Self-destructive love is nothing more than narcissism driven to its extreme.
I was reading that sentence for the umpteenth time when a knock sounded at the door.
“Madam Russell. The master would like you to come to his office.”
Instead of answering the familiar voice, Freya leaned back against the sofa and let her gaze drift across the room.
The book in her hands.
The warm May sunlight spilling over its pages.
The scent of rapeseed flowers drifting in through the fluttering, snow-white lace curtains.
The long, pale, well-maintained fingers of a noblewoman resting lightly on the high-quality paper.
It was the same day, the same scene, as familiar as the opening line of a book she had read until it was burned into her mind.
“…Madam?”
The voice from beyond the door prodded her. Usually, a servant would have delivered the message and vanished; she knew exactly why this man was waiting for a reply.
“Yes, Lorenzo. Tell him I’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes, understood.”
The footsteps retreated quickly. Freya set the book down, rose from the sofa, and walked toward the vanity.
In the mirror stood a woman who clashed violently with the tranquil scene she had felt only moments before.
Her dark brown hair was coiled in heavy, grape-like clusters, curled with a tightness that bordered on the absurd. She wore a crimson dress that cinched her waist and pushed up her breasts with the garish audacity of a streetwalker, her lips painted a matching, violent red.
Once, this appearance had been charming enough to command a room, but now, it served only to cast a poisonous, gloomy shadow over her features.
She reached out to stroke her own cheek. Even seeing it every day, the reflection felt like a stranger’s.
“I’ve looked like this the whole time.”
The version of her he saw… Driven by a sudden, sharp bitterness, Freya forced the corners of her lips upward. As the woman in the glass smiled, the awkward expression smoothed away the gloom.
If she had time, she would have scrubbed away the clownish makeup and undone the hair, but that was a luxury she wasn’t allowed.
“Good.”
Leaving her reflection behind, Freya left the chamber with a lighter step and walked to the opposite end of the corridor.
To the place where her husband—the man she had loved so deeply that even the passage of years could not erode the feeling—was waiting.
This time, she would do it for his sake.
✦ ✦ ✦
Scratch, scratch.
Max sat at his large mahogany desk, his pen moving incessantly across the documents as if he had forgotten the woman standing opposite him existed.
“Max.”
As always, she was the one to shatter the silence. Max slowly raised his head.
Had it been a month? He despised this mansion, refusing to call it home, yet he was forced to see her whenever he returned. He spent as much time as possible away, only coming here when absolutely necessary.
Today was one of those occasions.
“Sit.”
Max gestured toward the sofa and rose from his chair. As he sat across from her, he paused.
He hadn’t seen her in a week, and something about her felt different. In what way? Max watched her with indifferent, narrowed eyes.
The ostentatious dress, the labored, intricate hairstyle, the vulgar makeup, the cloying stench of expensive perfume and powder…
She was undeniably the same Freya Russell, a personification of unrefined luxury and lust.
*Am I imagining it?*
Perhaps it was he who was different. Today was a day of special significance for him. Yes, the change was likely his own doing. Was he nervous? Smirking inwardly, Max spoke.
“Freya.”
At his call, her deep turquoise eyes, which had been tracking the patterns on the table, locked onto his. Her cherry-red lips parted.
“Speak, Max.”
There it was again. She was the same woman, yet he felt a jarring sense of dissonance. Max finally realized what it was.
It was her expression.
The Freya Russell he knew was always angry, desperate, or hysterical. A woman mad for Max Russell. That was the consensus of everyone around him, and he had always agreed. In his presence, she had always seemed fractured, frantic, a woman unhinged.
But the Freya sitting before him now was calm. She was neither raging nor clinging.
*Could it be… does she know something?*
A flash of suspicion crossed his mind, but it changed nothing. He would not back down.
Ten years as fiancés. Five years of marriage. Max let out the words he had been waiting a lifetime to say.
“Let’s divorce.”
As his voice rang through the office, Freya drew a small breath. *Is it starting?* Max braced himself, waiting for the inevitable seizure of tears, the screaming, the hurling of objects. It was a cycle he had dreaded for five years.
But nothing happened.
The silence was unnerving, bordering on bewildering. The woman simply watched him.
What on earth was this? Despite how much he had wanted to escape her, fifteen years of being bound to Freya had given him an intimate, if unwanted, understanding of her nature.
Yet, in this moment, she felt like a stranger.
*Did she… really know?*
Even if she had, this reaction was wrong.
Ah, could it be? For a moment, the words she had once whispered to him—words he had dismissed as the ramblings of a madwoman—resurfaced.
“Max, you actually love me too, don’t you? Since I have only you, why do you refuse to admit you have only me? Why can’t you realize your own true heart?”
Max’s lips twisted at the unpleasant memory.
“Why no answer? Do you still think my true heart is something different?”
“No. That’s not it.”
Surprisingly, her answer was immediate. She added, in a voice of terrifying composure:
“Max, it’s true. I know now that your words are sincere.”
“What?”
Max blurted the question out before he could stop himself. Unlike him, she remained unnervingly calm.
“I believe you, Max. And I accept it. Yes. Let’s divorce.”
At the completely unexpected reply, agitation flickered across Max’s face. Then, a bright, chilling smile bloomed on Freya’s lips.
“In two years.”
Fifteen years was the time she, Freya Blanc—no, Freya Russell—had spent obsessed with Max Russell.
Today was the day Max Russell would end that wretched, terrible obsession, and the day Freya accepted Max’s true heart for the first time in fifteen years.
On one condition, however.