23.
She had secured an invitation to the Imperial Ball from her father, completely hoodwinked the arrogant men of the Jockey Club, and gained the assurance that the head of Delaporte Bank would be unable to refuse her proposal at their next meeting.
It seemed that because things had been going so well, she had overlooked the most important part.
Yes, she had known he wouldn’t easily trust her. Freya ignored the suffocating sensation in her throat and stared straight into Max’s blue eyes.
“Max Russell, listen to me.”
There was still a long road ahead. Her husband would continue to face situations like this in the future. And every single time, he would doubt her intentions.
If she tried to persuade him every time, if they kept repeating this cycle of suspicion and persuasion, there might come a moment when her words would no longer reach him.
Therefore, this conversation had to be finished once and for all.
She placed her hand over Max’s, which was gripping her arm hard enough to cause pain. Her hand, impossibly small in comparison, covered the back of his, as if to calm the agitated man.
Unlike her soft touch, her voice was firm.
“I will only answer this question this one time. Even if you ask me again later, I will not respond. So, remember what I am saying now very carefully, and if you feel suspicious again in the future, recall what I said today.”
Freya spoke with sincerity—even if that sincerity might not be properly conveyed.
“Everything I have done today and everything I will do in the future is for you. Not for anyone else, but only for you, Max Russell.”
Distrust still flickered in his eyes. She understood. She knew what the Blanc family meant to him.
“It must be hard to believe. Remember? I told you that if you could only trust me, I would sign a hundred contracts if need be. But even if I truly wrote a hundred contracts, there would eventually come a moment of doubt. Just like today.”
Nevertheless, this was all she could say.
“Even so, trust me. Because I have decided to lead you out of this place. Just as you did for me long ago, this time, I will lead you out.”
Max’s hands were solid and large, incomparable to the days of their youth. But when Freya carefully took hold of his hand and pulled it down, his fingers followed with an ease that felt futile.
Their gazes locked. Too much was swirling in his eyes, and Freya could not tell what he was feeling in this moment.
Making him believe her was, in fact, easy. She could simply tell him of a few events to come and have him watch. But that would not signify trust in her.
So, instead of persuading him with rational, logical words, Freya held Max’s large hand and smiled as brightly as she had that day.
“Max, if it’s you, you would know how happy I was when I took the hand you offered me that day. When it becomes truly hard to believe, think back to me then. Everything I do is to return that same joy to you.”
Truly, all that remained for her, all that she wanted, was one thing. Just as her prince had done for her that day, this time, it was her turn to help him escape this hellish life.
So, this single phrase was the most heartfelt proposal she could make to her husband.
“So Max, this time, trust me.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Everything had unfolded exactly as her father said it would.
Now, there was no one left by Max’s side. Only her. His wife, who was in the middle of divorce proceedings.
Freya felt relieved.
Now, her husband would have no choice but to accept her. He might be mired in sorrow for the moment, but eventually, he would recognize her sincerity.
The winter she was twenty-three… even then, she had thought so.
A few days before the year turned, her husband came.
The husband she once thought would never return had come to find her at Blanc Castle.
For Freya, that alone was enough.
The divorce proceedings that had dragged on for over a year and a half, the husband who had said he loved another woman, the husband’s business she had ruined with her own hands—they would forget it all and start again from the very beginning.
When Max first spoke of divorce, it felt as though her world was collapsing, but she hadn’t given up, and in the end, she had protected the love of her life.
…Or so she had believed.
The cracks in Freya’s belief began when she heard that Max had headed somewhere other than Blanc Castle.
With a vague, sinking anxiety that something had gone wrong, she went to find her husband and found him standing before a cliff. A cliff not far from the castle—the one the villagers called Lovers’ Cliff.
“Freya Blanc, are you satisfied?”
It was the first thing her husband had said in half a year.
Max was a mess. A bitter smell of alcohol clung to his vagrant-like appearance. He looked utterly exhausted. Though he seemed as if he might collapse at any moment, only the blue eyes of Max staring at her were strangely, eerily vivid.
*I didn’t want to hurt you.* Freya tried to call out to her husband in a trembling voice. She had done it because she was so desperate, because she wanted him so much, because she couldn’t bear to let him go… She wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him that once this moment passed, their marriage and his business could both be returned to the way they were. So he shouldn’t be in so much pain. That was what she intended to say.
But her husband did not wait for her.
Everything happened in an instant.
He said he resented her. He said he detested her. He asked if she would still say she loved him even when things had reached this point. He called her insane. He told her to open her eyes and look at him properly, asking if it was even him that she had loved.
Her husband shrieked.
He said what she did was not love. He said it was an illusion created within a fantasy. He said what she had done was nothing more than a game, mimicking a princess from a fairy tale. He said the love she had felt was nothing but a wicked, trivial prank…
“Freya, look at what your love has done to me.”
That was the last thing her husband said. His body slowly fell backward. In truth, she didn’t quite know. By the time she came to her senses, her husband was already gone. Below the cliff, only the angry waves surged. And just like that, her one and only love vanished from her life.
And that was his first death.
Until the very moment he took his own life before her, he never spoke the truth. Instead of mocking her foolishness, instead of condemning her betrayal, Max Russell denied her love.
He was right.
She was insane, and something like this could never be love.
✦ ✦ ✦
“How do you feel?”
Freya blinked slowly. At that, tears streamed down her cheeks. Her breathing was ragged. She must have been weeping in an unsightly manner.
“…I feel like someone who has just woken up from a vicious nightmare that felt like reality.”
Of course, what she had just seen was a reality even more terrible than a nightmare.
For a moment, sensations as vivid as those in the nightmare washed over her, and she was swept up in the illusion of having returned to that winter.
And when she opened her eyes, she was back in the small house on Rasharière Street.
Stunned by the dissonance between reality and memory, Freya remained motionless for a long while, clutching her heart, which still shuddered from the pain.
“People say memories are erased, but in reality, they do not vanish so easily.”
Sigmund’s calm voice reminded her that the cliff she had been at just moments ago was merely a memory.
“We use the expression ‘extracting’ memories. Let us imagine that there is a large filing cabinet inside your head. Each compartment contains every memory you have experienced in your life, from the trivial to the intense.”
The words Sigmund had shared once before echoed again.
“What we commonly call ‘oblivion’ is not the memory itself, but rather the meaning of having forgotten which compartment that memory was stored in. And the most important role in remembering the place where a memory is kept is played by emotion.”
Sigmund continued his explanation as he took out a handkerchief and handed it to her.
“What I will do from here on is to dilute the emotions you felt, one by one, through hypnosis. The more intense the emotion, the longer it will take, but as you continue the treatment, there will come a moment when the event you believe you experienced will feel like a story you heard from someone else.”
Although she already knew the content, Freya quietly took the handkerchief and wiped her tear-soaked face.
“And as more time passes, it will be forgotten, just as we do not remember what we ate for a meal a week ago, or a month ago.”
Sigmund waited for Freya to calm down before asking once more.
“Do you truly wish for this?”