Chapter 523: Broken Things
Cecilia lay in bed, her body still and warm beneath the familiar blankets of Arkai’s Capital Residence.
She looked at the high ceilings and the elegant furnishings. The night was quiet.
[Congratulations, Cecilia! You’ve completed "Regret! Escape the CEO as the Missing Pregnant Wife!" Love Scenario!]
Huh—?
But—but Sol—
Her baby, the egg she had held in her arms, warm and pulsing with life, the child she had carried and birthed, loved with every fiber of her being... gone.
The scenario was over. They had returned.
It was the same night she had left. The night after she had spoken to Lilyca for the first time, when Ivy had brought the young Saintess Candidate to Arkai’s residence.
She had started the scenario after confirming everything with her husbands via telepathy, lying in this exact bed, cuddled in Arkai’s arms.
Now she was back. Which meant the last person whose memory had been locked, Arkai, had finally regained his.
But how—
Cecilia felt movement behind her. Arkai, who had been cuddling her in sleep, pulled away. The sudden absence of his warmth made her turn, her heart already pounding with an anxiety she couldn’t name.
"Arkai...?"
The word died on her lips. He was sitting up in bed, his back pressed against the headboard, his pitch black eyes wide and fixed on her with an expression she had never seen on his face before.
Horror.
He stared at her as though he was seeing her for the first time.
What—
Cecilia’s mind snapped to the conclusion immediately.
He had been retrieving Eastiel’s new camera from her room. And now she remembered exactly where she had stored the manila folder Arzhen had given her.
It was the one containing the investigation into her mother’s death. The one with Sienna Dawnoro’s name on the customer list for the special heat suppressant.
The name Cecilia had seen and immediately hidden, too afraid of what it might mean to confront it directly, at least at the time.
Did Arkai—
"Did Sienna kill your mother?"
Before she could piece everything together, he spoke first.
Cecilia couldn’t answer with words. But her eyes answered for her. They faltered, but not suddenly or dramatically. Her eyes faltered slowly.
The luster in them changed, like a candle guttering in a sudden draft. And that was answer enough.
Arkai stared at her. The horror in his expression didn’t ease. If anything, it deepened, added with something else.
Anger.
Incandescent, blazing anger, burning beneath the shock like a forge-fire. His wolf ears, pinned flat against his skull, trembled with the effort of containing whatever was raging inside him.
"When did you plan on telling me?"
"After we give birth, and before attempting to make you remember." Cecilia answered honestly, stripped of any attempt at deflection.
She had promised herself she would tell him. All of it. She just hadn’t expected the truth to come out like this, in the aftermath of a scenario she hadn’t known was ending, with Sol’s warmth still fading from her arms.
Arkai’s breath stuttered. His chest heaved. "What about Sol...?"
Cecilia moved fast, closing the distance between them, reaching to hug him. She couldn’t bear to lose her husband too.
But he held her away. His hands, which had always reached for her, which had always pulled her closer, now pressed against her shoulders like a barrier.
"Just answer me," he said.
"I planned on figuring it out, how to bring Sol with us, before telling you everything and attempting to make you remember—" The words tumbled out of her in a rush, and somewhere in the middle of them, she broke.
The tears she had been holding back since the System’s notification chimed finally spilled over, streaming down her face unbidden.
Arkai’s face crumbled. The anger didn’t disappear, but it fractured, cracked open by the sight of her tears. He backed away, his hands dropping from her shoulders as though the touch of her skin had become unbearable.
Then he turned, got out of the bed, and kept moving. Away from her. Toward the door.
"Arkai...?" Cecilia was shocked and her tears still falling.
He didn’t stop. He kept putting distance between them, wider and wider.
"Arkai, where are you going?" Her voice rose, fear and anger tangling together in her throat. "Come back here."
He didn’t speak. His hand found the door and pushed it open. That was how he was gone.
"ARKAI!"
Cecilia screamed his name—
CRASH!!!
ROAAARR!!!
A tremendous, splintering sound shook the walls, followed by a roar that was not human, not wolf, but something in between. Things were breaking.
She paled and launched herself out of bed, her bare feet slapping against the cold floor as she ran toward the door.
But by the time she reached the hallway, all she could see was the tip of Arkai’s tail, a flash of black fur, as his massive wolf form crashed through the furniture, frantically moving away from her. Further and further.
"ARKAI!"
[Sol. What about Sol?] Oathran’s voice cut through her mind. He also returned to this world and immediately asked, but not quickly enough.
"Oathran, help—Arkai’s on a rampage, please, please, please come here now, please—"
[Sol—I’ll go there as well—] Eastiel’s voice joined Oathran’s. [Just tell us we can go back to that world like we did to the previous world and figure it out.]
"Yes, yes we can—I think we can—!" Cecilia was sobbing now, uncontrollably, as she ran through the wreckage of the hallway.
The furniture Arkai had crashed into lay splintered and scattered. He wasn’t trying to destroy anything, she realized. He was just trying to move away. To escape.
The things he broke were only in his path, obstacles between him and whatever distance he needed to put between himself and her.
"I’ll teleport the two of you, alright?" Cecilia made the decision in a heartbeat. "I’ll use Arkai’s mana so he’ll be drained and stop—"
[Cecilia, calm down. It’s still you who summons us. Your body—] Oathran said gently but firmly.
[No, let her summon us. Use my mana too. Your Majesty, we need to be there right now.] Eastiel said, that particular calm he only found in crisis returned at the exact time they needed it.
Cecilia didn’t hear more. She was running, her lungs burning, her vision blurred with tears, chasing the shadow of a wolf who had fled from her. But he was too fast.
"System, use Summon—"
[Yes, Cecilia!]