Chapter 529: Chapter 529: A Love Story
Chapter 529 – A Love Story
"...please kill me afterwards. My soul to ashes."
Noah frowned at those words, his eyes resting on Marigold’s face. There was no need to say anything.
Her expression was resolute, as if nothing could change her mind. Yet despite knowing that, he still parted his lips.
"Are you sure?" He twisted his lips the instant the words came out, acknowledging how stupid the question was.
"I am, Noah." She replied, her voice strangely peaceful now. She looked like someone who had finally found something to look forward to; a purpose that made the future worth a little more.
Yet that anticipation came attached to an ending. An ending to everything she had gone through. An ending to an existence spent mostly lost, trapped inside her own mind, killed again and again by herself so many times she no longer recognised who she was.
But there was a solace in the current moment that Marigold hadn’t anticipated. A solace in ending that existence after tasting the one thing she had spent eons chasing.
Love.
Not the ability to love — the heavens knew she had so much of that, it had driven anyone receiving it to madness. What she wanted was to receive it. To be on the other side of it, for once.
And now, for the first time since she was born, a man had lowered himself to understand her instead of standing at a height and pointing a judging finger down at her.
It seemed easy. It was not. It required a ridiculous amount of strength to set aside everything you knew and look at reality through someone else’s eyes.
And it required an even greater strength to show compassion when the whole universe would have rewarded that man for being a wolf to a man instead.
So she dared. She took a leap of faith.
"Will you allow me that ending?"
Noah sighed wearily. "Is there no other way?"
"There are." Marigold said with a bright smile. "But I don’t want them. I want the first time I feel that love to be the last time I feel anything at all. Do you understand me, Noah? I know you do. You are the only one who does. The only one."
Noah’s body trembled without him meaning to. He lowered his head and buried his face in his palms.
Marigold’s happiness blazed hotter at the sight. Slowly, with wrenching effort, she pressed her palms against the cold floor and began crawling toward him, still talking.
"Are you sad for me?" She said, laughing in a way that would make the universe weep.
It was so beautiful. So beautiful that the universe itself seemed to mourn that such a thing was being wasted on her last moments.
The realisation was jarring. And it felt as though the whole universe felt it with Noah.
The air grew colder. But beside that, something else slithered through it...something that made Noah, a man with a strong heart who rarely shed tears, fight to keep them from falling.
Not because he suddenly loved Marigold deeply. But because of what she was doing. The way she was laughing. Crawling toward him playfully like a child showing off something wonderful, wanting to be seen, wanting to be proud of.
It made him understand, fully and for the first time, a saying he had heard countless times but never truly grasped until this moment.
A candle burns brightest before it goes out.
And right now, he was watching the last light.
"Answer me, Noah." She breathed, now an inch away, taking his hands and pulling them from his face to see him. Her smile widened when she found what she was looking for.
"You are sad, aren’t you?"
"I am, mother-in-law."
"For me?"
"Aye. For you."
She barked a laugh, sickeningly happy to finally have someone sad on her behalf. Then she nestled deeper against him, placed her head on his lap, and curled herself like a sleeping child.
Her eyes closed, a peaceful smile settled on her lips and did not leave.
"You," Noah began, his voice weighted with something that had settled on him without warning, "should say goodbye to your daughter."
"Is that necessary?" She murmured. "She won’t listen to me."
"Just do it. The intention is more than enough. And I will make her listen."
He reached down and began to caress her hair, still matted with blood from her recent madness.
"What would I even say, Noah?" She purred contentedly at his touch. "That I hate her?"
"Do you still hate her?"
Marigold laughed softly. "No. No, Noah, I don’t." She paused, then continued. "I told you, I want only love in my heart when I breathe my last. Only that. I have freed myself of all hatred."
Noah’s face tightened, his lips pressing thin. "Then you can try telling her something other than that. Maybe ’I love you’ will do just fine."
Slowly, he began to feel a strange coldness spreading through her body.
The coldness of death.
His heart clenched.
"I will." She said, her voice growing faint. "I will do it for you, Noah. But... please, can you allow me one more thing?"
"Tell me."
"A story." She said, grinning, mischievous and excited at once. "Tell me a story. I am getting sleepy, and I... I feel like I’m going to sleep soon. But I don’t want nightmares. I always have nightmares."
The coldness deepened. And each time it deepened, Noah’s grip on himself weakened further.
His eyes were shimmering. He bit his lip, kept caressing her hair, and answered while trying to hold his voice steady.
"W-What kind of story, then, mother-in-law?"
He failed. His voice cracked.
Marigold didn’t notice, only making herself more comfortable as she answered in a faint whisper.
"A love story." She said, her smile still there.
Noah opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He looked down.
Marigold was no longer breathing.
She was dead.
And her soul was burning itself — slowly, inevitably. Soon she would be nothing but ashes. Just as she had wished.
There was no need to continue. And yet Noah kept caressing her hair and parted his lips anyway.
"Well, why not, mother-in-law?"
He paused, blinked and the world blurred around him.
"Listen well then. I promise you will like it. For this is the story... the story of a princess of a certain Celestial Empire..."
His voice cracked, tears falling without end onto the peacefully smiling face of Marigold.
"...falling in love with a Warborn."
—End of Chapter 529—
