I Am The Game's Villain

Chapter 796: Simon Falkrona SS [2]

SIMON

Elona died during Ante-Eden’s attack on the capital.

Even now, writing those words in my mind feels unreal. The person who had once brought light back into my life, the person who had helped me believe that love and family were still possible after everything I had lost, died before I could make things right between us. I never told her how sorry I was. I never repaired what I had broken. I never gave her the apology she deserved, nor the warmth I had stolen from her in those final days.

Worst of all, when the end came, I was not even by her side.

That absence has never stopped haunting me.

Later, I learned more. I learned that what Uncle Conrad had told me contained truth, but not the whole truth. My parents had cooperated with Ante-Eden. My father had poisoned Oryanna Olphean, and her death had been the spark for Thomen’s wrath. The blood on that history did not belong to one side alone. But Conrad had never told me that. He had never wanted me to understand. He had only wanted to turn me against the family that had taken me in.

And he succeeded.

He played his part in Elona’s death as well, and I, in my stupidity, didn’t notice. I chose bitterness over trust. I let his words guide me. I doubted my love for Elona, doubted the bond we had built, and by the time I understood how badly I had failed, she was gone. Not only her, but Thomen too, the man who, despite what my father had done to him, had shown me care, shelter, and a place in his home.

Then more was taken from me.

Lyra fell into a coma after being gravely injured. Edward was sent to prison after killing Walter Celesta. And once again, I found myself standing in the ruins of a life I had believed would endure.

Alone.

That was the cruelest pattern of my life, perhaps. Every time I began to feel that I had found something solid, something lasting, it was torn away from me, and I was left behind to sift through what remained.

In the end, all I had was the title Thomen left behind and an empty house crowded with memories. Every room held ghosts. Every corridor echoed with voices that were no longer there. The walls themselves seemed burdened with everything I had lost, and no matter where I looked, I found some reminder waiting for me. Elona’s warmth. Edward’s silence. Thomen’s stern kindness. All of it remained, not as comfort, but as pain sharpened by absence.

It was a house full of the dead and the living I could no longer reach.

And inside it, I was alone once more, waiting for the day my love, Lyra, would finally wake up.

She was still there, asleep in one of the great rooms of the Falkrona mansion, resting upon a bed too large and too grand for someone so silent. The room was always painfully quiet here.

Every time I entered, I found myself holding my breath without realizing it, as though even the smallest sound might disturb whatever fragile thread still tied her to this world.

Day after day, I stayed by her side. I spoke to her, even when there was no answer. I told her about the weather, about the academy, about the foolish little things that happened and the heavier things I could not bring myself to say aloud to anyone else. I kept hoping that one day she would stir, open her eyes, and look at me the way she used to. I hoped she would smile, reach for me, pull me into her arms, and give me once more the warmth that had so often kept me from falling apart.

She was the only one left to me.

And I needed her.

I could not bear to lose her too.

"Lyra..."

I sat in the chair beside her bed, my eyes fixed on her motionless figure. At times it was almost cruel how peaceful she looked. If I did not know better, I could have believed she was merely sleeping, lost in some deep and distant dream from which she might wake at any moment. But reality was far less merciful than appearances. Her mind had been damaged, and though healing magic could mend flesh, the brain was far too delicate. No healer wished to promise what they could not deliver.

The only one who might have been able to save her was the Saintess.

But the Saintess had not yet been chosen, had not yet awakened.

So all I could do was wait.

Slowly, I rose from the chair and stepped closer to the bed. I reached out and brushed a few strands of hair away from her forehead, my hand careful and light, as though she might break beneath too much force. Then I leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

"I’ll come back," I whispered, though I did not know whether I was reassuring her or myself.

Then I turned and forced myself to face the day.

When I stepped outside the mansion.

Near the entrance, waiting with a smile as though she had been there for some time, stood Azeliah.

At first, when the idea of marrying her had been raised, I had rejected it almost immediately. The thought of taking another woman’s hand while Lyra still lived, even in that silent state between presence and absence, had felt unbearable to me. Wrong, even. I had not wanted to hear it. I had not wanted to consider it.

And yet, looking back now, I could not say I regretted it.

Azeliah had become my support through all of this, more than I had expected, perhaps more than I deserved. She had stayed beside me through grief, through silence, through those long, exhausting days when I could barely manage to carry my own thoughts. There were times when her presence alone was enough to keep me alive.

Even now, dressed in her Royal Eden Academy uniform, she looked beautiful and radiant. Sometimes I thought she was one of the few reasons I could still smile at all, one of the few reasons I could still bring myself to walk through the academy’s gates without drowning in memory.

By that point, my attendance at the academy was almost a formality. My position had changed. My life had changed. There was little left there for me that truly felt youthful or ordinary. But I still wanted to finish. No, more than that, I needed to finish.

It was what my second father would have wished.

And if Elona were still alive, she would have scolded me for skipping classes surely. I could hear it clearly enough in my mind that it almost made me smile.

So I would finish.

Thankfully, Aunt Belle had insisted on handling the affairs of the duchy for the time being, telling me that I did not need to concern myself with such matters yet. For that, more than I often said aloud, I was grateful. It reminded me that for all I had lost, I was not entirely abandoned.

I was not completely without family.

Aunt Belle was still there for me.

And Edward was still alive as well, though far away in Sancta Vedelia.

Despite everything that had passed between us, despite all the anger and grief and blame, I still hoped that someday we might mend what had been broken. I knew my part in that ruin. The last time I had seen him in prison, he had not openly screamed that Elona’s death was my fault, but he had not needed to. I had seen it in his eyes. The hatred in him had been born from love, from the pain of losing her, and from knowing that until the very end I had kept my distance from her.

What could I have possibly said to him that day?

He had been right.

He had every right to hate me.

In the end, when Elona had needed her brothers most, both of us had failed her in our own ways. But I had failed her with coldness, with absence, with distance chosen too late and for all the wrong reasons. That was something I doubted I would ever forgive in myself.

"Simon."

I blinked and lifted my gaze. Azeliah was standing directly before me now, near the waiting car, her expression softened by concern. I had drifted too far into my thoughts again.

She raised one hand and touched my cheek tenderly.

"It will be fine, dear husband," she said with a small smile. "You are not alone."

"Azeliah..."

Her eyes gentled further, and without a word she took my hand in hers. Then slowly she guided it downward and pressed it against her stomach.

"And you wouldn’t be in the future either."

For a moment, I did not understand.

Then I did.

My breath caught.

I stared at her, then at her stomach, then back at her face as my mind struggled to keep pace with what my heart had already begun to realize. Azeliah lowered her gaze for a brief second before looking back up at me with a shy smile I had never seen from her before.

In that instant, everything inside me seemed to go still.

"Azeliah..." I said again, but this time her name left my lips like disbelief, like wonder.

She gave the faintest nod, her fingers still wrapped around mine.