A Butterfly Through the Mist - Chapter 80

For Tilia to obtain a protective order against her father, it was better to rely on Ontaroa’s laws rather than those of Arkansis.

There was the issue of whether the law would apply to Tilia Ambrose, a foreigner, but Ilex decided to take advantage of the fact that she would be an employee of the Ontaroa Foreign Affairs Consulate.

Of course, there wasn’t a single judge who would bother looking for legal loopholes to help an unappointed consular employee who had yet to submit any evidence.

So Ilex decided to use his position.

After all, no matter what anyone said, he was the son of a princess who once bore the Bardin royal surname and the second son of the illustrious Duke of Davenport.

Had there ever been a time when he found his own status so useful?

It was a stroke of luck that one of his cousins, with whom he had maintained a close relationship, had a strong interest in victim relief laws.

She seemed to think that he, too, had a deep concern for laws protecting the weak, but as always, Ilex didn’t bother correcting the misunderstanding.

If her misconception led her to push for stronger victim protection laws, it was a misunderstanding he was more than happy to accept tenfold.

His cousin, Iris, quickly looked into the matter and sent back her response.

[If you time it right, you might be able to get a travel ban imposed… but a restraining order would be difficult. Even for citizens, it’s rarely granted.]

Even with two members of the royal family working on it, the matter was not as easily resolved as he had hoped.

It was while he was pondering how to revise the conditions for imposing a restraining order that he stepped into the courtyard to clear his restless mind.

Just then, an overwhelmingly strong scent of perfume reached his nose.

“What are you so engrossed in?”

When he turned his head, he saw a woman whose presence was so overpowering that her crimson lips seemed to devour her entire face—his mother.

With an indifferent expression, Ilex flipped over the letter from Ontaroa as if discarding it and opened his mouth.

“Just reading some gossip.”

“Leah mentioned that you’ve been exchanging letters with Iris quite often lately.”

Leah was Iris’s mother—his aunt and his mother’s younger sister.

Wearing a detached expression similar to her son’s, the woman sat down beside him and spoke with cool detachment.

“I don’t know what you’re up to, but I hope it’s nothing I need to concern myself with.”

“It won’t be.”

Ilex replied nonchalantly without even looking at her.

“You just need to continue your life of peaceful indifference. Just as you always have.”

At those words, Seraphine, who had been staring in the same direction as her son, lifted her gaze and looked at him.

She was so beautiful that it was hard to believe she had given birth to two fully grown sons. Adorned with dazzling jewelry that outshone even the setting sun, she smiled elegantly.

“Ilex, do you know why I accepted your father’s proposal?”

Even as she smiled, not a single unnecessary wrinkle formed around Seraphine’s lips. That was the result of pouring enough wealth onto her face each day to sustain a few commoners for years, all in an effort to defy the passage of time.

“It was because our values aligned. We agreed that after producing an heir, we would each enjoy our own private lives.”

Private lives.

Ilex barely stopped the corner of his lips from curling up in derision.

Only then did he finally turn his head to look at his mother.

Despite her graceful appearance, there was nothing memorable about her features except for the extravagant beauty—she was like a peacock, dazzling but lacking any lasting impression. Her languid voice carried on.

“You may not want to admit it, being so young, but there are marriages like ours. I cherish your father very much. Without him, my comfortable life wouldn’t exist.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“I don’t want this peaceful, happy life to be disrupted.”

Ilex turned his head away, signaling that he had no intention of continuing the conversation.

“Do you understand, Ilex?”

However, Seraphine, persistent as ever, continued gazing at him and whispered, “I will not tolerate anything that threatens the perfect life I have built.”

***

Perfect life, my foot.

Ilex twisted his lips in disgust as he watched a young woman confidently stride into his father’s bedchamber.

If that was what constituted a perfect life, then it was better not to live at all. If that was the kind of marriage required to maintain one’s private affairs, then it was better not to marry in the first place.

Cherish? Nonsense…

Turning away from the filthy sight, Ilex pulled the curtains shut and returned to his desk.

However, after flipping through the disorganized books for a while, he let out a long sigh and leaned back against the chair.

He brought a hand to his furrowed brow, but the tension wouldn’t ease.

The amendment to Ontaroa’s victim protection law for foreign nationals had been stagnant for months, going nowhere. Meanwhile, time had flown by, and now Tilia was a fourth-year student preparing for her graduation exams.

This year, he had to find a solution—no matter what.

As Ilex flipped through his letters, he began tapping his fingertips anxiously against the table.

He had to send Tilia to Ontaroa. He couldn’t let her marry that perverted earl.

The moment the image of Tilia in a white dress standing beside that decrepit old man crossed his mind, all expression vanished from Ilex’s face.

‘Should I just kill them all?’

Thinking about it, that was the simplest and cleanest solution. Bradley Ambrose and George Ambrose were useless humans anyway. Even if he staged their deaths as accidents, no one would investigate too seriously…

‘No.’

Snapping out of his thoughts, Ilex ran a hand over his face and shook his head.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t cross that line. Because if—by even the slightest chance—Tilia ever found out, there would be no turning back.

Yet, as he clung to the faint hope of solving things within legal bounds, his cynical attitude soon returned.

And if she did find out—so what? What would change? In her eyes, he was already worth less than a cockroach.

Frustration and resignation flickered in his gaze. He couldn’t help but recall his own ridiculous behavior over the past semester.

Ever since realizing how much Tilia Ambrose despised him, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to change her perception of him.

Ilex had subtly lingered around her, attempting to show a different side of himself—one that contradicted the rumors.

For the first time since he was ten, he dressed neatly and kept his hair tidy. He attended lectures as if he had never been late or absent a day in his life.

He threatened and drove away the idiotic men who always swarmed around him. He even did something as insane as spending his entire vacation reading classic literature, just to excel in rhetoric—Tilia’s favorite subject.

And yet, Tilia never once spared him a glance.

Literally—not even a single glance.

The entire academy had been abuzz over his bizarre behavior, yet the one person he wanted to notice him remained utterly indifferent.

Ah, though there had been one exception.

That time in the library. When she had furrowed her brow in suspicion, watching what he was studying—that had been a reaction, however small.

But in the end, all the absurd efforts he had made for months had been meaningless.

After witnessing her throw away chocolates he had secretly placed in her cabinet for the thirty-second time, Ilex finally gave up—just as he had discarded those sweets.

After that, he merely maintained his grades.

The title of top student—he instinctively knew that if he lost even that, Tilia Ambrose would see him as nothing more than trash unworthy of acknowledgment.

And so, until she reached her fourth year, Ilex had become nothing more than a fool who had never even managed to hold a proper conversation with her.

Even if he successfully sent Tilia to Ontaroa, nothing would change. He would remain the same pathetic man who had never once spoken properly to the woman he loved, yet still foolishly ensured she could leave for another country.

Then what was the point of all this effort? Why was he expending so much energy on a woman who would always hate him?

Yet even amidst that self-loathing, he couldn’t stop himself. He kept reaching for books, flipping through pages, searching for a solution.

He knew this was the most foolish thing in the world. He knew it was beyond pathetic.

But some people still raised the axe, even knowing they were chopping their own feet.

He wanted to see Tilia Ambrose smile. Just once, he wanted to witness her chattering excitedly.

Even if she was smiling without him beside her. Even if she was only smiling because he wasn’t there.

Even if it was from afar—he wanted to see it.

And so, despite the dark scowl on his face, he continued searching for a way.

The laughter he had never once heard from her was the only thing that kept his hands moving.

A sorrowful kind of compulsion.