Holy Night: My Husband is Definitely a Paladin - Chapter 256

Michael forced a smile and responded.

“I see. It certainly took a long time.”

His reaction gave Cecilia even more confidence.

‘I should be grateful to that wench.’

Because of Irene, he had ultimately been excommunicated.

For an entire week, he had locked himself away in that wench’s tiny room, engaging in such acts that even those passing by must have felt embarrassed. It was only natural for it to end this way.

She didn’t know the exact details of how the excommunication process had played out at the Grand Temple, but it was obvious even without seeing it.

The High Priestess must have pressed him for answers, and while Michael might have protested in frustration, he would have eventually accepted his fate.

How despairing it must have been for a man who had walked only one path his entire life to realize that path had been completely cut off.

‘Thanks to that, all of his resentment was directed at that woman instead.’

The fortunate thing was that he was quickly adapting to the ways of the secular world.

Cecilia intended to give him a new purpose, now that he had lost the destination he had once devoted himself to.

That purpose would be herself.

‘He’s the perfect candidate for marriage. A man who will dedicate himself completely for a lifetime.’

Even through her hazy vision, Cecilia gazed at Michael with satisfaction, as if he were the only thing shining in the room.

Her purification abilities would eventually fade, but his strength would remain for a long time, protecting both her and the kingdom.

Moreover, he was an orphan from the temple, with no family or relatives.

Unlike the other royals who constantly proposed marriage in hopes of acquiring her artifact, he had no competing claimants to take what was hers.

More than anything else…

Cecilia wrapped her arms around his. Pressing her body close and deliberately pushing her chest against him, she found it amusing to feel him stiffen.

There was still an innocent side to him.

Once she showed him the true depths of pleasure, that meaningless week with the wench would be erased from his mind in an instant.

Feeling excited, Cecilia brought up her memories of Irene.

“She was such a laughable woman.”

“Who are you referring to?”

“Irene Rhodiam. Who else? That wench. Even when you clearly wanted nothing to do with her, she still loitered around you so pathetically. I can still picture it so vividly.”

Then, Cecilia began recounting events from when Michael and Irene had been together at the fortress.

“When she grabbed your hand, you turned your head away, remember? You wouldn’t believe how many people scoffed at her that day. Even though you despised her so much, she still used her injuries as an excuse to find some way to touch you…”

That wasn’t true. He hadn’t despised it.

To those who were not knights, the wound might have seemed deep, but to him, it had been nothing serious.

So he had thought little of it.

Yet Irene had looked up at him, her eyes shimmering with tears, completely lost.

With trembling fingers, she had reached out and clung to his hand.

She hadn’t even fully grasped it. Perhaps because of hesitation, she had only managed to hook onto his pinky finger.

The moment her skin touched his, Michael felt as if he had been burned.

Startled, he had immediately pulled his hand away.

But the heat remained on his fingers.

At the same time, his mind became hazy, overcome by something dizzying.

A desire he had never known before flared up inside him.

He wanted her to hold onto him more firmly.

If only she would pull him into that fire completely—

The moment that thought crossed his mind, Michael had been consumed with such disgust for himself that he could hardly bear it.

Because this feverish turmoil he felt had dredged up the clinging emotions he had suppressed so deeply that he no longer even recognized they existed within him.

That was why he turned away. He could no longer keep looking at Irene. If he did, he feared that one day, he might do something irrevocable.

Cecilia continued speaking.

She remembered, with excruciating detail, every single moment Irene and Michael had spent together.

No—Cecilia knew far more about Irene than that.

“It was the same back then. Just because she was invited, how could she dare to approach you and ask if you’d go with her…? When you left, and everyone laughed at her, only then did she finally realize her own humiliation and scurry away.”

“It was the same during the Grade 12 dungeon. There were so many great rewards, weren’t there? Everyone was pleased as they left, but she alone was rummaging through the chest, shaking it desperately, as if something might still be left inside. How pathetic.”

“But of course, the most infuriating thing was when she dragged you into her room and locked the door. She must have thought it was her chance.”

With each word Cecilia spoke, Michael forced strength into his legs to keep himself from collapsing on the spot.

And as he listened to the princess, he realized something.

Everything he had done to Irene… Because he feared his own feelings, because he couldn’t handle his own turmoil… Those things had only served to poison her.

With a single instance of him rejecting her, Irene had been mocked and ridiculed by everyone in the fortress.

With a single time that he turned her away, she had been shunned and ostracized for several excruciating months.

Michael wanted nothing more than to rip himself apart with his own hands.

His every action had always left Irene with nothing but cold wounds.

The memory of her small, freezing room surfaced in his mind.

He had been the one to strip that place of warmth.

Perhaps because she had finally laid bare something she had intended to take to the grave, Cecilia seemed strangely satisfied.

And then, she finally said the words he had been waiting for.

“Now that I think about it, I really did well to tell her to go to that dungeon.”

Ah.

Finally.

Michael’s hand moved instinctively, gripping the hilt of his sword.

At last, this vile woman had begun to reveal the truth he had so desperately sought.

“…What do you mean? Telling her to go to the dungeon… Are you referring to Irene Rhodiam? That ‘wench’?”

Suppressing the overwhelming urge to shout, to bash her skull in, he forced himself to respond with a voice laced with feigned amusement.

And at the same time, in his heart, he begged Irene with everything he had.

I’m sorry.

Even for a moment, for uttering your name like this, please, never forgive me.

If, one day, from the highest steps of heaven, you look down and see me in the dirt—spit on me. Scorn me.

As Michael desperately fought to contain the murderous intent raging within him, Cecilia burst into laughter and said,

“That wench. When I told her you were inside that dungeon, she ran in like a fool, so happy and eager. She really must have liked you.”

At those words, Michael heard it.

The sound of something within him completely shattering.