"Don't kill her"
As Kael lowered his blade
'Wasn't he ill'
'So why is he here, and standing well like a normal person'
kael mind spun with confusion, struggling to piece together what was unfolding before him.
Celestara's husband, with a sudden urgency in his steps, rushed toward Marina, his eyes filled with both sorrow and resolve.
"W-why ... huff .. a-are you..huff.. h-here, Alaric?" Marina's voice was laced with desperation, her breaths shallow and pained.
Blood trickled from her lips, yet her gaze held defiance as she looked up at him, refusing to show weakness.
"I can't stand by and watch you die," Alaric replied, his voice trembling.
He knelt beside her, cradling her injured form in his arms, disregarding the blood staining his clothes.
"I won't lose you," His words hung heavily in the air, carrying an undeniable weight, a strange mix of sadness and devotion that left Kael reeling.
"What's… going on here?" he muttered to himself.
Kael's eyes narrowed as he observed the scene.
His instincts were sharp, his mind trying to discern if this was yet another layer of deception or something genuine beneath the façade of betrayal.
Alaric held Marina close, brushing a strand of hair from her face, his touch gentle despite.
A sudden realization sparked in Kael's mind, and he almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it.
'If I'm right', he thought
"did the villainess just get... NTR'd? " Kael Muttered while laughing.
"What a fool, choosing mangoes when he have watermelons" kael muttered again.
While laughing shamelessly.
Suddenly kael realised .
'Why am I laughing , it's not a laughing matter,'
"Pffft" laughing sound escaped from kael mouth.
Both Alairc and Marina looked at kael.
"Oh sorry!" Kael apologise, while gesturing his hand to continue.
Here he was, standing in the middle of what he'd assumed would be a life-or-death confrontation, only to find himself entangled in what looked like a twisted love triangle.
He could barely suppress the smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
As Alaric continued to cradle Marina, oblivious to Kael's inner monologue, Kael couldn't help but watch with curiosity.
Celestara, the cunning villainess herself, had been unknowingly betrayed by her closest confidante... And her husband.
'Betrayal?'
Kael couldn't deny.
This was more than a simple betrayal.
They have tried to kill her.
Kael's mind churned as the truth started to crystallize.
Alaric wasn't the victim he had pretended to be; he was playing a far darker game .
His apparent suffering had been a smokescreen all along, a twisted act in a complex web of deceit.
The term Empathic Override came to Kael's mind.
It's a term used when someone prioritizes another's suffering over their own, masking their own pain to help the other cope.
Celestara, who deeply loved Alaric, had been unknowingly misdirected by his sacrifice.
Alaric, have helped Marina to place a curse on Celestara.
And he had projected his own suffering so convincingly that Celestara focused solely on him, never realizing the true danger she was in.
If the curse had spread to cover more than 90% of her body, she wouldn't have been able to break free from it.
Yet now, with this realization, there was hope
Kael's remembered seeing a faint blue mark on Celestara's hand, a subtle sign of the curse she bore.
It had been there all along, hidden in plain sight.
Kael clenched his fists, fury boiling beneath his calm facade. He laugh was nowhere to seen.
This whole time… she was fighting to save the very man who plotted her downfall.
It was a cruel irony, and Kael couldn't help but feel a flash of anger on her behalf.
It seemed he'd stumbled into a story even more intricate than the novel he had once read.
As kael looked at Marina.
Though weakened, she was clearly no longer in immediate danger.
____________
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