Marcellus leaned quietly against the headboard, his gaze lowered, his eyes hollow, as though staring into a past long beyond his reach. After a long silence, he finally spoke, his voice hoarse and heavy, each word weighed down by pain:
"I should start… from when my relationship with Livia fell apart."
His tone carried the restraint of someone in agony, as if every syllable tore at his chest.
"At that time… the Holy Grail's influence on me was overwhelming. It crept into my mind bit by bit, corroding it. It made me cold, irritable… even cruel in ways I didn't recognize as my own. I thought I could suppress it, pretend nothing was wrong. But in truth… I was no longer myself."
He slowly closed his eyes. In his mind, the memory replayed vividly: candlelight wavering in the dark of night, the air of the chamber heavy and cold, his own guttural growl echoing as he lost control. In the dim glow, the fragment of the Grail pulsed with a grotesque rhythm, like a beating heart tugging at his blood, at his reason.
"Livia saw me." His voice dropped suddenly, tinged with a faint tremor. "In her eyes… for the first time, I saw fear. Not the fear of me being hurt… but fear of me. In that instant, I knew I had already lost something. And yet… I forced myself to act as if it didn't matter."
As he spoke, Marcellus's hand tightened, the knuckles turning white with the pressure. He drew a deep breath and pressed on:
"She questioned me—asked what was wrong, if I was hiding something from her. And at that moment… all I felt was anger. Anger that she dared to doubt me, that she touched the secret I was desperately trying to bury. So… I chose silence. I chose indifference. I even cloaked myself in arrogance, as if none of it concerned me."
His voice quivered; at the corner of his eyes shimmered the faintest trace of moisture. "The truth is… I was terrified. If I told her everything, would she see me as weak, as unworthy? Would she… leave me? And so I said nothing. And by saying nothing, I drove her away with my own hands."
The ward sank into suffocating silence. Elias's face had grown grave. For the first time, he saw Marcellus stripped of his pride and cold composure, laid bare in shame and regret.
Marcellus murmured, his voice fragile, nearly breaking apart:
"If back then… if I could have set aside that damned pride, and simply told her everything—told her even just once, 'I need you'—then maybe we wouldn't have come to this. Maybe… we wouldn't."
His hand slipped weakly back down, as if robbed of strength. The raw regret and anguish lay exposed, unshielded, like a blade unsheathed in the open air, cutting at the heart.
Elias, who had been seated with his arms crossed in his usual composure, shifted imperceptibly. At first his brows knit only slightly, his eyes flickering with surprise, as though he couldn't reconcile this broken, regretful man before him with the proud, unyielding Marcellus he had always known.
But when he heard of Livia's "eyes filled with fear," Elias's gaze shuddered visibly. His lips pressed tight, and the mask of detachment he wore slipped enough to reveal the ache beneath. His fingers clenched into his palm, so tightly the nails bit his skin, yet he said nothing.
As Marcellus's words grew more choked, Elias's hard expression softened, blurred. In his eyes welled a complexity impossible to name: anger—for Livia's loneliness at that time; pity—for the man who had finally shed his armor; and a jealousy he could not conceal, sharp and bitter.
By the time Marcellus whispered, "If only I had put aside my pride…" Elias's throat tightened, his Adam's apple bobbing as though something were lodged within him. His gaze wavered, evasive, unwilling to let anyone see the impact, the crack in his own defenses. Yet the taut lines of his jaw betrayed the turmoil surging inside.
He did not speak. He only looked at Marcellus, silently. In that instant, his eyes seemed torn wide open, the barrier ripped away—so naked, so unguarded, it was almost unbearable to meet them.