CHAPTER 269: MY WIFE IS JUST SLEEPING

Raven once told her that Edmund had cried when he saw her being buried. However, he didn’t show any meaningful reaction when he saw her lying lifeless on the bed.

At least, that’s what people saw on the outside.

Strangely enough, even though Primrose was only peeking into the past, she could still hear his thoughts.

[This has to be a joke,] Edmund thought. [Why did Sir Dorne say my wife is dead? She’s just sleeping.]

[The maids said she loves to nap. She’s probably just napping now, and she’ll wake up before dinner.]

[She never looked happy eating with me, so I’ll ask the maids to send my meals to my study room. That way, she can eat peacefully in the dining room.]

Primrose stood just a few steps away from her own lifeless body, staring at her pale face, one that had already started to show signs of stiffness.

No matter how you looked at it, this wasn’t someone who was just taking a nap.

She had died, but Edmund didn’t want to believe it.

"Could you ask the cooks to prepare some sweets for my wife?" Edmund turned to Sevrin with calm eyes. "The maids said she always liked having cake for dessert."

Sevrin furrowed his brow, clearly unable to believe that the Lycan King was talking about cake when his wife had just passed away.

"Your Majesty," Sevrin said firmly. "Your wife is gone."

Edmund looked at him with a cold, blank expression. "What are you talking about? My wife is right there. She didn’t go anywhere."

[She’ll wake up.]

[Maybe she doesn’t want to wake up because she doesn’t want to see my face.]

[Maybe I should leave the palace for a while.]

No, no, no!

There was nothing wrong with him!

Primrose reached out to him, but her hand only touched the air, like she was reaching for something that wasn’t there.

Her eyes widened in horror when she realized that she couldn’t touch her husband.

"Your Majesty, please stay calm." Raven’s voice echoed in Primrose’s mind. "Memories from the past are fragile. If you let your emotions take over, I’ll have to pull you out before anything goes wrong."

Primrose quickly shook her head. "No, I’m fine! I just ... I just need to take a few deep breaths!"

But how could she breathe calmly when her husband looked like he was trying so hard to imagine a false scenario just to deny her death?

"Your Majesty!" Sevrin grabbed Edmund’s shoulders, trying to knock some sense into him. "Your wife has passed away! You can touch her and know that she’s not just taking a nap!"

Primrose heard Sevrin’s thoughts.

[I get that he’s in shock, but if the king can’t handle his emotions now, what’s going to happen to the kingdom in the future?]

Edmund was having a breakdown, and the first thing that crossed Sevrin’s mind was the fate of the kingdom?!

For heaven’s sake, no wonder it had been so hard for Edmund to express his feelings in the past.

Everyone around him was as dense as a rock and acted like emotions were dangerous, like feeling too much would destroy everything.

Well, yeah, that was possible, but bottling up all your emotions could be just as dangerous later on.

What’s wrong with crying when you’re sad?

Sometimes, letting it out is the only way to keep your heart from shattering even more.

Unfortunately, without Primrose’s influence, Edmund had never been able to understand that.

Worse than that, the beasts in this lifetime also hadn’t learned how to be gentle or express their feelings, since Primrose had barely interacted with them.

Even the soldiers outside the room stood in silence, stiff as statues. But she could hear their hearts quietly breaking on the inside.

Wait—why were they crying? She had rarely interacted with them.

[People were so cruel to our queen,] one of the soldiers thought. [There were all kinds of nasty rumors, but I knew they weren’t true.]

[I’ve been guarding her room ever since she came to this palace, and she rarely ever left it,] another thought. [Poor queen. She locked herself away for years and died in this cage.]

Ah, so some of them did care about her.

They were just really bad at expressing their positive feelings.

They knew the rumors weren’t true, but they couldn’t stop them from spreading.

If only she had known this and hadn’t acted so passively back then, maybe she could’ve become good friends with them.

Primrose lowered her gaze again, staring at her pale face lying on the bed. "What a fool," she whispered.

But honestly, she couldn’t blame herself completely.

In her past life, she stayed away from the beasts because she couldn’t read their minds and their behavior toward her was also not that good.

No matter how kind or sincere someone might be, none of it would matter if they didn’t say it out loud.

None of this tragedy would have happened if their communication hadn’t been so awful, and maybe if Primrose hadn’t judged them so quickly.

Still, out of everyone who was grieving, no one was as broken as Edmund.

He was still clinging to a lie, creating a fake story in his head just to avoid the truth.

But the moment Sevrin forced him to look at Primrose’s face up close, those lies started to crack.

"I told you, she’s just taking a nap," Edmund said flatly. He didn’t even blink, like he was afraid that if he did, the tears would come pouring out. "My wife is sleeping."

"You can feel her skin, Your Majesty!" Sevrin shouted. "She’s ice-cold!"

Edmund didn’t respond. Instead, his thoughts echoed painfully inside his own head.

[Why would I touch her? I’m too filthy for her.]

[She’d hate it if I laid a hand on her.]

[She even cried when I marked her.]

[My wife hates me ... because I’m a monster.]

Primrose clenched her fists at her sides.

Lately, her husband had been doing so much better, so she rarely heard him tear himself apart like this anymore.

But now, facing the version of Edmund that had never known her love, she finally understood that he didn’t just have low self-esteem.

He hated himself so deeply that he wouldn’t have minded disappearing from the world entirely.