Chapter 126: Did You Ever Love Me?
Holden lowered his head, and after a long silence, he murmured, "But we can't just give up on her because of that."
Anne pressed her lips together. She glanced at the sun sinking toward the horizon in the distance. "No one's asking you to give up on anyone. This is your choice, Holden. No one's forcing you."
Holden froze, wanting to step back, but the tree behind him blocked his way. He slowly slid down to sit on the ground, looking up to see Anne standing against the light, her expression cold yet beautiful like a goddess.
His throat bobbed as if struggling to swallow a bitter pill.
"My choice?" Holden asked in a hoarse voice, "If I had firmly chosen you back then and refused to divorce you, would we... would we have had a better future than we do now?"
Anne remained indifferent. "That question stopped mattering a long time ago."
Holden shook his head. "No, it's not that it doesn't matter. I've been thinking about this question lately—or maybe not just lately. Since the day you chose to divorce me, I've been thinking about it. I just couldn't figure out the answer."
"I've realized you hid a lot from me too. Like how skilled you are with a sword, how many impressive friends you know. If you had told me back then, we could have gone to the battlefield together. Our relationship wouldn't have fallen apart, and we could have earned military honors together. Wouldn't that have been great? Why did you hide all this? And why did you immediately choose divorce after I brought Candy home? We didn't have to divorce. I didn't mistreat you. I let you continue being my wife, even gave you control of the household, and you..."
Holden paused, struggling to continue. "Did you ever love me at all?"
Anne didn't speak, just looked at Holden coolly.
Holden tried to find an answer in her eyes but found only coldness and distance.
"Maybe you think it's too late for me to ask you this now. It is—we're legally divorced, and I've married Candy. She has her flaws, but she's good to me and truly cares about me. I... but when I think about how she's been acting lately, this isn't the Candy I remember at all. I thought she was an honest, kind, and brave girl who looked out for her fellow soldiers. I thought that's who she was."
Holden's voice caught. He didn't get it. Before, he'd seen Anne as some uptight noble while Candy was his escape from the darkness—vibrant, beautiful, passionate, free. With her, he wouldn't be trapped by rules and expectations.
And Candy was brave on the battlefield too. That kind of girl was the wife who could fight alongside him.
But after Holden abandoned Anne for Candy, what did he actually gain?
His mother's anger, his little sister's tears, and the disdainful looks from others. Apart from Candy, he got nothing.
Holden had thought the Eastern battlefield would be a fresh start for him and his wife, but Anne was here too. Why was she here? What right did she have to be here?
With these thoughts, Holden watched Candy fail and saw the selfishness and hypocrisy behind her facade.
Meanwhile, Anne grew more dazzling, drawing Holden's gaze unconsciously, making him constantly reflect. This woman had been his wife. The honors she earned could have been half his. So why did things turn out this way?
The more Holden thought about it, the more he avoided Anne and even resented Candy. Though he knew it wasn't Candy's fault—he'd made the choice. He'd abandoned Anne.
"It's not about whether it's too late," Anne said coldly. "There's just no point."
"I was supposed to go to the battlefield originally, but my mother wouldn't allow it. She threatened me with her life, demanding I forget about going to war and marry as an ordinary noble lady. She was my mother—I couldn't refuse her demands. And you were the most suitable candidate my mother selected."
Holden murmured, "Selected by your mother... but did you ever love me?"
Anne frowned in annoyance, not understanding why Holden kept obsessing over this question. But if she didn't give a clear answer, he'd probably keep asking. "Yes, my mother selected you, but in the end, I had to agree. So I'll admit it, Holden—I genuinely wanted to spend my life with you back then."
Hearing this, Holden's eyes widened, but before he could speak with joy, Anne continued at a faster pace. "But the fact that you're asking those earlier questions today shows me you really aren't a qualified husband. Your heart wanders elsewhere. Even after marrying Candy, the woman you claim is your true love, you're still asking someone you've separated from whether she ever loved you. Does it really matter? Will the answer make you proud or cut you to the core and make you want to fix things? Do you really not know where you went wrong?"
Holden's expression gradually darkened. "How am I not a qualified husband? Wasn't I good to you back then? I've done nothing wrong by Candy either. You're asking for too much. You hid your strengths on purpose, deliberately making me think you were just a useless decoration at home. Besides, I didn't ask for a divorce in the first place—you were the one who begged His Majesty. Otherwise, how would we have ended up like this?"
"Is this something I should fix? No, Anne. At the end of the day, this is all your problem. Your heart can never be satisfied, so you keep demanding more. The truth is, I gave you what most wives could never get from their husbands. You had power, you had status. You just needed to manage the household a bit and do what a wife should do. How is any of this my fault?"
Anne actually laughed in anger. "Power? Status? You think I should be grateful for these things and consider you the most perfect husband in the world? Have you ever thought about this—I ran the Titan household for three years. No matter how your mother and sister treated me, I endured it, waiting for you to come back. Put your hand on your heart and tell me: I waited three years. What did you do when you came back?"
"Now you're saying I hid the fact that I know swordsmanship and deliberately made you divorce me? Holden, you're the commander of the Dawn Knight Order—your brain should work, right? How can you say something like that? You need to pay the price for your own choices. Do you understand that? Coming to me now talking about 'what ifs'—do you really think I should have stayed by your side?"
"No. You just saw with your own eyes that I'm far better than Candy, and you can't get over it. You're thinking that if I were around, you could gain more benefits. But I never appeared just to bring you glory. Why should I have told you I know swordsmanship?"