CHAPTER 315: WHICH IS WITCH-II

Atlas’s gaze softened, the sharp edges of his blue eyes fading into something gentler. For a brief moment, he almost looked content, no longer a fallen king, no longer the man entombed in glass, but simply someone remembering a fleeting kindness. Perhaps it was this, just this small memory of affection from the woman he had loved so fiercely, that helped him endure the centuries.

Arabella hesitated before speaking, her voice low, cautious. "You said that Circe loved Rafael..."

He blinked, then nodded slowly.

"But... did you hear that from her?"

There was a pause.

Atlas let out a short, brittle chuckle, the sound not quite reaching his eyes. "Yes," he said, as if rehearsing the answer he had repeated to himself over the years. "I saw them in the garden. Rafael was kneeling before her, holding her hands like she was the last miracle left in the world. I interrupted them, rather foolishly, I suppose. I was angry, just like any man would. But I had to ask her directly."

He paused, his smile dimming as if the memory physically pained him.

"She looked at me... and said yes."

Arabella’s breath caught in her throat. The words were simple, but she could feel something in them didn’t fit. A part of her recoiled, not in doubt of Atlas’s pain, but in uncertainty of the truth beneath it.

"Then she... really did love him?" she asked, almost unwilling to believe it.

Atlas didn’t answer immediately.

"She said the words," he murmured. "She said, ’Yes, I love Rafael.’ And what could I do but step back and let her go? That should’ve been the end of it. I should’ve walked away."

His hands clenched slightly around his knees, his voice beginning to fray at the edges.

"But I didn’t. Because I didn’t believe her."

Arabella turned sharply toward him, startled.

"I thought... maybe she only said it to spare me. To protect me from a harder truth. Or maybe... to keep me away from something she didn’t want me involved in. Maybe because she also knew that I would soon be kept inside that glass coffin, perhaps because she didn’t want me to be saddened by leaving her side forever... because she fears that I would decide not to stay inside that coffin and rather die to spend the rest of my life with her."

He looked at her, and this time, his gaze held no composure, just years of doubt and a truth that had never settled.

"I loved her enough to believe she was lying."

Arabella’s throat tightened, her heart beating faster. Suddenly, the tale felt less like a story of unrequited love and more like a puzzle with pieces that refused to fit.

"Though," Atlas sighed, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "in the end, I found out they really were in love."

He didn’t sound bitter. Not even angry. And that, Arabella thought, was somehow even more heartbreaking.

There was no betrayal in his tone, just the hollow ache of a man who had accepted a wound too deep to ever fully close. It made her chest tighten. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could carry that kind of grief and still speak of it so quietly.

"Rafael was speaking with his mother, the Duchess," Atlas continued, his eyes faraway. "I overheard them, not by intention, but by accident. She asked him if he was prepared to take my place on the throne... since I was planning to step down and allow myself to rest in the glass coffin."

Arabella blinked, stunned. "You were going to relinquish the throne?"

He nodded, slowly. "I was tired. My body was failing. And I thought... perhaps history wouldn’t remember me kindly. Just a nameless king who reigned for a few short weeks. A footnote. The Duchess never liked me, and I could hear the joy in her voice, how pleased she was to see me disappear. I imagine she couldn’t wait to erase me from the records altogether."

Arabella clenched her hands, listening as a growing unease twisted inside her.

"She said Rafael would make a better king. Rafael... the last surviving royal of acknowledged blood," Atlas added with a tired smile. "Not counting the illegitimate children of the King, of course. None of them were ever recognized."

Then his expression shifted, still calm, but there was something glassy behind his eyes, like the surface of a lake just before it cracks.

"Rafael told her he was surprised," Atlas said. "Surprised by how far Circe would go for him. How she was willing to poison me for years. How easily she could betray the man who had saved her and her kind. And how it was her idea to place me inside that glass coffin... somewhere no one would ever find me."

Arabella’s mouth opened, but no words came at first.

"That can’t be," she finally breathed. "She couldn’t have... she wouldn’t, poison you? That must be a misunderstanding. It has to be. Maybe Rafael was lying, maybe she never said those things—"

"But why would Rafael lie to his own mother?" Atlas asked.

He wasn’t accusing. He wasn’t defending. He simply looked at her, genuinely curious, like someone who had asked himself that same question again and again for years, always hoping for a different answer.

Arabella couldn’t reply. Her throat was tight, her heart louder than her thoughts. The image of Circe, the noble witch, the loyal companion, began to blur, unraveling like threads pulled from an old treasure box with no real answer.

And yet...

"I don’t believe it," she whispered, more to herself than to him. "Even if she said those words... there must have been more to it. There has to be."

Atlas gave a faint, broken smile.

"I used to think that too. But you know," he whispered, "When Circe closed that glass box and looked at me for the last time, she was smiling, out of relief."

Arabella’s hope for Circe slowly diminish at these last facts and she could only stare at Atlas with hurt as if she was the one who had felt what he had felt.

"I still love her," Atlas then said, "Foolish as I am, she was the only person in my life that became the reason for me to live my life. Without her, I would have died younger... and so I thought that even if she pushed me to death, I wouldn’t mind. I would willingly do anything for her sake, after all."