Conquering His Cold Heart
Chapter 485 - 485: Dark Hole

Back in the castle, everything was in utter chaos.

The news of the Queen's disappearance had traveled around the Kingdom at lightning-fast speed which resulted in the influx of uninvited guests to the castle. Some guests were there to show their concern and support for the King while others were there to merely enjoy the spectacle.

All the soldiers were rushing here and there, busy aiding the Queen's search in one way or another. The maids and servants were especially busy catering to the guests.

While the castle was in a state of uproar, Caspian had heeded Vincent's suggestion and was inside his bathroom, soaking himself in the icy cold water.

He kept on sitting inside the bathtub until his whole body went numb in response to his unmoving posture.

Although he wanted to sit there in the tub for an indefinite amount of time, he knew he couldn't afford to just slouch around when everyone was looking for his wife in his stead.

So, he forcefully pushed himself up on his feet, got out of the tub, and then wrapped a towel around his waist. Without even drying himself, he walked out of the bathroom and made his way toward his dressing room.

He wanted to put on some clothes and go to the commander for an update on the search that was currently going on. He wanted to know if his soldiers were close to capturing the culprits or not. If they already had the name of the main perpetrator, he wanted to go and drag those filthy men to the punishment room himself.

Caspian was about to call his servants to help him with his clothes when his ears caught the sound of the carriage wheels. Without thinking for half a second, he rushed towards the window, pushed it open, and flew out in the direction of the carriage that had almost reached the main gate of the castle.

The carriage abruptly came to a halt when Caspian descended from the sky and hovered in the way.

Caspian looked at the startled coachman and asked with a hint of anticipation dancing in his eyes, "Is the Queen inside?"

His wishful thinking was instantly trampled when the coachman replied, "I apologize, Your Majesty. I was ordered to return without Her Majesty."

'Ordered to return without Her Majesty…' Caspian's jaw ticked when he repeated those words in his head. "Ordered by who?" he grumbled subconsciously.

The coachman gulped dryly, realizing how it sounded wrong, and then answered with a heavy breath, "By Lord Vincent." He also quickly clarified, "Her Majesty hasn't been found yet. Lord Vincent asked me to deliver the things inside the carriage to you and then remain on standby in case I was needed."

Caspian didn't ask what things were inside the carriage. He already knew they were gifts bought by his wife. For him. So, even though he wasn't really eager to unbox the gifts at the moment, he grumbled, "Send them to my chamber."

He then returned to his room just as how he came there, changed into decent clothes, and went to see the commander.

"Jasper, any progress?" Caspian asked impatiently.

Jasper shook his head but gave the recent update that he had. "The soldiers are following the trails of footprints for now. Lord Vincent is leading a team as well."

"Any idea about who the kidnapper might be or their demands? Have you interrogated Bartholomew? There's a 90 percent chance that he is the mastermind." Caspian let out a chilling grumble.

Jasper disappointed Caspian because there were no such leads yet and Bartholomew hadn't regained his consciousness either.

After talking for some more with Jasper and assessing the situation, Caspian also greeted some of the guests. Though he didn't really need their help, he gladly accepted the offers in the hope that his wife would be found sooner rather than later.

And even though he was itching to go out there in the field, battering any suspects along the way, he forced himself to head for his chamber. He needed to conserve his energy as well as the boiling rage inside of him for the actual culprit.

For now, he would trust his soldiers with locating his wife and safely extracting her.

Upon reaching his chamber, he was somewhat taken aback by the heap of boxes and bags that lay on the table of his antechamber. He didn't expect his wife to load the whole town in that small carriage.

His heart turned even bitter now.

He couldn't help but feel somewhat guilty because his wife had gone to the town, unprotected, just so she could buy gifts to reconcile with him. Not to mention that he had gotten a little busy which caused the delay in dispatching of the extra guards.

Caspian narrowed his eyes at the gifts and pressed his lips into a thin line. And as he darted his eyes at those material objects that his wife had gathered, he muttered in a low broken voice, "Silly woman… Just another cup of tea would have done the trick. Now look at the mess that you have dragged yourself into!"

He sighed, not knowing whether to appreciate those gifts that his wife had gathered at the expense of her own safety or to burn them all down.

In the end, he decided to leave them be for now and went to his wife's bedchamber instead, the room that had been synonymous with happiness and comfort for him for the past several months.

Caspian slipped inside the blanket and lay down on his rightful side of the bed. He wasn't going to fall asleep obviously but that didn't mean he wasn't wishing for his wife to come home and snuggle by his side.

He gently caressed Anastasia's pillow, and promised in his heart, 'Anna, stay strong. I promise I will find you before the end of the night.'

Caspian was confident that his friend and competent soldiers wouldn't let him down.

However, his heart clenched when the fear of letting his wife down etched across his chest.

Though it had only been a couple of hours since Anastasia's kidnapping, Caspian couldn't help but feel as though it had already been weeks since he last saw her.

Suddenly, an image of his wife's face flashed in his tense mind. There were bruises all over her delicate face. He immediately fisted his hands and snarled at the empty room, "If I see a single mark on her body, I am going to skin them alive before I do anything else."

Two more hours passed by. Caspian was an emotional mess by now.

He was thinking of waiting for Anastasia in her bedchamber but the empty side of the bed made him even more paranoid.

Caspian placed his trembling hand on Anastasia's side of the bed as a fearful thought infested him. 'Is this how my future will look like?' He couldn't help but feel as if this was a demo of his near future.

Cold bed. Long lonely nights. Aching heart. His wife existing only in his memory…

His eyes trembled, unable to contain the liquid that trickled down on the pillow to form a little pool underneath his temple.

The constant aching in his heart turned nastier by the second.

In the end, unable to rein his overflowing emotion, Caspian stormed back to his own room.

As soon as he entered his bedchamber, he was pulled into the abyss of his loneliness. He dropped down to his knees. Suffocated, he looked around for anything he could grasp onto so that he could pull himself out of the abyss.

He didn't find anything.

The cold sheets were laughing at him. The curtains were dancing as if they were teasing him. A streak of blood on the shelf that had somehow escaped the eyes of the maids taunted him. And the flickering dim lights reminded him of his wife's flickering life.

The complex emotions that had been bubbling inside of him all along suddenly engulfed him whole.

Something inside of him shattered.

He suddenly jumped on his feet, flipped the bed, broke the shelf, tore the curtains off, and smashed the candle holders, all while screaming and shouting at the inanimate objects in his room.

He didn't care if there were still some guests left in the castle. He couldn't keep on hiding his emotions and pretend that he was okay when he was clearly feeling everything crumbling inside of him.

After destroying everything in his room, he sat down on the floor, on the artful mess that he had created.

He rubbed his face with his palm aggressively, pulled on his hair, and then croaked in frustration, "How long are they going to take to find a single goddamn woman?"

---

Caspian found himself aimlessly wandering down the long and empty corridors of his castle.

Except for the maids, servants, and guards, there were no unnecessary people roaming around the castle. Of course, the dungeon was filled with prisoners. But that was different considering they were always away from sight.

With Vincent's suggestion, Caspian had temporarily called Zenon back from the mission and had pardoned him before delegating all the stately duties to the poor advisor who was swamped with workload lately.

With nothing much to do, Caspian spent his days walking around the castle as if he was a ghost whose soul had been lingering around for centuries because of some unfulfilled desire.

Everyone in the castle was worried about him since they had barely heard him speak recently or had seen him take a sip of blood in over a week. He refused to drink even when Vincent tried to coerce him. And it was evident from Caspian's paling face that he was getting weaker and weaker by the day.

As usual, his feet automatically led him toward Anastasia's chamber, and stopped in front of the huge door.

And as always, when he came to his senses for a split second and realized where he was standing, he turned around, not wanting to enter the room that painfully reminded him that he had failed miserably at fulfilling his promise to his wife who was still missing.

*Thump*

Caspian's eyes widened when he heard a faint sound coming from Anastasia's chamber.

He quickly turned to push the door and dashed straight to Anastasia's bedchamber, hoping to see his wife there. When he reached there, a crow flapped its wings and flew away from the slit of the window after doing some mischief in the room.

Caspian looked at the empty glass that was lying sideways on the bedside table and immediately felt disheartened. The tiny sliver of hope in his heart went out of the window along with that crow.

He scoffed at his own silliness and mumbled in a dry throaty whisper, "What was I even hoping for? Even after all these days, nobody has found a single clue yet… How would she magically appear here?"

Lost in his self-loathing, it took a while for Caspian to realize that he was surrounded by Anastasia's intoxicating smell.

It made him long for his wife even more.

The numbness in his heart began to fade away and was quickly replaced by every kind of painful emotion in existence. This was another reason why Caspian had been strictly avoiding entering his wife's chamber ever since he walked out of there on the night of her kidnapping.

But now that he was inside, his downcast eyes darted around the room until they settled on the bed. Caspian slowly walked towards the bed and stretched his hand to touch Anastasia's pillow. However, he retracted his arm, unable to bring himself to touch anything that belonged to her, fearing the lingering smell of his wife would fade away quicker.

He slowly shifted his eyes from the bed to the other parts of the bedroom. Anywhere he looked, he could feel Anastasia's warm presence.

The images of her elegantly walking around the room, reading her favorite books in the corner, sleeping in his arms, and simply staring at him with that beautiful smile on her lips flashed before his eyes. His heart warmed up at those thoughts but froze again when he missed her presence so much that he wondered if there was a physical hole in his heart.

'It has already been almost two weeks since I last saw her… Is she even okay?'

His lips quivered uncontrollably.

The dark hole in his heart kept on sucking him deeper and closer down the path of insanity. But he steeled his heart before insanity claimed him whole. He couldn't allow himself to go down that path before he found his wife.

Caspian was having an internal conflict with himself when he was suddenly disturbed by the noise that came from outside. It sounded as if someone was having a back-and-forth with the guards just outside the door.

Caspian didn't give it much attention and was back to being lost in his own excruciating thoughts when someone suddenly barged in, shouting, disregarding the King's privacy.

"Your Majesty! Lord Bartholomew has no part in Her Majesty's kidnapping! Why is he being unjustly punished for a crime that he didn't even commit? Haven't you had enough even after killing his only daughter and slaughtering his entire guards?"

The complex emotions that had somewhat settled down suddenly came bubbling right up when Caspian laid his eyes on the man before him.

He didn't wish to participate in any meaningless banter with the man he didn't even know. Thus, he simply clenched his jaw and said in a cold distant tone, "Keep on talking if you wish to share the same cell with that bastard."

Although that man felt scared under the icy glare of the King, he was adamant about fighting for justice.

So, wanting to show his undying loyalty towards his master, he shouted to conceal his trembling voice, "You cannot always rule by sowing fear among us. The days of ruling by fear are over. I am going to take this issue to the council of ministers and I am fighting back against your cruelty! We have had enou–"

"Enough!" Caspian blared while simultaneously slamming his fist against the bedchamber wall. A few things on the other side of the wall, in the antechamber, dropped and clattered on the floor.

The resulting sound was so thunderous that the man who was adamant about fighting for justice suddenly lost his voice. Not just that, he almost leaked himself when he saw the murderous glare that fell on him.

"A-Anyway, I will not c-c-c-cower back… I-I am telling you!" After a whole minute, he managed to stutter that much before running away from the room like a dog with its tail between its legs.

Caspian kept on glaring at the door until the guards outside apologized to him for letting that man slip through and then shut the door again.

It took Caspian quite some willpower to control his urge to fly out of the window and snatch the life out of that man.

'Save the rage for the culprit,' he kept on reminding himself.

Finally, he heaved a deep sigh to calm himself even if it was just a notch. But when his eyes fell on the huge crack in the wall, instead of calming down, he felt guiltier for ruining his wife's chambers.

"I should have it repaired right away. She will not like it if she sees all the mess," he anxious mumbled to himself and then strode out of the bedchamber.

He was going to give out the order to the guards outside. However, just when he was about to cross the antechamber, the corner of his eyes caught a glimpse of a notebook lying on the floor.

It was the diary that Anastasia had hidden behind the painting that was hanging above the fireplace and had forgotten. The diary had finally seen its freedom when Caspian knocked the other side of the wall so hard that a swing of the painting on this side caused the diary to drop to the floor, along with several other decorative items that sat on the fireplace.

"Her diary…" Caspian whispered and before he knew it, he picked it up from the floor and was now reading it.