As she rubbed her cheek against his back and whispered softly, Leon’s body grew stiffer and stiffer. Adela slid her hand lower and lower, brushing against the front of his trousers, which she already undone.

“Adela, you will regret this.”

Leon turned around slowly.

He bent low and closed the distance in an instant. His face was near enough that their breath mingled, and a lethal hunger flashed in his eyes.

His expression was cold, but the eyes fixed on Adela burned as though they would swallow her whole.

‘…Ah.’

She made up her mind to seduce Leon tonight, but faced with his ferocity, her body refused to cooperate. Frightened, Adela moved to cover herself, too late, and Leon grabbed her ankle and tilted his head to one side.

“You said you’d attend to me.”

“Who said I w, won’t……”

Adela’s voice trembled precariously, like a candle flame shaking in the wind.

Her gaze fixed, as though nailed in place, on the hard length pressing out from between the front of his trousers.

Every night she spent with him came back to her. The tearing pain and the suffocating weight. As those sensations revived, the color drained from Adela’s face.

‘But if things stay like this, nothing will be different from my past life.’

Summoning her courage, Adela pushed herself upright and lowered herself before him again.

Just from her gaze, the head of his c*ck, beaded with clear fl*id, twitched heavily. Adela drew a breath and reached out with trembling hands, stroking Leon’s length softly.

“……!”

The moment her touch landed, Leon’s body went rigid at once. Adela looked up and stared at her own reflection in his red eyes.

‘In your eyes, there is only me. And it is the same for me.’

Adela licked the tip with her tongue and stroked the shaft slowly with her hand.

“Where did you learn to do something like this? Who have you been with?”

Leon’s voice was low and cold.

The pressure made her body shrink instinctively, but Adela answered without backing down.

“I learned it from books. This is obviously my first time.”

It was half true.

The Adela of her past life lay in bed and received him like a corpse, but the fact remained that she spent many nights with him.

She was disgusted with herself for being aroused by her enemy, and she shut her eyes every single time, yet she could not deny that Leon was her first love and her last.

Adela bit her lip every time to keep that wretched longing from showing, and her lips were covered in wounds until the day she died.

Leon’s hand, trailing up from her ankle to her knee and then her thigh, replied coldly.

“It had better be. You are nothing but war spoils the Emperor gifted to me. I make it a habit not to take damaged goods.”

His eyes flickering with desire, Leon pressed between her legs. Adela moved quickly to cover herself, but it was no use.

“Wh, what are you doing?”

“It’s too late to regret it now, Your Highness the Princess.”

* * *

A scream from far away woke Adela.

The air brushing the back of her hand was bitterly cold.

She returned.

To that very day when nothing yet began, but everything started to fall apart.

Hell stretched out below the terrace of Valent Castle. The castle walls burned red, and acrid smoke blanketed the night sky.

“…Hah.”

Adela raised her hand and pressed hard against her chest.

The cold sensation that pierced through her was still vivid. Emperor Abarus’s spear blade clearly ran through her chest, and beyond it, Leon lay dead with his eyes not yet closed.

But when she opened her eyes again, what she faced was not eternal darkness. It was today, eight years ago.

Her parents left with nothing but screams, and Valent was on the verge of being erased from the map.

The Empire’s hunting dog came to kill her. Leon would burst onto this terrace soon.

In her past life, he came to break Adela, and in the end, he cast himself aside and saved her.

Soon, Leon would appear with flames at his back.

He would try to drag her back into misery again, but this time, she would be the one to take hold of Leon first.

She had to be the one to hold onto the man who saved her life. This time.

Even if the end was a more terrible ruin.

Adela pressed her trembling fingers to her heart. The pain vanished without a trace, but inside her chest, the wretched regret of her past life burned.

‘I was foolish.’

The parents she believed to be noble and virtuous rulers were stamping their seal on a contract to sell their own daughter.

The invader she despised broke down the castle gates to pull her out of that hellish marriage.

The image of Leon, drenched in blood until the very last moment, begging Emperor Abarus to spare her life, rose before her, and hot tears spread across Adela’s cheeks.

Thud-thud-thud.

Then an ominous sound of hoofbeats shaking the ground reached her. It was the same omen as before.

In thirty minutes, the conqueror Leon Fershtein, blinded by vengeance, would break down the door to this room.

In her past life, Leon became Emperor Abarus’s dog and died to protect Adela. But this life had to be different. Adela wiped her tears roughly and stood before the mirror.

‘I cannot repeat my foolish past.’

She threw off the gown she was wearing and smoothed her thick brown hair. She steeled herself, her green eyes, the ones Leon was particularly fond of, flashing with resolve.

‘As long as I can protect you, it doesn’t matter what becomes of me.’

Her resolve set, Adela leaned against the bed and listened to the noise outside.

The neighing of horses and screams mixed together, and the castle, once silent as a tomb, grew loud.

Adela looked over the letter she brought from her parents’ room and let a cold smile settle on her lips.

[We hereby promise to exchange Princess Adela of the Valent Kingdom for the Coderius Mine.]

It was proof of the secret agreement her parents exchanged with a merchant from a neighboring kingdom. If Leon had not invaded, she would have been sold off as the fifth wife of a man past sixty the following month.

“Not even worth laughing at.”

Adela snorted and tore the letter into long strips, tossing them at her feet.

“You absolutely cannot, this is Princess Adela’s bedchamber!”

A commotion erupted outside the door.

‘…Ah, Sofia.’

Her nanny Sofia died in her past life, stabbed with a spear while trying to protect her. Adela crossed the bedroom and kicked the door open.

Sure enough, Sofia stood with both arms spread wide, blocking the rough soldiers. Spotting Adela, Sofia cried out urgently.

“Your Highness, please go back inside! I will hold them off here.”

Without a moment to hesitate, Adela stepped in front of Sofia and called out.

“Did your master order this?”

The soldiers who were threatening her with spears faltered at Adela’s commanding voice.

At that moment, from far down the corridor, a sharp metallic sound rang out, spurs scraping the floor.

Clang. Clang-clang.

Adela felt it instinctively at that regular, menacing sound.

‘Leon is coming.’

A dark shadow swallowed the corridor, and then a striking man in black armor with a black cloak draped over it leaned against the wall.

“We greet Count Fershtein!”

The two soldiers who were just moments ago snarling at Sofia as though they would kill her buried their heads and broke into a cold sweat. As he pulled back the cloak he wore, Leon’s red eyes gleamed in the dark corridor.

His sharp nose and firmly pressed lips radiated a merciless air.

‘…Ah.’

Seeing Leon alive and breathing, Adela struggled to keep her emotions in check. She told herself she would handle things according to plan, but her vision blurred all at once.

Adela stared hard at Leon, then walked lightly over and rested her head against his chest.

“Leon, what took you so long?”

Through the cold armor she leaned against, Leon’s body went rigid as a glacier. His wildly pounding heartbeat transmitted itself directly to her cheek.

“…You.”

She was supposed to weep in terror or curse him, yet she pressed herself into his arms instead, and Leon seemed to forget how to breathe.