Melissa returned to the bedroom after finishing her preparations.

In front of the wooden door carved with elaborate reliefs, she steadied her breath while staring at the lion pattern for three seconds, attempting to calm the storm of emotions swirling inside her.

When she opened the door, she saw a man with his upper body bare.

His shoulders were broad enough to hold three people, with a thick neckline and a perfect straight line running from between his firm chest down to his abdomen. Though his good proportions didn’t show it well from the outside, his body was more meticulously maintained than most knights.

The muscles she had thought were cultivated for aesthetic value were, upon closer inspection, covered in scars suggesting actual combat experience.

The man, sensing her intense gaze, picked up a new shirt and lifted the corners of his mouth pleasantly.

“Thanks for the compliment.”

Melissa, who had been standing by the doorway unable to approach him, shook her head in surprise.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You did, with your eyes – admiration.”

Reizen roughly threw on his shirt and strode to the sofa. It was a navy blue sofa densely embroidered with gold thread. Sitting down with one arm draped over it, he nodded his head to indicate the space beside him.

It was an invitation to come sit next to him.

“…”

“…”

But Melissa couldn’t move from her spot, her eyes locked with his. Several seconds of silence passed.

The man, his chest mostly exposed despite wearing the shirt, wet his dry lips with his tongue. The air felt strangely thick and difficult to breathe.

Melissa fidgeted with her fingertips near her throat, feeling it tighten. Her skin became sticky despite having just bathed. Cold sweat trickled down her spine irritatingly.

Should she go sit down pretending nothing had happened, or would it be better to confront him about how she absolutely couldn’t do that?

Whenever faced with such dilemmas, Melissa had always chosen the former. Things usually flowed smoothly when she acted normally.

But now her inner state was already in chaos. Would there be any meaning in holding back?

Melissa felt she couldn’t bear it if Reizen disappeared on her again this time. She didn’t want to experience that abandoned feeling she had felt this morning ever again.

She no longer wanted to swim in isolation while waiting. She wanted to venture into the sea. She didn’t want to die suffocating like a fish floundering in an aquarium.

“…The sun will rise while you’re waiting.”

Reizen, with a gentle smile on his face, poured whiskey from the bottle on the table.

As the amber whiskey trickled into the ornately patterned crystal glass, Melissa’s clear voice overlapped with the sound.

“I didn’t expect you to come today. I heard you were away on important business.”

Her tone was deliberately precise, almost forced. Reizen nodded once upon hearing this.

“That would normally be the case.”

The man set down the heavy whiskey bottle and looked at the woman standing by the door with fierce eyes.

When their eyes met, she felt sharp needles stabbing her heart repeatedly. At this unfamiliar pain, Melissa instinctively hunched her shoulders and stepped back.

“Seeing your reaction, I’m glad I came.”

Reizen downed the whiskey in one gulp, put down the glass, and spoke while fastening the wristwatch from the table to his wrist.

“I came to say goodnight. I need to leave again in three hours.”

Three hours later would be dawn.

It was half a day’s carriage ride from the capital to Miellin territory. Even with cars reducing travel time, she’d never heard of anyone foolish enough to make round trips between the capital and territory twice in one day.

Reizen lightly patted the sofa beside him again and smiled.

“So, Mel. Don’t make that face and come here. We can at least have a goodnight kiss, can’t we?”

We?

Had she ever really been included in his idea of ‘we’?

Melissa felt disgusted by that smile. He was the man who had hated the noble society so much that he’d destroyed her family. Though it was a forced marriage by the Emperor, how much must he have laughed at her internally while marrying her and sharing her bed?

This man was just like her previous husbands. He had used her status as a fallen noble to satisfy his own insufficient revenge and satisfaction.

Had he enjoyed it?

When Melissa looked at him with sparkling eyes of admiration, how ridiculous must he have found that gaze?

How pathetic must she have looked, this naive and lacking woman who couldn’t even recognize her own enemy and instead begged to stay by his side to repay his kindness?

Not knowing any of this, Melissa had been genuinely grateful to him. Grateful that he had made it possible for her to live, that he had cried together with her.

His warmth and kind words had given her strength, and she had felt protected knowing there was someone who would reliably resolve things behind the scenes no matter what she did.

For the past three years, she had felt from him the stability she had so desperately craved. It was an unfamiliar feeling for her, who had lost her parents young and grown up under strict education from her stern grandfather.

She had wanted to be cherished by him.

She had wanted to act spoiled a bit more.

Like other ordinary noble ladies, she had wanted to feel jealous sometimes, enjoy sweet dates occasionally, and while they might quarrel at times, mostly love and accept each other as lifelong companions.

That was the extent of her feelings.

Even after being branded otherwise, she had thought only of this man, and the future ahead with him had seemed soft like peach-colored light.

Reizen had been her benefactor who came like spring. He had been a dream that stayed briefly like a butterfly before vanishing, a hope. Melissa had liked this man so, so much…

That’s why the sense of betrayal hit even harder. If he hadn’t intended to deceive her, he should have told her the truth from the start.

Then she wouldn’t have stupidly fallen in love with him. She would have died long ago and escaped this life. She would have disappeared.

‘After preventing even that by saving my life…’

How could he present such betrayal?

Along with tears, ha, a cold laugh escaped. And all he has to say is something about a goodnight kiss?

“Goodnight kiss, you say, goodnight kiss.”

He wanted to say goodnight?

Her voice came out warped, unable to suppress her emotions, with completely irregular pitch.

“Do you think such a thing could serve as an excuse?”

Reizen’s expression gradually hardened. The man who had been sitting comfortably on the sofa straightened his back and fixed his gaze. He wore an excessively calm expression, suggesting he had anticipated something like this.

That point stretched Melissa’s nerves even tighter and scraped them with a sharp knife.

“So that bastard captain told you something.”

“Don’t insult Lord Holstein. He’s not someone who deserves such treatment from you.”

“From me?”

Blue veins stood out on Reizen’s forehead.

He pressed his brow and laughed coldly. The man wet his dry lips and nodded with apparent understanding.

“Right. Being a noble of high birth, he wouldn’t be someone to be insulted by a half-breed like me.”

Melissa deliberately didn’t answer that remark.

“How long were you planning to deceive me?”

Reizen’s mouth stopped mid-open. The man rose from the sofa, stroked his chin, and chose his words. Finally, the man pressed his eyes with his hand and answered with apparent exasperation.

“Deceive who about what? Planning is something you do when you’ve made up your mind, but how could there be a ‘plan’ to deceive when I never made up my mind to do so?”

It was always like this. Neither confirming nor denying her words while subtly avoiding the truth.

Melissa, frustrated once again by his ambiguous answer, shouted.

“Then stop beating around the bush and tell me the truth!”

Her demanding voice wavered aimlessly. White streams of tears ran down Melissa’s cheeks. Without batting an eye, she spat out one by one the questions she had been holding inside.

“Whether what the captain said is true, whether you really were an executive in the revolutionary army from four years ago, whether our… hic, our family…”

Her throat closed up tight.

Melissa, sobbing, gripped her throat tightly with both hands and squeezed out the words through force.

“Whether you… gave the order to destroy our family.”

The man standing awkwardly in front of the sofa pressed his lips together and hardened his expression. His slightly overgrown blonde hair cast gray shadows over his eyes.

His split scarlet lips quivered with hesitation. Unable to bear this, Melissa cried out while weeping.

“If it’s not true, just say something, anything to deny it!”