It was a cold voice, like someone recording the results of an experiment. The gaze he turned on her face held unmistakable warmth, but the eyes that dropped to her swollen belly carried no emotion at all. His expression said only that something inconvenient had occurred. He looked annoyed, at most, that the situation had become troublesome.

His gaze lingered on her round belly, then traveled downward, between her legs. Deep red blood. He clicked his tongue at the sight of her condition, the bleeding already underway.

“It’s quite a distance from here to the imperial palace. Hmm.”

Emil muttered in a tone thick with irritation. Selene’s small act of defiance, the betrayal that had by now grown almost familiar to Emil. If the consequence of it turned out to be a miscarriage, the loss would be far too great. It would mean losing one very good leash to keep her bound to him.

“Can it be saved, I wonder? What do you think, Selene? Does it seem like the baby will die?”

Madman. At Emil’s words, Selene’s face, already drained white, went even paler. She thrashed her legs, trying to pull free from his arms, but her body had already gone limp from the bleeding and the pain. The bleeding and the vicious agony tearing through her belly worked against her. And above all else, her power was useless in front of this man.

“Ugh…. N, no…! No…!”

Selene’s eyes strained toward the small side gate at the back of the cabin. Emil’s gaze caught hers with sharp precision and followed. He turned something over in his mind, chewing on her words, then let out a small sound of realization.

“I was wondering what you kept staring at. Of course. Ah, that ‘thing’ was here, wasn’t it.”

His tone was light, the way someone might speak of a forgotten trinket they no longer needed. That voice only deepened the revulsion rising in Selene. It felt like proof that even her escape, even this small act of resistance, amounted to nothing in his eyes.

Her face crumpled. The skin beneath her eyes burned hot, and the tears she had been holding back fell, one drop at a time. Emil looked at her, and a rapturous smile spread across his face.

“Selene, are you crying? You’re beautiful even when you cry.”

Peck. He pressed his lips beneath her eye. He drew the tears in and swept them away, the way someone might who wanted to possess even a single strand of her sorrow. The fight drained out of her at the sight of him, and her head dropped, heavy and defeated. Her reddish-gold lashes cast a shadow downward, conjuring that particular beauty of hers, the kind that always carried a trace of grief.

He watched her with a look of pleasure, then flicked his hand.

“By my command—”

The moment his hand moved, knights appeared from nowhere and dropped to their knees. They bowed their heads before him, and Emil spoke in a slow, measured murmur.

“Move this place to the imperial palace. Dismantle the house and relocate it to the Secret Garden within the palace grounds. And fill in the pond behind the house entirely.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Listening to their reply, Selene pressed a hand over her mouth. She barely choked back the urge to retch. Her vision blurred and her head rang with a hollow buzz. She twisted her body against the nausea, and the man looking down at the woman in his arms raised his brows with what looked like concern.

“Has the morning sickness not passed yet, Selene?”

“Ugh. Mmm…. Hh, hh, mmm….”

She could not hold back the involuntary tears and looked up at him. He wore the face of the most tender man in the world as he slowly stroked her belly.

“To think our child would put you through this much. If it doesn’t survive this time, it would be better to simply make a new one.”

“….Ha, how could you…. How can you….”

She could not finish the sentence. Only a broken, anguished sound spilled from her parted lips. He is not human. He is not right. This man, Emil Offenburg, is absolutely not right.

It felt like something squeezing around her throat. The shackles that had come loose long ago still felt as though they hung from her ankles. Tears fell one after another from her wide eyes, and slowly, her eyelids closed.

He watched her, then slowly brushed his hand across her face. The way he carefully wiped away each tear was almost reverent. As he watched her cry, his breathing grew slightly ragged. Each exhale carried a wet, clinging hunger. He had always loved her tears. He bit down on his lower lip, unable to fully conceal the excitement burning in his eyes.

“If we stay here any longer, I think I really will end up hurting you. Let’s go back.”

“Hh, ugh…. No…. No…….”

The man holding her with easy lightness stepped out of the cabin. His large frame ducked through the doorway. And the moment the outside air brushed the tip of her nose, her eyes filled with the sight of knights packed in dense rows all around them.

“How, how could….”

“Surprised? I had them here to play with you, Selene.”

“Th, that’s impossible…, how.”

“Is it because you’re carrying a child? It seems like you’ve become a child yourself. Hide-and-seek, of all things. Well, it was cute, I suppose.”

The face smiling at her had only the corners of its mouth lifted. His eyes were not smiling. It felt like a warning directed at her. That this once, he would let it go. She fell silent and closed her eyes where she was. It had all been a lie. The sounds she had heard from a distance, the fact that she had made it all the way to the forest without incident, all of it had been Emil Offenburg’s game.

The stupidity of having been completely fooled cut her to the bone. She hadn’t noticed. Of course she hadn’t. Witches were beings who had no need to read humans. She, who had lost a witch’s power and never developed a human’s instinct for survival, had become something lesser than a human.

The man who had been gently patting her belly with his fingertips carefully set her down inside the carriage. A terrible memory surfaced. The memory of being forced into this very thing and made to travel to the imperial capital. It turned Selene’s stomach.

“My love. It will hurt, but bear with it just a little. Even if the pain is enough to kill you, you won’t die from it.”

“Mmm….”

A strained m*an escaped her lips. The hand lightly patting her hip was gentle, the way one might handle a small child. She shuddered at the horrible sensation and kicked her legs, trying to push him away.

“Get, get out…! Please! Aah! Just leave me alone, please…. Ugh…. Emil….”

“Selene. Why are you being like this and hurting my feelings? I’m truly upset.”

His eyes drooped downward, the picture of someone in genuine distress. His brows fell at the corners and he bit lightly at his lip, and emotion settled over what had been a cold face. It was the kind of pitiable expression that, in the days before she had known him, would have made her fall completely and give him anything he asked for. But not now.

“Why on earth…. Why are you doing this to me…. Please….”

Her vision blurred. Through the haze, she could see his knights tearing roughly through the bamboo grove. A place untouched by humans for hundreds of years. The precious gate of the Hecate sisters. It was being destroyed, reduced to ruin.

She was exhausted. Her swollen belly kept sending waves of pain through her, and her fraying mind grew dimmer with every passing moment.

“Please, just…. let me go….”

She murmured it like a plea, and he let out a soft sigh. He tilted his head and stroked her hair with what looked like tenderness. In the red eyes watching Selene, a deep obsession gleamed. Her face twisted. 

Why? Why hadn’t she known? 

Those eyes were the same as they had been back then. So why, when those eyes had been filled with nothing but her, had she felt nothing but happiness, knowing nothing at all. Why had she loved that child so much she would have given him the whole world.

“You were the first. Someone who loved me.”

“…….”

“You said you would never abandon me, and then you did. And yet I forgave you.”

He let the words fall one by one, his voice thick with something close to tears. His face had crumpled as though even the memory caused him pain, and then he drew a long breath.

“And yet- even though you abandoned me, I still love you. So I will forgive you for abandoning me again this time.”

“…….”

“Because my love is greater than yours.”

The smile that spread across his face was beautiful. Dark hair fell along his brow, and the red eyes, distinctive to the Offenburg bloodline, glittered. Those deep red irises held nothing but Selene. The leg that had been pushing against him went limp and fell away.

He gently dabbed the blood from between her legs with a handkerchief, then struck the carriage wall twice. The carriage swayed and began to move, carrying her back toward the imperial capital.

Selene watched her home grow smaller and disappear, and tears streamed down her face. She would likely never return here. I will probably never reach my sisters’ land again.

‘Selene Hecate, stop playing at these pointless little games. Remember how our sister lost herself.’

She closed her eyes, listening to her sister’s voice, which rang in her ears like a curse.

Thinking that perhaps, from the very beginning, from the day she had taken in this man, the fate of Selene Hecate had already been decided.