Chapter 2

Watching Leonid close the distance in an instant snapped her back to her senses. Ellen forced her trembling body to move.

‘I have to get away from him. No matter what.’

She clenched her frozen hands into fists and ran with her eyes fixed straight ahead. But no matter how desperately she pushed herself, the sounds behind her refused to grow any more distant.

“Ellen!”

His voice, raw and burning, caught at her ear. It only made her heart seize with greater dread. She knew exactly what that tone of his meant.

In her panic to run faster, her foot badly got caught and went down on her knees in the snow. Ellen looked back over her shoulder with tears welling in her eyes. Leonid was even closer now.

“N, no.”

I have to get away.

Ellen thrashed and hauled her frozen body upright. She looked around in a rush. The knights were closing in to surround the direction she had been heading. She abandoned her original path and ran wherever her feet would take her.

“……”

Grrrr. Woof woof woof!

The howling of the hunting dogs and the clang of weapons against iron armor the knights wore echoed across the mountain. Through it all came Leonid’s voice.

“Stop running. Stay right there.”

His sharp voice cut into her.

Ellen shook harder from the terror of being caught than from the cold that felt like it was splitting her skin open. She shook her head desperately at Leonid, who kept coming after her.

“N, no.”

She fled like a madwoman through the steep trees. Bare branches scraped against her as she stumbled forward in a precarious run. But there was no room to catch her breath.

Ellen ran on without even a moment to wipe the tears streaming down her face. But however much she wanted to go faster, her legs sank deep into the thick snow with every step, and her feet kept slipping.

“Aaah!”

With a wretched cry, her body plunged into a snow pit. Because the snow had piled up so thickly, she never could have imagined the ground was hollowed out beneath. Ellen wailed and struggled with everything she had to pull herself out.

“Ugh.”

It was deeper than she expected, and the inside was slick. There was no way out. Through it all she could see Leonid drawing closer.

“……!”

Her eyes went wide with panic. Even if she managed to get out, there was nowhere left to run. Ellen thrashed as she watched the knight order closing in around her from every side. Leonid reached the edge right in front of her.

“Don’t come any closer!”

Ellen shook her head and screamed. But against her desperate wish, Leonid lunged forward in an instant and snatched her up.

He wrapped his arms around her as though he would never let her go again and gave a nod to the knight order. The knights bowed respectfully and withdrew a great distance, disappearing from their line of sight.

“Did you really think you could run from me?”

He held her without a single gap and whispered coldly against her ear.

Every hair on her body stood on end at his voice. Cradled against him, Ellen could only move her lips like a small child who had never learned to speak.

“Ah……”

She heard a soft, low laugh. Leonid lifted her into his arms and turned.

“L, let me go!”

Her body left the ground and Ellen panicked, thrashing wildly.

If she was dragged back with him like this, there was no telling what would happen to her.

The brutal scene she had watched from hiding moments ago played out before her eyes.

“Stay still. Unless you want to be carried back to the imperial palace bound.”

“Please……sob……”

“It seems that’s exactly what you want.”

The beautiful eyes looking down at her flickered with madness. It was the same look she had drowned in countless times, gasping, in the grip of something animal and consuming.

She pressed a hand hard against her own chest. Hating her heart for responding to him even as she trembled with fear.

Ellen pushed against Leonid with everything she had. But his solid body didn’t shift even slightly.

“How far do you intend to drive me out of my mind.”

“……Your Majesty.”

“The year you ran away. Do you have any idea what kind of hell I lived in.”

He stopped walking and set Ellen down. Then he unfastened his cloak and seized her with it.

“Please let me go.”

He pulled her pleading form into his arms and used the cloak to bind her tightly against him. It made resisting far harder than when she had simply been carried.

“No. I will never let you go.”

“Ugh.”

“Beneath me, gasping, looking only at me, thinking only of me.”

He dragged his lips across Ellen’s tear-streaked cheek and whispered.

“Cry this beautifully for me and no one else.”

“Mm.”

Leonid pressed his lips to Ellen’s. Even in that rough kiss with no trace of tenderness, her body remembered him and burned hot.

“Hah.”

Her lips were only released when she was on the verge of losing her breath. He looked at her with eyes that hid nothing of his desire and trailed them down her neck.

“Now you’re going back to where you belong. There, you’ll pay in full for running away.”

Where I belong. He means his harem.

He wants to lock me back in that swamp where I wither away endlessly reaching for his heart.

‘A man who will never love me no matter how much I love him……’

What he wants, what he’s obsessed with, is my body alone. I am nothing more than a pretty possession for him to vent his desire on.

But I……

Ellen met Leonid’s gaze as he looked at her as though he would devour her whole. Her heart lurched without fail.

‘I can’t be shaken like this by a single kiss.’

What did I think I was doing, running all this time?

Ellen clenched her hands inside the cloak. She could not be dragged back and live the same life all over again.

She stopped struggling and let the tension drain from her body. Leonid pressed his lips to the top of her head and curved his mouth upward.

“Good. Stay still, just like that.”

Leonid lifted his lips from her hair and moved to carry her. At that moment, Ellen threw all her weight forward and drove her head into his chest.

Caught off guard by Ellen’s sudden strike, Leonid stumbled back a step. Ellen didn’t waste the opening. Still wrapped in his cloak, she moved fast.

“Come here. Right now.”

His handsome brow furrowed sharply. She shook her head like a woman possessed and kept running, eyes fixed ahead.

“No. I am never going back to your harem.”

Ellen ran with everything she had, running as though her life depended on it. Then, without warning, her vision went dark and the ground gave way beneath her.

“Ellen!”

Ellen’s foot slipped on a frozen mound of snow and her body rolled down a steep slope, hurtling toward a cliff. Leonid cried out her name in horror and threw himself toward her.

“……Ugh.”

Just before going over the edge, she grabbed a thick branch hanging in the air. Ellen dangled precariously from it and looked up. Leonid was there, ashen-faced, hauling up the branch she clung to.

“Don’t.”

“What are you saying!”

She looked at his face, twisting with despair, and smiled faintly. A strange, fleeting satisfaction came over her, knowing that she had finally managed to hurt him.

Leonid gripped the thick branch with trembling hands.

“I will not let you fall. So hold on tight.”

“……Leonid.”

Ellen hung from the branch as it was slowly pulled upward and spoke his name aloud for the very first time. It wasn’t bad. No, in truth, it felt quite right.

Perhaps there had always been a part of her that wanted to call his name just once.

Not as his possession, but as a woman who loved him.

“I’m done.”

“What do you mean!”

Ellen looked at Leonid drawing closer and shook her head.

She wouldn’t last much longer. The strength was draining from the hands gripping the branch.

One hand slipped free from the branch she had been holding on to with everything she had. The other was sliding slowly downward as well. Leonid saw it and screamed like a man losing his mind, reaching out to her.

“Running from you.”

Loving you.

“Ellen, please don’t do this.”

“I finally understand my own heart.”

……That I could never forget you.

She had struggled so hard to run away. Yet her wretched body and heart still remembered him.

“What do you mean. Don’t do this, take my hand. Now.”

Tears streaked down his beautiful face.

So Leonid could cry after all. She only learned it now, when the end was near.

His tears fell and landed on Ellen’s cheek.

Without thinking, Ellen stretched out her hand, drifting in the air, toward him. Leonid leaned his body deeper over the edge and reached back.

“Ellen, hold on just a little longer. I will get you out of this. I promise.”

Their hands circled each other, almost touching, never quite reaching. Leonid howled like a wounded animal and fought to get to her. Between it all, Ellen’s grip convulsed with the effort of holding on.

This was the limit. It had always been this way. No matter how hard I struggled, I could never reach him.

“No. This is as far as we go.”

Ellen smiled more beautifully than she ever had.

Because this would be the last thing he ever saw of her.

Just before Leonid’s hand reached her, her strength gave out and the last hand let go. Her body fell into the open air.

“No!”

Leonid threw himself after her as she fell. But he could not reach her. The knights who had spotted the Emperor rushed in and surrounded him, pulling him back.

“Goodbye. Leonid.”

“Noooooo!”

Leonid’s cry of anguish shook the cliff face. Ellen’s voice was swallowed by his scream.

In the end, even a final farewell was not permitted to her.

“……”

A single hot tear traced its way down Ellen’s cheek.

Now I can finally be free of him.

It was everything I had ever wanted……Yet for some reason, it felt as though her heart was being torn in two.