It was a strange feeling.

Knowing that Rowell was staying by her side put her at ease. Just moments ago, she had been scrambling to escape from the very man she believed was fated to k*ll her.

The image of Rowell reaching his hand out through the window came back to her.

The way he had gritted his teeth and pulled the rope.

The desperate look in his eyes, his expression, his movements, all of it conveying how much he needed nothing to go wrong.

It was strange.

Truly strange.

No. It can happen. Being saved from death is no small thing.

She gripped the hem of his white shirt. That small point of connection brought a sense of calm to her heart. The relief that came from knowing she had survived a brush with death, and that it was thanks to this man, washed over her.

The soft sound of peaceful breathing filled the air.

Rowell looked at Catherine with a settled gaze. Sleeping so quietly, she looked like an angel.

He could leave now.

His eyes fell on the pale, slender hand gripping his sleeve. It was the kind of hand he could easily shake off with a tap, yet somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Hah.

With a quiet exhale, he decided to stay just a little longer.

Just a little more, just a little more.

Rowell found himself watching the sleeping Catherine as though under a spell. Her smooth forehead, her straight nose, her long lashes, her rosy cheeks, and her lips as lush as cherries.

Her lips…

‘Ah, what am I thinking?’

“I must be out of my mind.”

Perhaps the night had cast some kind of spell.

His state of mind was clearly different from usual.

– – –

Tweet, tweet, tweet.

Rowell opened his eyes to the fresh chirping of birds.

Thinking it might be the sound heralding morning, he looked out the window, only to find it was still the pitch-dark hours before dawn.

“Hah…”

Why was morning taking so long to come?

He had expected the night to be long, but it truly was. He hadn’t managed to close his eyes even once.

「I can manage without sleep for a day or two.」

If he had been alone, that would have been true. But with Catherine beside him, sleep was not the problem. He was not all right for an entirely different reason.

Rowell looked at Catherine, who was sleeping soundly.

He had tried to get up several times, thinking it wasn’t quite right to be sitting here beside a sleeping lady, but each time, Catherine would reach out in her sleep and hold tightly to his sleeve.

“……”

Whether she was anxious, or simply at ease, he couldn’t tell.

He couldn’t make sense of it.

Rowell once again tried to quietly rise without waking Catherine. He was a grown man. There was a limit to how long he could stay like this.

He needed to get some air…

“Mmm. Mm…”

Catherine, who had been sleeping perfectly still without so much as a stir, began to move. Her shifting body turned and came to rest halfway on top of Rowell’s chest.

Rowell let out a low groan.

The blood rushed to his head and he felt dizzy. The curves of a woman’s body came through clearly even through the maid’s uniform. Her warmth and the steady beating of her heart along with it.

“Hah. This is truly maddening.”

He glanced down at Catherine, who had buried her face against his chest and fallen asleep.

He stared at her for a long moment.

Then slowly pressed his index finger against her furrowed brow.

“What kind of dream are you having to make you frown like that?”

Looking at her, a quiet smile came to his face. And so he gazed at her face without end.

As though taking on his expression, Catherine’s face gradually grew peaceful as well.

When the sun rose, they would have to return to Kelt.

He truly had no desire to do so.

“Mmm… mm… no…”

As though reading his thoughts, Catherine murmured in her sleep.

“You dislike it too, my lady? I feel the same.”

The quiet laugh faded, and Rowell’s expression grew serious.

His gaze, low and settled, took in the sight of her angelic face.

And if he disliked it?

What would he do about it? What could he do? The position of Duke Windhart had been created for the Emperor’s sake from the very beginning.

The most he could do was offer a word of remonstrance.

He had no grounds to insert himself between Edwin and Catherine when he and she were nothing to each other.

The only thing he could do was petition for the daughter of the distinguished Rochelin family to be treated in a manner befitting her station, rather than as a sl*ve or a commoner.

His heart was troubled.

Bound by principles and rules, as though his hands and feet were tied.

There was truly so little he could do.

Even he, who had distinguished himself with countless achievements on the battlefield, could not act freely in the political arena of the capital, which revolved around the Emperor’s absolute authority.

He gently nudged Catherine, who was sleeping with her face resting against his chest. Her golden hair fell softly into disarray. Even as Catherine shifted back to her place, she did not let go of his sleeve.

Forgetting his plan to get some air.

Rowell sank into thought. A deliberation with no answer continued.

He couldn’t remember when he had fallen asleep.

– – –

Tweet, tweet, tweet.

True morning had arrived.

Having fallen asleep in the late hours before dawn, he should have been exhausted.

But Rowell, who had never needed much sleep, opened his eyes with ease.

Thinking he would head back after breakfast, he moved to rise, and then…

“Hmm?”

Rowell slowly closed his eyes and opened them again, wondering if he had seen wrong. But no matter how many times he opened and closed them, the reality before him did not change.

An empty space beside him.

His sleeve, freed at last.

A maid’s uniform tossed carelessly on the floor.

“……”

When on earth did she escape?

She had clearly been fast asleep until the early hours of dawn!

Rowell’s expression crumpled in dismay.

– – –

A short while before.

Around the time the red light of dawn had begun to color the sky.

Catherine woke up in a fury. More precisely, she had been jolted awake from a nightmare, furious.

“What kind of dream was that?”

It had been a truly awful dream.

It was all the more so because it reflected her actual future.

In the dream, she had been captured by Edwin and was living out her days tangled in his obsession and desire, when a revolt broke out, just as she had read in the original story. Rowell had stormed into the Emperor’s bedchamber, and his sharp sword had sent Edwin to the next world without mercy.

The one thing that had changed was that Catherine had survived.

But the life she lived as a survivor was worse than death. She spent every day being tortured on the grounds that she was a bewitching creature who had clouded the Emperor’s judgment.

To the point where she wanted to beg them to just k*ll her instead.

In the dream, she had pleaded.

「Mmph! Mmph! No! Please!」

But her mouth was gagged without fail, and the t*rture began.

When the t*rture paused briefly, she would collapse in exhaustion as though her soul had left her body, but before long, it would begin again.

Having experienced the vivid reality of t*rture within the dream,

She jolted awake.

Fury had roused her from sleep.

The first thought upon waking was:

“Amy, you little…!!”

‘How dare she try to hand me over to Edwin?!’

It was impossible to think of it as nothing more than a dream. It felt like the true future lying in wait before her.

It had been nothing more than an indirect experience, but it was horrifying.

The sleeping face of Rowell was before her eyes.

“To think I felt even a moment of relief looking at this man. I must have lost my mind!”

He had said he would only stay until she fell asleep, yet here he was, having fallen asleep himself.

In any case, the fact that she had been sleeping side by side with the man who might one day k*ll her. She must have truly and completely lost her grip on her senses.

It was like a rabbit falling asleep in the arms of a lion.

It wasn’t hard to guess why Rowell had ended up sleeping beside her. She had been clinging to his sleeve like a drowning person grabbing at a last straw at the edge of a cliff.

Catherine flinched and pulled her hand away.

He could easily have pretended not to notice and left, but she was grateful that he had stayed by her side because she was frightened. Even so.

He did not know his own fate, and she knew the fate of them both.

She couldn’t stake her life on a single act of kindness.

She had to escape from Edwin.

Catherine quickly got out of bed. She threw off the cumbersome maid’s uniform and pulled on whatever she could find among the spare clothes in the wardrobe.

Before stepping out the door, she glanced back at Rowell.

“Male lead, I’m sorry. I need to live.”

But before leaving Delkist Castle, there was something she had to do.

She needed to find out why that Amy was acting the way she was!

– – –

She burst into Amy’s room.

She woke Amy, who was sleeping buried among her books, without any preamble. There was much to demand answers about, but she started with the most certain thing first.

“Rowell was in the last room on the left! Did you actually want me to get caught?”

“What are you talking about?”

Amy rubbed her eyes to wake herself up and continued.

“I said the last room on the right. Didn’t you hear me wrong?”

A surge of rage.

So that’s how she was going to play it, by denying everything.

Catherine had very little patience. No, patience was wasted on someone like this!

“You little…! Do you want to die?!”

She lunged forward and grabbed Amy by the collar without warning. She grabbed and shook her, shook her back and forth, shook her side to side.

“Ack! Gack! S-Sister! Use your words, use your words!”

“Do you look like someone I can use words with?!”

“Kgh! Is there, anyone, there?”

“Everyone’s asleep! At this hour, everyone’s asleep!!”

Amy was shaken about like a ragdoll. The girl of pitiful stamina who spent every day doing nothing but reading books had no means of overcoming Catherine, who had been thoroughly fired up by rage.

Catherine vented the pent-up resentment inside her on the spot.

“You’re the one who went and blabbed everything of your own accord! That I came here! That I asked you to say you’d been on a trip!”

“Th-that was, I just, I hate lying…”

“Liar!!”

Her fury was not spent.

How could she take spectacular revenge on Amy and then make her escape.

Catherine looked around the room with eyes blazing like a hyena, and spotted the books and scrolls filling every corner.

‘Right. I’ll tear all of those to shreds!’

She stormed over to the pile of books, fuming.

Catherine grabbed whatever her hands could reach. Papers covered in geometric patterns, books, parchment scrolls, she would tear every last one of them apart.

‘I’m about to lose my life, so you can lose something precious too, Amy!’

Rip!

“No! Stop!”

As one book was torn in half, Amy came flying at her.

“Are you insane! Do you know how rare this is!”

“My life is more precious to me!”

A struggle that was not quite a battle broke out. Amy was desperate to protect her books, and Catherine was fighting tooth and nail to tear as many as possible.

Amy shrieked.

“You think only your own life is precious, you treat other people’s lives like they’re worth less than a fly!”

“What nonsense are you talking about!”

“Then why did you k*ll my father?!”

“……!!”

A cold silence fell in an instant.

Catherine stared at Amy with wide, startled eyes. Amy was seething, trembling with barely contained rage. Tears fell in drops from her eyes, unable to hold back the fury.

Her bloodshot eyes glared at Catherine as though they could tear her apart.

Catherine felt as though cold water had been poured over her head.

It hadn’t happened yet.

How did Amy know the contents of the original story?

“What did you just say?”

“……Nothing.”

Amy ground her teeth and spat the words out. But Catherine couldn’t let it go. She said something she had never said to anyone before.

It seemed impossible, but.

It was something that had already happened to her.

“Did you possess someone in a book too?”

At that question, a stunned ripple passed across Amy’s expression.

“A book… what…”