A terrible silence filled the space between them. Atlion didn’t even blink. Swan’s breathing quickened as she managed to force each word out. The man who had tried to bind her like a chain now just stared at her, pale and motionless.

“Please, just leave me alone. Let me… let me live. I’ll spend my life repenting, I swear…”

Her cries spilled out, trembling and ragged. As if stabbed in the chest, she gasped for breath, her words tumbling out in broken whispers. Swan’s head dropped as if she had lost consciousness, her strength gone.

Atlion stared at the woman, begging for a chance to live. His gaze fell to his wrist, partially visible under his robe. The skin there bore hideous scars, scratched anew each time they had begun to heal. A seething, fiery energy enveloped him like molten mercury, burning and relentless.

***

The heat that consumed him was all too familiar. Fierce and raging, it stormed through him, impossible to predict or control. It swallowed him whole, leaving no room to breathe, no room to escape. The feeling had begun the moment Swan had fled from him – a harbinger of destruction that could only end in death. And in the end, it left a corpse at his feet.

He rose, mixed the drug into his drink and downed it in one gulp. The combined effect of alcohol and drugs weighed heavily on his mind. He prayed for the power to drain away – even the ability to harm himself. He didn’t want to be a corpse in front of Swan. And he certainly didn’t want to die a grotesque, premature death by stabbing himself too deeply and accidentally ending his life.

Yes, he didn’t really want to die. And yet Atlion kept drawing blades across his skin. The self-harm came in fits, almost like seizures, and only after that did his lucidity return. Some days he even hurt himself deliberately, just to speed up the return to sobriety.

The desire, the heat – it was so difficult to overcome. The court physician had prescribed sedatives to prevent self-harm, but the problem was the nightmares that plagued him whenever he slept after taking them. His nightmares always showed Swan with another man. Swan would push him away and flee into the arms of another man, with her arms around the man’s neck and her br*ast pressed against him.

But the worst thing about these nightmares was that they were no different from the reality he faced.

And so…

“Both my dreams and my waking life are hell, Swan.”

The hell his wife had created for him. Perhaps it would be better to die. He didn’t know anymore. Atlion couldn’t understand why he had become so broken. Why he had fallen so far. He couldn’t even justify it to himself, and every day felt like wading through a swamp.

Was the reality he was facing really so unbearable? It was just that Swan was no longer by his side. There had been far more days in his life when she hadn’t been there – days when he hadn’t even known her. So why? Why did this woman have such power over him? What did she mean to him that her absence could shatter him so deeply that he could never recover?

But he was broken beyond repair. He could never return to who he was before he met Swan. He could never go back to the days before she became his wife. That rainy night when she had thrown herself crying into his arms and he had taken her as his bride… from that moment on, there was no going back.

He bit his lips until they bled. The weight on his head felt as heavy as lead, but a shard of glass ended up in his thigh. Thanks to Raoul’s concern that he might use a knife to cut his flesh or sever a tendon, there were no blades in his bedroom. So Atlion had shattered a glass and driven the jagged edge into his thigh, tearing flesh that had just begun to heal and reopening old wounds.

“Hngh…”

He thought of the heat that consumed him. The fire that clouded his soul and clouded his mind. His desire to hold Swan. His urge to kill her. Swan… Swan… The longing for the woman he could no longer reach. The grief. The anger at her betrayal.

But most of all…

The fear that he would never be able to get her back, no matter what, consumed him. He shifted his gaze to his thigh, where the shard of glass was embedded.

“…Hah…”

Cold sweat that had gathered on his forehead dripped down the bridge of his nose and fell. He stared at his pale thigh, now stained with blood.

‘I’ll never get you back.’

The woman who had once smiled so brightly at him would never return. Why…? He dug the shard of glass mercilessly into his flesh. His teeth clenched, then suddenly he burst into laughter. A low, almost maniacal chuckle mingled with the gasps and groans that came from him. His bloodied hand shook uncontrollably.

As he raised the shard, ready to draw it across his neck, the sound of his laughter woke Swan. Her eyes fluttered open and she stirred, her gaze landing on the dark figure crouched beside her.

“Your Majesty?”

She slowly got to her feet and walked towards him. The metallic smell of blood hit her nose. Only then did she notice the blood flowing from him.

“Your Majesty! What are you doing?”

Her voice trembled as she knelt before him, panic setting in as she tried to assess the extent of his injuries.

“Your Majesty!”

Swan cried out in alarm as she hurried towards him. Atlion lifted his eyes to meet hers. Sometimes he saw hallucinations. Whether he took the sedatives or not, whenever his madness worsened, Swan would appear to him, flickering like a ghost. Even though he knew it was a hallucination, he clung to her, tried to hold her in his arms.

There was nowhere else to pour out his desires, so he clung to the only remnant she had left. Her scent lingered on the panties she had once worn, and he had kept them since her departure. Clinging to it, he had no choice but to satisfy himself with it.

“What, what are you doing?”

Swan gasped in horror and grabbed his hand. Atlion stared at her, his eyes glassy and unfocused. Swan turned to call for a maid, but before she could, his familiar strength pulled her back, forcing her to face those wet, desperate eyes once more.

“Your Majesty – your thigh, you’re bleeding…”

“Kiss me. It’ll heal.”

“Please – don’t do this. You must come to your senses…”

Her voice trembled with a mixture of fear and pity, her heart pounding as she struggled to free herself from his grip.

“Hurry, Swan.”

“Your Majesty…”

“Say you want me. Say I’m your husband. Say there’s no one else but me! Hurry! Hurry, Swan! Please, please… Don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me, Swan.”

He fell to his knees. Swan, trembling and unsure how to deal with the sight of blood dripping from his thigh, looked down at him. Her breath caught in her throat. Atlion, clinging to her with tear-filled eyes, was nothing like the man she had known.

“Get up, please, Your Majesty. The wound will get worse.”

“Say you’ll stay by my side!”

He clung to her, crying as if his life depended on it. His blood-stained hands cupped her slender waist, then slid up to cling to her chest. Swan froze, watching him hold her like a child clinging to a blanket, before she hesitantly wrapped her arms around his head.

Suddenly, a violent force pulled her down. She fell with a startled cry, pinned beneath him. She looked up at him helplessly, her eyes widening as she noticed the blood streaming from his mangled thigh, staining everything around them.

As she reached out to cover his bleeding thigh with her hand, not knowing what else to do, his grip tightened. His desperate, trembling form towered over her, refusing to let her go.

Atlion grasped her hand violently, growling as he glared at her. His clenched teeth and ragged breath betrayed his fear. The way he looked at her was as if she were an enemy rather than his wife, yet his gaze burned with longing. He clenched and unclenched the hand he had grasped roughly, his grip unyielding.

His ragged breaths fanned the bridge of her nose. Swan looked up at the man, panting heavily, her hand trapped in his grip. Slowly, she tried to move her hand, and to her surprise, the force holding her down lessened until she was free. Instead of pushing him away, Swan reached out and traced the tears that had streamed down his cheeks.

His turbulent eyes flickered with confusion, much like the moment she had begged him to let her live, when his stoic gaze had shown a fleeting glimpse of uncertainty. Those unreadable blue eyes were now fixed on her, watching her every move as she reached up to gently wipe his brow with her hand.

Atlion submitted to her touch like a tamed beast, as if this was what he had wanted all along. As if he had longed for her to soothe and tame him. He leaned into her palm, pressing his cheek against her hand like a purring animal seeking affection. But even as he nuzzled her, his body betrayed him. He shifted his weight onto her knees and her gaze dropped, landing on the part of him covered by his robe.

Beneath the fabric, his p*nis was *rect, long and thick, the head rounded. She knew all too well the ecstasy of that invasive sensation – she had experienced its overwhelming intensity before, to the point of losing herself. This relentless, searing passion had made her tremble.

Swan took a deep breath to steady her breathing and tilted her head upwards, her expression caught between serenity and turmoil.

Their eyes locked, the tension between them suffocating, heavy with clinging lust. Swan’s lips trembled uncontrollably as his hand reached down, pushing up the fabric of her dress. She couldn’t bring herself to resist, her mind consumed by the sight of his blood flowing, crimson and relentless. If offering herself to him could somehow stop the bleeding, then part of her wanted to do just that.

Perhaps it was because she couldn’t understand what had corroded this man to such an extent. His touch on the hollow of her knee was slow and sticky, tracing across her thin, dry skin. Swan looked up at him, her wide eyes dazed, and let out a shaky breath.

As he loosened the belt around his waist, his bulging p*nis sprang free, hard and unyielding, his intent clear as he moved towards his target. Swan’s body stiffened and her breath caught in her throat, torn between fear and resignation.