Chapter 50

Ashton’s bath was shorter than Sabina’s. He hadn’t forgotten to bring clothes and seemed used to washing himself. He wore a soft hotel robe and had a towel wrapped around his head.

Sabina reached out her hand.

“Give me the towel. I’ll do it for you too.”

“It’s fine.”

The man snorted. Sabina’s pride was slightly wounded.

“I can do it too.”

“Sure you can.”

A brief exchange of words passed between them. But Ashton soon handed the towel to Sabina as if to say, “Go ahead and try.”

Sabina quickly discovered that drying someone’s hair without tangling it required more skill than she expected. Ashton took the towel back from her awkward hands, giving her a look that said, “See?” Sabina drank her cooling milk in one go and went into the bedroom.

Ashton didn’t follow her, just smiled quietly.

* * *

The two decided to sleep with a wall and door between them. Before bed, Sabina kept poking her head out of her room, bothered that Ashton was sleeping on the couch.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“I keep saying this, but I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

“At least it’s not reputation, so just go to sleep. Okay?”

Ashton spoke gently but firmly, then closed the door. Sabina fiddled with the doorknob a few times from the other side but couldn’t overpower Ashton. She eventually gave up and lay alone on the wide bed.

What Ashton worried about, of course, wasn’t the gossip of people who didn’t even know the nature of his relationship with Sabina. He threw a blanket over himself and stretched out on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

He’d been so excited that he forgot about this concern until booking the room. This was why he had to split the rooms.

He calculated the cycle in his mind. It was close. He just hoped “it” wouldn’t come tonight. But things didn’t go as he wished.

In the deep night, Ashton, who had fallen asleep worried, woke abruptly to a pain like every bone in his body was shattering. He sprang up from the couch like a spring, twisted in agony, let out a short m*an, and clawed at the leather of the couch before nearly falling off.

He rummaged through his jacket and pulled out a pouch. Inside were four crystal vials. One was empty, three were full. The liquid inside one of the three was a distinctly different color from the other two, even in the dark.

The clear liquid was for drinking once at a set time each day; the black liquid was for when pain struck.

He forced his unresponsive fingers to open the vial with the black liquid. The unpleasant-tasting medicine poured down his throat. Ashton hated this medicine. It might dull the pain, but it left him nauseous for hours.

His robe was soaked. He shivered. He collapsed in front of the coat rack, catching his breath.

Ashton guessed the disease “broke out” sixteen years ago. For the first eight years, there were no symptoms, so he didn’t even know he was ill. But the disease was slowly growing inside him the whole time.

The first symptom was a subtle sense of fragility. In the late winter when he was twenty-two, Ashton began to feel as if his bones, muscles, and organs were out of sync. The progression was very gradual then. It was years before the pain started.

Now, the pain kept coming. The intervals grew shorter and the disease accelerated as his condition worsened.

The disease affected his body in strange ways. His appetite slowly decreased without him noticing. A few weeks ago, he realized he’d lost all memories before age nine. But there wasn’t much he could do, even if the disease threatened him.

This illness was extremely rare, and nobody could cure it.

‘I wanted to last until February.’

The medicine didn’t seem to be controlling the symptoms enough. He grew anxious. Helio surpassing him quickly was crucial. He’d provoked and pressured him enough that Helio would struggle to break the seals.

Ashton understood Helio better than anyone. As Kenneth said, the two were like brothers.

He braced himself on the floor and retched a few times. The side effects of his self-made medicine always gave him terrible nights. He covered his mouth to keep from making noise.

It was a night when nothing went as planned.

Lying with his eyes closed, Ashton froze when he opened them again.

Sabina, dressed in a cream-colored nightgown, was standing in the doorway, watching him. In the darkness, her pale skin seemed to glow faintly. Sabina walked slowly across the living room toward him. He was ashamed to be seen like this, but his body was exhausted.

Sabina crouched in front of him.

“Are you okay?”

Why had she woken up? She always slept deeply and was hard to wake… Ashton looked at her with misplaced resentment. Sabina wiped his forehead with her nightgown sleeve.

“You’re sweating a lot. Are you sick? Or was it a bad dream?”

Ashton couldn’t answer easily. Sabina touched his cheek. Her hand was cold. She looked worried.

The man finally spoke in a cracked voice.

“Alcohol…”

Only then did Sabina understand why Ashton had asked for strong liquor for himself.

She’d hoped he wouldn’t drink, but his eyes were so stubborn. Sabina had no choice but to bring him the liquor. He emptied the bottle in one go and retched as if about to vomit, then relaxed.

Sabina watched his body warm up, expressionless.

Ashton’s face was stained with shame. He hadn’t wanted Sabina to see him like this. He hated that her sleeve was soaked with his cold sweat. He clenched his jaw.

“Can you stand?”

Ashton tried to get up using the wall, but collapsed. Sabina shook her head.

“You can’t.”

When she blinked, Ashton was sitting on the bed where Sabina had been sleeping moments ago. The teleportation magic made his sick, alcohol-upset stomach even more nauseous. Sabina calmly held the empty milk glass under his chin. He gently pushed it away.

“Sleep here.”

She whispered as she laid him down.

“Even if you say no, I won’t listen.”

Ashton had no choice but to lie in bed under the covers as Sabina directed. She brought a dry towel to wipe his forehead, and moistened a handkerchief to wet his lips. Ashton looked like he might cry, covering his eyes with his arm.

Lately, sometimes when the symptoms hit at night, he wondered if he’d wake up the next day.

Fear was slowly eating away at the rational part of him that said he could endure. Sabina kept stroking his cheek. Ashton murmured in a dry voice.

“Sleep.”

“Okay. I will.”

She said that, but didn’t look like she was going to sleep. She wanted to put him to sleep. He thought it wouldn’t work—on nights like this, he always slept fitfully.

But almost magically, in less than ten minutes, he was sleeping like a baby. The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed, his face became defenseless. Sabina watched him quietly, then looked out the window. After a while, instead of lying next to him, she put on a shawl and went out to the living room.

* * *

She’d suddenly woken because she’d dreamed of the day she died.

It wasn’t the memory of standing on the execution platform. It was the memory of dying at Reyes’s hands.

It had been a perfect day. Sabina, Reyes, and Helio, home for vacation, had dinner together. Reyes was a kind lover not only to Sabina but to her ward as well.

The obsessive inferiority Reyes used to display to Kenneth was gradually fading, and Sabina felt relieved. The plot that had led to Sabina’s death in her previous life was gone.

The imperial prince, visiting his lover’s house privately, knocked on Sabina’s bedroom door. She let him in without hesitation. Reyes, who was to spend the night at D’Vialis Mansion, had shed his heavy coat, ornate decorations, and leather gloves, dressed lightly.

But oddly, he was wearing a dagger on his belt. The moment Sabina noticed the incongruity, it happened.

Reyes drew the knife and stabbed Sabina in the heart.

She screamed. Reyes covered her mouth, sweating profusely. He’d never practiced stabbing anyone. Her sternum and ribs got in his way, and Sabina thrashed in pain.

Reyes cut her belly instead of her chest and put his hand inside.

It hurt so much she couldn’t even struggle anymore. Her vision blurred, and all she wanted was for the pain to end quickly. Her ears rang. Suddenly, through her dulled hearing, she heard someone shouting.

In that instant, Sabina felt time rewind, sucking into her. Time reversal lasted only a moment. And during that process, someone else entered her mind.

She woke up at that point.

Her heart pounded. She breathed deeply and clutched her chest. At the last moment, the one who intervened in Sabina’s mind was probably her own possessing self. She realized anew that she was an intruder in this body. Because she lived as Sabina with Sabina’s memories, she usually didn’t feel it.

She sat on the bed, hands limp, overwhelmed by sudden emptiness. Outside, something heavy fell onto the carpeted floor.

Sabina listened. The room wasn’t soundproofed, so she heard the man outside moaning in pain and crawling. She froze and held her breath, then cautiously opened the door.

Ashton was crawling toward the coat rack, rummaging through his jacket pocket. She heard the faint sound of crystal vials clinking in the dark. He opened one and drank the medicine, retching as if to vomit everything inside, but nothing came out.

Sabina was shocked by the unexpected scene. She’d never imagined Ashton could be sick. He always seemed healthy and relaxed. There was never a hint of illness.

But now, he was groaning in pain. It all seemed unreal.

Sabina put Ashton to bed and let him sleep. He soon lost consciousness. She picked up her shawl and went back to the living room, standing in front of the coat rack where he’d desperately crawled.

A crystal vial lay on the floor.

She slowly bent down and picked it up. She drew the curtains and held it up to the moonlight—it glittered. Sabina narrowed her eyes and closely examined the residue inside. It looked like black powder mixed in solvent. There was a subtle layer between the sediment and the solution.

Sabina layered several sheets of hotel memo paper on the table. She turned the vial upside down on the smooth paper. She patiently waited for most of the remaining medicine to soak into the paper.

A black stain appeared in the center of the memo. Sabina closed the vial and folded the memo. She tucked the “sample” deep into her bag.

Then she remembered there were multiple crystal vials. She carefully searched Ashton’s pockets. In one, she found the Maslado pocket watch. She put it back and checked the other—a thick pouch.

Inside were one empty vial and two full ones. Both contained clear liquid. Sabina secretly took one, laid out more memo paper, and carefully dropped just one drop of the medicine. She folded the memo several times and put it in her bag.

Afterward, she calmly put the clear medicine vial back in Ashton’s pocket, and left the black medicine vial on the floor near the coat rack.

Back in the bedroom, Ashton was sleeping deeply. Sabina gently lifted the covers and crawled into bed, curling up on her side to sleep.