On top of that, finding out that the person she had been with all these days was the High Priest might be the most shocking thing she had ever experienced. It was not a particularly pleasant turn of events, and Devin ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek.

Still, if he found her friends and told her where they were, the misunderstanding would clear and she would resent him a little less, Devin hoped. What Layla wanted was to be reunited with her friends. Devin skipped the trouble of walking down the corridor and opening her door and slipped straight into her room in one move. He drew the curtain and sat beside her sleeping form, looking at her quietly.

The peach flush that had colored her cheeks so prettily in the afternoon had returned to its natural shade. Snow white skin, red lips. It was a little disappointing not to be able to see her beautiful eyes, but Devin pressed a tender kiss to the corner of her eye. She did not stir at all, so she must have been deep in sleep.

Devin had never once felt nervous when restoring someone else’s memories. This time was different, and he steadied his breathing quietly before placing his hand on her forehead. He used his divine power to set right the time that had gone astray. He went through the sequence of lost time one by one. The god had already turned attention this way, so the god might notice that Devin was restoring her memories. He needed to focus every nerve and restore them quickly so she would not be hurt.

The god must have been taken aback as well, since Devin’s divine power had faltered and failed to do its work properly. His ability, which had never once made an error, behaved differently when it came to his mate. Devin laughed despite himself and focused again.

Devin’s sacred white light seeped out. A white mist spread slowly through the room, filling it with a holy presence. The mist drifted close as though to cradle Layla’s small feet, then drew back gently. It circled around her in a pleasant, tickling way. The slight furrow between her brows smoothed away. The smile that touched the corners of her lips told him she could feel the mist, one of Devin’s divine powers. She had been frightened of it at first.

“It will not hurt, Layla. Do not worry.”

The sacred white light was absorbed one by one into the time that had gone astray. As Devin channeled his divine power into her, he pressed a kiss to her red lips. He lingered only a moment on her sweet lips before pulling away, which left him wanting more, but he intended to taste them fully once she woke. He had been starved of her all this time. On the first night, he had not been there when she woke. Back then, he had not even known something had gone wrong, but spending these past few days with her, Devin now understood.

This time, he would be there when she opened her eyes.

***

Layla made her way through an unfamiliar place, on guard, and turned her head. She heard someone nearby without warning and her whole body went rigid as stone. She was not alone here.

“Who is there?”

Where is this? Layla looked around tensely and then recognized where she was. Why did I not see it? How foolish. This was the entrance to the Lenitas Shortcut, a place she had been to before. Why am I here again? She had seen her friends in a dream earlier today, and it had been the Lenitas Shortcut then as well.

The air around her was still as death, not even a breath of wind stirring. That only made the strangeness feel more acute. In that moment, an impossibly handsome man looked at her. Their eyes met and they looked deeply at each other, but strangely, she could not properly make out the man’s face. Even as she looked at him, it was as though she were seeing a phantom, and nothing of him would settle in her mind.

A cool, refreshing breeze blew in from somewhere, swept over Layla’s slender body, and lingered at her fingertips before fading. A dizzy warmth rose through her body and her mind turned hazy.

Her shoulders drew in at the realization that she was not alone in the dark mountain. The figure facing her had not taken their eyes off Layla for a single moment. The man who had been watching her so fixedly finally began to walk toward her. Each time he closed the distance in one stride, the scent of cool winter rain seeped in through her nose. As though responding to that scent, a fresh, green fragrance like summer rain rose from her own body.

“Ha……”

The man who caught Layla’s scent let out a low groan, his throat moving slowly. It was a rough sound from a man she had never heard the like of before.

Dreaming something this absurd twice in one day, Layla nearly bit her own tongue. Why does this keep happening? She struggled to break free of the dream, but the harder she tried, the deeper she was pushed. She still could not tell who the man who had come to her was.

The scene changed.

It would have been a relief if things had improved, but she was lying in an unfamiliar bed. A wet sound reached her as her thick folds were sucked hard and her hips arched. Her smooth folds were taken fully into

a mouth and sucked fiercely. Sweet slickness seeped out, wetting the already damp flesh. A breathless m*an broke from between Layla’s red lips. Before she could even think to close her legs, the soft inner flesh on either side was licked.

“Aaah.”

That was unmistakably her own voice. Her own voice, familiar without needing to think about it. She tried to see who it was drawing her into this swamp of pleasure, but every time she tried, a blurry shadow rose up before her eyes. Even as she tumbled into a bed with someone whose face she did not know, she felt no fear at all. She was simply delighting in his touch, helpless and undone.

Nothing came from her lips but breathless m*ans. This dream was not controlled the way the first one had been. Then a voice reached her from somewhere. Her lower body was being worked relentlessly by a nameless man, so the voice now entering her ears must belong to someone else entirely.

“I am late in introducing myself. I am Louis.”

“……”

“Ah, perhaps High Priest is more familiar.”

High Priest? She had spent long years in the temple and never once crossed paths with the High Priest, yet here was his introduction, appearing out of nowhere. Was she actually in the middle of a conversation with the High Priest right now? The scene changed again. Unlike before, the scenes began shifting rapidly, one after another. The backgrounds and conversations changed so fast it made her head swim, and Layla could barely keep up. Even so, she had a strange instinct that she must not miss a single thing.

“God’s servant, I seek permission to take a mate in defiance of divine law. I make my marriage vow with Layla Bella, my mate.”

“I will marry the High Priest. Until the last day of my life I will give my best to this marriage and fulfill my proper duties.”

A sharp breath. How in the world? When had she married the High Priest? She truly had no memory of it at all. When she had opened her eyes that morning, she had been in an unfamiliar place, so did that mean that house had been the High Priest’s home?

“Marriage comes with its proper price.”

The words she heard again sounded cold for some reason. It was the High Priest who had said something like that to her so bluntly, without preamble. As the time she spent wandering through the dream grew longer, Layla noticed that all the memories flowing into her mind were completely jumbled. They were not coming in order but forcing their way in at random.

It was hard to tell whether what was being shown to her was real or not, but she had clearly lost her memories, and when she first opened her eyes, it had been in an unfamiliar house. It was not the temple, and she had been connected to the god in a vision, so what the High Priest said was unlikely to be a lie. If that was the case, then she really had married the High Priest. In the midst of all this confusion, she thought of her friends, and the moment she did, a scene appeared.

“Did you not see them?”

“Salina, Nihil, and Maris have left Mount Aurelia.”

“They left the mountain? Are you saying they went to a neighboring village?”

“Yes. They went somewhere safe.”

“What do you mean……”

So the High Priest had helped her friends escape from the temple. She had not fallen asleep that dawn and missed going to the Lenitas Shortcut. Layla had met her friends there at the right time. And there, the High Priest had allowed her friends, all except for her, to go out into the wider world.

Layla fought desperately not to have her every will consumed by the dream. One wrong move and she felt she might be trapped inside it forever. Someone kept drawing her deeper into the dream, and she needed to break free of that control.