“…You’re leaving?”

Andymion had to repeat the words back to confirm them, words he would have preferred never to have heard. His voice sank low.

He had been thinking about how to spend the first holiday of the festival season together as a family, what gifts would be best for the children.

And what to give you for your first birthday, the gift he was secretly planning.

He had realized, with a strange, buoyant feeling, that days he had passed without much meaning since childhood could become thrilling and special because of one person.

But a single unexpected word from Evelyn doused the mood in an instant, snuffing it out like cold water thrown over a flame.

“Exactly as I said. When my contract with you ends, I want to leave the Fersen household.”

“I thought we had already settled that matter before coming up to the capital.”

It was too much to be called wordplay, yet too cruel to be accepted as reality.

He set down his glass of sweet, bittersweet wine mulled with fruit and cinnamon, and with a strained, awkward smile, asked her why.

“Back then, I was swept up in my emotions and failed to properly recognize my place and my limits.”

“Your place and your limits?”

“As you know, I’m someone who shouldn’t be hoping for a ’next.’”

Was she being punished for coveting what she had no right to desire?

The result of chasing the dream that perhaps she, too, could find happiness in the arms of someone she loved, was just as devastating as she had feared.

In the worst situation she had never anticipated, the only thing she could do was release the hand she had barely managed to hold.

Unable to deny, to the very end, that this unwanted choice was the best for everyone, Evelyn had no choice but to conceal her true feelings.

Not wanting anyone to see the ache tearing through her heart, she let a natural, false smile bloom fully across her face.

“I said I would find a way for us to share a future together.”

Her stubborn insistence on unilaterally ending things, and that guileless smile that held not even a trace of reluctance at parting.

Everything about Evelyn before him grated on him, and his already sharp voice sank another degree colder.

Less than a year. The time they had spent together was not so long.

Yet Andymion knew well that she was not the kind of person to confess love impulsively, carried away by mere emotion.

He knew there had to be a reason, and yet the feeling that even the sincerity he thought he had finally reached was being denied made his anxiety spread beyond his control.

To keep his unraveling, surging emotions from crossing the threshold, he curled his hand into a fist with all his strength.

“Yes. You said you would do that. But I think the time I have left will run out faster than the time it takes to find that way.”

“Evelyn.”

“And if such a way had existed from the beginning, my clan would never have been destroyed. I don’t want to keep clinging to a hope that is more likely not to exist.”

“So you want me to let go, as though we were strangers?”

“Yes. I want to bring what little time I’m permitted to a meaningful close―”

Evelyn’s stubbornness, pressing forward to the end down a path that betrayed his trust, finally shattered what little patience he had left.

Before she could finish the words she had spent all night sleepless preparing, Evelyn was shoved by the shoulder as he closed the distance between them in an instant.

Without even a moment to let out a short gasp, her tilting body fell straight onto the sofa.

With no chance to right herself, Evelyn was trapped between his firm, thick arms, and she could only stare up at him with wide eyes.

His deep violet eyes, filled with nothing but stubbornness and anxiety.

Beyond them, Evelyn could read without difficulty the clear, unspoken message that he would give her no room to escape.

“That night, what was the sincerity you conveyed to me?”

Andymion remembered clearly that night when, after so many turns, their feelings had finally met.

When he had learned of Evelyn’s circumstances, so precarious and fragile it seemed she might vanish someday.

When, at the end of those circumstances, he had been forced to kneel before the emotion called love, made all the more clear.

When he had learned that she, who had sobbed and poured out her true heart, saying she wanted to live together with the one she loved, with the children, felt the same as he did.

That night when he had wiped the tears gathered at the corners of her reddened eyes, kissed her softly, and confirmed their love countless times.

He found Evelyn despicable for denying all of it so easily, as though flipping a hand over, and he could not let her go.

“Even if you were to die, even if you were to meet such a tragedy, meet it at my side.”

He spoke without hesitation even the words he had been too afraid to voice, fearing they might actually come true.

He knew well that these words, more like a threat than comfort or persuasion, would never work.

But because he had to hold onto her by any means, now that her resolve to leave was firm, his heart, brimming with desperation, drove him harshly in a direction contrary to his true feelings.

“Your Grace.”

“I will never be the one to let you go first. No, absolutely never.”

In his deep violet eyes, which had always seemed cold and cutting, a flame now burned with desperate longing.

His clumsy, childlike way of not hesitating to speak sharp words even knowing he would wound himself in the process.

The aching heart of this man who could not go on living without her.

All of him, at once unfamiliar yet something she had longed for, yet ultimately could not accept, shook Evelyn in that moment.

‘Don’t waver.’

A great tremor ran through her heart, which she had steeled firmly again and again through private suffering.

At such close range that their breath nearly touched, his gaze, shining all the more keenly, seemed ready to read every last truth hidden behind Evelyn’s false sincerity.

But Evelyn, who had been skillfully composing herself without betraying her agitation, parted her lips calmly.

“No. If you won’t let go first, then I will. I no longer have the confidence to be happy at your side.”

“Evelyn!”

“I’m telling you I no longer need your love, which only makes me more miserable!”

The words that could not be added to any further drove into his chest like a blade, slashing without mercy.

Andymion, fallen into a deep, bottomless hell, let out a bitter, hollow laugh half a beat later.

As she bore the full weight of his sharp gaze, mixed with nothing but emptiness, hurt, and disappointment, Evelyn felt her chest throb and tighten until she could barely breathe.

But unable to shrink back when she needed to paint the picture she intended perfectly, Evelyn poured out the cruel words without restraint.

“Holding onto a relationship with no hope only makes both people miserable. With someone who can promise a longer future―”

Unlike those hateful lips that had torn his heart to shreds and left him wretched, her blue eyes, meeting his, trembled faintly.

Having witnessed Evelyn’s countless performances and deceptions all this time, he caught on that it was a cunning little game, and let out a short, hollow laugh as one corner of his mouth curled crookedly upward.

He knew it was a lie. So why was she so desperate to keep it from looking like the truth.

At Evelyn’s resolute manner of stringing along words she didn’t mean in the least, his anxiety surged beyond all control.

The moment a fear rose sharply from deep within him that perhaps this ruin could not be avoided.

He let go entirely of the thread of reason he had been holding onto until the very end.

Having made up his mind to find out the reason behind this wretched little game even if he had to drive her into a corner, he pressed his lips fully over Evelyn’s.

“Mmph, ugh…!”

Plunging in at once and coiling around Evelyn’s tongue, he simultaneously bit and swallowed her lower lip again and again, relentlessly.

“Hah, Your―!”

Swallowing and swallowing again so that she could not form a single proper word.

Evelyn, struggling to even exhale properly as her breath rose and swelled from the sudden kiss, was occupied with simply receiving him in his urgency.

Evelyn, belatedly realizing what he intended to use to break her down, squirmed her small body trying to pull away from him, but it was no use.

“Your Grace, w, wait…!”

He tore into the sash fastened at her waist, wrenching it loose.

With that, the dress that had been hanging precariously at the edge of her shoulders slipped down completely, baring Evelyn’s pale, full chest.

Andymion gripped and kneaded her br*asts, which were fuller and more than his large hands could hold, always spilling out between his fingers even after filling them completely.

Evelyn’s brow furrowed briefly at his rough handling.