The seal of the Emperor of the great empire, Decan.
Using the authority of the Decan Emperor, the hearts of Aisha’s nobles could be moved.
Ajean picked up Kaiden’s seal with trembling hands. Then she stared at it for a long while with a blank expression.
“Do you not like it?”
Ajean shook her head vigorously. Red color bloomed on her pale cheeks.
The bloody wars and the tedious official duties.
Every part of daily life had felt nothing but wearisome.
Kaiden shifted his gaze to the window.
The night sky was still vast and distant, but the glittering Milky Way was vivid enough to seem within reach. Just like the witch of Aisha, Ajean.
“Your Highness, please return safely then.”
She was done with her business, so it was time for him to leave.
Kaiden chewed on an inexplicable sense of defeat as he walked out of Ajean’s room.
Left alone, Ajean hugged a pillow and leaned against the window. The countless stars shone so vividly they seemed about to pour down to the earth.
“It is all right. My heart is mine.”
It was unclear who the comfort was meant for, as Ajean forced her voice out as though wringing it from her throat.
Then she lowered her gaze to the golden seal in her hand.
Kaiden’s seal, reflecting the moonlight, shone more piercingly than any star in the night sky.
❀❀❀
Returning to his bedroom, Kaiden undid his uniform buttons as though tearing them off.
With his rough handling, the metal ornaments hanging from his shoulders scattered in every direction.
The suffocating feeling would not ease at all. Kaiden swallowed a long sigh and turned over the moment of detoxification in his mind.
When the detoxification incense billowed fierce smoke, Kaiden had drawn the fragrance deep into his lungs and tried praying to the goddess.
‘Goddess Saullemathes. If you are there, I have one request. I do not wish to meet Ajean in my dreams tonight. I am already suffering enough, so please help me. I am called the sun of Decan, after all. I ask for your cooperation.’
Perhaps the goddess was displeased that the unbeliever Kaiden only prayed when it suited him.
The gods did not answer prayers of this kind, and Saullemathes did not grant Kaiden’s prayer either.
D*mn it. It was Ajean again, as always.
In the dream, Ajean was collapsed on the floor, sobbing.
Her small shoulders heaved up and down again and again as she poured out sorrowful cries. Tears flowed ceaselessly from her large eyes like a broken pipe.
Kaiden walked over and placed a hand on her small shoulder. The words of comfort telling her not to cry would not come.
Ajean raised her head abruptly, and asked in a voice heavy with grief.
“Why…… didn’t you save me? Do you know how cold the water was? Everyone was watching. Now they will all mock me. They will say the abandoned imperial princess of Aisha was abandoned in Decan too. I hate you, I hate Your Highness.”
The real Ajean would never say such things.
In that instant Kaiden became aware that he was in a dream. The sweet whisper came without fail.
‘It is a dream. No matter what you do, Ajean will not know. Beg. Beg like a dog.’
The self-justification ended simply. Kaiden knelt before her without hesitation. The words he had wanted to say burst out like a flood.
“I am sorry. I was wrong, Ajean. I wanted to save you but I could not. I did it to protect you, truly. Stop crying. Tell me what you want instead. I will give you anything, please just stop crying.”
“Huu, I do not need any of it. I am going to Aisha now. I miss Allen. Allen…… where are you? Please take me away.”
Ajean sobbed as though she might stop breathing, and Kaiden’s world shook violently.
An irresistible thirst coursed through his veins and spread through his entire body. Ajean’s sorrow seeped into his heart like a deadly poison.
Kaiden could not believe he harbored such obsession and longing. With a crash, the boundary of his consciousness collapsed once more.
Like a prisoner with no way out, he begged desperately again and again.
“I will bring you the head of Emperor Razeo who put you on that auction block. Shall I buy you jewels no one else can obtain? Just say the word and I will give you anything, but I cannot allow you to return to Aisha. Say something else, quickly.”
“I said I do not need any of it. Send me to Allen. Please.”
She was a violent invader and an unreasonable ruffian.
She would not listen to Kaiden at all, and her struggling only grew worse.
The hand gripping Ajean’s shoulder tightened further. It was an instinctive action driven by the thought that he could never let her go.
Kaiden brought his hand to Ajean’s pale cheek. Large tears rolled down onto the back of his hand. Ajean’s warmth stabbed at his heart.
The hand that had been wiping those tears pressed against Ajean’s lips. When the fingers that slipped between her red lips touched the soft inner surface, Ajean let out a small cry.
Kaiden kissed her. Ragged breath tangled with tongue. Ajean’s lush black hair became a tangled mess in his hands.
The more she tried to pull back and retreat, the more Kaiden held her waist with relentless persistence. For every step she retreated, Kaiden advanced.
In this dream, she was different from usual. When his hands touched her, she shuddered and shook her head. Not even a breath escaped from her firmly closed lips.
The legs that had parted gently, the red cleft that had been gratifyingly wet. As though none of that had ever happened, she locked the door shut and refused him.
Growing desperate, Kaiden rubbed his face roughly with his dry hands.
Knowing it was nothing more than a crude illusion born of desperate desire, something that could never be real. Kaiden clung to the shell of Ajean.
When he woke from this dream he would tremble again with miserable self-loathing, but there was nothing to be done. Even like this, he wanted to meet her eyes.
Yet the Ajean in the delusion, no matter how much Kaiden begged, only went limp and would not respond.
Look at me, look at me. Ajean.
He gripped the softness of her chest hard in his hand. He licked and then painfully sucked the n*pple that slipped between his fingers, yet the body gave no m*an.
It was the same when he slipped his hand lower. Pressing and stroking the small, soft flesh with his fingers again and again brought no pleasure. That place was as barren as a dry desert.
Please, please, Ajean.
Kaiden’s hands were earnest even in their desperation. Like a man determined to wring desire from an empty shell, he tormented Ajean relentlessly.
He dragged his tongue long across the dry folds. He buried his head between her white, straight legs and licked like a dog, murmuring.
Forgive me, forgive me. Ajean.
Even with his desperate ministrations, her folds would not grow wet. Her body was like a person who had bolted the lock of their heart.
He pressed the tip against her folds, slick only with his own saliva. Even forcing into the narrow cleft, the body gave no response.
Thrusting up into her, the beautiful bare body swayed. His shadow covered Ajean. No matter how he pressed into the narrow space, no matter how mercilessly he drove to the root. Ajean only swayed limply like a doll.
She did not pull him close by the neck, did not show him eyes glazed with pleasure, did not cry out in joy. The body, reddened from being bitten and sucked all over, gave not even warmth, let alone pleasure.
Kaiden despaired. This being, with no self and no substance, refused him. It wore Ajean’s shell and deceived him.
Then it happened. Ajean’s features blurred and faded, and a familiar yet unfamiliar face overlapped hers, and her voice twisted strangely.
“Arthus…… my Arthus, do not abandon me please. Do not let me go.”
His mother’s dying words flowed from between Ajean’s lips.
Kaiden’s trembling world shattered into pieces at the entrance of hell.
Breathing was difficult in the midst of despair and pain, yet he stubbornly held Ajean in his arms.
Uncontainable fury erupted.
“Mother! Where else would that bloodline go? Like father, like son! I will not let her go. I have no intention of it. I am a Vilteraus too, so there is no hope. What is a conquest marriage? My hands are already stained with filthy blood. What is there that I cannot do!”
Kaiden held Ajean and cried out like that. Until the very moment he woke from the dream.
Turning over the dreadful detoxification dream made him sigh involuntarily. Kaiden walked toward the window.
His long shadow stretched past the window and out into the rear garden.
Ajean Turandeus.
Like his heart, burned to ash, the night was ferociously black. Had darkness ever felt this hellishly vast.
“…… Ajean.”
He called the name that gripped his heart in a low murmur.
The low voice scattered into the air. He tried to say something more but held it back deliberately.
Kaiden fell onto the bed and closed his eyes. The sound of his desperately beating heart was vivid in the quiet.
Ajean was both salvation and nightmare. At least tonight, that was unmistakably so.
Kaiden swallowed what was in his heart along with a breath in. He rose and walked to the bathroom, and when the long shower that felt like penance finally ended…
Kaiden returned as the perfect creation in whom the dignity of Vilteraus was embodied.
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Bluegvibes
Kaiden’s yearning is well written. His own internal war raging inside him, driving him absolutely insane is a really good insight between nature vs nurture. Although he’s absolutely against becoming like his father, I do believe that he will. Despite his mother’s protest in his dream and Ajean’s emotionless reaction during the s*x after her own plead of cry, their cries fall on Kaiden’s deaf ears. He’s unwilling to listen to their grievances and wants to impose his own obsession. He’s never fought back his own intentions, but rather scold himself for his dreams and thoughts, and proceeds to make plans to conquer Ajean, and holds resentment against Allen.
I know the emotionless s*x being highlighted in the dream was to reveal Ajean’s position in his dream was to be a placement of Ajean’s suffering that Kaiden refuses to acknowledge as he can read her as a book even if she’s trying to hide her feelings. I find this chapter rather incredibly disturbing. He pleads for forgiveness, thrusting into her, licking her up and down, while hoping she’ll let out a m*an. I know that the intention isn’t about consent and more on the fact that it’s Ajean’s personified agony and as well a personification of what he perceives Ajean’s feelings towards him, an acquaintance. It was still disgusting that Kaiden knows he wants to force himself onto Ajean in his dreams.