“Why do you have dead eyes?”

His heart dropped with a thud of surprise. Kaian fumbled the dagger in his hand like a clumsy novice assassin.

Clang. The blade struck the marble-inlaid floor and rang out with a clear, sharp tone. He parted his lips slightly. The emperor. Iberis.

‘She remembers me?’

She remembered the moment the young girl had saved him, and the time he had repaid that debt? Not only that, but looking at him now, she showed no surprise at all.

‘She knows me?’

What in the world was happening?

But his mind checked out once again. He heard a sound. A soft, wet lapping. Where? From the wound on his nape, which was still bleeding freely.

He recoiled in alarm but could not overpower her grip. He was bled like a beast offered up for sacrifice. One pull, then two. The sound of her swallowing made his skin crawl.

“What are you, doing?”

What are you doing right now?

At the single dazed line he barely managed to get out, the woman with blood now staining lips that had already been a vivid red lifted her head from his nape and smiled deeply.

“Your blood really is special. It is you.”

As the stark contrast against her white skin made his vision swim, the Snow Princess who had gripped and shaken the whole of his life, no, the emperor Iberis, to whom blood suited so terribly well, spoke.

“I need your blood.”

Pointing at the assassin who had come to die, with her pale fingertips.

“I need you, Kaian.”

At that soft command, Kaian had no idea how to refuse.

It all just felt like a dream.

* * *

She had heard he was quite a ruthless assassin.

He doesn’t look the part at all.

Of course, Iberis, who never forgot a debt or a grievance, remembered Kaian’s existence well.

The boy in shabby clothes, drenched in blood, whom she had saved and sent away with her own hands. He had clearly looked like an assassin, but she had let him live because those amber eyes had not lost their will, and they reminded her of a sunset.

How could she forget that?

She had thought that would be the end of their connection, but while she was running headlong toward the edge of a cliff, she encountered that assassin boy again.

Even as she endured terrible agony from the poison, Iberis had been holding on without collapsing, pressing a shard of broken glass into her palm to keep herself conscious.

If an assassin came close, she would stab them. She would not die alone, no matter what.

She was holding on like that, with blood in her mouth, when she met the boy again.

His face was hidden behind black cloth, but how could she not recognize those vivid citrine-like eyes? Watching his wavering gaze, she realized the boy had recognized her as well.

The blade he had raised came down, and the shard of glass she had been ready to thr*st from her hand dropped to the floor with a small thud.

‘I can’t do it.’

‘……’

That was all. The boy said nothing more. He silently pressed the antidote to the poison that had been killing Iberis and her companions into her hand, and disappeared.

I knew he wouldn’t come back to anything good, so I looked into it.

She hadn’t been able to check right away. Iberis’s own circumstances had been dire.

It was only after she had eliminated all those who had followed the Empress Dowager and her surroundings had stabilized that she found out. How brutal a life the boy had lived after that.

She had confirmed information on the boy who had been an assassin, but the connection with those tenacious eyes seemed to have carved out his own footing right where he stood.

It had been quite a glittering life, and one soaked through with sticky blood. Kill and kill again, stepping over corpses to reach the very top, they said.

And so she had left that connection alone.

She knew he was living a wretched life while pretending to be the heir of a respectable noble house, but since he had not come to petition her himself, she left him be.

She had been thinking she would involve herself just once.

When Kaian finally finished his revenge on his own, she would look after what came next. If he wished it, she would let him live out the rest of his life in peace.

If not that, then she would see to it that he could live as an ordinary heir of a marquisate, as a proper successor.

But then the curse threw everything into disorder. She had been cursed because of the Empress Dowager, who had escaped from the tower where she was confined. A year spent writhing in terrible pain.

Fate. What a capricious thing.

Cross-referencing the information she had on hand confirmed it beyond doubt: Kaian was the subject of the second Oracle.

But how was she to bring him in? An assassin, once resolved to hide, could not easily be caught even with all the resources of the imperial family.

With only one day left before the deadline the Oracle had set, Iberis gambled. She ordered a contract to be placed through the assassination guild itself. A covert order to kill the emperor, Iberis. Herself.

And so……

He came in person, bold enough to kill me himself.

He was an amusing man.

He certainly stands out.

His was a face that young noblewomen and ladies would exhaust their tongues praising. Even in Iberis’s eyes, which were not easily swayed by beauty, the man was devastatingly beautiful.

It was almost funny that someone who looked like that was working as an assassin. The blood grazed during his attack had carried the scent of sweet fruit.

The funniest thing of all was how blank the man before her looked.

What is he staring at like that?

He had approached without a trace of presence, enough to impress even her, and yet he had not scattered so much as a drop of killing intent. He had come to assassinate the emperor, and the moment their eyes met, he had dropped his guard entirely.

Wasn’t that rather endearing?

Strangely so, enough to make her let her own guard down.

I didn’t expect this kind of reaction.

Iberis felt a playful impulse rise in her as well. This was the first time she had come face to face with someone she had only known through records and tried to speak with him directly. She reached out her hand and gave herself over to where that sweet fragrance beckoned.

Because she had just used the power of ice, a pain like her skin being torn and split was spreading through her. And so she pressed her lips to that sweet-smelling skin and drank, hoping it might dull the pain.

……!

Gulp. The moment she swallowed that first mouthful, Iberis knew it instinctively.

It was sweet enough to be intoxicating. The pain receded in an instant, and she floated in a feeling of ease.

It was devastatingly good.

Yes. It’s you.

Certainty spread through her along with a slow, satisfied smile.

And so she gave in to greed once more and drew another mouthful of blood.

Haa.

Damnably, her whole body flushed as though reacting to it. Life returned to her frozen flesh, and a hazy heat spread gently through her groin.

That’s right. It’s you.

The man before her was, just as her teacher Behil’s letter had described, the one who would take on the most crucial role in breaking the curse.

Because of the fairy bloodline that had manifested through atavism.

For a man who had been kidnapped for that blood and bound to an assassination guild, it was the sort of thing he could violently resist.

But for Iberis, she had to secure him by whatever means necessary. Unlike what she had anticipated, looking at his hazy, unfocused eyes, it didn’t seem like it would be difficult.

A ruler was someone who knew, at times, how to seduce.

Iberis curved her lips with alluring grace.

“I need you, Kaian.”

When she said that, a new light stirred in those amber eyes that had been as unfocused as mist. Desire drifted through them. She felt it clearly.

That’s the real him.

The change in that moment was so strikingly obvious that Iberis nearly burst out laughing. He had the face of someone who looked as though he could elegantly claim to know nothing of desire, and yet he was a maddening creature. Devastatingly greedy and cunning.

Even now, wasn’t he just like that?

“I require a more detailed explanation, Your Majesty.”

There was not a trace of the dazed man from a moment ago.

“You recover quickly.”

An elegant smile layered itself over him like a thick mask. The blank look from just before sank away into shadow. He was skilled at playing a part.

“I came knowing it was a road to death, yet a road to life has opened before me. How could I not make use of it?”

She liked all of this very much.

A smile rose in her, almost strangely.

“You aren’t afraid that I covet your blood?”

“Well.”

He was a funny creature. Even in a situation where one wrong word could mean death, the will to live burned in him like a flame. He was exactly like a little fox wagging its tail, sniffing out the hole it could slip through to survive.

Iberis had a weakness for foxes. She was far too indulgent toward creatures that tilted their sharp little heads and seemed to beckon. And the beautiful creature before her kept calling foxes to mind.

“Indeed, a bold one is not bad.”

Iberis stepped a little closer. She met the gaze that stared back at her without a shred of fear, despite having just had his blood drunk, and opened her mouth.

“I will explain.”

The Empress Dowager. The curse. The time and pain Iberis had endured, and the means of resolving it. It was time to lay it all out in full.

“Once you have heard everything, there will be no road back for you. Are you prepared?”

Now then. Her heart pounded with anticipation, wondering how the man before her would react.

Just as it had pounded loudly and without restraint when she had drunk from that soft skin moments ago and felt a desire so vivid it was almost startling.