Lionel thought. It had truly been a hellish stretch of time.

During the days he had spent back in his territory, sunk in deep thought, the emperor who had thrown a stone into his heart remained silent without so much as a single letter. Like she knew that when the time came, he would come running even without any word from her.

That infuriated him all the more.

The curse, the Oracle, the sight of Iberis commanding him to hold her. All of it had shaken the foundations of a man who had spent his life doing nothing but swallowing his rage toward a certain someone.

Because……

‘D*mn it all.’

He had harbored desire. He had dreamed such dreams about the woman who was his enemy, the one who had caused his younger sister’s death, the woman who was his past regret.

In the dream, the woman smiled a smile she would never show in waking life and reached out her hand toward him.

In the dream, the woman apologized to him. She whispered tenderly that she was sorry.

As if whispering that what Lionel wanted was precisely that.

As if he would forgive her on the spot if she did……

‘No. I cannot accept this.’

But separate from his turbulent feelings, the curse laid upon the emperor was real, and the cardinal had proven the Oracle’s existence.

If Iberis collapsed and her power ran wild, the empire would fall into catastrophe.

Lionel had no room to step back.

The reality that had crashed down on him was that he had to keep alive the very person he wanted to kill, and by doing such a thing.

‘This is all for the greater good. Nothing more.’

He clung to that stubborn thought as his gaze swept the room. He did not know what this prickling, thorny feeling rising inside him was, but it was certainly not pleasant.

‘So she went and found the others after all.’

The men who would hold Iberis besides Lionel.

‘A blond man. And that one, is he the Empress Dowager’s lover?’

He did not know either man well, but it was clear neither was someone to take lightly. Surely there was no one who did not know the might of the Grand Duke of the North, and yet these men were paying Lionel no mind at all.

Somehow that did not sit well with him. The fist he clenched tightened until a chilling sound came from it. But there was one more thing that nagged at him.

‘Why are there only two of them?’

Had he not been told there would be three more?

Just then, a presence made itself known. The eyes of everyone in the room turned as one toward the door. With a creak, the one who entered was Sirak, the emperor’s watchdog, his expression cold and impassive.

“……”

Summoning people and saying not a word. It was exactly like his master, insufferably arrogant.

The reason Lionel’s fiery temper did not flare was the faint smell of blood coming off the man who had entered. It was the blood of someone he had smelled before.

The emperor. Iberis.

‘Did that woman cough up blood?’

The fact that that strong woman was suffering under a curse struck him forcefully once more. Regardless, Lionel found the knight who was just standing there glaring without a word entirely disagreeable, and he crossed his arms and muttered with arrogance.

“Aren’t you one short?”

His narrowed blue eyes fixed on the presumptuous knight who was staring back with equal displeasure.

“Don’t tell me the last one is you.”

Something close to killing intent drifted through the room. The knight did not deny it. That man truly was the subject of the final Oracle.

Lionel clenched his teeth against a displeasure unlike any he had felt before. The emperor’s watchdog, one of the two people that cold woman willingly cherished.

At that moment, Sirak, who had kept his mouth firmly shut, finally spoke.

“I will explain the Oracle.”

The displeasure surged, but he listened all the same.

The content of the Oracle was simple. Each of them had to spend three nights with the emperor. The four men had to spend a total of twelve days together with her so that the contact would not be broken.

The explanation ended with the note that the curse-breaking would be completed on the night of the thirteenth day, and that day in particular, all of them would need to gather together.

“So we are to follow the order carefully. How curious it feels, rather like being a stud horse.”

The blond man with the polished face said this with a pleasant smile. The smiling face was designed to lower one’s guard, but there was a blade in his words. He was clearly no ordinary noble layabout. Where had she dug up someone like that?

“Why, why am I, why am I third?”

The one gnawing at his fingernails was worse. Lionel made no effort to hide his grimace and swallowed his curses. D*mn it all, a criminal like that……

It was madness, as he had always thought. What had that woman promised these men? Thinking about it stoked a pointless fire in his chest.

He rose roughly from his seat.

There was nothing more to discuss.

That was what he would have done, had the captain of the imperial knight order not stepped into his path, had he not then thrown out a firm warning.

“I will give you one warning.”

“……”

He did not bother to reply, but he tilted his chin as if to say go ahead and speak.

The knight made no secret of his dislike of Lionel, and Lionel felt the same.

From long ago, back when the man had been glued to the side of the Snow Princess before her awakening, he had always been a thoroughly disagreeable presence.

“This is nothing more than a curse-breaking process. Should anyone, in the course of lifting the curse…… harbor improper intentions beyond their station, I hope they will think better of it.”

“……”

“……”

“……”

The beast-cold gray eye swept over the people in the room. It was a chilling warning, but it did not appear to have landed with any of them.

Lionel in particular, who would soon be entering the emperor’s chamber, sneered at the knight and walked out of the room.

Improper intentions? Damned nonsense.

‘I will count myself lucky if I don’t find it revolting.’

Even if he had been dreaming of that woman. Even if the blood-tinged kiss had sent Lionel reeling in terrible shock.

The fact that the Iberis he had to keep alive was the very person he wanted to kill remained unchanged.

* * *

That night.

When he made his way to the bedchamber he had been directed to, Lionel’s mood was strangely unsettled, awkward, and unpleasant. Where would the Grand Duke of House Ires, guardian of the vast northern territories, ever be subjected to treatment like this?

‘I truly feel like a kept man.’

To prove this was a matter conducted under the highest security, Lionel moved through a silence in which not even a mouse seemed to stir.

After winding through the corridors more times than he could count, he arrived before a large door. The handmaid holding the lantern slipped away.

It was not the emperor’s bedchamber. The room, which seemed to have been prepared specifically for tonight’s curse-breaking, was cold and bare. It held nothing but a single plush bed, large enough for several people to roll around in, sitting there alone.

And then his gaze met that of someone sitting on that bed.

“……”

“……”

An inscrutable face with unreadable depths. The emperor.

In that moment, Lionel realized he was as tense as he had been the first time he went into battle against a monster. His face twisted sharply. Why on earth. What was any of this. It was nothing but a transaction, an act with no particular meaning.

Just then, Iberis looked at him and smiled. It was closer to a smirk than a pleasant smile.

“Why are you smiling?”

Lionel bristled out of habit and strode forward, looking like he never hesitated at all.

In the soft moonlight, the woman wearing nothing but a thin chemise stabbed at his eyes.

Gulp. Lionel swallowed dryly and his jaw tightened.

“I asked what you are smiling at, Iberis.”

Looking at those narrowed eyes made his pride feel ground to dust. But d*mn it all, this was entirely that woman’s fault.

‘Why is she dressed like that?’

He could see straight through it. Through the translucent chemise that let the moonlight pass, the curves of her body were fully visible.

He grimaced, then became aware of the burning sensation spreading through his hands. D*mn it, the image of the woman from his dream, smiling softly as she walked toward him, rose vividly to mind.

It was a truly damnable thing.

But what could he do? Lionel’s blue gaze slid back to the woman once more. The hesitation and discomfort of moments ago fell away and he stared, transfixed.

He knew the feel of that woman’s skin beneath his hands. He knew how sweet the saliva inside that red mouth was when she parted her lips and he slipped his tongue in. He knew how impossibly soft the flesh was as it melted against his fingertips.

How many times since that contact had he been horrified, furious, and despairing over the torment that came to him in dreams?

But above all else, the hardest thing to endure was this.

“Have you been well since that day, Grand Duke?”

That woman’s composure.

“You seem to have been quite busy. I was no less so. While you were waiting, I found the other Oracle men safely as well. So……”

The sight of Iberis, wearing undergarments that showed her bare skin through them, not the least bit bothered, pulling at the corner of her lips and smirking at him.

“How rude. Where exactly are you looking?”

Lionel squeezed his eyes shut.

‘D*mn it all!’

What was driving him into the mud?

It was that he was the only one, Lionel himself, being shaken by this unwanted heat.