“Lionel.”

He had no desire to answer.

“Do you still want to kill me?”

“……”

“Do you?”

That cruel gaze, looking as though it was enjoying itself, as though it would not be satisfied until it had dug out every last thing hidden inside him, made it all the more so.

Did she truly have to ask? In front of him, when he was already feeling the weight of his own inner conflict, did she have to.

Did she have to look at him as though asking how it felt to desire the woman who had caused his sister’s death?

She was always like that. She would strike and then pull back.

She made things difficult for him, as though telling him not to entertain useless thoughts and to simply live with nothing but his rage toward the sovereign who had let his sister die.

The cowardly man knew it. The truth was, he had known from the very beginning. That there was no fault in that woman.

Elizabeth had chosen her own path, and the choice she had once made to save that woman had not been made at anyone’s instruction but her own.

He knew that the woman who had cherished his sister so dearly could not have been anything but devastated by her death, that those had been desperate times, and yet he had pretended not to know.

And yet…….

His cowardly heart turned away from that truth.

He kept his mouth firmly shut.

He burned, wound tight with nothing but rage.

He was cowardly enough that even now, having finally buried himself inside her and moved within her, he could not answer.

‘I.’

Lionel’s face contorted without mercy.

Too tender for him to hate her fully, yet too cold for him to love her fully.

The sovereign who drew the line at hatred and told him not to acknowledge any other feeling was like ice.

“Lionel.”

She spoke then.

“Even if you cannot believe it, this is something I have wanted to say at least once.”

“……What?”

Her voice was unexpectedly, slightly gentle. Perhaps because this was a moment she could never have imagined herself in, a crack had formed even in the emperor’s cold mask.

“Elizabeth’s death was a great loss to me as well.”

Words she had never once said before.

“I am sorry for taking your family from you, Lionel.”

The first admission to come from the mouth of the woman who had always goaded him to rage and hatred to the very end, stoking the fire like someone feeding kindling to a flame.

“……”

“……”

Lionel lost his words for a moment at the voice of the sovereign who had never said a single word about Elizabeth.

The Snow Princess.

She was brave.

This moment was no different.

Things had burned like a beast’s in the middle of it, but how could a noble emperor have ever wanted to break a curse this way.

It must have been wretched and awful. Lying with a man who said he hated her and wanted to kill her must have been even more suffocating.

And yet she laughed. She had provoked him boldly and drawn him in. She had shaped the situation with that unpleasant smile of hers, as though telling him not to feel guilt or discomfort.

‘Terrible.’

He himself was.

Lionel opened his eyes and looked to the side. There was still roughly half a day left.

It was almost absurd, the situation of having even just their toes touching in accordance with the warning to maintain contact throughout.

Covered in marks she had never worn before, looking a complete mess, she watched him quietly and then let out a small laugh like a child.

“Are you a little glad to see me so undone?”

He reached out his hand. Her white throat, the throat of someone he had always thought of in only one way. He took it in his grip. What would happen if he pressed just a little harder here? Killing intent, hatred, rage, and…

“Yes. I want to kill you.”

“As I thought.”

“There is no reason our relationship would suddenly change.”

“Well. Perhaps not.”

Looking into her eyes as they stared straight back at him, Lionel did not know what expression he was making.

He did not notice the tightly knotted thread of venom inside him loosening and going slack.

F*ck. This was as far as it went.

“I hate you, Iberis. Did you not make me this way?”

He muttered it stubbornly, the way someone who would never willingly concede might. Iberis, who had been staring at him with eyes far too sticky to call hatred as she looked at his bare body, widened her eyes in apparent surprise and burst out laughing.

“The nerve of you!”

Laughing like that while her bare body shook with it, she seemed like someone who had no idea how a man watching her would react.

The flow of her slender curves and her chest swaying in a way that seemed to tempt him were lovely.

F*ck. He still did not want to admit it. That beneath all this hatred, there had always been affection.

“I still want to break you.”

“……”

“I want to make you breathless.”

“……”

“But right now.”

He wanted to drive her until she could cry when she needed to cry, the way an ordinary person would. He wanted to hold her in his grip and crush her until she lost her shape. And at the same time, he wanted to hide her in his arms so that no other man could touch her.

The conclusion was one.

He wanted that woman.

“I want to hold you.”

Whatever form that took.

“I think I have truly lost my mind, Your Majesty the Emperor.”

He leaned in and kissed her lips, and the sovereign laughed in disbelief. She swept her own hair back and then seized the hair of the man kissing her in a rough grip.

“How dare you. You f*ck me once and think you can aim for the emperor’s kept man?”

He understood now. The woman before him had a habit of deliberately saying things like that whenever something flustered her.

He nibbled at Iberis’s ear. He stroked the skin that flinched with pleasure and whispered.

“You have been on my mind all along. That is why I was angry, why I raged because I could not accept it. Even knowing it was not your fault. The truth is, it was that way from the very f*cking beginning.”

Did she have any idea what a wretched process it had taken to admit this.

Of course, the emperor was not easily moved. She narrowed her eyes at the man trying to cross the line she had drawn, the wall she had set.

She smiled, quiet but fierce.

“Lionel, I am the one who chooses. Not the one who is chosen.”

Do not say anything beyond that.

This is nothing more than a healing process that will end after the first time.

However much pleasure you felt in that s*x, it does not matter in the slightest.

He understood that was what she meant.

But a man who had crossed a line once knew how to be thoroughly shameless. All the more so because he had just fully acknowledged the feelings he had suppressed with stubborn pride and willful blindness.

He no longer wanted to deceive himself.

“You promised to grant me a wish.”

He watched her eyes narrow and kissed her cheek. He sucked at the skin of the woman who sent him a displeased look without refusing him.

“The time is not up yet. Have you forgotten?”

He naturally parted the thighs he had bitten and sucked at so many times. The tip of his rigid member rubbed and pressed against the smooth inner flesh.

“You are going to regret giving me this opportunity.”

He might not have known it with his eyes closed, but once he had admitted it, desire rose in him. He would not separate himself from this woman he wanted to kill and wanted beside him. Keep her alive first, at least.

To do that, she would have to take other men into her arms because of this f*cking wretched curse.

“Remember that you gave me your first.”

“You really have no end to you, Grand Duke.”

“Even so.”

Thr*st.

“Your hole bites down and says it likes it.”

“You, insolent, ugh, shameless!”

Iberis shook her head. Her black hair spread across her white skin like an ornament and it was beautiful. He gripped her hair in his hand and smiled with open greed.

“I am your faithful subject.”

“Ha! The nerve is truly beyond words, isn’t it? Is there such a thing as a loyal subject, mmm, who wants to kill his lord?”

“Yes. I could kill you with what is below, forever.”

“Lionel, are you, ngh, truly insane?”

He wanted her to look only at him, using hatred as his excuse. He wanted her to understand clearly who owned the c*ck currently driving into the emperor’s lower body.

Who had torn open her soft entrance and made a path inside her. Who had drawn the thread of blood that had blurred and disappeared, mixed with her slick and his release.

“You will not be able to forget.”

So that knight outside as well.

“Remember this, Iberis. I am the one who took your first.”

Throughout the entire night of healing, woven through with cries of pleasure, it was a memory that knight outside, scattering his killing intent, could never steal.

* * *

Three full nights.

Through all of it, the pleasure and the cries and everything woven together, one person stood holding his post with a haggard face.

He held his position without drinking water, without stepping away.

So that no one could glimpse the emperor’s secret, so that her weakness could not leak out.

And when the last dawn finally broke, the door opened.

Carrying the raw smell of blood and a vivid iron scent, looking every bit the part of a man who had spent the night doing exactly what he had, he walked out.

Slap. His robe hung open and disheveled.

Slowly stroking the nail marks on his skin, the Grand Duke, Lionel, met the eyes of the knight glaring at him.

“……”

“……”

A killing edge surged between them, heavy and immediate.

The one who smiled first was, unexpectedly, the Grand Duke.

A short, quiet scoff.

He had always shown a vicious temper to everyone connected to the imperial household regardless of age or s*x, but now he spoke with a looseness, the venom somehow drained out of him.

“The watchdog can go home.”

The knight, Sirak, said nothing in return.

“Your liege will not be coming to her senses for a while.”

“……”

Unable to ignore that languid gaze of his, like a beast that had eaten its fill, Sirak’s brow twitched.

Watching the retreating figure walk away with the slow ease of a great serpent passing by, Sirak clenched his fist tight.