The eyes that had wavered for just a moment, the fierce inner struggle, and then the hand that had finally let her go, and the broad back that had turned and disappeared.

She had learned later that he had secretly held off the Empress Dowager’s pursuit unit alone and helped her.

And yet the news that came back from a man like that was the death of his dearly cherished younger sister.

And also.

“Explain what you mean by that nonsense.”

Those feelings.

Why had a great noble of the far northern lands shown his face at the imperial palace banquets so often? How had the sister he cherished so dearly become a friend to a princess who was mistreated by the Empress Dowager?

‘Ah, would you take my brother with you?’

Ah, Elizabeth.

‘What kind of nonsense are you saying to the legitimate imperial bloodline who must succeed to the throne?’

‘Oh come now, I’ll inherit that Grand Duke seat myself. I’ll give my brother to Your Highness the princess. Keep him by your side!’

‘Elizabeth.’

‘Ahaha! Then wouldn’t everyone reach a happy ending? I’m certain of it!’

Elizabeth, that happy ending crumbled.

It was over something no more than a feeling close to young infatuation that the Grand Duke had come to suffer so terribly. And surely not a trace of such feeling remained in those eyes now.

But.

“I told you to speak plainly!”

The moment the hand gripping his hair loosened, the man did not miss his opening. He shot to his feet like a thunderclap and seized Iberis by the collar. Daring to seize the emperor by the collar.

‘Shh.’

She murmured softly, just loud enough for someone waiting outside, and soothed the killing intent of the knight who was ready to burst in at any moment and cut down the man before her.

Her loyal knight of werewolf bloodline seemed to have caught the sound and barely managed to rein in his killing intent, but the Grand Duke, a massive figure with bloodshot eyes, could not conceal his agitation.

Iberis smiled.

Because she felt no anger at all.

“I am your sovereign.”

“Don’t make me laugh!”

“Shall I cut off the hand that dares do this?”

“I have never once acknowledged that.”

“What a pity. In a few days the land of the North will vanish into a handful of ash. Or freeze solid.”

“Iberis!”

The man before her would not believe it, but she had truly cherished Elizabeth. Had held her dear. When the girl who used to smile so brightly chose death in her place, Iberis had been so devastated and furious she wanted to claw her own heart out.

But she was of the imperial bloodline.

She bore the mission of saving the empire and others from the Empress Dowager’s evil. There was no time given to collapse and weep in despair.

To stay alive and change many things, she had to become heartless. She tore out soft tears and grief from herself like garbage and threw them into the street.

She became merciless and cold.

So the man before her had every right to hate her to the very depths of her soul.

“Lionel.”

“……”

“I said it was not a joke.”

When she called his name quietly, the hand that had been shaking violently went still. She had no wish to unsettle a man wearing an expression of utter incomprehension. The clearly twisted look in his eyes seemed quite pained.

“What is this? What are you trying to do, Iberis? Why did you drag someone who was perfectly fine in their own territory all the way here?”

But what could be done? The Oracle had pointed to him. There were not many who had saved Iberis. If he knew that she felt relief knowing one of those people was to be her first, this man would want to bite off his own tongue and die. Iberis looked at the man and smiled.

“I need you.”

“……What?”

“I have been cursed.”

Crack. The hand gripping her collar tightened. A force that could tear thin fabric to shreds. And then it let go abruptly.

The man, watching Iberis remain unmoved even through that brief standoff, crumpled his face as though telling her to stop talking nonsense and scoffed at her.

“A curse?”

“Yes, a curse.”

“There are limits to the rubbish you can spout. Who would dare curse you?”

Why not?

“You, who awakened the power of the dragon!”

Yes, and so Iberis too had been off her guard. She had believed that even the Grand Witch could not do such a thing.

Just what method had the Empress Dowager used in the moment of her escape to curse a bloodline of the dragon. All that woman had taken with her when she fled was her own body and the daughter who had escaped alongside her.

A thin, bitter smile bloomed.

“The Empress Dowager was a Grand Witch worthy of being written into the history books. It seems you have forgotten that the people who fell into that woman’s grasp were not one or two. Especially my father. The late emperor.”

The same bloodline of the dragon.

“He fell too.”

Though it was said she had not been able to bring him down in one blow and had resorted to every manner of curse and drug before he finally collapsed, at any rate there was a precedent for the curse taking hold.

“Would I be any different?”

“But you are!”

The man, who had been fumbling for words for some time, scrunched his face and whispered.

“You are different.”

The damnably unfaltering emperor who refuses to fall, that was what the bitterly spreading words amounted to, and Iberis let out a small laugh.

“I was not so different.”

“……”

She looked with longing at the face before her, the wavering blue eyes gazing straight at her, the sharp features with their deep lines, the face that resembled a loyal subject and friend she had loved, and reached out her hand.

“I was not so different, Lionel.”

If she were to say she was glad it was him, how horrified would he be. How revolted. Would he scream?

“In the year since that woman fled, I endured countless curses. But at last the body has reached its limit. I am dying. There is not much time left.”

“……What? What kind of nonsense. A real curse?”

“Yes. No method has worked. If my body breaks apart like this, what do you think will happen?”

“That would be.”

“That’s right. A catastrophe.”

She reached out and trailed her fingers along his sharp cheek, as though toying with the grave face that had gone rigid.

Ah, in that moment a silent exclamation rose within her. The damned god had truly granted an immediate and splendid effect.

“While doing every manner of thing imaginable to keep from dying like this, I found one method.”

“That is……”

“The Oracle.”

The sensation of the body that had been perfect after her awakening now crumbling was truly wretched.

Iberis had always been tormented by pain and heard phantom sounds. Some days she could not sleep at all, and other days she fell into a terribly deep sleep she could not wake from. She vomited black blood, and her power ran out of control, the ability of glaciation leaking out and freezing things at random, and she felt an unending thirst for sl*ughter.

“You are my medicine. It is said that if one who has received the Oracle embraces me, the curse can be broken.”

He shook his head.

“Don’t. Make me laugh.”

“It means you are the only chance to save me.”

“Don’t say such absurd things.”

“Will you save me as you did in the past, or will you leave me to die this time?”

Even in the midst of this tragedy, she was quite the entertaining person to tease. When she wanted to cry, Iberis smiled all the more brightly. When she was so furious her body trembled, she pulled the corners of her mouth up even further.

It was the same now.

She had to taunt the one she felt guilty toward, and drag this man who despised her so fiercely into her bed. But the first man spoken of in the Oracle was unmistakably Lionel before her. Who else bore the name of Grand Duke, born in the North.

“It’s you, Lionel.”

“No.”

“It’s you.”

Iberis moved. She reached out and seized the man who had drawn close by the collar. She yanked hard. The human man, unable to overpower a monster’s strength, staggered and fell. She reached out her other hand and gripped the nape of his neck.

“It’s you.”

Like the sharp talons of a hawk pressing down on the neck of its prey, and then quickly opening her mouth.

“……!”

She stole Lionel’s lips.

“You’re, insane.”

She lunged again at the lips struggling to pull away. For a man cold as ice, his lips were quite soft and sweet.

Despite clearly wanting to strike her off even if it meant hitting her, the fact that he could not muster proper strength suggested he was considerably flustered.

Iberis seized on that opening. She drew out her tongue for all to see and licked Lionel’s upper lip. She dragged it slowly across his lower lip. And finally pushed her tongue into his mouth, which had fallen open in shock.

‘……!’

A flash went off before her eyes. She had thought putting one’s tongue into another person’s mouth and drawing out their saliva was simply unhygienic, but was it because of the curse? It was so different.