Chapter 9

“Ah…!”

Zechart stared at the trembling line of the woman’s back with an expression that bordered on madness. Moonlight streamed in through the window, casting a pale glow over her skin. Maybe she wasn’t used to this kind of intimacy—her slender frame kept collapsing, her upper body unable to support itself. She was delicate-boned to begin with.

Zechart slid his hand along the faint outline of her ribs. The heat that radiated from her supple skin was unmistakable.

“Edith.”

For the first time, the woman’s name—Edith—slipped from Zechart’s ragged breath, barely audible. Any question of how or when this had all begun had long since been washed away. The pleasure that coursed through his veins, tearing along every nerve, made even the most basic doubts impossible to hold onto.

“Please… stop…!“

Reflexively, he cradled her small, tense chin from behind, pulling her back and capturing her plush lips as if to swallow them whole. Their mouths met in a feverish kiss, hot with an urgency that blurred who was whose.

Zechart, who had been relentlessly driving her to the edge, paused for a brief moment when Edith, her head bowed, suddenly threw it back again. Her small body, so full of him, shuddered adorably with every spasm.

He pressed soft, fluttering kisses along the sweat-damp line of her back, his lips tracing delicately down her spine until he grazed the tender skin near her shoulder blade. He nipped there—just enough to leave a mark—and the delicate skin bloomed with a red stain almost immediately. Somehow, that simple mark sent a wave of deep, dizzying satisfaction through him. So he left more: on her slender nape, on her shoulders, until at last he turned her onto her back.

Her wet eyelashes cast trembling shadows across her reddened eyes.

Edith. Edith Lindel.

Instead of voicing her name, which kept swirling on the tip of his tongue, Zechart lowered his head. It happened to be just as she was about to say something—her full lips were parted, inviting.

Maybe it would have been, “Stop, I can’t anymore.” She’d been sobbing those words the entire time he held her.

But her desperate plea—impossible for him to grant—was swallowed sweetly with her feverish breaths. Zechart pressed her open, holding on with a gentle but unyielding grip, even as she struggled to endure him. He could feel her small tongue tense and freeze, entwined deeply with his.

With each time he plunged further, her hands clutched more tightly at his shoulders, until by the end, her knuckles had turned white.

Zechart gently took her hand and placed a soft kiss on it.

For a brief moment, he wondered at this tenderness—so unlike himself—but the sensation of her warmth tightening around him quickly washed that thought away.

Her sweat-dampened body soon began to move again, falling in line with his rhythm. The slow tempo at the start steadily accelerated, until it was wild, almost frantic, like an untamed stallion.

An electric, dizzying moment swept through both of them. Zechart’s mind went blindingly white, every nerve ending alive and pulsing.

And then, with a wet, shuddering sensation, Zechart’s eyes snapped open.

He looked around, blinking drowsily, and found everything impossibly quiet. His ragged breaths were the only thing heating his lips, his awareness slow to catch up, heavy eyelids fluttering as reality returned. Gradually, his senses sharpened, pulling him fully awake.

A faint, incredulous laugh slipped from his burning lips.

“…Ha.”

Clenching his teeth, Zechart sat up in bed.

He showered quickly and grabbed a cigarette that he’d left lying somewhere in the living room. Lighting it, he took a long, deep drag—enough to hollow out his cheeks. By the time the cigarette was half-burnt, another dry laugh burst out of him.

No matter how he looked at it, it was absurd.

It wasn’t enough to think of her from time to time—now he was having filthy dreams like this. If he’d known it would turn out like this, he might as well have killed her back at that beach. As he’d originally planned: fast and clean. He refused to dwell on why he hadn’t. He also refused to examine the reason for that odd, distant ache he’d felt when facing her. He was deliberately avoiding those thoughts. Because, even if he dug them up, he had a feeling the answer would be nothing he wanted to admit.

Was it the intoxication of her shallow breaths? Or the almost aching tenderness of her touch beyond the mask?

Since that night, the woman had been haunting Zechart’s mind—so much so that he was now dreaming such sordid dreams about her.

“…Crazy bastard.”

Zechart exhaled the smoke slowly, the word distasteful on his tongue. It really had been a hell of a night.

The next morning, Zechart sought out Markus. The bloodshot whites of his eyes betrayed his state from the night before.

“Who? Edith Lindel?”

“That’s right.”

“What about her?”

“There’s nothing on her in the file you gave me.”

“Oh.”

Markus, unfazed, flipped through the file he’d been looking at.

“That’s just a name a resistance member gave up when we caught them, but we haven’t been able to get anything else. She never showed herself, so we didn’t dig any deeper.”

“….”

“Want me to look into it?”

His answer came after a slight pause.

“No.”

Then, with barely a breath between, he changed the subject.

“How’s the decryption on those documents Rachel got?”

At the mention of decryption, Markus’s face twisted, and he rubbed his forehead in frustration, knocking his glasses off the desk.

“God, it’s driving me nuts.”

“Complicated?”

“Yeah. Looks like it was written with an Enigma machine.”

At the word Enigma, even Zechart let out a quiet grunt.

The Enigma was a typewriter-shaped cipher machine. Depending on the settings—plugboard configuration, rotor arrangement, numeric values—each letter entered would be substituted with another, in layers. Its security was legendary; without the settings, there was no way to decrypt it. And, of course, the settings themselves were kept secret in codebooks, shared only among users.

“Ugh, whatever. I’ll just tell Rachel to go find the codebook. She can run herself ragged for all I care.”

It was then that Zechart let out a faint, wry laugh.

“I’ll get it myself.”

Caught off-guard, Markus hastily readjusted his fallen glasses and stared.

“What?”

“I’ll get it myself.”

“You will? That’s a first. You’re the last guy I’d expect to move for anything outside of orders.”

“I think I know where it is.”

In Zechart’s mind, the scene of the room where he’d first seen the woman replayed itself. He hadn’t paid it any mind at the time, but sitting on the edge of the desk had definitely been an Enigma.

***

“Are you sure… you’ll be all right?”

Perel asked Edith, who had just emerged after changing into the cleaner’s uniform Karol had given her.

“What do you mean?”

Her voice, clear and bright, was cool as water.

“I mean, isn’t this too dangerous? Maybe you should reconsider and try something else. I have a bad feeling, especially since the comrades who were supposed to join us keep getting delayed…”

“Perel.”

Edith stopped mid-step and turned to look at him. His eyes, red and dark as wood, were steady on her.

“Someone has to do it. If you want to take down the king, the queen and bishop have to move first.”

“……”

“It’s not some noble self-sacrifice, either. I’m just the best choice because my identity hasn’t been exposed. The other comrades have taken on risky missions for that same reason.”

She hid her faintly trembling hands behind her back, where he wouldn’t see—where he wouldn’t notice her fear.

But Perel’s grim expression didn’t fade. The worry etched on his face wasn’t just about the mission.

“Edith.”

“Yes?”

His gaze lingered on her eyes, on the redness and swelling that still lingered from the night before.

That was what truly troubled Perel. He could imagine all too well what her night had really been like, despite how she pretended otherwise. Whatever he said, he knew all she would offer in return was another quiet,

“I’ll be fine.”

He ended up giving a sigh of a smile instead of words.

“Just… be careful.”

“I will. Please find out what’s delaying the others.”

“Yes, I will.”

Edith offered a grateful smile, then continued on her way.

The bishop’s first move toward checkmate.

***

As soon as Edith left the house, she wiped away the smile still clinging to her lips. Her steps turned heavy, as if weighed down with sandbags.

The truth was…

She wasn’t all right.

Clenching her still-trembling hands, Edith finally allowed herself to admit it. But the reason was different from what Perel feared.

It wasn’t today’s dangerous mission that unsettled her.

It was ‘If you look, you die.’

It was the man she’d met at the shore just days ago.

The one who looked exactly like Maximilian.

But Maximilian was dead.

Officially at the Battle of Schwern, unofficially on a covert mission.

His body had never been found. For a while, Edith had clung to that sliver of hope. But—

“None of the special operations unit your husband commanded have been located. It seems all members were killed in action.”

She wanted to deny it, but it was the truth.

No matter how elite the unit, he had led a force of only about forty men into one of Hasmal’s most secure facilities. She didn’t know the exact nature of the facility or their mission, but communications had ceased immediately after infiltration, and not even a distress call had come through.

What could be more certain than that kind of death?

So, Edith doused the small spark of hope that had flickered in her heart the night before with tears—just as she’d done countless times over the past three years.

Maybe he’s still alive… That kind of hopeless wish was only a hindrance to Edith, who had to protect Leon on her own.

‘So rest in peace, Mac. There, and in my memory. Until the day we meet again.’