He grew increasingly irritable and sharp. His resentment, with nowhere else to go, found its way to Belina, who knew nothing and kept suggesting he see a physician. If only she had accepted me from the start. If only she had loved me from the beginning, I would not have had to go that far.

A little over a year into their marriage, he visited a brothel for the first time. He chose the woman who most resembled her, had her fawn over him, and pushed himself inside her. But he still could not manage it with Belina.

“…Where have you been?”

It was not without result. Belina had noticed where he was going and began watching him carefully. She could not always hide her unease, and she tried to please him.

Every time she did, a twisted satisfaction rose from somewhere deep in his chest. Yes, this was how it should have been from the start. She should have been the one watching her step, not him. She should have been the one working to keep this marriage together.

It was around that time that Lucian began to torment her. He started making degrading demands, as though taking revenge for her refusal to accept him. Each time her listless face colored with shame, satisfaction welled up inside him, and when she could not bear it and broke down crying, a deep thrill ran through him.

Poor Belina. If only you had loved me from the start, you would never have had to suffer this humiliation. I would have treated you tenderly, day and night. Why did you have to love someone like him?

But the more nights passed, the more Belina grew numb. When he kissed her, she moved her tongue without expression, not even closing her eyes. When she took him in her mouth, she only moved her head mechanically. When he brought her something that barely passed for clothing, she asked plainly how it was meant to be worn. When he bound her n*ked from head to toe, she let out a sigh that said here we go again.

Belina no longer smiled at him. When they drank tea together, she would often stare blankly out the window, and when he came back from the brothel, instead of growing restless or anxious, she could not hide her irritation.

The more she did, the more violently he tormented her. Even knowing there was no going back. As though it were the only thing left he could do.

Why will you not love me? Why will you not accept me? You had no trouble at all falling back in love with a man you cannot even remember, so why will you not…

Lucian opened his eyes in pain. His half-closed eyelids blinked very slowly. His broken nose made breathing through it impossible, and every time he exhaled through his mouth, a rough metallic sound came out along with the taste of blood. The clean lines of his face had long since been destroyed by merciless beatings, and from his barely closed mouth, bloody foam seeped out at intervals.

“Bel, rina… buh, be… na.”

He mumbled haltingly, and a guard came over to check on him. The guard grimaced at the sight of his caved-in face, barely recognizable, and clicked his tongue.

“Hey, the prisoner’s awake. Report it to His Majesty.”

The guard shuddered as though disgusted by the filthy state of him and got to his feet. Then he took bandages from a drawer and wound them loosely around his face a few times. When the rough hands caught his wounds without care, Lucian cried out in pain. But the guard only muttered a few curses.

“You still think you’re a count or something? Stop your whining. Her Majesty the Empress is coming too, so cover up that ugly mug.”

“Bel, buh… bur…na…”

At the mention of Belina coming, Lucian stirred faintly. The guard scowled and smacked him across the back of the head.

“What’s this lunatic going on about? Is Her Majesty the Empress your friend or something? D*mn fool, going to get his tongue ripped out before he dies.”

The guard spat on Lucian where he had crumpled over and stood up. Then footsteps reached them. Lucian managed to twist his body toward the entrance, and the guard quickly straightened his posture as well.

Belina came down the stairs with unhurried steps. Lucian forced his swollen eyes open wide to see her. But even that was half obscured by the bandages and blurred.

“…Why did you wrap the bandages like that?”

What reached him clearly, in place of a clear view, was an unwelcome voice. The voice of the man who had taken Belina from him and brought him nothing but terrible pain. Lucian tried to say something to him, but his halting voice was quickly swallowed by the guard’s fawning.

“I, I thought it might be rather unsightly for Her Majesty the Empress to see, so I covered it up in a hurry.”

“…That was the right call. Will you be all right? The smell is foul.”

“Yes, I am fine.”

When Kailos asked with concern, Belina spoke for the first time. The voice that had always been cold and expressionless toward him now carried a warmth it never had before. Lucian looked at her with a feeling of fresh betrayal. Through his blurred vision, he could make out her face, expressionless as she looked down at him.

“Bur… be… lina…”

“Ugh, this bastard again…”

The guard turned to him with irritation. He had been fidgeting anxiously, afraid a reprimand was coming, and now reached for a wooden plank propped in the corner.

“My apologies, Your Majesty. I will take care of it right now…”

“…It is fine.”

Belina raised her hand, and the guard quickly set down the plank and bowed his head. Kailos, who had been watching, turned to the guard and had him step out for a moment.

“Lucian.”

Belina spoke only after the guard had left. It had been so long since she had called him by name that Lucian forgot his pain for a moment and looked at her.

“Be… r…”

“You look dreadful, Lucian.”

Her voice was cold. Lucian struggled to move his body to meet her eyes. Belina continued to look down at him without expression, then opened her mouth abruptly.

“I went back and forth on whether I needed to come at all… but I thought it would be better to let you know.”

Lucian could not answer and only looked at her. His eyes, barely able to open, widened to their limit with fear. Edwin. His thoughts had gone to his head butler. Had she come to bring news of his execution?

“Edi… E, Ed…”

“You always said it was my fault. That we were never able to join, all that time.”

But what Belina actually brought up was something else entirely. Lucian, who had been thinking of Edwin and the death that awaited him, finally let the tension leave his body. Had she wanted so badly to say it was not her fault?

“…It was.”

“Wha…”

He had been prepared to listen until her grievance ran its course, since even opening his mouth was an effort, but the unexpected words made him ask back without thinking. Opening his mouth wider than it could bear sent his broken jawbone grinding beneath the skin, and at the same instant a sharp pain drove from his jaw straight up to the crown of his head. Belina watched him writhe in agony without a word, then said it again.

“It was because of me.”

* * *

She had thought it a little strange. Lucian was not a man incapable of arousal or release, and by his own account he had no trouble with other women. Yet whenever he tried to enter her, he went limp without fail.

“…I was the one who would not accept him, apparently.”

According to the mage, spells and magic circles were simply methods for putting magic into practice. What gave magic its greatest power was, at its foundation, a wish. A wish strong enough to move magical energy.

Since the magic had manifested through Edwin’s sorcery, the deep wish she had held until the very end, the desire not to accept him, had taken the form of a curse.

“I thought I had spent all that time living in submission, doing whatever you wanted… but apparently not.”

Those had been powerless days. Days of meekly complying with everything he demanded, unable even to dream of divorce. Countless nights had been steeped in shame and helplessness and defeat, and for that reason she had wanted, more than anything, to keep Kailos from ever knowing what those days had been like.

But learning that the cause of it all had been her own wish to refuse him made every humiliation and degradation she had endured feel like it had not been for nothing. She had been resisting him all along. She had been protecting herself the entire time. She had never surrendered to him the one thing he wanted most.

“I never yielded to you. Not once. Not even when you erased my memories and deceived me.”

The two eyes that had always looked down at her trembled violently between the loosely wrapped bandages. He writhed like a worm and tried to say something.

“Uh… eh… n, nuh…”

But his shattered jaw and the blood pooling in his mouth made it impossible to understand a word. Not that she had any intention of listening even if she could.

“Let us go, Kailos.”

“Ghh… kkhk…”

Belina kissed Kailos plainly in front of him and turned away. Lucian convulsed and screamed something after her, but the moment he raised his voice, a fit of agonized coughing took him and he collapsed. His howl of pain did not make it to the top of the basement stairs.

“…Are you all right?”

Kailos checked Belina’s expression the moment they reached the surface. Belina smiled and shrugged.

“Why would I not be?”

It was likely a question asked because he had sensed she had endured a great deal of humiliation at the Markovhar estate. But when Belina answered with a look of relief, Kailos did not press further and instead gave a small cough and changed the subject.

“That bastard looked pretty gruesome. You should only have good things to look at.”

“Then should I just look at you?”