“To be clear.”

After a long silence, Ahazan finally spoke.

Bracing both hands on Clodine’s bed, he leaned over her, enclosing her within the span of his arms.

“I let you decide how this begins. But I’m the one who decides how it ends.”

For a fleeting moment, his golden eyes seemed almost black.

Clodine instinctively sensed that the way he looked at her had changed completely from before. As their gazes locked, an unfamiliar impulse surged inside her chest, an intensity she had never once felt in her life.

Though she remained still, it felt as if her breath were running short. She lifted her shoulders slightly and drew in a deep breath. The faint tremor in her breathing must have reached him as well.

With heated hands, he cupped the nape of her slender neck and stroked it gently.

“I’m warning you. I can’t promise to be gentle right now.”

Under the flickering firelight, his fingertips traced the flushed skin of her neck as though tasting it first. A cold gleam crossed his face—no, something even more dangerous than cold, bordering on cruel.

Locking his gaze onto hers, he spoke again, a clear warning in his tone.

“This is your last chance to stop.”

It was no empty threat.

He would keep his word without fail. Clodine could feel the firmness of his resolve against her very skin.

Somewhere inside her head, it felt as though a voice was screaming at her to stop this madness at once. Yet the louder that voice grew, the more she was seized by a courage whose source she could not trace.

It felt as though the boldness she had cultivated her entire life had existed for this moment alone.

There was no need for further words.

Still wrapped entirely in her thin nightgown, Clodine’s arms lifted without hesitation and circled Ahazan’s neck.

With that single gesture, the sovereignty over what would unfold that night passed wholly into his hands.

Ahazan released a short breath, almost like a husky sigh, and rose from his lowered stance. Even when bent forward, his presence had never diminished; now, standing tall, he cast a vast shadow over Clodine’s bed.

For the briefest instant, fear flickered across her face.

The expression a person wore when gripped by fear stirred something instinctive within Ahazan, a primal exhilaration.

Having spent much of his life on the battlefield, he had never once let go of prey he had marked in his heart.

He liked watching the process, the will draining slowly from an opponent’s face, fear gradually consuming its place entirely.

Fear was a poison that drove a person mad while still alive.

And Ahazan knew well which emotion it most closely resembled.

Love.

He was fully aware that whatever love Clodine had once held for him had ended long ago. No matter what he did now, he would never be able to give her the same fierce stimulus that the man she once loved had given her, at least, not in the sense of love.

Then what of fear?

It was like being trapped in a darkness with no exit. It distorted what one saw, made one question whether the pounding heart existed in the chest at all or inside the mind instead. It forced ragged breaths from the body with the relentless thunder of its beating.

Dark and oppressive though it might be, in some ways it created sensations not so different from being intoxicated with love.

Ahazan slipped off the night robe he had only just put on and revealed himself fully before her.

His body, marked with countless harsh scars, might have inspired revulsion in some. He did not concern himself with that.

What interested him instead was making her heart pound inside her mind, forcing her into breathless gasps, surrounding her with a presence from which there was no escape.

If it could not be love, then let it be fear.

“The chance is over now, Clodine.”

With one hand, he pressed gently yet firmly against both her cheeks.

Clodine, her gaze already clouded, parted her lips as though in answer.

Ahazan bent over her, cradling her head in both hands as if it might snap, and opened his mouth as well. Like someone coveting ripe fruit, he captured her small lips in a single, consuming kiss.

Clodine trembled faintly, but she responded.

With both arms, she pulled him closer by the neck, pressing her body against his.

Ahazan shifted more of his weight onto her, easing her back onto the bed. While his lips explored her without restraint, his hands drew her nightgown down from her shoulders.

Her bare skin emerged into the air, warm and fragrant.

As the cool air brushed against her, Clodine instinctively tried to cover herself. But before she could, Ahazan gathered both her wrists in one hand and pinned them above her head.

“Ahazan…”

A fragile sound, almost a whimper, slipped between her lips.

He caressed her with his gaze alone before speaking in a low voice.

“You need to stay still. You don’t have another choice.”

Though his words carried a trace of force, the sweetness woven into his tone melted the tension within her.

Deliberately, he allowed the cool air to linger against her skin for a while longer. He watched with satisfaction as the chilled flesh reacted, growing sensitive beneath his touch. When she seemed to feel the faintest shiver of sensation, he intended to use every means he possessed to bring her pleasure.

“You’re beautiful.”

As he looked at her, a dizzying ecstasy clouded his thoughts. The sensation flooding his body was far more intense, far more alive, than any moment when he had nearly died on the battlefield.

Unable to endure it any longer, he gathered her fully into his arms.

The frantic pounding of a heart, his, hers, or perhaps both, echoed in the darkness.

And so the night, fearful and beautiful all at once, deepened steadily around them.

***

That night, Clodine drifted in and out of consciousness without pause. Without exaggeration, it was the first time in her life that she had tasted physical pleasure because of someone else.

The boundaries of her awareness wavered, her consciousness scattering outward from an indistinct center she could not locate. As the sense of time and space blurred, her body, wrapped in a milky haze, felt as though it were floating atop a current, endlessly adrift.

In Ahazan’s arms, she drowned in overwhelming ecstasy, only for reality to surge back and send her plunging into sudden despair. Again and again it happened, until without even realizing it, she could do nothing but surrender the weight of her body entirely to him, as though swimming through empty air.

At the center of every sensation stood Ahazan, no one else, and he stood there by her own choice.

It felt utterly unreal.

When faint dawn began to seep into the sky, Clodine lay on her side and opened her eyes. Lowering her gaze, she stared at the arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

The broad, solid chest against her back and the soft sound of his breathing slowly guided her back into a cruel reality.

‘Look carefully at what you’ve done.’

Her teeth clenched.

Color drained from her face in an instant, and her shoulders shrank as though seized by fear. When Ahazan stirred slightly in his sleep, she slipped from his embrace.

It seemed that in that short span of time she had already grown accustomed to the warmth and weight of him; once separated, the absence felt strangely unfamiliar.

Lowering her feet to the floor, Clodine sat at the edge of the bed and began to weep.

A violent nausea rose from deep within her stomach. Clamping both hands over her mouth, she swallowed back the urge to scream.

Every place his gaze, his hands, his lips, his body had touched still burned vividly, clamoring for the same sensation again. She could no longer deny that she had always longed to be held by Ahazan as she had been tonight, had always dreamed of him turning back toward her.

At that moment, the thin veil clinging stubbornly to her face shattered into pieces.

The mask she had worn, pretending it was her true face, crumbled.

The false years in which she had disguised the filthy longing she could not sever after being cast aside by Ahazan as though it were lingering friendship seemed to laugh at her now.

Ah… how could she be this pathetic?

Even the heart pounding so fiercely in her chest at this very moment felt unbearably loathsome.

Clodine rose unsteadily to her feet. Each staggering step was heavy with despair. She was still sobbing uncontrollably.

‘It has to end.’

She did not know whose voice it was, but it filled her mind. At times it sounded like the furious crowd of Rotermann; at others, like the writhing cries of dead women beneath the earth.

Though her vision blurred with tears, she moved roughly toward the mirror. Upon the cabinet beneath it, a piece fitted with a small drawer, rested a black box she knew well.

With trembling hands, she picked it up.

From within, she drew out a pale shard gleaming with a sharp edge.

Her face turned ashen as she stared at it.

Ahazan was still deeply asleep.

Stifling her sobs as best she could, Clodine approached the bed. Her right hand, gripping the shard, trembled without pause.

‘Let this end now, Ahazan.’

Today, she intended to end everything.

She no longer possessed the strength to endure herself.

The deep-rooted hatred that had rotted her heart would end with Ahazan’s death. And the filthy longing that refused to disappear would be extinguished with her own.

No one would remain here alone to become the host of this tragic destiny any longer.

Ahazan’s sleeping face was peaceful. Bathed in the pale blue of moonlight, he looked so beautiful she wished to remember him that way even in death.

Clodine clasped the shard in both hands and brought its long, pointed edge to rest against Ahazan’s throat.