To You, Who Lost Me - ✿ dusk blossoms ✿

Chapter 3 Part 1

A scent like smoldering embers—hot and familiar—wafted toward her.

Melissa tried to retreat, but there was nowhere left to go.

With her caged in his arms, Alexander feigned looking out the window as if nothing was amiss. Then he tilted in closer, brows faintly drawn.

“You seem more passionate about dragons than our scholars.”

Melissa couldn’t bring herself to say, That’s because it’s your domain.

He was known as the Master of Dragons, the Dragon Knight. Dragons were inseparable from his identity, and if she wanted to understand him, she had to understand them.

The image of him soaring through Tavalon’s skies, cutting down foes, standing proud in the burning wilderness—his black hair bathed in sunset—was etched into her mind. She had imagined it so often that, unable to bear it, she’d once tried sketching it.

“W-Where are we?” she asked hastily, trying to steer away from the teasing lilt in his voice. His jaw was so close, it could have brushed her forehead.

They were inside a tower, set apart from the manor. A spiral staircase wrapped around a central pillar, nestled between the main keep and the outer wall.

“The Watchtower,” he replied.

Though she fidgeted nervously, he didn’t pull away.

“It’s typically used as a command post. But here in Tavalon, it serves as a dragon observatory. That’s why it’s taller than any of the others in the six territories.”

He leaned in closer.

“Shall we go to the observatory?”

A flicker of heat passed through his lowered gaze.

“No one will be there.”

She could no longer deny what she had tried so hard to dismiss—this was clearly… a seduction.

And from Melissa’s point of view, it made no sense.

There had never been a reason for him to behave this way. Even when they were young, even until recently, he had shown no particular interest in her. In fact, he’d seemed completely indifferent.

So why now?

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Ah—”

Her chin was caught in his hand. He forced her to meet his eyes.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“I’d prefer if your attention stayed on me.”

Melissa’s breath caught in her throat, the pressure beneath her chest tightening unbearably.

The emotion she felt—was sorrow.

Whether he was using her to humiliate the Franz family or had some deeper ploy, she couldn’t tell. But for him to speak such words—knowing full well her heart—was more than mockery. It hurt.

“Are you doing this because of the power I supposedly have?”

Just moments ago, she’d felt light and content—but now, embarrassingly, tears threatened to spill.

In front of him, emotions—tears—were always the hardest to suppress.

She twisted her chin free from his grasp and backed away, nearly climbing onto the windowsill.

Her hands trembled.

“Or is it just fun for you to tease me?”

“To tease you?” he whispered, face unreadable.

Melissa realized something strange: even with no expression, his face could contain layers of meaning.

Up close, she could finally see it.

A moment ago, she’d claimed nothing was perfect—yet inwardly, she had been thinking of him.

But even he had the tangled expressions of a man. She couldn’t decipher them exactly, but…

“Is my behavior sudden?” he asked flatly. “Then was your engagement a natural thing?”

His tone implied that her engagement to Franz was the reason for all of this—as if she were the one provoking him.

A statement easy to misunderstand.

Anyone hearing it might assume he’d harbored some long-standing affection for her.

But she—better than anyone—knew that wasn’t true.

Or… maybe she didn’t know him at all.

She’d never had the chance.

Her mind kept twisting things toward hope, toward a better meaning.

But now—what did any of that matter?

She shook her head.

“Whatever the reason… it’s not right. This isn’t…”

He stepped closer. Far too close.

She raised her hands to push him away, but he caught her wrist.

“Tell me, my lady… what have I done?”

Do you really not know what you’re doing?

She nearly raised her voice in anger. Just as she was about to shout, she was suddenly pulled into his arms.

Her cheek landed on his chest, firm and tight with muscle unlike her own. His hand slid up her slender waist and gripped her shoulder blade, and his lips brushed near the dip of her collarbone.

With only a thin layer of fabric between them, she could feel the entirety of his body—too solid, too large.

Melissa was so shocked she couldn’t move. Her heart felt like it would burst.

“This is what’s inappropriate.”

She could almost tell the shape of his lips by how his breath tangled in her hair.

But just as swiftly as he had embraced her, Alexander pushed her away.

He held her rounded shoulders and smiled.

“I’m simply being kind.”

Melissa felt dizzy.

She was falling apart while he looked completely unaffected.

A chill rose from her throat to the top of her head.

“If you’re that kind, my lord,” she said with dry lips.

“Please send me back so I can safely go through with the wedding.”

Melissa had said the first thing that came to mind just to escape him. It wasn’t sincere.

Given Bright’s order to kill the dragon, she knew she might die in Tavalon.

She just didn’t want to be used—at least not by Alexander.

“Didn’t realize you were so serious about marrying Franz.”

Alexander sounded genuinely surprised.

Melissa offered a faint smile.

As dreadful as it was, marrying Franz did have one benefit.

“Then I can go see my grandfather. I won’t be a hostage anymore.”

When the engagement to Franz was first arranged, she’d vaguely thought—

If I marry him, I won’t be a hostage anymore. I’ll finally be able to visit my grandfather freely.

Now it was a meaningless wish.

“How desperate are you?”

He tilted his head slightly, took a few steps back, and lifted his chin.

Melissa calmly met his gaze.

Thinking of her grandfather, her demeanor steadied, her mind sharpened.

It wasn’t Alexander standing in front of her now—it was the stern old man from her childhood.

“Remember this. You’re my only family.”

The pain of having killed his own daughter and being forced to send his only granddaughter away as a hostage—Melissa had felt that sorrow deeply, even as a child.

“My beloved granddaughter.”

The one who loved her. Her only family.

“I’m desperate. Desperate enough to do anything I can.”

“Hmm. Anyone can say that. I’ll need to see how desperate you really are.”

He brushed her chin with his fingers, wearing a displeased expression as if something had annoyed him.

“Care to try falling?”

His gaze turned to the window.

Melissa’s eyes widened in alarm, and Alexander stepped toward her again.

If earlier had been just an embrace, this time his solid knee pressed between her thighs, and their chests touched.

He stood as if to say, Could you really choose anything else over this?

As if he believed that if she were to fall, she would fall into his arms, not out the window.

But just as he reached to wrap his arms around her waist—

There was nothing to hold.

In the next instant, a strange glint passed through Melissa’s blue eyes.

“Melissa?”

She leaned over the window ledge and dropped.

Toward the bed of purple jasmines blooming below the tower.

***

What Alexander wanted was clear: for Melissa to choose him.

When he looked into those blue eyes that so desperately sought him, it felt as though everything could fall easily into place.

Strangely—truly strangely—seeing her flustered, obedient to his commands, wasn’t so bad.

The way her whole body blushed because of him, how she backed away but couldn’t tear her eyes from him.

Even the soft feel of her flesh when their bodies met, or the thunderous heartbeat that echoed against his chest.

However, even with eyes wavering as if in devotion, she pushed him away. She stubbornly tried to deny the man right in front of her.

It had been entertaining to keep her in the manor like a fragile flower, but this was a different kind of pleasure. A sudden, throbbing impulse to grip her tight and leave a mark surged through him—he was certain now this was the thrill of the hunt.

So he wanted to corner her. To drive her to the edge and make her, swept up in the impulses and fickleness of love, deny the engagement with her own mouth.

It wasn’t that he hated the liveliness in her voice when she spoke of visiting her grandfather. But she jumped without hesitation.

“Melissa!”

He immediately stepped onto the windowsill and jumped after her.

It wasn’t a blind leap. He reached out his hand.

A sigil resembling a dragon’s eye spread across the back of his right hand, and a portal opened in the air between them and the ground.

As he wrapped his arms around Melissa, they fell through the portal.

Beyond the portal was another realm—a dimensional rift, not unlike a dragon’s nest. It operated under laws different from the physical world.

He hadn’t planned to open it this soon, but there was no other choice. They were still suspended midair—still falling.

“Tiasat!”

He shouted the dragon’s name, and the wingless beast surged up, maw open, and caught them.

Holding one of the dragon’s two horns with his free arm, Alexander steadied himself against the jolt.

He let out a short, breathy laugh when he saw the crown of silver hair in his arms.

He had meant to make a move, and yet she had completely outmaneuvered him.

“Looks like you’re a bit impulsive, dear sister-in-law.”

The heartbeat against his chest now thudded more violently than before. Earlier it had been quick and fluttering, like a bird—now it was heavy with a mixture of fear and adrenaline.

As she peeked up from his arms, he first met her blue eyes.

Half frightened, guilt etched across her face—yet there was something undeniably cheeky about her too.

She whispered, “I knew you’d catch me.”

“Why?”

He couldn’t stop his voice from coming out stiff and cold.

Even so, Melissa added a cautious smile, calm to a fault.

“…All day, I watched how the servants and knights looked at you. They had respect for you. And trust.”

As if to say she would probably never have that herself, she added quietly, “It didn’t seem like you were someone who’d let me fall.”

What a hopeless woman. Absolutely foolish.

Those clear, steadfast eyes of hers showed not even a hint of hiding her feelings for him.

Silver strands, fluttering in the wind, danced across his vision.

“You might laugh at me for thinking that, but…”