“Don’t feel burdened. Our lord has worked so hard, he deserves some pleasure. I’m someone who can fully understand these things. So please take good care of our lord for now, Priestess.”

Why couldn’t she say anything while hearing such words? Evelyn clenched her fist as numbness rose to her throat.

The woman stepped closer and spoke with an encouraging tone. Yet she lowered her voice shyly and made awkward hand gestures while stabbing Evelyn with her words.

“Try, um, different positions. If it’s fun, you can last longer, right? Good luck with that.”

The woman left a playful wink for Evelyn as she brushed past her and entered the corridor. The cheerful voices of the woman and her maid laughing behind Evelyn’s back fluttered down to her feet like flower petals.

She thought she had grown somewhat accustomed to humiliation after meeting countless nobles and enduring Gabriel’s torment. Apparently not.

The most devastating thing at this moment was that she couldn’t utter a single dignified word in response.

Evelyn clenched her teeth firmly to hold back tears and balled her hands into fists.

She retraced her steps. In the bedroom she shared with the Border Count, she found her bag and her neatly folded priestess robes tucked away in the corner of the wardrobe.

Excluding everything she had received from the Border Count, she packed only the belongings she had brought when she first came to Norton’s territory.

Finally, after taking off the soft dress and changing into her priestess robes, she headed to her original room in the annex building that had been assigned to her.

Bang! The door of the infirmary opened roughly.

The volunteer group’s infirmary, set up in the first-floor lounge of the guard post, instantly turned cold, like a thin layer of ice had formed.

It was well after sunset. Darkness had already settled on the windows everywhere, and only dim lamps barely illuminated the makeshift infirmary.

The priests who had just finished treating the last child and were cleaning up all froze like ice when the Border Count burst in with an ominous presence.

“Why are you here at this hour?”

Norton strode toward Evelyn, who was organizing a bed in one corner. He had searched the bedroom, the library, and turned the entire castle upside down, but his little priestess was nowhere to be found. Until then, he had thought she might be wandering somewhere in the castle with a maid. However, the maid who belatedly appeared amid the commotion caused by the castle’s master was not with Evelyn.

Jile, who had her monthly day off, had informed Evelyn of this fact in the morning and told her that another maid would come to serve her today. But after Jile left for the village, no maid came to attend to Evelyn.

Jile remembered that she had given Evelyn directions to the guard post in the morning and reported this to the Border Count. Only after hearing this did Norton belatedly remember that she was a priestess of the volunteer group.

“Damn it…”

Why hadn’t he thought to search the guard post and the annex?

Norton had only thought of Evelyn as someone who stayed by his side. He had forgotten she was part of the volunteer group, treating her like she had been his person from the beginning, his woman.

He had assumed she would stay within the given activity radius in the castle, and by the time he reached the guard post, his frustration had risen to the top of his head.

Though divine power supposedly didn’t wear out, Evelyn seemed inclined to overexert herself in everything. The volunteer group wasn’t just a promotional organization where priests sat in comfortable chairs and shot a bit of divine power at children before calling it a day.

There was plenty of dirty work and physically demanding tasks. Though she looked better now after eating and resting well, when he first met her, Evelyn had split fingernails unlike a woman who had just reached adulthood, and her complexion was pale. The skin under her eyes was dark, and she even looked exhausted from chronic fatigue.

She was a strange priestess who healed others but didn’t take care of herself at all.

That’s why Norton disliked Evelyn doing anything other than resting and eating. It was obvious she would perform the life of a priestess, caring for others without looking after herself, more diligently than anyone else.

So when he opened the door to the guard post and saw Evelyn in worn priestess robes, stacking sheets on a bed and trying to lift the heavy pile of fabric, the irritation floating in his mind finally burst out.

Her disheveled hair and haggard expression were unpleasant to see. He wanted to give her only good things, to make her smile or moan all day, but here she was acting like her good days were already over.

“What are you doing here?”

His low voice was aggressive, like a threat. Evelyn put down the gathered sheets and faced the Border Count.

“I’m cleaning up after my shift.”

“But why!”

Everyone, including Evelyn and the surrounding priests, was startled by the sudden shout. Seeing Evelyn flinch, Norton suppressed and contained his rough breathing. 

Renner, the aide following the Border Count, quickly ushered the priests out, asking them to return to the annex and finish the remaining work tomorrow.

As the priests flowed out like an ebbing tide and Renner closed the entrance door to the guard post, silence fell over the makeshift infirmary.

“Evelyn, promise you won’t come here again.”

“This is what I’ve always done. Why are you stopping me?”

“I told you that you’re no longer part of the volunteer group.”

Evelyn found it difficult to face him suppressing his anger, but his forceful words finally made her release the resentment she had been holding back.

“Who decides that? You decide? Why? Why do you arbitrarily determine my life?”

“What did you say?”

“I am a priestess. A priestess who purified your body. Not a mistress, but a priestess!”

“Who doesn’t know that?! Who doesn’t know you’re a priestess! I want to smash the heads of everyone who knows, but I can’t because everyone knows it. So go up to your room right now!”

Norton’s voice rose again, making Evelyn a little afraid, but even that hint that he disliked her being a priestess brought a bitter taste to her mouth. It felt like he was digging deeper into her wounds that were already raw and scratched everywhere, filling Evelyn with even more indignation.

“…No. I’ll go to the annex.”

Evelyn walked past Norton toward the door. She gritted her teeth to hold back tears and strode forward, but her wrist was soon caught by the man.

“Why so suddenly? What’s the problem?”

“Me.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m the problem! It’s a problem that I’m a priestess, it’s a problem that I, a priestess, live in Your Excellency’s bedroom! It’s a problem that I can’t be a mistress because I’m a priestess!”

Evelyn poured out her intensifying emotions. Tears fell heavily, and the resentment she had neatly stacked in one corner of her heart was no longer hidden from him.

‘Why do I have to be treated this way?’

All she had done was endure with divine power and faith, pray, and just live each day diligently.

‘Why me, why always me!’

A life where she wasn’t welcomed had been bearable enough.

Being abandoned at the temple at an age she could barely remember had been fine.

Living her entire life amid contempt and criticism because she had no backing, living like a misfit because her abilities were insignificant, wandering throughout the empire like someone without a destination, forcibly taking a place in territories that didn’t welcome her, and being worn down by labor, all of that had been fine.

Because she had always been proud of herself for living diligently.

Despite being insignificant and having nothing to boast about, Evelyn had never been ashamed of herself.

But why did she now feel like her feet were stuck in mud?

Although she was the one who had undressed to help purify the Border Count, she hadn’t been the one to strip first and pounce on him.

If she had known that the first desire she had ever indulged would gnaw at her like this, Evelyn would have ignored the Border Count when he first showed side effects from demonic energy.

Evelyn regretted her choice and felt wronged that she alone seemed to suffer from it.

It felt like all her past days of diligent living were being thrown into the mud. And it was like she had thrown them there with her own hands.

At this moment, Evelyn hated herself the most.

Why did she have to fall in love with him…

“What are you saying?”

Perhaps it would have been better if he had shown anger. His sharp gaze and low voice were even eerie, like he was about to slaughter everything.

Evelyn suppressed her excited emotions while trying to hold back the tears that were pouring out.

She could go back. Like before. Like she had lived all along. So there was no need to feel wronged about the mud she had created herself, nor to entrust everything to the man.

Yes, that would do.