Adrian didn’t even realize that he had started calling Roxiana ‘Princess’.

Floyd looked down at Adrian with sunken eyes.

“No.”

A hoarse voice flowed out.

The knights’ hearts sank at the sight of his emaciated figure, which never tired even when facing dozens of monsters. Roxiana, wrapped in Floyd’s jacket and cradled in his arms, was limp like a dead person. Her face, glimpsed briefly, was pale and her lips were parched.

“But I barely managed to keep her breathing.”

Although it’s unclear how Floyd, who isn’t a doctor, ‘kept her breathing’, everyone let out a sigh of relief at the news that Roxiana was alive.

They didn’t know about spirits, but anyone could predict that even a human could die from complete loss of vitality after doing something like this.

Kirshan approached with a worried expression.

“Let me take a look.”

“No.”

Floyd said with a voice mixed with a sigh.

“Go back.”

Heat continued to flow from Floyd’s body, but it was flowing into Roxiana’s body so quickly that the knights couldn’t notice.

Floyd, like a mother bird incubating an egg, held Roxiana tightly and ran towards the Grand Duke’s palace.

As soon as he arrived, he laid Roxiana on the bed in the Lily Palace.

Roxiana was still pale, and Floyd felt like he was going to go mad. She was now breathing enough to feel her breath, but occasionally she would emit cold air and stop breathing.

Each time this happened, Floyd felt his heart dropping out, and he rubbed his lips against Roxiana’s. When intense heat seeped through her parted lips, her breathing became stable.

“My lord. I’ve brought some medicine.”

Kirshan brought medicine that generates heat in the body.

“I’m not sure how effective it will be, but we have to try something.”

“Leave it and go.”

Kirshan saw Floyd lying on the same bed as Roxiana, holding her tightly, but silently left the medicine and went out. Floyd only picked up the medicine bottle after Roxiana’s spasmodic cold had subsided.

He tried to part her lips to pour in the medicine, but more of it flowed out of her mouth, as if her throat was frozen.

“Damn it.”

Floyd held the medicine in his own mouth and directly transferred it into hers. He stirred around inside her mouth to help the medicine flow in well. He wiped off the medicine that trickled down Roxiana’s chin with his hand. After several attempts like this, he was able to feed her a whole bottle of medicine.

Floyd’s touch was anxious as he caressed Roxiana’s cheek while holding her cold body close. Floyd whispered as he kissed her forehead, cheeks, nose, and nape.

“Stop driving me crazy, Princess. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind because of you.”

+++

Roxiana calmly thought amidst the shattering pain.

‘So this is it.’

This must be what it feels like for a soul to break.

The excruciating pain of breaking apart little by little, like grains of sand, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. If only it would shatter all at once, it would be over in an instant, but the pain of being torn apart bit by bit made her want to scream for death to come quickly.

‘But I won’t die.’

Somehow, she felt that way. Even if her soul shattered, even if her vitality was halved, she felt she would still be breathing.

‘I’m a child revived by the spirit kings after all.’

That was enough. She never thought she could live a normal life anyway. As long as she could achieve her purpose, it didn’t matter if her soul completely shattered.

The pain of her bones aching, her whole body’s organs freezing, blood vessels breaking, and flesh falling off was not as painful as the reality of her family being thrown into a well. It was less agonizing than the fact that her family had been brutally killed by those they trusted.

So Roxiana could endure it. She could bear the pain even if it seemed to last forever.

‘But I’d like to lose consciousness for a bit.’

Surely her body had collapsed, but her mind was clear. That’s why the oncoming pain was even more vivid. Occasionally she couldn’t help but scream, but those screams didn’t escape her body.

Roxiana endured the pain, sometimes screaming, sometimes wailing, alone in a terribly wide and deep darkness.

A long time passed.

She wasn’t sure how long it actually was, but to Roxiana, it felt like an immeasurable age had gone by. When her soul was completely shattered and even her mind was about to scatter, a beam of light pierced directly towards Roxiana.

That light caressed Roxiana’s shattered soul in a way that was incredibly warm, sweet, gentle, and tender. Her scattered soul clung together as if it had encountered sticky honey. The excruciating pain that split her entire body disappeared every time it collided with the light.

Although she couldn’t possibly grasp light, Roxiana reached out towards it. She clung to the light and embraced it. Like a person who had been thirsty for a long time finding water, she greedily accepted that light.

And so, when the extreme pain subsided to a level of ordinary pain, Roxiana opened her eyes.

+++

The sunlight that touched her eyes was painfully strange. Feeling several times more pain than when opening her eyes to sunlight in the morning, Roxiana closed them again.

She felt as if she had dreamed a very long dream. She couldn’t recall what thoughts she had or what experiences she had in the dream, but the terrible pain was vivid.

An awful pain she never wanted to experience again.

Her body still hurt, but it was nothing compared to what she felt in the dream. It was a level of pain she could sufficiently endure, so Roxiana carefully opened her eyes again.

Tears that had welled up to protect her sore eyes from the particularly bright sunlight streamed down her face. Through her blurry, tear-filled vision, she saw a familiar ceiling.

A ceiling with a painting of Adelia flowers.

‘It’s my room.’

When did she start thinking of the Lily Palace bedroom as ‘my room’?

The reason for this thought that didn’t match the situation was probably because she wanted to distract her mind from the pain that still remained.

“One week.”

Startled by a voice in the bedroom she thought was empty, Roxiana’s eyes flew open. As she turned her head, the first thing she saw was reddish-brown hair.

He was sitting hunched in a chair beside the bed, his elbows resting on his knees, head bowed. His face was hidden by his fallen hair.

But she could read intense anger in his tightly tensed shoulders.

“Princess. For one week. Like a dead person. You were lying here.”

As if trying to suppress his erupting emotions, he spoke slowly, chewing each word. His voice, sinking low, was ominous.

Roxiana stared blankly at him, still bowing his head, then opened her mouth.

“The forest……”

“The forest is not the issue!”

He shouted, jumping to his feet. Only then did she see his face. His contorted expression looked more anguished than angry.

“The forest is not the issue, Roxiana! Do you understand? You really almost died!”

I almost died, so why are you so angry?

Roxiana set aside her question and calmly replied.

“But I’m alive.”

“Alive? Do you know how you survived? Do you know what state you were in when I found you in that forest? You couldn’t even breathe!”

“But I’m still alive. I was certain I wouldn’t die.”

At Roxiana’s rebuttal, Floyd was about to shout again but gritted his teeth. He bowed his head for a while to suppress the emotions boiling inside him, then raised his gaze to meet her eyes.

“Certainty. That’s a convenient word. When you don’t even know how you survived.”

“……”

“You would have died without me, Princess. I saved you. Do you know how I saved you?”

Roxiana recalls the light she felt in her dream. As she tries to remember the sense of relief when she encountered that sweet, gentle, and warm light, he suddenly reaches out and gently grasps Roxiana’s chin.

His thumb lightly rubbed her plump lower lip. When Roxiana tried to turn her head, he cupped her cheek with his other hand, preventing her from moving.

Roxiana thought his ash-gray eyes might devour her.

“On these lips.”

The finger tracing her lips moved down her cheek and jaw to caress her neck.

“On this neck.”

It passed her shoulder and scraped down her arm.

“On these arms and waist, legs. To the tips of your toes.”

Everywhere his hand touched felt as hot as if flowers of heat were blooming. That heat instantly became something sweet and seeped into Roxiana’s body.

Only then did Roxiana realize that the light she saw in her dream was Floyd’s flame. She was about to tell him about the strange dream she had, but Floyd spoke through gritted teeth.

“I kissed and rubbed every inch of your body without exception.”

Belatedly realizing the meaning, Roxiana’s eyes widened. Floyd smiled sadistically and said,

“There isn’t a single part of you that my lips haven’t touched, Princess.”

“Your Highness’s flame……”

“Yes, Princess. You greedily devoured my flame. No matter how much flame I poured out, you swallowed it all. Do you understand what this means?”

“Yes, I understand. No matter how much power I use, if Your Highness shares your heat with me, I can survive!”

“What did you say?”

Floyd was dumbfounded and lost for words.

He wanted to say that he had saved her by doing lewd things to an unmarried woman without permission. He wanted to tell her not to do such reckless things again if she didn’t want this to happen again.

But why is this woman’s eyes shining so happily?