Floyd thoroughly enjoyed watching Roxiana’s eyes widen and narrow, her lips part and then firmly close. While feeling better than usual, he wondered why he was spouting such crazy things, but his lips moved on their own.

“It seems you don’t want to beg anymore. Before, you were a sword, a shield, an impudent…”

Roxiana’s hands firmly covered Floyd’s lips. Seeing her glaring with a reddened face, Floyd burst out laughing, “Ahaha.” The more Floyd laughed, the redder Roxiana became, until even her earlobes and nape turned pink.

“Your Highness… you’re being too mischievous.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. Sorry. But at least now it doesn’t seem like the princess will try to kill herself.”

“I’ve told you many times. I no longer have any thoughts of dying.”

“Yes, that’s fortunate. You won’t go around acting like an impudent vixen to anyone but me.”

“Your Highness!”

Floyd grasped her wrists that were still covering his mouth, and kissed her soft palms and wrists. Roxiana tensed her arms in surprise, but didn’t pull her hands away.

Her submissive attitude stimulated and drew out the impulse Floyd had suppressed deep inside. A dull heat rose up to his solar plexus and heated his head.

He wanted to kiss each of her fingers, trail up her wrist and forearm, to her shoulder and nape, past her earlobe to her soft cheek, and finally capture her lips. He wanted to caress her round shoulders and confirm all her curves with his hands that had traced down.

The desire to leave marks on her skin, now clean with the slave’s brand erased, filled Floyd’s head shamelessly and without restraint.

Perhaps because he now understood the reason for this lust, it was harder to control than usual.

If he couldn’t restrain himself and laid her down on that grass, if these hands roughly violated her, what expression would she make?

Floyd barely managed to remove his hand that was touching her as he swallowed dryly.

“I dislike women.”

Roxiana, who had been unable to collect herself due to the heat emanating from Floyd, came to her senses at his sudden words.

She swallowed the words ‘It doesn’t seem that way at all’ and looked at him, and he smiled knowingly as if he could read her thoughts.

“But it’s fortunate. Since you’re not a woman but a princess, I don’t dislike you.”

There were many things to point out about his sophistry, but Roxiana wisely said nothing and just nodded. He watched her as if he found her adorable beyond words, then turned his gaze towards the sea.

“It’s an ordinary story, if ordinary. Earl Ratean of the Gania Kingdom had a second daughter named Eliensa.”

At the mention of Earl Ratean, her heart sank. Roxiana realized he had begun talking about the past and straightened her posture.

Floyd, however, was casting an indifferent gaze into the distance as if it were nothing.

“Eliensa became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Christine at a young age. It must have been a very honorable position. Becoming the queen’s lady-in-waiting is something most young ladies desperately want.”

Becoming the queen’s lady-in-waiting meant elevating one’s standing in high society. It was natural for women who wanted to make a name for themselves in society to desire to become the queen’s lady-in-waiting.

“Eliensa did very well. Despite being younger than the other ladies-in-waiting, she carried out her duties capably. But being too capable became a problem. Eliensa’s name, known as the capable girl among the ladies-in-waiting, reached the king’s ears. The king showed interest in Eliensa, and though she tried to avoid it somehow, a mere earl’s daughter couldn’t dare refuse the king’s orders.”

Joseph V became hopelessly infatuated with Eliensa, who was clever, capable, pretty, and proud. And so one day, Eliensa realized something was different about her body.

“It was well known that Joseph V liked women, and he had quite a few children born from those women, so it wasn’t a big issue. If only Eliensa hadn’t been greedy.”

“Greedy…”

“Yes, my mother was greedy. She threatened the king, saying she would take this matter to the High Temple if he didn’t acknowledge the son she bore him as his own.”

While it was forbidden by the temple for a king to have multiple concubines, it was also something that was tacitly overlooked. But if someone were to bring it up officially and make an issue of it, things would be different. The High Temple might not be able to openly punish the king of a country, but it was clear that his treatment would change.

“So Joseph acknowledged me as his son. And that incident enraged Queen Christine. The Ratean family wasn’t powerful enough to withstand the queen’s fury alone. My mother only wanted to have me, her son, proudly acknowledged as of royal blood to secure my future, but she failed to properly assess the reality of the situation.”

Joseph V, who had grudgingly acknowledged Floyd as his son, turned a blind eye to what Queen Christine was doing to the Ratean family. Without even the king’s protection, Eliensa had no power left to protect herself, her son, or her family.

The Ratean family couldn’t withstand the downpour of strong hostility and the iron mace of power, and Eliensa ended up imprisoned in a tower.

“But the queen couldn’t do anything about me, who had already been acknowledged as the king’s son. I was the king’s son, but also the son of a woman imprisoned in a tower. I was Eighty Pelur, but no one would acknowledge me as a Pelur. From the time I came of age, I lived a life where being beaten was normal. I thought everyone lived like that, being beaten.”

Roxiana held her breath as she looked at him. Floyd was still gazing at the sea, and his expression remained unchanged.

“When the king was in a bad mood, when the queen was in a bad mood, when Lucas made a mistake, when the servants made a mistake, when there was bad news in the country, when there was a fire on that mountain, when there was a drought, all of it was my fault. So I was beaten. I was beaten for those reasons. I was beaten when I opened my eyes and until I went to sleep. Every day, every day, if you keep getting beaten, your body turns gray. So though my name was Eighty, everyone came to call me Floyd. Do you understand, Princess?”

Floyd met Roxiana’s eyes and smiled faintly.

“That’s the meaning of my name. Gray. Ashen. Floyd means that.”

Roxiana tried to hold back her tears with wide eyes, but it wasn’t easy. She could now hold back tears for herself, but his cruel past overflowed in her heart and was hard to bear.

“Don’t cry yet. My story hasn’t even begun.”

Just as Roxiana, who could hold back tears for herself, shed tears for him, Floyd, who became enraged about Roxiana’s affairs, was calm when telling his own story.

“When I was very young, my mother was with me. I don’t remember well, but I recall her sometimes holding me and singing. My pretty baby, my only son, my jewel… Well, she said such embarrassing things. But when was it? When I was 4? 5? Around then, my mother was imprisoned in the tower. And every time I made a mistake, I had to watch my mother trapped in the tower, led by the queen’s hand.”

Floyd paused for a moment and took a slow breath.

“If I made a mistake, my mother was tortured. If my mother tried to kill herself, I had to be beaten in front of her. The queen, very cleverly, had found a way to torment both my mother and me at the same time. Because my mother and I loved each other, we killed each other. Every day, every moment.”

Roxiana covered her mouth with both hands to stifle a scream.

To torture a parent in front of their child, and to torture a child in front of their parent. To keep them both alive in such a way, unable to die.

It was such a horrific thing that even imagining it felt sinful.

Tears flowed down the back of her hands covering her mouth. Her chest heaved as she suppressed her screams and groans.

But Floyd continued speaking calmly.

“So I turned seven, and what happened that day? Ah, yes. At the royal party that day, did some noblewoman have the same dress as the queen? Did the noblewoman criticize the queen’s dress? Anyway, something trivial that I can’t even remember now happened, and the queen became furious. After beating me and still not satisfied, the queen dragged me to the tower, opened the iron door, and pushed me in. Then she ordered the guard there.”

-“It’s cold, so throw in some lit straw.”

“The room where my mother was confined had only straw. With no blankets or anything, a pile of dry grass was the bed, and they threw in burning straw there. What do you think happened?”

Each word coming from him was so unbelievably horrific that she didn’t want to hear anymore. But Roxiana suppressed the urge to cover her ears and stared straight at him. It felt like she had to.

“It was hot. Really hot. At first, I begged. I begged for my life, apologized, and asked for forgiveness. But…”

Floyd stopped there. His Adam’s apple bobbed as if he was about to vomit.

“But do you know what I saw through that small window in the iron door?”

She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She was afraid she would learn something outrageous.

Looking at Roxiana like this, Floyd smiled with his eyes. Roxiana held her breath, seeing his beautifully curved eyes that sent chills down her spine.

Floyd whispered,

“That woman was smiling like this. Quite splendidly.”