72. Skin Rubbing Tightly Without Gaps

2023.12.11.

Yuan Pelliese broke free from the firm arms tightly wrapped around her body.

She had the illusion that her entire body was creaking with every movement.

Even when she opened her mouth slightly, her voice wouldn’t come out properly.

The voice that last night had poured forth sounds she’d never heard from herself before was now completely hoarse.

Lifting the blanket to inspect her skin revealed bruises densely covering her flesh, as if she’d been naked for days and pelted by hailstones.

She sat leaning against the headboard, carefully gathering her tangled black hair to one side and embracing her trembling body with her own arms.

Beneath the pouring sunlight, the man lying asleep looked like a masterpiece sculpted over years—his lips tightly sealed in a straight line.

His body, barely covered below the waist, was unbelievably massive and solid, with a frame unlike any other.

Yuan hesitated, wondering whether to pull the blanket over him, then paused, choosing instead to quietly admire the man beneath the sunlight.

Scattered across his pale, smooth skin were countless scars, the origins of which she couldn’t guess. Were those also the Emperor’s doing? It would be nice if he could take even the pain of old wounds away.

Regretfully, Yuan gently traced the scars on his body with her fingertips.

‘……Clade.’

Two full days had passed since they had devoted themselves entirely to each other, not even pausing for meals.

Clade, who had declared he wouldn’t fall asleep, had consumed her without showing any sign of fatigue, just as he promised.

His breath against her lips was passionate yet sweet; the breath touching her body was urgent yet infinitely tender.

Every moment he touched her was like this.

As if everything she’d known about him until now had been a lie.

As if this were his true self all along.

Surely, nights like this weren’t the first in his imagination.

He cradled her like a delicate petal or a fledgling bird, taking her into his mouth, then losing all reason whenever Yuan quietly pulled him close and swallowed her moans.

He parted her lips, swallowing her remaining voice, while simultaneously pressing his hot breath deep inside her.

He traced each of her even teeth and explored every corner of her soft lips, tasting them thoroughly.

When she gasped, suffocated by his intense heat, he even used his lips—devoid of any hint of laughter—to moisten her entire body.

Moment after moment followed where black nights turned white and bright days turned pitch black.

Whether she had slept with her cheek pressed against his chest, or scratched and traced his back with her fingertips as it slowly contracted under tight tension before fainting abruptly—she could no longer tell dream from reality.

The usual bustling sounds of servants moving about were absent beyond the window; all around was silence.

Thanks to the streaming sunlight, Yuan gently touched Clade’s sharply shadowed features with her fingertips. Beautiful. So beautiful. This man is my husband.

Throughout the night spent nestled in his arms, every time Yuan burst into uncontrollable tears, she hid the words “I love you” within them.

And each time, the man skillfully fished out those words mixed within her sobs and asked her again.

“Say it again.”

“I can’t hear. Say it again.”

Amid the pathetic creaking cries of the bed and her trembling body reacting to unfamiliar sensations, the man swam mercilessly onward.

He kept digging, and dug deeper still.

Even though he had neither spoken words of love nor responded to her confession of love.

When exhausted Yuan, breathing in shallow gasps, stared blankly at the ceiling with unfocused black eyes, his golden hair fell into her hazy vision.

His deep purple eyes, appearing nearly black in the dark, slowly traced over Yuan’s dazed expression as if savoring it.

Then, brushing the ends of his disheveled golden hair against her small nose with his own, he silently demanded an answer with his eyes, as if asking her to say what he wanted to hear.

Startled by the unmistakable sensation of his desire pressing clearly against her abdomen—if she didn’t answer, he would begin again—Yuan tightly gripped Clade’s arms beside her ears and barely managed to utter his name.

Clade.

Don’t cross the line. Don’t call my name. I never gave you permission for such a thing.

Yet the man who should have pushed her away, acting as if he’d never been tender or persistent, silently listened as she repeated his name over and over.

Then, he abruptly pulled her back into another frantic white night, only to slowly push her into a languid black day.

When Yuan’s mind was completely muddled, when she had no strength left even to twitch a finger, when she lay with closed eyes, her wet lips fluttering like a goldfish’s—only then did he collapse his body atop hers and whisper into her ear, where the fine hairs stood on end.

“Yuan.”

It was the moment her spine, trembling uncontrollably until now, finally went numb beyond endurance, bending under the sensation, and her mind turned to mush.

Just as strength returned to her fingertips, which had tightly scratched his damp, tense back.

“……Don’t die.”

At his dark voice, thick and wet as it seeped into her ear.

Finally, the entire world collapsed.

In that instant, Yuan let go of the soaring ecstasy slowly approaching her and sank down into the soaked bed.

To the man who answered “Don’t die” to her declaration of love.

To those beautiful eyes moving slowly, persistently, asking if she had the answer he wanted.

Yuan knew the answer he desired, yet she could not bring herself to speak it.

The man, silently gazing at the tears falling to either side of her face, wordlessly licked them away.

Yuan closed her eyes, feigning exhaustion, and the man, as if forgiving her this once, ceased the persistent movements of his body that had so desperately sought her.

Instead, he drew her into his embrace and wrapped both arms tightly around her.

Their skin pressed together without a single gap burned with intense heat.

Their wet, damp bodies felt comfortably buoyant, as if floating in warm water.

Yuan was certain the rapidly pounding heartbeat threatening to shatter her eardrums was her own.

She fully felt, throughout her entire body,

the man’s wish that asked for nothing but to not die.

And her own helplessness—her inability to fulfill even that one wish.

Holding tightly to warmth she might never touch again, she pressed her lips against his firm chest as if by accident.

The man did not push her away.

A quiet dawn.

In the dim, uncertain light of early morning, whether the man was asleep or awake, she could not tell.

Only then did Yuan begin, deep in her bones, to finally understand Louise’s heart.

‘Louise.’

Was it like this for you too?

Willingly taking my place,

so that even if you died in some unknown place,

at least one person—me—would survive.

For a younger sister who never once told you she loved you, until the very end.

‘So this was how you felt.’

In the past, I absolutely could never have understood you.

But now, I… completely understand.

I fully understand you,

who could only go to die out of love.

It wasn’t guilt over our parents’ deaths that kept you by my side.

It wasn’t because we were family that you stayed beside me out of obligation.

‘You loved me.’

We loved each other.

And I’ve only just realized it now.

Yuan Pelliese quietly, very quietly, wept in the darkness, grinding her teeth.

Tears she hadn’t shed even when seeing Louise’s corpse and arranging her funeral now poured down her face.

***

Yuan glanced around in surprise upon seeing her half-torn clothes scattered beneath the bed, quickly shoved them underneath, then hastily threw on a robe hanging in the corner of the bedroom.

Only after memorizing Clade Euphris’s sleeping face again and again did she act.

‘Guilt over Louise is not something I can share. It belongs solely to me. It is mine to bear.’

The eighth bride of the exiled prince Clade Euphris.

The path of death that Louise walked in her place.

That was the path Yuan herself was meant to walk.

The circumstances following her sister’s death were not unexpected fortune coming to Yuan.

It was misfortune that Louise had taken upon herself in Yuan’s stead.

It was a fate Yuan could never abandon.

Willingly accepting that responsibility and pain, Yuan approached the sleeping Clade.

And from his body, she extracted and absorbed the final remnant of suffering that had parasitized him.

A force, whether fierce resistance or welcome acceptance, surged through the veins visible on her pale arm, spreading horrific agony throughout her body.

The pain delivered aftereffects to her internal organs—hair standing on end, screams unable to emerge—before quietly settling into her heart, planting roots and holding its breath.

There, it crouched, ready to burst forth at any moment should she let her guard down even slightly.

Her irregularly beating heart strangely calmed.

She felt as if she had been completely reborn.

Her limbs, previously trembling violently, gradually regained stability.

Her pitch-black eyes flashed darkly.

Yuan pushed the note containing Bollonico Euphris’s order to eliminate the exiled prince into the fireplace, where embers still glowed, and waited until it turned to black ash.

The time had come.

To betray her husband.

To seek out the husband’s enemy and bring it to an end.

***

After the blood-drenched debutante ball, Bollonico Euphris was uncharacteristically subdued.

Even minor nobles who had just begun establishing connections with Bollonico were executed without exception, and as a result, the lines of visitors to Bollonico’s palace, usually long, were relatively sparse.

Everyone was keeping a low profile.

While a large, blue-skinned servant lay sprawled on the floor, having been whipped as punishment, Bollonico lazily lounged on a chaise longue, poking the servant repeatedly with the blunt tip of a rapier.

Just as the injured man’s groans mingled poignantly with the sound of a beautiful harp—

Marquis Companni requested an audience.

“Hire Hatarun has gone silent. We are pursuing him.”

“Honestly, these sages—. So dull.”

“I’ll find a new personal physician.”

“Then who should we send? Among the remaining spies, who is close enough to reach him?”

“…Only the exiled prince’s wife. But isn’t she still someone you don’t fully trust?”

“Hmm. Trust or not trust isn’t the point. The point is that Bollonico has a use for that woman. And it’s not about killing monsters.”

The woman was the one closest to the secret of the Pelliese family that Bollonico had long been curious about.

Bollonico gently touched his cheek, where the woman had struck him for the first time in his life.

That mysterious sensation from that day still lingered on his skin.

If his suspicion was correct, that woman was the Pelliese family’s true treasure.

He would need to meet her again soon.

That day, he had been too stunned to grab and stop her as she hastily turned to leave.

“And the ‘bird’ has sent this letter.”

Bollonico listlessly took the letter.

The yellow bird perched on Marquis Companni’s shoulder flapped its wings, flew up, and circled around Bollonico.

A rather thick letter.

Raising his eyebrows and pressing his lips into a thin line, Bollonico unfolded the letter—and his eyes widened more and more.

He read the letter over and over with such intensity it seemed he might devour it, then suddenly lifted his head and stared blankly at Marquis Companni standing before him. His once lifeless blue eyes now sparkled with an eerie heat.

“Marquis Companni. Prepare Bollonico’s carriage. The most splendid and beautiful one. Ready all the prince’s palace servants. Dress them in the most lavish garments Bollonico has bestowed! Chief Steward!”