“… Did you drink alcohol?”

Blair was the one who first broke the silence flowing between the two.

Seeing her beautiful brow slightly furrowed with worry, Herdin chuckled and retorted.

“Why? Are you going to nag?”

He didn’t answer Blair’s question, but his eyes, more languid than usual, and his leisurely approaching steps answered for him.

Blair approached to support him and replied.

“It’s not nagging, I’m worried.”

Herdin watched curiously as Blair approached him with small steps. The sight of her trying to support a man a head taller than herself was laughable.

His wife, who approached fearlessly without knowing anything, wrapped her slender arms around his waist. At the same time, a sweet body scent wafted over him.

At that moment, the thread of reason that had been loosened for a while tightened and finally snapped.

Herdin pushed the woman in his arms against the wall and immediately pressed his lips to hers.

He felt Blair flinch in surprise, but he cupped her cheek to prevent her from escaping.

Blair, frozen for a moment, closed her eyes and accepted him. The bitter taste of whiskey was felt on his hot breath.

He was the one who had been drinking, but she felt like she might get drunk instead. Blair clutched his firm arms as if clinging to him.

The two explored each other, exchanging hot breaths, as if they had completely forgotten that they were standing in the hallway.

Blair was the first to come to her senses.

“Herdin, let’s… let’s go to the room.”

As Blair barely pushed him away and spoke, Herdin captured her lips again and lifted her into his arms.

Her worry about being carried by a drunk person proved unfounded, as when she regained her senses, she found herself lying on the bed.

Herdin tore off Blair’s nightgown that was in the way and continued with a kiss as if he would devour her. Blair’s body trembled in surprise, but he paid no heed and touched her body.

Those kisses, those touches were as desperate as someone who had suffered from a long thirst.

She noticed that his behavior was subtly different from usual when Blair, breathless, momentarily separated her lips and opened her eyes.

Their gazes met as he looked at her with his eyes slightly lowered.

His blue eyes somehow looked… agonized, as if he was being strangled.

In her past life, consumed by her own emotions, she had thought his difference was simply due to being drunk.

She thought he had started to love her again after suddenly distancing himself from her one day, and longing for even a shred of his affection, she was just happy in that moment.

There was no room to consider his emotions.

She was afraid that he might push her away again when he sobered up in the morning, that it might end like a one-night dream.

But paradoxically, in this life where she no longer yearned for his love, she saw his emotions first.

“… Herdin.”

Blair called out to him as he was about to press his lips to hers again.

“Did something happen?”

His approaching lips paused at that. But the answer that soon followed was casual.

“No.”

Herdin interlaced his fingers with Blair’s and added softly.

“Nothing at all.”

With that answer, the conversation between the two ended.

He pulled Blair’s body, not yet fully relaxed, and overlapped his body with hers.

“Ah!”

Although her body was already somewhat heated just from the intense kisses, Herdin was still overwhelming for Blair.

He was always overwhelming, but today even more so.

Herdin desperately pulled her in and embraced her to the fullest. However, even with no gap between them, the hollow feeling created by a suddenly realized emotion was not filled at all.

As if needing something to fill that emptiness, he sought her inside.

But the more he did so, the emptier he felt, and he tightly embraced the woman looking up at him with fever-bright eyes.

The woman who fully accepted him despite finding it overwhelming was still beautiful even in this situation. Damn it.

Why.

Why did you have to be that woman’s daughter? Why did you have to be the Emperor’s sister?

No…

Why did I have to fall in love with you?

There were countless reasons why I should let you go, but the one reason I couldn’t was driving me crazy.

It felt like falling into an endless abyss.

His vision blurred with the emotion completely consuming him, but Herdin focused on the desire before his eyes, ignoring it.

Now, no matter what happens, I won’t be able to let you go.

“… Blair.”

Blair, who had been shaking mindlessly, entrusting her body to him, opened her eyes upon hearing his rough voice by her ear.

The moment she met his blue eyes flickering with desire.

Suddenly, she realized a fact she had forgotten. That this was the last night she would spend with this man.

At the same time, his harshly felt coldness became a little sad.

He was still in his outdoor clothes, and only she was in a state without a single thread on her body.

It had been sad in her past life too.

The distance of a single layer of clothing that couldn’t be closed even when pressed as close as possible, that warmth that could never be felt.

The memory of that night when she swallowed her sorrow, afraid he might distance himself, still remained vivid.

But today, wouldn’t it be okay to be a little more greedy?

Just for today, one last time.

“Herdin.”

Blair spoke, carefully grasping his collar.

“Will you… hold me warmly, just a little?”

Herdin, seeming to understand her meaning, began to remove his outer clothing. One by one, the clothes came off, revealing a perfect body.

Finally, he lowered his body and pressed his lips to hers. At the same time, his hot body firmly embraced Blair. At the warmth of his body touching her skin, she felt like she might cry for some reason.

Soon, her vision began to shake again.

Blair desperately embraced that warmth in return.

All night long, so as not to lose it.

* * *

The entire empire was abuzz with rumors about Blair for days.

The back-alley taverns were no exception. Rather, being places where people who lived rough lives gathered, the rumors became even more vulgar.

Especially when the subject of the rumors was a woman.

“Did you hear that rumor? That the Duchess tried to bite the Empress Dowager’s neck?”

“And here I thought they were so refined, but the Imperial family is no different from any other family. A daughter bewitched by a man betraying her mother, truly a family in shambles.”

“Well, like mother, like daughter. How far can the nature of a lowborn, uneducated bloodline go? I guess she got completely infatuated after getting involved with the Duke and even sold out her mother.”

“Women, as always, if you treat them just a little nicely―”

It was at that moment, as the men sitting at the bar were giggling and inflating dirty rumors about Blair.

Crash―

A glass shattered in Mikhail’s hand as he was carrying cocktails to them.

At the commotion, both his subordinates nearby and the men in front of him startled and looked at Mikhail.

Along with the shards of the crushed glass in his hand, alcohol and red blood were dripping.

“… Ah.”

Mikhail, meeting the eyes of the frightened customers, seemed to have just realized that the glass had broken.

“I apologize. The glass broke.”

But nowhere in his chilling expression could any feeling of apology be read.

One of the men involuntarily flinched at Mikhail’s aura, then tried to hide his emotion by shouting loudly.

“You, it looks like you broke the glass on purpose! What kind of customer service is this?”

Sensing the unusual atmosphere, one of Mikhail’s subordinates quickly stepped in to mediate.

“We apologize, sir. It seems our employee made a mistake due to fatigue. We’ll prepare a new one for you right away.”

Seeing his subordinate’s signal, Mikhail left the bar and went up to the second floor. There, he first healed the wounds where glass shards had pierced using his holy power.

Just as he was finishing the healing, footsteps approaching from behind him were heard.

“Master.”

As Mikhail turned around, he saw a subordinate approaching. He paused upon seeing the blood-stained palm of Mikhail’s hand.

“… Did something happen downstairs?”

“No, I just got a little hurt. What’s the matter?”

“About the black magic book you ordered us to investigate earlier, it’s still difficult to gather information since it’s forbidden magic.”

Mikhail furrowed his brow.

He was investigating the black magic circle he had seen on Blair when they went to the cabin in the forest that day.

If even she was unaware of its existence, there was a high probability it was magic implanted with dangerous intentions.

He wanted to remove the ominous magic circle from her as soon as possible, but as expected, gathering information wasn’t easy.

“Even if it’s something trivial, bring it to me as soon as you acquire it.”

“Ah, about that…”

Mikhail looked curiously at the subordinate who didn’t immediately withdraw, and the subordinate pulled out something crumpled from his inner pocket.

“It’s not a black magic book, but I brought it just in case since it’s related to black magic.”

On the first page of the document he handed over was a black magic circle drawn, and below it―

[It is said that there is black magic that connects the second condition of the contract with the divine beast that was severed long ago.]

… was written in a neat handwriting. It seemed to have been written by the owner of the document.

“Where did this document come from?”

“Some guy left it instead of paying his bar tab yesterday. He seemed to be a gambler, and said he picked it up on his way home early in the morning recently.”

“He picked it up on the street?”

“Yes. At first, he didn’t know what it was and was going to sell it for a high price thinking it was an important document, but when he realized it was a black magic circle, he got scared and just handed it over instead of the bar tab.”

As Mikhail examined the document again while listening to his subordinate’s story, he paused when he closely looked at the black magic circle drawn on the first page.

‘This is…’

It was the same pattern as the magic circle engraved on Blair’s collarbone.