“Haa… Is… it over?”

“Yes.”

“Are you not hurt?”

The empress, sensing a presence, rubbed her eyes and regained her senses.

Though he wanted to see her sleeping figure more, Mereum hid such feelings and answered plainly.

“…Yeah. It was nothing.”

The smell of blood is thick throughout the room.

Mereum opened the terrace window wider for ventilation and pulled the bell rope to call someone.

The corpse had to be wrapped in a carpet and sent to the incinerator so that nothing dirty would remain until morning.

As his noble lady should only see beautiful things, Mereum tended to hurry with the cleanup.

“But I don’t think you were supposed to be on guard duty tonight.”

“I switched.”

“You must be tired too. You just returned from an expedition, and you trained today as well. You should rest at night.”

Her affectionate voice was pleasant to hear.

However, Mereum only listened to her voice pronouncing sentences in an old-fashioned manner, paying no attention to the content at all.

She probably doesn’t know. Or even if she does, she’s pretending not to.

Every time Mereum went on an expedition, he felt anxious enough to want to tear at his chest.

Even as he beheaded demons for her sake and extracted the cores embedded in their chests, getting covered in their bodily fluids, Mereum had only one thought.

I must hurry back and protect her.

So that she doesn’t die. So that she can’t die and leave him behind.

That’s also why he trained the elite knights so harshly to improve their skills.

“The carpet got dirty. We’ll have to replace it with a new one.”

Mereum silently draped a robe over her shoulders as she rose from the bed. As he did so, his hand briefly touched her bare skin, causing him to hesitate.

Time had turned the boy into a man.

But even time couldn’t teach him how to express his love.

Now, whenever Mereum saw her, he felt something rising within him. His body felt stiff, as if it were wrong, and he feared hurting her due to lack of control over his strength.

And before all those emotions, greed emerged.

Someone once said that first love is puppy love.

If it’s called puppy love because it ends quickly, what should we call a feeling that lasts this long?

Mereum silently gazed at her profile as she leaned against the terrace railing, feeling the night breeze.

‘A stimulating scent.’

She emanates an unforgettable fragrance, one that rises not from her skin but from within her—the scent of magic.

Somewhat sticky and languorous… If pressed to describe it, like cinnamon sugar.

As he recalled, it wasn’t like this at first. It used to smell of violet or coconut-based perfume, or honey.

That was the scent from her skin, not much different from other women.

But as she absorbed the demon cores he brought back from expeditions, she gradually changed.

Her skin gained a glow, and occasionally, a flash of light appeared in the depths of her pupils that once seemed lifeless. Though her body remained slender, that was just the silhouette; he could see that her interior had become solid.

This captivating scent began when he brought and offered her the Minotaur’s core, and it has since held Mereum’s senses captive.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Feeling his persistent gaze, she finally turned to look at him. At that, Mereum blurted out the most recent of the words that had been piling up inside him.

“Are you really going to take a concubine?”

“That’s…”

“Don’t tell me it’s none of my business.”

She tried to distance herself from him. That was hardly a secret.

Unlike a few years ago when he could see her face several times a day and dine together, now he had to go on expeditions just to see her.

Because on the days he departed to subjugate demons, she would always come out personally to encourage him.

After a few victorious returns, she stopped coming out to greet him when he came back, but that was fine. After all, she needed the demon cores, and he was the one who could provide them.

He wouldn’t be abandoned as long as he could give her what she wanted most.

That should have been enough. It should have been.

But.

“Assassins come almost every day. An assassin might infiltrate the cruise ship. Maybe the man you’ve chosen is a highly trained assassin.”

He couldn’t barge into the empress’s bedroom when she was with her lover.

What if this so-called concubine had poison under their nails or somewhere else and strangled or scratched her throat?

Humans are weaker than demons.

There were over a thousand ways humans could die, and this caused Mereum obsessive anxiety.

Just blocking the airway with a pillow could cause death by suffocation… How could she suddenly take in a stranger as a concubine?

‘If necessary, I could…’

The sentence following the subject doesn’t continue.

His tongue felt parched.

“That might be true… but I can protect myself now, so it’s alright.”

“What if the opponent’s skills are beyond expectations?”

“There will be knights in the corridor, so what’s the problem?”

That single dismissive remark tore at Mereum’s heart.

He couldn’t bear even the imagination of it.

Her in the arms of someone whose face he didn’t know. Her kissing someone. Her receiving someone else’s passionate love and admiration…

And him, standing guard in the corridor outside the room where the two of them were.

Mereum finally understood the feeling of wanting to die.

But if he revealed these aching feelings, she would immediately reject him.

With a slightly apologetic face, she would slightly droop her eyebrows and make the expression he hated most. The expression of pushing him away.

‘I can’t give her a reason to reject me.’

So today, he would swallow his feelings.

Because it wasn’t the right time yet.

But Mereum was losing patience more and more.

“Is Her Majesty the Empress asleep?”

“Yes.”

As he closed the door and came out, the guard knights standing in the corridor approached.

Mereum briefly imagined himself standing in the same place as them, asking the same question, and wrinkled his nose.

She doesn’t know how he fights against demons.

Because she’s never seen it.

She didn’t know how he changed when he wielded his sword while weaving through hordes of demons.

She didn’t wonder why he, a mere foreigner from Quan, could command knights from Nix, no matter how skilled he was.

Knowing her results-oriented personality, he thought that could be the reason, but looking back now, maybe Leonarda simply didn’t want to know.

Because the more she knew about him, the more emotions would accumulate and grow, whether it was a sense of debt, responsibility, or gratitude.

‘You thought I’d let you draw the line like that.’

Leonarda taught him the beauty of music.

When she taught him how to play instruments, she was immersed in the sound of the strings, but Mereum wasn’t really interested in that.

If he was intoxicated by anything, it was her holding the instrument.

Leonarda also taught him about painting and sculpture.

She cultivated his eye for good works and instilled in him the refinement befitting his status that no one else had taught him.

In the end, all the beauty that existed in his world was what she had shown him.

For Mereum, beauty was Leonarda.

It was a different word with the same meaning, and now when he saw something exceptionally beautiful, he thought of Leonarda.

Like a warhorse knowing it must run when the drum sounds. Like a puppy realizing that food is given when the bell rings.

Her name was the drum, the bell, and his habit.

‘After acting like you’d give me all the good things in the world…’

Now she tries to bestow grace on someone else, as she taught him.

And then she demands that he watch it happen.

‘How cruel.’

A bitter smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Mereum, touching his own lips, unable to bear the stifling feeling, went out to the garden.

A faint light was seeping out from the empress’s bedroom where he had lit a single candle.

Didn’t I tell you? That it is a demon.

The Spirit King, Eldaim, whispered in his ear.

Concerned for the contractor who had finally been bewitched by the demon.

Lightly clenching and then relaxing his fist, he replied softly.

“It doesn’t matter.”

If Leonarda is a demon, it just means there’s one more word that means beautiful.

As words associated with her increase like that, someday only beauty will accumulate in his empty interior.

Mereum stood firm in the garden, listening to Eldaim’s grumbling with one ear and letting it pass.

Guarding her night was what he wanted to do most.

“Go away! I don’t want to see you!”

A space sealed off to not let in a single ray of sunlight.

The Lily Palace, with all its windows covered by thick curtains, seemed so desolate it was hard to believe it had ever been bustling with people.

“I don’t want to see anyone!”

The owner’s influence had a big part in the Lily Palace becoming like this.

In fact, the budget allocated to the Lily Palace hadn’t decreased by a single penny compared to a few years ago.

She could have changed expensive furniture or carpets every season, bought dresses according to her mood, and even if she threw it all away, no one would have said anything.

People who remembered receiving help from the Saint still sent rare medicinal herbs, and pro-emperor nobles also occasionally sent gifts to maintain the dignity of the Lily Palace.

So perhaps Helene could have been happy.

After all, she wasn’t in love with the emperor anyway.