The Terminally-Ill Duke Clings to Me Every Night - Chapter 1

On a scorching summer afternoon.

A woman was being led to the gallows by a guard, her wrists bound behind her back.

With each step, the iron shackles around her ankles made a chilling sound, but she had no time to pay attention to it.

In just a few minutes, her body would surely be hanging there.

‘It’s all over now.’

Her gaze at the gallows was empty. Her dry lips were cracked like a desert, and her once lively leaf-green eyes were lifeless.

Was it because the sun was burning too hot? Or was it fear of death?

The woman was staggering as if she might collapse at any moment.

[For the crime of causing the death of Duke Haidern, the criminal apothecary Leah is sentenced to death!]

– Bang bang bang!

The sound of the wooden gavel on the day of her sentencing trial still rang clear in her ears.

She had cried out that there was no way the medicine could have been wrong, but her protests fell on deaf ears.

The nobles were busy cursing that an incompetent apothecary had put the empire’s duke in mortal danger.

‘I should never have come here in the first place.’

No. At least on the day she became the duke’s personal physician, she should have run away immediately. But now such regrets were useless.

She let out a hollow laugh. It had been 22 years since she was reincarnated into this world alone.

The past days of struggling to survive in this world flashed before her eyes like a kaleidoscope.

“The execution of apothecary Leah will now commence. Prisoner, come here and kneel down.”

As the guard roughly pushed her back, she crumpled to her knees. The crowd stirred as the face of the protagonist who had caused an uproar throughout the capital was revealed.

– I heard the Duke Haidern died after taking medicine made by that woman.

– How pitiful. She’s still so young…

– Pitiful? She’s practically a murderer!

Among them were those who showed sympathy towards her, and those who blamed the young apothecary’s reckless actions.

“Does the criminal Leah have any last words?”

At the judge’s words, she bowed her head.

‘Last words? As if I could have any.’

The man had died because of the medicine she made.

The heavy guilt and bitter regret weighed down on her entire body. It was almost suffocating.

‘If I hadn’t done that, would things have been different…’

But realizing it was a useless thought, Leah closed her eyes. Hoping for this agony to end quickly.

As she appeared to have resigned herself, the judge raised his hand.

Just as the guard was tying the rope around her neck at the signal to carry out the execution.

“Stop.”

A man’s voice quietly echoed through the venue.

“Who are you?! How dare you…!”

As the man in the black robe slowly revealed his face, the murmuring voices in the venue fell silent.

‘What’s going on?’

Feeling the air around her freezing, Leah slowly opened her eyes.

What she saw before her were the man’s red eyes faintly visible under the blazing sun.

“…Your Grace?”

She murmured in a trembling voice as if she had seen an apparition.

Duke Haidern, whom she thought she had killed, had returned alive.

* * *

‘It’s warm.’

How long had it been since she felt such comfort? She could feel the soft, fluffy bedding enveloping her body.

‘Who is it?’

A moan of unfamiliarity escaped Leah’s lips at the gentle touch caressing her earlobe. As if bothered by the touch, Leah buried her face deep into the pillow.

‘Is this a dream?’

It felt like a sweet dream where someone was caressing her face with an affectionate, tender touch.

The thick breath tickling her nose. And the ticklish touch brushing through her hair.

‘Why does it feel so real?’

As Leah’s mind gradually awakened to the vivid sensations that seemed too real for a dream, she gently opened her eyes to see:

Sculptured features, brilliant golden hair like the sun, and blood-red eyes.

‘Your Grace?’

She blinked her eyes as if seeing a ghost.

Was she still dreaming? Leah carefully pinched her flesh with her fingers.

‘It’s not a dream…’

But judging by the pain where her fingers touched, it wasn’t a dream.

‘Then am I… dead?’

With a glimmer of hope, Leah gently felt her neck. She was surely destined to have her neck severed at the gallows.

At that moment, she recalled the duke she had encountered at the execution grounds.

Could it have been an illusion created by her desperate wish? Even as she was collapsing, Leah couldn’t take her eyes off the duke.

“Are you really alive? H-how is this…”

Leah fumbled at the man’s face in disbelief.

The unfamiliar sensation of skin under her fingertips told her this was no illusion.

As Leah was touching the man’s face this way and that, he grabbed her wrist and murmured.

“My face will wear out.”

‘Ah.’

The deep baritone voice wrapped around Leah’s ears. It was a voice so familiar… the voice she had longed for so much.

“Is it really you, Your Grace…?”

Leah, who had sprung up from the bed in surprise, looked the man up and down. Yes. There couldn’t be another man with a face like this.

“Good heavens.”

She had clearly watched him take his last breath with her own eyes. As she stood there dumbfounded with her lips parted in shock, he murmured.

“Why, aren’t you happy? That I’ve returned alive.”

Was this a matter of being happy or not? Leah just stood there frozen, as if still unable to grasp the situation.

Seeing her like this, the man took her hand and led it.

“I’m disappointed.”

Then he made her hand cup his cheek.

“When I died, you were crying and making such a fuss.”

After keeping her hand against his cheek for a while, the man growled.

“Was it all a lie?”

She could feel the man’s breath on her palm, where his lips were now touching.

“That’s not it. Your Grace, you clearly stopped breathing…”

“I did.”

The man smiled slightly as if amused by Leah’s reaction.

“But thinking of you flirting with other men in my absence.”

A cold light flashed in the man’s red eyes.

“It made my blood boil.”

‘What?’

It was already mind-boggling that the duke she thought was dead had returned alive. And now he was suddenly saying things like…

Unconsciously swallowing hard, she began to carefully examine where she had been lying.

An unfamiliar room. Thanks to the thick darkness, she couldn’t see properly, but one thing was clear. It was overwhelmingly luxurious.

At that moment, the man murmured her name. In a very soft voice unlike before.

“Leah.”

His fingers gripping her chin were hot, as if telling her not to look away.

‘Was His Grace… always like this?’

Leah examined the man closely with a strange gaze.

From his skin that seemed to glow with an overflow of vitality, to the firm chest muscles visible through his open robe.

Against her will, her gaze began to move down past his toned abdominal muscles.

– Gulp.

Leah raised her head, forcibly pulling her gaze up as it kept wanting to drift lower.

The man, chuckling softly as if amused by her reaction, gently stroked her earlobe.

“I apologize for calling you a quack all this time.”

His low voice, deep as a cave, brushed her ear.

“Thanks to you, I feel reborn.”

The man’s long fingers caressed her cheek. Even now, he murmured as if he couldn’t believe this moment.

“From now on, everything will be different.”

In the room shrouded in thick darkness. The gazes of the man and woman intertwined in the air.

“…Pardon? What do you mean…”

It happened in an instant. He climbed on top of her body. Before she knew it, the duke was positioned over Leah, who now had her back against the bed.

“Y-Your Grace?”

“I thought you’d be a little happier.”

He answered softly as he removed the strands of hair clinging to Leah’s cheeks one by one.

“Didn’t you wish for me to be healthy?”

Yes. She had wished for it.

Perhaps in this entire mansion, no, in the whole empire, there was no one who wished for the duke’s health as much as she did.

‘But this is too healthy even for being healthy!’

Wasn’t he a man who was on the verge of death, no, who had actually breathed his last just a few days ago? The Akkia she knew certainly wasn’t such a masculine man.

He was a duke who had received a terminal diagnosis, said to have not long to live. To think he would be pressing down on her so domineeringly like this.

She was starting to be bothered by the unfamiliar sensation pressing against her abdomen. Hoping it wasn’t what she thought it was.

But before she could find an answer, Akkia’s voice, mixed with thick breaths, reached her.

“Leah.”

Swallowing dryly once again, she pushed at his shoulders.

“Um, Your Grace…? Let’s talk calmly first…”

“It’s strange.”

“…Pardon?”

“My body is strangely overflowing with strength.”

The sticky desire nestled in the man’s eyes weighed down on her.

“To the point where I can’t control it.”

Red eyes seething as if about to devour her. She felt like she might lose her mind in the passion swirling in that redness.

– Thump.

– Thump.

– Thump.

Her heartbeat asserted its presence loudly like a drumbeat. To the point where she thought she might die if her heart kept beating like this.

“So Leah.”

A thick breath flowed from him as he drew so close their lips might touch at any moment.

“Take responsibility.”

Then he gradually climbed up Leah’s thin wrist and interlaced his fingers with hers.

“You’re the one who made me like this.”

As if not giving her even the slightest gap to escape.

The sickly duke had become healthy. A bit too much.