TLFR 05

Chapter 5

“…I know. There’s no such thing as a favor without a price.”

Ines was not a fool. There was no way everything could be given to her so naturally. Even knowing that, her throat tightened.

“But…”

The truth was, she did not want to run away.

She did not want to shave off her lifespan. The respite she had tasted for a few days had awakened instincts she had thought long dead.

Her blue eyes, glistening with tears, sparkled like sapphires.

“Kian. Maybe there are other options.”

The truth was, she wanted to live. Without doing things like seducing a man with her body, in a good place like this, eating good food, wearing good clothes, safely and happily…

Kian said nothing more.

Ines’s wish to see the Grand Duke once more was unexpectedly granted the very next day. He visited her room.

Ines turned her head without thinking at the knock, then froze solid.

The man was standing at the door. While Ines belatedly scrambled to her feet, he entered the room without hesitation.

Rayeon, having scanned her appearance, spoke first.

“It suits you well.”

It was not an empty compliment. Today Ines was wearing a shining silver dress. The dress suited her black hair quite well. As did her blue eyes.

Even Rayeon, with his high aesthetic standards, was somewhat surprised at how much she had changed.

That was not to say she had become a peerless beauty overnight, but she was certainly more worth looking at than before.

Rayeon slowly added a word.

“You’re beautiful.”

Ines’s ears turned bright red. She did not know where to put her gaze.

She sat down at the tea table as he guided her, answering stammeringly.

“B-Berry picked it out for me.”

“She’s a maid with good taste. Is there anything inconvenient about your stay?”

“Not at all, nothing. Everyone is so kind, and this place is too beautiful for me. Thank you for your consideration.”

Ines could not bring herself to look directly into the Grand Duke’s green eyes and lowered her gaze. The compliment that she was beautiful filled her head so completely that she could not even tell what she was saying.

The Grand Duke, gazing at her, soon smiled faintly.

“I’m glad you’ve grown accustomed to it.”

“To what…?”

“To the way Eleanor treats its guests.”

Ines smiled awkwardly, unable to affirm or deny.

In truth, she had not yet fully adjusted. Too many things had changed, even if they had changed.

But it was, after all, no more than a fleeting dream. It was better not to grow accustomed.

“Isn’t it boring staying only in your room?”

“No, not at all. I… I think I like this place.”

“I see.”

A languid smile spread across the man’s face. He seemed satisfied with Ines’s stammering answers to his questions.

The smiles and looks of favor that occasionally showed on a person whose expression rarely changed were terribly attractive.

Enough that her gaze was stolen before she knew it.

Her heart beat strangely.

She was a little puzzled by the heavy pounding resounding through her body.

‘Do I have a fever…?’

Come to think of it, her earlobes had felt hot for a while now. It had been that way the entire time she sat across from the Grand Duke drinking tea.

It was strange.

While Ines struggled to calm her heartbeat, the man rose from his seat.

“Oh, I have something to give you.”

“Y-yes?”

As Ines reflexively rose, the man who had come within two steps pressed down on her shoulder.

“Your Highness?”

“Stay still.”

Their reflection showed in the mirror hanging across the table.

Just ten days ago they had been two utterly incongruous people, but now she did not look as out of place as she had then.

Not like a worn stone or a rat… she even looked a little like a person.

Something cold touched her neck. It was a shining necklace chain.

At the center of the hanging pendant was a transparently gleaming emerald, surrounded by small diamonds.

The heavy weight of the necklace settled on her as if binding her.

Ines blinked and looked at the mirror. The woman in the mirror slowly raised her hand and touched the necklace. The texture beneath her fingers was real.

But it did not feel quite real.

The Grand Duke murmured low.

“It really does suit you.”

The black hair, white skin, and green gem harmonized beautifully. With the silver dress trimmed with delicate lace added, she looked just like a slender, delicate doll.

Her straight, slender neck was exposed between strands of black hair. A hot hand, contrasting with her cool skin, brushed her nape.

That hand soon traveled down along the line of her neck and caressed the green emerald hanging below her collarbone.

Ines’s body flinched slightly. Seeing that fragile tremor, a smile caught on Rayeon’s lips.

“Far more than before, I like it.”

The woman had only barely taken on a human form after being dyed entirely in his color.

The satisfaction that fact gave him was at least greater than Rayeon had expected.

Ines, as if entranced, watched the man’s eyes as he stared directly at her reflection in the mirror. The same color as the jewel around her neck was right there.

She felt she could drown in that highly saturated green.

“…Your Highness. Why are you so good to me?”

His hand, which had been stroking the necklace, stopped. Ines continued muttering as if to herself.

“Letting me stay in a good place, dressing me in good clothes, giving me precious gifts…”

“Treating me… kindly.”

Kindly, was it. Rayeon laughed inwardly in disbelief.

It was clear this woman had never once in her life received genuine goodwill from anyone.

For nearly a week, Rayeon had all but forgotten Ines.

He had more than enough urgent problems than a woman like her. Starting with the reconstruction of the duchy’s border cities, the barbarian tribes coming down through the northern mountain range, and the manpower supply issue for the Gelnova plains.

The seven-year war had caused countless damages to the duchy as well. Once this matter was finished and he returned to his nation, he would be frantically busy stabilizing the duchy for years to come.

In such a state, would he have leisurely selected gifts to send? No.

The one who had sent her piles of gifts over the week was his aide.

The only thing he had chosen himself was the one emerald necklace he had picked up without much thought today.

And yet she called it kind.

‘Easier than I thought.’

There seemed no need to even say the words “I will treat you as a human being.”

Well, he knew that the bastard sort were always thirsting for affection. Hadn’t his uncle always craved his grandfather’s love?

Though the end of that was betrayal.

Thinking of his uncle twisted his lips. He lowered his head so Ines could not see his expression.

He braced one hand on the back of the chair she leaned against and with the other lifted her white, slender hand.

“Well. Think of it as you like.”

There was no need to put in effort. Thinking that, the moment he pressed his lips to the back of her hand where blue veins showed—

Ines turned her head.

Her breath was felt very close. A trembling lip brushed faintly against somewhere on his left cheek and jawline.

It was a touch so ambiguous it was unclear whether it was a kiss or not, perhaps a contact with no meaning at all.

Ines raised her head. Two eyes of differing temperatures met at close range.

Seen up close, the woman’s eyes drew very delicate lines.

Beneath the thin double eyelids, the long lashes trembled, and each time they moved up and down, the deep blue eyes disappeared and reappeared repeatedly.

They were eyes that knew nothing of the world, ignorant of the hostile gazes lurking outside the imperial palace, filled only with a gentle purity.

He had long wandered battlefields, and perhaps because of that, she was a kind of person he had never encountered anywhere he had stepped.

If one divided the world and people into good and evil, this woman would lean toward good from head to toe.

With that near-conviction, Rayeon lowered his gaze.

The white face seen obliquely still bore a faint flush. On her lips.

On her lips…

Beneath the lips holding a red tint, a sweet breath escaped between neat teeth.

Her flustered breathing was irregular. Perhaps she was the type whose body heated up when nervous—her visible neck and straight collarbones were also subtly flushed pink.

Suddenly, he felt the urge to shake her a little more.

If he lowered his lips just like this, what expression would this hopelessly naive woman make, what sound would she make?

How far would she flush red…

A dark, unusual light settled in the green eyes that had maintained composure all along. He was not the type to get aroused by a woman like this. Then why now?

Cold reason began to rationalize the impulse that had just risen.

Objectively examined, there was no reason he could not approach her.

She was his anyway.

If he had left her alone, she would have rotted in Lezan’s imperial palace, but he had decided to save her and declared her his.

The deliberation ended there.

Rayeon asked quietly.

“Anything else you’d like to say?”

A small disturbance arose in the woman. In her blue eyes that did not know how to hide her feelings, he accurately read the embarrassment and hopelessly innocent heat. A curve caught at the corner of his lips.

“…If not.”

Rayeon straightened his back, then grasped Ines’s thin shoulders and raised her up.

Ines, not understanding, got up awkwardly. There was not a trace of change in Rayeon’s expression.

“Your Highness. Why…”

But as if to prove her judgment had been mistaken, their lips met before she could even finish speaking.

The kiss was not gentle.

Between lips that met as dryly as the man’s expressionless face, a hot, soft tongue forcibly parted her tender mucosa. It slid in as if invading, mixing and stirring.

The stimulating sound of saliva wetly rubbing mixed with the faintly leaking moans. The deeper the contact continued, the faster her heart raced, and a sizzling heat pooled deep in her body.

In the man’s eyes seen in her blurred vision, in the hands holding her, in the deep kiss—Ines was not such a fool as to not recognize the desire that had been ignited in an instant.