MBYS 06

Chapter 6

The First Night in the Darkness (3)

There was no mercy in the grip that snatched her wrist.

Without being able to let out even a single scream, Eveline was dragged helplessness toward him.

Just as the soft mattress touched her back, an impact struck her entire body. A massive shadow blocked her vision as a heavy weight crushed down upon her.

A suppressed groan burst through Eveline’s lips. The man occupying the space above her pinned her down and glared, refusing to allow even a flinch of movement.

Flashing with intense heat through the pitch-black darkness were glowing blood-red eyes.

The moment her eyes met that gaze, a chilling tremor ran straight down Eveline’s spine.

Irregular, rough breaths poured over her cheeks.

He emanated a precarious heat through his whole body—enough to make the skin touching him burn hot.

“Y-Your Highness…”

Eveline’s lips trembled violently as a tearful voice spilled out. Yet, it seemed to produce no resonance in Kailus.

His rough hand moved slowly down Eveline’s delicate neckline, obsessively tracing the edge of her collarbone.

Eveline bit her lip and swallowed the groan threatening to burst forth.

‘Just holding hands isn’t enough.’

The heat of the pain he emanated was simply too vast. At this rate, both he and she were in danger.

She needed to maximize skin contact to absorb this heat faster.

Eveline raised her trembling hands.

It was the moment she tried to pull down her own shoulder straps. He bound both of Eveline’s wrists with a single hand and pinned them directly above her head.

Eveline’s grey eyes trembled violently as she looked up at Kailus.

“…Disgusting.”

It was a voice dripping with contempt. The corner of Kailus’s mouth twisted into a sneer.

“Did you think spreading your legs first like this would blind my judgment?”

It was a misunderstanding. Eveline parted her lips to speak, but he growled as if he didn’t even want to hear an excuse.

“You must have calculated that offering up a shallow body like this would make me fall for it.”

His chilling gaze pierced through Eveline’s fear.

“Don’t flatter yourself. What I need is your function, not you.”

His voice was terrifyingly low and cold.

“So don’t play foolish tricks in front of me.”

His red eyes scanned slowly from the top of Eveline’s head down to her toes. It was a gaze evaluating the worth of a commodity.

A suffocating silence filled the space between them. She needed to make an excuse. Yet, weighed down by the sharp, hostile aura he radiated, she could barely part her lips.

Right then, Kailus spoke first.

“That fellow you call a father handed you over to me.”

The corner of Kailus’s mouth twisted bitterly.

“For a dirt-cheap price, no less. He grinned ear-to-ear over a mere 10,000 gold.”

Eveline’s pupils lost focus and shook violently. It was a cruel confirmation that her biological father, Count Roa, had ultimately traded his daughter for money.

A corner of her chest throbbed with pain.

“Remember this. You are my possession now. Every single strand of hair, down to the flesh on your toes.”

Kailus leaned forward and growled into her ear.

“So tell me. That ability you have… what is its true nature?”

His gaze craved the utility hidden beneath her outer shell, not Eveline’s flesh.

“Is it magic? Or else… a curse?”

Kailus’s palm roughly pressed down on the left side of Eveline’s chest, near her heart. Through the single layer of thin fabric, her wildly fluttering heartbeat was captured in his grip.

“By what trick do you strip away my pain?”

Eveline’s dry lips parted with difficulty. It was something Eveline herself did not know. It was a mark stamped onto her soul from birth, as natural to her as breathing.

“That is…”

Just as her barely squeezed-out voice was about to scatter into the air—

“Urgh…!”

Kailus’s mouth contorted horribly, and his sturdy frame twisted grotesquely as though bound by invisible chains. Over the arm pinning Eveline down, taut muscles and veins bulged out.

“Haah, haah… ugh!”

Turbid gasps burst out.

Dark red veins squirmed grotesquely along Kailus’s neck, crawling up to beneath his jawline.

“Argh…!”

Kailus violently rammed his head down. His eyes flashed blood-red, losing focus, and he seemed unable to hear Eveline’s voice anymore.

Before long, the pain with nowhere to go turned into violence, descending upon the nearest presence. His grip dug ruthlessly into Eveline’s shoulders.

“Ah, ugh…! It hurts!”

A plea laced with a scream burst from Eveline’s mouth. Yet Kailus did not stop.

“Damn it!”

Spitting out a curse, he clutched his head.

Every time he thrashingly struggled, unable to overcome the pain, the bedsheets crumpled.

A heavy energy whirled, slashing through the room. The crystal water bottle atop the nightstand shattered into pieces, scattering fragments, while thick velvet curtains fluttered violently.

In the midst of the chaos that erupted in an instant, Eveline trembled like an aspen tree.

Yet, she did not run away.

The fear in Eveline’s eyes cleared, replaced by cold rationality. His weakest moment right now was her opportunity to engrave the fact that she was his sole savior.

Eveline clenched her molars and sat up.

“Your Highness.”

Fragments of the sharp aura grazed her cheek, but paying them no mind, she approached the struggling man.

“Come… here.”

Kailus instinctively reached a hand out toward Eveline. Eveline held him tightly in an embrace.

“I will take it all. That pain… all of it.”

Eveline whispered like a spell, locking him inside her arms.

In an instant, Kailus’s body stiffened.

The moment her warm body temperature touched him, the scorching pain began to abate.

Kailus’s body instinctively began to bury itself deeper into her embrace.

As the surface area of touching skin broadened, the speed at which the curse consuming him poured into Eveline accelerated.

Eveline buried her mouth into Kailus’s shoulder to muffle the scream threatening to burst out.

Beneath her skin, black threads sprouting tens of thousands of thorns slithered through her veins, tearing them apart. Near her heart, something icy and scalding pierced her simultaneously.

Instead of her vision flashing, scenes cut into her line of sight. Banners torn by the wind, the smell of iron, a bone-chilling cold. Someone’s screams echoed not from afar, but from within her own body.

“Ugh…!”

Eveline’s spine stiffened reflexively. Her joints locked stiff as if nails were driven through every bone.

Cold sweat poured from her entire body. Her thin chemise soaked cold, clinging over her spasming skin.

‘It hurts… It’s so hot…’

She wanted to push away the source of this terrible pain and run away this instant. Yet, Eveline instead put strength into her arms, embracing Kailus even tighter.

The calculation that letting go meant the end forced her body to bind him even harder.

It was not purely a choice for survival. Amid the horrific sensation of his hellish magic tearing her veins apart, Eveline caught hold of a very old fragment of memory.

A day in her childhood when she had run away barefoot after being beaten severely by the Count. A boy who had looked noble, completely out of place in that filthy back alley.

“Eat this.”

A small pastry handed over in the darkness. To her abused self, it was the only salvation permitted. That the boy back then was the Kailus of today was something she had realized the moment she held his hand in the banquet hall.

‘Because it was the exact same aura I felt from that boy back then.’

It was a life he had saved. Therefore, it was only natural for the master to reclaim it. Even if it were a path where death was destined, it did not matter. If she could meet her end in this man’s arms rather than on a cold basement floor, that would be enough.

To the exact degree her life force was shaved away, Kailus’s pain abated. The man’s muscles, stiffened like stone, gradually relaxed, and his rough breathing slowly regained a peaceful rhythm.

Raising a hand that was losing sensation, Eveline gently stroked his sweat-drenched hair.

“It is… fine. Ugh, it is all right…”

She had to act accustomed. For ‘salvation’ had to remain as ‘utility,’ not pity.

After an eternity-like period of pain passed, only a heavy silence settled in the room.

Kailus’s rampage stopped. Buried in Eveline’s chest, he remained motionless. Only his regular, rising and falling breath signaled that he had calmed down.

In contrast, Eveline had completely collapsed.

A high fever wrapped around her entire body. She lacked the strength to twitch even a single finger.

It was far more violent than when she had absorbed pain before. This time, it was not merely the quantity of pain; the texture itself was different. It was a sensation of pain not merely passing through, but taking deep root in her heart and sinking down.

Ringing filled her head, and her vision blurred. Beyond that hazy consciousness, Kailus, who had been held in her arms, slowly lifted his head.

With half-closed eyes, Eveline looked down at him with difficulty.

His eyes had cleared cleanly. The red pupils had regained their original calm and cold light.

Kailus stared intently at the pale, sickly Eveline. Her lips were split and beaded with red blood from holding back the pain, and her sweat-soaked hair clung messily to her pale cheeks.

Yet, the emotion lingering in Kailus’s eyes as he looked up at her was not pity or worry. It was a terrible satisfaction—and possessiveness toward his object.

Reaching out an arm, he wrapped it around her waist. Kailus pulled Eveline roughly into his embrace.

At the sudden pressure, Eveline wriggled her body weakly. But Kailus did not allow her resistance.

“Stay still.”

He growled low. Kailus buried his face into the nape of Eveline’s neck and inhaled deeply.

“Sleep like this.”

The command was absolute. Entangling Eveline’s legs with his own thigh, he blocked even the movement of her lower body.

Eveline ended up trapped in the prison of the man’s arms. Heavy, hot, and suffocating. Yet, she held no right to refuse.

Reaching out one hand, Kailus roughly snatched the blanket at the edge of the bed. The heavy blanket settled over both their bodies.

Once again, pitch-black darkness arrived. A languid breath tickled the shell of Eveline’s ear.

“Tomorrow… I will call a doctor for you, so stay like this.”

Following those low words, his breathing deepened. Eveline carefully shifted her body, feeling suffocated.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Kailus’s arm, which she thought had fallen asleep, tightened around her waist. Beneath his closed eyelids, a red light flashed.

“If you run away, I will crush your legs first.”

Spitting out the terrifying warning, he buried his face back into the nape of Eveline’s neck. Soon, a regular sound of breathing resumed.

Unable to even breathe properly, Eveline merely blinked her eyes in the darkness.