MBYS 21

Chapter 21

The sweet scent of full-bloom flowers and damp warmth poured down like a waterfall. Crushed by that sensation, Eveline’s tightly closed eyelids trembled and slowly lifted.

The moment her vision cleared, a milky-white mist caressed her retinas first. Winter sunlight, pouring through the vaulted, massive glass ceiling, tangled with the dense water vapor inside the greenhouse, dyeing the entire space in dreamlike halos of light.

“……”

Eveline swallowed down the breath that had been about to slip past her parted lips.

It was not contained in flowerpots or crude wooden boxes. The entire floor of the expansive greenhouse was thickly covered in fertile, black soil, and upon that earth, nameless southern flowers proudly raised their heads.

Flowers red as if they had drunk blood, flowers whiter than pearls, and unfamiliar blooming plants tinged with a cool, violet hue.

It was a complete and artificial spring, forcefully driven straight into the heart of the cruel northern frozen wasteland.

Eveline took a step as though bewitched.

The soft, damp texture of the soil passed through the soles of her shoes and traveled straight up her spine. With every step forward, deep green leaves brushed against the heavy, dragging hem of her dark navy velvet dress, shaking off transparent dewdrops.

Eveline reached out a gloved hand.

Her fingertips brushed against a red flower petal, thin and delicate enough to be translucent. Even through the lace glove, the breath-like, living warmth of the flora seeped through.

A warm, vibrant sensation—so utterly alien to her own fingertips, where dead blood pooled and rotted black.

That was the moment.

Over Eveline’s hollow, crumbly gray eyes, clear sunlight filtered through the glass pane and shattered into tiny pieces. Transparent moisture welled up instantly in her blindingly dry and numb pupils.

Eveline bit down on her parched lips. Blinking her eyes repeatedly, she forcefully pushed back the moisture flooding her vision.

‘Don’t delude yourself. This is merely providing the bare minimum environment necessary for a tool. If she freezes to death, she can no longer fulfill her usefulness. Did he not say so himself? It is nothing more than an investment to maintain my utility.’

Without realizing it, Eveline turned her head and looked back.

Her gaze locked dead-center in the air with Kailus, who was standing at an angle near the glass door, watching her walk inside.

For a split second, Kailus’s hand froze.

The red eyes that had always sunk with glacial indifference were pinned in a fierce silence, obsessively scanning Eveline’s face. It was not a simple attempt to check her complexion or assess her condition.

His gaze was piercing right through the unfamiliar expression on Eveline’s face—her two eyes, colored with life for the first time as something overwhelmed her, and the very subtle, relaxed curve of her cheeks where her guard had melted away.

The silence lengthened.

Soon, Kailus’s brow narrowed irritably. He wrenched his forcibly entangled gaze away and cast it up into the empty air beyond the glass ceiling.

He crossed his massive arms tightly and leaned his shoulder against the iron frame of the glass door.

Even so, the tip of his sidelong red glare still hovered restlessly around Eveline’s silver hair.

Unable to endure the perilous current flowing through the silence, Eveline turned her head away first.

She resumed her steps deeper into the greenhouse. Her heartbeat hammered dizzyingly against her ears. Her footsteps came to a halt in front of a structure standing at the very back of the greenhouse, its back pressed against the massive glass wall.

It was a bookshelf.

Heavy bookcases woven from moisture-resistant, sturdy oak lined up like a wall along the glass barrier of the greenhouse. And on every single tier, large and small books were packed tightly without a single gap.

Eveline’s breathing choked sharply inside her chest.

Her hands shook.

Her gloved hand trembled as it reached out into the empty air. She caressed the spine of a thick book tucked into the nearest slot. Gold-leaf lettering embossed over smooth, high-end leather binding.

It was the very same military geography book Eveline had spent days agonizing over, curled up in the corner of Kailus’s study while burning through pain.

The old poetry book tucked beside it, the territorial administration code right next to that, and even the continental flora guide neatly arranged on the shelf below.

These were all books that had been scattered haphazardly across Kailus’s vast study.

No, to be precise, it was abundantly clear that he had meticulously selected only the books that had borne Eveline’s fingerprints and held her lingering gaze over the past few weeks, moving them here in their entirety.

Eveline slowly turned her head.

Kailus was still leaning against the frame near the glass door. He crossed his arms and pretended to casually skim the greenery inside the greenhouse, but the final destination of his gaze was undeniably Eveline’s frozen back before the bookshelf.

“……These books are.”

The voice slipping past Eveline’s lips lacked its usual dryness and trembled. Kailus shrugged his large, solid shoulders indifferently.

“The study was cramped, so I just cleared out things that were an eyesore to me. They’re just junk I don’t read anyway.”

A lie.

Eveline’s fingertips twitched violently on the book spine.

The Northern Grand Duke’s massive study was vast enough to comfortably hold dozens of armed knights. The transferred books had not been sorted by subject or author; instead, they were arranged in chronological order, closely mirroring the timeline of when Eveline had pulled them out and read them.

‘There’s no way it could be……’

Eveline bit down on her lower lip.

She decided to think of it simply as managing a tool’s condition. After all, she needed to be at peace to endure the magic transfers.

It was no different from throwing a toy into a breeding pen so that she could maintain her usefulness a little longer.

A warm breeze mixed with the scent of soil and flowers brushed through her silver strands. Leaning against the bookshelf, Eveline gently pressed her forehead against the cool spine of a book.

No matter how much she shook her head to deny it, the unfamiliar warmth kept worming its way through the cracks.

The fact that this arrogant and ferocious man was quietly trailing her gaze from behind the mask of cool indifference—

That fact planted itself like a thorn deep in the corner of her heart, refusing to budge. Eveline squeezed her eyes shut tightly as if to suppress what was welling up.

Thud, thud.

The sound of footsteps treading on the soft soil of the greenhouse echoed out. Kailus was walking inside. The moment he brushed past Eveline, a cool scent of sandalwood and a faint trace of blood drifted heavily through the air.

“Come whenever you like if you fancy it. You don’t need my separate permission.”

Kailus no longer bothered to check Eveline’s expression. He turned on his heel and walked toward the glass exit door.

And just before his massive back nearly touched the glass door, without pausing his stride or looking back, he dropped a low voice.

“And don’t collapse. If you pass out in some patch of weeds like this, it’s a nuisance to go looking for you.”

Click. With a heavy frictional sound, the glass door closed.

Even after Kailus’s shadow completely evaporated from her field of vision, Eveline remained frozen in place before the bookshelf for a long while, unable to pull her feet away.

The inside of her throat burned hot. She didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or laugh.

Yet one thing was certain: the heat wrapping around her right now was entirely different from the scorching burn of the magic transfer. It did not tear her skin. It did not scorch her internal organs.

It was an excruciatingly sweet warmth that made her breath come in ragged gasps despite the complete absence of pain.

Eveline reached out a hand.

It drifted aimlessly from one end of the oak bookshelf to the other. Brushing past the leather-bound spines one by one, her gaze came to a halt in the farthest, dimmest corner of the bookcase.

Tucked away incongruously among the countless luxury tomes sat a single, old, and crude book.

Unlike the other volumes adorned with gold leaf or flashy leather, it was a rough, antiquated manuscript bound in faded, yellowish parchment. The corners of the cover were worn and frayed from weathering the storms of many years, and not even a title was inscribed on its spine.

Eveline pulled that old manuscript from the shelf as if drawn by a spell.

Through her glove, the rough, dry texture of the parchment transmitted completely. And right in the exact center of that dust-covered, aged cover—

A ferocious crest, deeply branded like a stigma in dark red pigment, radiated a bizarre, living pressure.

A giant red dragon roaring with its wings unfurled. It was the crest of the Northern Grand House of Damian.

Unable to let out even the sound of a breath, Eveline’s pale fingertips stopped right over that faded red dragon crest.