Chapter 2
The discomfort of Barath’s presence at her back was building.
To his relief, he heard a small rumbling in Selene’s stomach.
A low, cold voice rang in her ear.
“Eat.”
And with that, Barath turned on his heel and walked out.
As the faint warmth behind him faded, she could smell the fishy odour again. The bedding had obviously been removed, but the smell seemed to linger faintly.
Selene opened all the windows in her bedroom, and it was clear that this was the north.
The air was still cold even though spring had begun, but most of all, the snow outside still hadn’t melted.
Selene looked slowly at the bedroom again.
As befits a northern castle, the walls were hung with furry wall hangings of all sorts, and the floor was lined with a warm carpet.
Suddenly, she remembered Barath’s footsteps last night. She didn’t think she would have made a sound if she’d been running around. How could he have made that sound on the plush carpet?
Soon, her eyes landed on the unmade bed, and she remembered Barath, the bed splattered with blood.
‘Should I run?’
In the original story, Selene’s confinement begins before the first night’s ceremony. He is a Grand Duke who has announced his retirement from the field of battle and returned to his estate to marry.
He had announced his retirement from the battlefield and returned to the estate to get married. In fact, the idea of farming in the north was a nonsense in the first place.
As confinement and coercion are the key words in the word, he was the top beast, the one who had no regard for the plight of a twenty-year-old girl who couldn’t even look him in the eye.
She had a hunch that what lay ahead for her was not going to be pretty. What dreams and hopes could there be for a woman and a beast who had been sold for money?
She read so many books with fairy tales and innocent love, and she wouldn’t have read them if she’d known what she was getting into…
Still, she was glad the confinement didn’t start right away. At least she had time to prepare herself.
She suddenly remembered Barath’s cold eyes and blunt voice, and began to worry about her first time with him, which would never be kind.
She sat down to eat, but she couldn’t get a bite down.
She just sat there, staring out the window.
As the new Grand Duchess, Selene was not brave enough to run away one day in the middle of nowhere.
She has no idea where to go or how to get there, and if she leaves now, she’ll freeze to death on the road.
She’d already been close to death from cold and hunger when she was a Yumi, so the vague fear of running away with nothing was even worse.
But she couldn’t bring herself to roast that giant of a man.
No matter how much she thought about it, shw had no answer.
While Selene sat there by the window, Anna came in, made the bed crisp and fresh, and invited her to lunch.
But her appetite was not satisfied.
The thought that we might not see the sun until tomorrow made me wince as the sun tilted lower and lower.
For a moment, she thought back to her time as Yumi.
Not unlike Selene’s situation, Yumi was an orphan. She had dreamed of becoming an actress since she was in school, and she had joined a small theatre company and worked her way up, even appearing as an extra in a few box office hits.
It was only now that the right roles were starting to come her way.
Her dreams were now scattered, fragments of memory.
The northern sun was short and it was about to get dark outside, and the breeze through the window had grown colder.
There was a hollow cough outside the door, followed by a knock.
“I’m coming in.”
Barath stepped in and the door clicked shut. Selene felt her heart drop in time with the sound.
The observant glances resumed.
When Barath entered the Grand Duke chamber, the first thing Selene’s eyes went to, apart from the window, was the woman.
She was a woman from the southwest.
‘It must be cold.’
Still, the northern breeze was crisp, and he studied her face, wondering if she hadn’t closed the door yet because she liked it.
She had bitten into her lunch and looked groggy, but she didn’t show any of the symptoms of a cold.
It was a bit ridiculous to think to myself why he kept looking at her.
He swallowed a laugh, and suddenly Selene’s eyes met his.
She’d been staring out the window for a while, so he assumed she didn’t like his presence.
He was probably not entirely wrong.
Still, it felt good to meet Selene’s eyes as she looked into mine.
He liked the way she looked at him, not avoiding or distancing herself, but looking straight at him with no expression of disgust.
Even better, she didn’t seem to be afraid of herself.
Selene’s heart was beating so hard it threatened to leap out of her mouth.
Years of honing her eye contact seemed to keep her from giving away her current state of mind.
Looking him straight in the eye, he was honestly her ideal man.
Not only was he huge, hard, and sharp, but he also had an unmistakable aura, similar to the aura of a top actor she had once seen, that was awe-inspiring.
A presence that overwhelms the other person without doing anything.
The man with such a presence is her husband.
‘Is it possible for excitement and fear to reside in the same heart?’
Selene forced herself to look away, her pupils threatening to flutter.
His eyes were like those of a predator, as if he would tear her alive if he caught her faltering.
After watching Selene for a while, Barath spoke slowly.
“You are not hungry, are you?”
Selene felt strange; his words sounded like the kindly Lion asking the rabbit, ‘Shall I bring you some grass?’
Selene smiled slightly. It was a strange expression, one eyebrow arched and the corner of her mouth slightly upturned.
It was the look of someone who had heard the strangest things, but Barath’s eyes widened.
For the first time, he recognisedt an expression on her face.
‘Ah. Selene likes to ask if you’re hungry,’ Barath thought, a silly thought.
He hadn’t seen the lace at the hem of a woman’s skirt since he was ten years old and had been on the battlefields of war.
Even at the few victory balls hosted by the imperial court, which he had attended reluctantly, no woman had ever spoken to him. More precisely, no one spoke to him except the men he’d rolled with on the battlefield and the emperor himself.
Who would say hello to him when he would shudder and dodge at the slightest glance?
Barath was an object of fear, not one of them.
Encouraged by his gentle tone, Selene decided to ask for what she most wanted to do right now.
“Outside.”
She spoke the single word, and Selene shut her mouth again.
She was embarrassed to hear her own voice, so different from the one she’d heard all her life.
She cleared her throat, took another deep breath, and spoke again.
“I want to go out.”
As she spoke, she regretted it. She didn’t think Barath would grant her wish.
In the books she’d read, he was overbearing, abrasive, and didn’t seem to know what patience was for.
She must have been mistaken for a moment when he asked her out of the blue if she was hungry.
Just when she thought she might be about to slam the door in his face and lock it, her eyes caught sight of Barath slowly rising to his feet.
Barath thought of Anna, who had been to his office twice today. She said.
‘She hasn’t touched food all day, just stares out the window.’
Selene looked up, and the huge man cocked his head.
“You’ll have to get up to leave.”
As his words fell, Selene staggered to her feet.
Even with her back straight and erect, she was barely above Barath’s commanding height. Had it been like that at the wedding?
He’d heard that first impressions were usually the strongest between a man and a woman, but Barath’s memory of that was hazy. Probably because he was unimpressed.
Even as he watched her, thinking he would be married to her for the rest of his life, not a shred of emotion moved him.
If anything, he remembered her clutching the quilt in the darkness more clearly.
Barath’s gaze shifted from Selene’s crown for a moment. It wasn’t a deliberate move, just a natural one.
Gradually, his gaze travelled to her collarbone. From above, she looked a little, well, provocative.
Barath clicked his tongue inwardly and opened the closet, pulling out a thick coat and cloak and wrapping them around Selene.
She looked a little puzzled.
The sunset through the window lit her face red as she looked up, wondering why she was bundled up so tightly.
Her face was fine, but there was something about the way her eyes locked onto his that made him want to look at her. Her skin was flawless, and he could barely see her full lips.
He forced himself to turn away and walked briskly to the door and opened it.
A breeze blew against the open window, ventilating the room and replacing it with colder air.
Selene tried to walk as briskly as Barath, but the hem of her overcoat kept catching on her feet.
Barath waited patiently, watching Selene’s impatient attempts to keep her clothes in order.
It didn’t occur to him how much time it would take to get from there to here.
Surprisingly, it was peaceful to watch her take each step cautiously, as if embarrassed by her haphazardly arranged coat and her own inexperience with walking.
When she finally came close enough to make eye contact, her face seemed to say, ‘I’ve made it this far, did I do well? It was a ridiculous thought, even to myself. A full-grown woman had just taken a few steps, and I was hoping for a pat on the back.’
The problem was that it really did seem that way to him.
It was only when she walked a few steps and then looked up at him with a sideways glance that she realized how ridiculous it was.
