One should be suspicious of kindness offered too easily, or dreams obtained too easily. They might be illusions or poison.
The boy who had opened the box with hope and joy, untying its ribbon, was always frustrated, disappointed, and saddened. That was how they oppressed and abused the dragon’s child, making him even less than human, preventing him from awakening as a dragon.
Even after becoming a dragon, he couldn’t help but doubt when his desperately wished-for desires came true. The traces of abuse are always vivid.
“…Kaela.”
Kaela said once more that she wouldn’t abandon him. Since words often disappear without leaving a trace, people don’t trust them and leave records and signatures instead.
Peon instinctively carved this moment into a separate memory. Then, unable to press her about whether she was sincere, he could only call her name without continuing.
Because everything he wanted always disappeared or was taken away from him, he had to hold on tight and not let go. He had to fight and win against those who would take things away. Nothing stayed of its own accord. Therefore, it must be a lie.
“It’s not a lie.”
Kaela knew even the anxiety hidden in his depths. She had seen everything her husband did because of her, even as she coughed up blood from poison.
She shook her head firmly. She gave the answer he desperately needed but didn’t dare to ask.
Peon wrapped both arms around Kaela’s waist and pulled her closer. Blood flickered in his eyes again. She shook her head and reached out to wipe his eyes.
“I mean it.”
She thought it was a wretched fate to marry again even after returning. She thought it was a relationship where Kaela was unilaterally trampled and ignored, yet still maintained minimal duty with foolish affection.
Since it was clear which way the scales tipped, she believed that between the two of them, Kaela would always be the one abandoned.
“From now on, I won’t die. I’ll try living.”
After watching her approach death’s door several times before Peon’s eyes, she understood. It wasn’t Kaela who had abandoned him; Peon had always been the one abandoned.
He was so miserable and lonely, muttering to himself while weeping tears of blood like a madman. When she saw him muttering in a daze, the fact she had vaguely known but thoroughly ignored and neglected became clear.
Ah, it wasn’t you who abandoned, but me.
One drop of blood falling down her pale cheek was enough, without needing further confirmation. That expression of his, unable to take his eyes off her or dare to ask more questions, was enough. Kaela wanted to live too.
“Thank you.”
His hand, large enough to cover her face, awkwardly caressed her cheek. Not knowing what to do despite how much he had suffered. Kaela rubbed her face against that hand that couldn’t even get angry or make demands when faced with her. Peon held his breath.
“For never giving up on me.”
“How could I give up on you?”
A drop of blood fell on her white, smooth clothing.
“I don’t know how to give up on you. Even if you scream that I’m disgusting and get angry, I’ll only keep trying to save you until the end.”
“I know.”
Kaela smiled brightly, either finding his words amusing or pleasing.
“I’m not desperately wanting to live or so excited about tomorrow that I don’t know what to do. I might break today’s promise if I become too distressed again and want to stop.”
Such days might come. Peon nodded.
“I know.”
The wounds already received are too great; there will be times when it becomes unbearable. Sometimes anger will surge up belatedly from the pain and emptiness, and there will be times when she wants to let go of everything because it’s painful, annoying, and difficult.
“But I just want to try living. Today, I just felt like it. The days I’ve felt like that have increased a bit. It’s been that way since I fell in the river.”
“Yes. I know.”
Peon kept nodding through tears and faithfully responding while wiping Kaela’s cheeks as she spoke.
“When it’s just the two of us, living together wasn’t bad. No, I think it was quite good.”
The incredibly beautiful man closed his eyes while dripping blood. He gratefully wept as he listened, as if her words were his only path to salvation and a pardon from execution.
“Just, today, because oppa suffered so much because of me, I hope you won’t be in pain anymore from now on.”
That’s why she decided to live. That was all. It wasn’t for any grand or remarkable reason, but she didn’t want Peon, the man who never wavered, to cling to her and cry so miserably.
It was just devastating to see him cry with his long eyelashes wet with blood on his masculine face.
“I just don’t want that to happen.”
“I’ll always be in pain if something happens to you. Remember that at least once when you get tired of me.”
Even amid all this, Peon tried his best to make Kaela’s vague promise a little clearer and extend its duration.
“I know that.”
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“Then, do you also know how pettily I’m going to cling to what you just said?”
“I know.”
Kaela nodded readily.
“Because I’ve seen what kind of person, no, what kind of dragon you are.”
“You know well, and you’re okay with that?”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t like being in pain either, and also…”
“Also?”
She wiped the cheeks of Peon, who kept asking questions and continued to show anxiety.
“I win, don’t I?”
Peon couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.
“It’s true, isn’t it? I win.”
“Yes. I’m in the position of begging you to live every day.”
He carelessly wiped away his blood and showered his wife with kisses.
“I have to beg that divorce isn’t allowed and to please treat me as a husband.”
It seems crying and acting crazy works somewhat.
“But I did treat you as a husband?”
“You treated me as Your Highness the Grand Duke.”
“No.”
Kaela placed her hands on his shoulders and shook her head.
“No?”
“Yes. You’re really, really my husband?”
But Peon’s face was somehow clouded. It was a relationship that had continued since they were too young, and wasn’t he full of flaws to be called a husband, with a mistress clinging to him?
Peon wasn’t sure if Kaela was just being lenient with him because of their long relationship, or if she really thought of him as her husband. He lacked confidence.
“It just keeps feeling like we’re only oppa and dongsaeng.”
Because they were specially close since childhood, and because of that closeness, they had inevitably seen too much of what they shouldn’t have seen of each other. Peon always felt thirsty, lacking, and insufficient in his relationship with Kaela, his heart burning.
“Well, since we’ve known each other since childhood…Beatrice is also unni.” (TL: sister/big sister)
“Yet you don’t call her unni anymore.”
“I don’t want to call her that familiarly anymore. And speaking of her, dying twice from the same poison made me really angry. I won’t die like that.”
At these sudden words, Peon fell silent for a moment, searching his memories.
“What do you mean, the same poison?”
The poison Kaela took this time was, in his memory, the first time.
“What do you mean?”
Kaela looked at him quietly for a moment before quietly beginning what she had wanted to say, or what she should have said.
“Before the regression, I mean. When I died.”
She deliberately spoke slowly. Because Peon’s expression was starting to crumble.
“Actually, just before I died, I saw Beatrice.”
The poison in the hands of the uninvited guest who broke through the frozen tower door when she was too cold and most bodily functions had stopped. This was a story only she knew.
Kaela did her best to calmly lay out the story of that time.
Although Beatrice called the Emperor “our Vincent,” her presence there was suspicious, and in the end, she dropped poison into her mouth, causing her to die quickly. Peon carefully listened to every word without missing anything.
“Thinking about it now, it was strange, but to talk about it…”
“It must have been difficult.”
Moreover, right after regressing, she probably felt it wasn’t worth mentioning at all. Peon nodded.
“I don’t have enough strength to talk at length. I also thought it didn’t matter since it ended with death. Considering our relationship, I didn’t want to talk about it either.”
“Of course.”
“But when the Marchioness of Schroz kept offering rose tea, there was something strange about the aftertaste.”
She traced and retraced the feeling of a tiny droplet stickily sliding down her throat.
“It’s the same poison. But it was a bit weaker. No, maybe when I was dying, my body was too damaged to feel the pain.”
Peon shuddered as he held Kaela and picked up the spoon he had put down.
“Eat while you talk, eat while you talk.”
He felt like feeding her something more might somehow ease this devastating feeling.
“Hm? Ah, yes.”
Kaela quickly opened her mouth to eat. After thoroughly chewing and swallowing, she continued chattering.
“Anyway, it’s the same poison. It’s definitely the poison Beatrice gave me.”
“…I see.”
Peon narrowed his eyes as he recalled Beatrice’s back view as she secretly wandered around the imperial palace.
Though rummaging through the brain of the crazed Marchioness of Schroz again might reveal more details, he already completely trusted Kaela’s judgment.
“Thank you for telling me. What would you like me to do?”
Kaela, who had been thinking quietly, puffed up her cheeks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that.”
“But you’re angry?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s think about it after you finish eating all of this.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Kaela very naturally turned her body completely toward the food.
“But, oppa?”
“Yes?”
“If oppa-dongsaeng isn’t right for a married couple, what should we change it to?”
The terms oppa and dongsaeng, which had become natural through long use, could be changed if they bothered her husband who shed tears of blood and set fires for her.
Things would get better as they fixed such things one by one. Then, living would change from being not bad to being better.
Even if it was difficult, she could do it. She was confident in her ability to work hard at least. Come to think of it, it was rare for nobles to call their husbands oppa.
“What else is there? If not oppa-dongsaeng, then it’s ‘yeobo-dangshin’.” (TL: honey or darling)
“Honey?”
“Yes. Now, honey. Ah, open up.”
“Ah.”
There was a soft kissing sound on her cheek as she chewed with her cheeks full.
****
The Emperor, who had been cursing and regretting that he should have waged war against the evil dragon earlier, that he should have taken its head even if it meant war, collapsed twice unable to control his temper.
Now even the Chief Chamberlain Count Horhen, Duke Ostein who had rushed in, and the Crown Prince who had been firmly holding his position, all thought the same thing.
The Emperor was not in his right mind.
Until now, everyone had only thought it but hadn’t spoken it aloud, but now it had become such a fact that they had no choice but to speak it.
The flames that had devoured the magic tools finally showed signs of disappearing only after burning all those precious treasures hundreds of years old. The walls didn’t burn, and not even the curtains were singed.
The Emperor, who had been carried to safety by knights, trembled his hands. He was now shaking, consumed by what might be fear or hallucination.
“I, I should personally…”
He needed to go personally and do something. His chest felt tight as if blocked, and his vision swam.
Something more fearful than death was dancing with a sword held over his neck. But there was nowhere to run, and no countermeasures. If he went personally, who knows what he would hear from the flames that mocked him.
The Emperor was too afraid and entrusted the task of suppressing the fire in the magic tool room to the Grand Duke of Lusenford who had hurriedly come to the palace. The evil dragon couldn’t touch its own son. He knew that.
‘That beast, that beast has appeared in Craine!’
The Emperor desperately held the hand of the Empress, whom he had ordered the knights to bring along. He completely embraced her limp arm.
“No one, no one can take her away. This filthy woman is mine…!”
But there was no strength at all in his aged arms embracing her white, smooth arms. No matter how much strength he put into holding her, he couldn’t handle the unconscious Empress’s body.
What should I do, how can I hold onto her? How can I possess everything? At that moment, the Emperor’s arms slipped. He grasped at empty air and took a sharp breath. Again. The Empress disappeared again.
“He-here…”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Count Horhen quickly approached respectfully.
“The Empress is here, right? Chief Chamberlain, the Empress is here, right?”
His searching hands were desperately pleading for him to say yes. But Count Horhen quickly drew in his breath. The Emperor was now groping for the half-transparent Empress.
“Th-the Empress! Call a magician! Quickly!”
“Qu-quickly catch her! Horhen, catch the Empress! Bring the magic tools!”
The Chief Chamberlain also dared to reach out to try to grab the Empress, but his hands only grasped air.
The Empress, who had momentarily become transparent, disappeared completely the next moment, before the magician could arrive, without even flickering as if mocking the Emperor.
At the same time, the flames that had been devouring the magic tool room quietly extinguished after consuming the last magic tool.
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