Chapter 14
Kyrie willingly took the offered hand. She felt as though she might collapse from the heat surging within her.
Only when a chilling cold swept over her body did the fever subside, if only slightly, yet the nausea remained.
Her body trembled from whatever it was she so desperately wanted to expel. And then, there was a hand that firmly steadied her shaking frame.
The same hand that had, not long before, torn her clothes to shreds.
‘……’
The queasiness eased once her trembling body was held in place. Unconsciously, Kyrie murmured,
‘A little… more…’
She wanted to be held like this, just until this maddening dizziness subsided. It was a plea born of such a feeling.
At her words, a faint, hollow laugh escaped from the other person.
‘Ha.’
That unreadable laugh made Kyrie flinch. In that instant, she felt a gaze searing into her, sharp enough to pierce through her.
It was Lexion’s eyes, watching from where he had been standing beside Elise, laughing.
‘Lexion.’
At some point, he was staring at her with eyes burning in fury. A face she had never seen before. A look she had never encountered in reality.
It wasn’t the gaze of jealousy or lust, but rather, the expression of a petulant child furious to see their once-easy plaything being handled by someone else.
A chill raced through her at that look.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to show interest in another man?’
Who was it that had said that?
She couldn’t recall, and yet the words clung to her mind, refusing to leave.
If Lexion was determined to drag the rest of her life through the mud, then perhaps the only satisfaction left to her was to enrage him in turn.
‘Hold me.’
The moment Kyrie spoke those words, reaching out awkwardly, the figure, whose face still remained unseen, murmured softly,
‘That depends on you, my lady.’
A pair of silver eyes briefly glinted in the light.
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆🌷͙⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
‘……’
Kyrie opened her eyes without a sound. A moment later, her lips parted slowly.
‘…Am I out of my mind?’
Though she’d been called a madwoman countless times, Kyrie herself had never truly questioned her sanity. But now, for the first time, she doubted it.
For heaven’s sake, of all the men to appear in her dreams.
‘Why him, of all people?’
The man who had, without any overt intent, belittled all her efforts and rendered them meaningless. The man who, without even trying, could humiliate her.
Even if it was a dream, to have begged such a man to hold her…
Her face flushed crimson in humiliation.
“To think that’s the first thing you say upon waking. Bold, I must admit.”
‘……’
He was seated on a stool by the bed.
“…Your Grace.”
Kyrie forced the words out. His mere presence, sharp and unyielding, like an exposed nail, made the discomfort festering in her chest swell even larger.
The moment she instinctively sat up, a sharp pain screamed through her temple.
“Ah.”
“You’d best stay lying down.”
The duke spoke with a detached voice, his gaze lingering on the side of her head where she’d winced in pain.
‘……’
His scorching stare was unbearably uncomfortable. Kyrie swallowed hard without meaning to and reached a hand to her head.
Layers of bandages were tightly wound around her aching skull. As she irritably tried to tear them off, the duke extended a hand.
“Did you know? You’re rather troublesome, my lady.”
With those low words, his rough fingers lightly brushed her hand aside and meticulously resecured the bandage.
The sensation made Kyrie flinch again. The moment his thick fingers brushed against her, the memory of those hands ripping at her clothes and touching her in her dream came rushing back.
Without a word, Kyrie scooted away, shrinking her body as though retreating. Her eyes filled with caution, like a hedgehog bristling its spines.
The duke looked down at her as though wondering if that counted as defiance.
“What exactly…”
“Did you lose your memory?”
His indifferent question made the memories rush back.
Elise, clinging so blatantly to Lexion. Her own reckless impulse driving her toward them. The force of Lexion shoving her away. The sharp sensation of falling down the stairs.
‘Those were quite tall stairs, if I recall.’
Yet, for all that, her injuries seemed minimal. Aside from the persistent throb in her temple, there was little pain, no visible wounds.
Not even a split or broken skull, her body might as well have been forged from iron.
‘That can’t be right.’
And yet, until the moment she lost consciousness, she hadn’t felt any premonition this might happen.
‘And another thing…’
Where had Lexion and Elise gone? Why was this man here? And where exactly was this place?
The room’s appearance was unfamiliar. It bore no resemblance to any palace Kyrie knew.
The sharp pointed arches supporting the corners of the chamber were foreign to her.
She wasn’t well-versed in architecture or the arts, but this building’s design felt far removed from any typical structure in the capital.
‘……’
It was then that Kyrie noticed something strange. While her clothing hadn’t changed much, something felt conspicuously absent.
Unconsciously, she groped at her waist. All she felt beneath the outer dress and a thin slip was emptiness.
‘The corset…?’
It was gone, someone had undressed her unconscious body and removed it.
Noticing her searching, the duke spoke as if it were nothing.
“They say you can’t breathe properly in those things. It had to come off.”
‘……’
“I wasn’t about to let someone die in my house.”
“Die…”
“You were unconscious for an entire day. It was a reasonable concern.”
‘In my house.’
From the way he said it, this place must have been his townhouse in the capital.
It was deeply unsettling, though Kyrie found herself in no position to protest.
All she could do was hope that it had been the physician and some handmaids who’d undressed her and nothing worse, though there was not a single maid in sight.
Kyrie’s gaze flickered to the duke’s rough hands, then up at the ceiling.
And to think she’d been asleep for a whole day.
‘What in the world is going on?’
Nothing made sense. She looked to the duke for answers, but he offered none.
He simply watched as her hand rose, almost by instinct, to the bandaged side of her head again. Clicking his tongue, he spoke with cold indifference.
“You should’ve been left as you were.”
“I…”
“It wouldn’t do if you lost your value because of a scar, would it, my lady?”
The air seemed to freeze for a brief moment.
Kyrie slowly blinked, as if trying to properly absorb what she’d just heard.
“…Value, you say.”
The Grand Duke, expression unchanged, retrieved a cigar from his pocket, sliced the end with a cutter, and placed it between his lips. His crimson lips pressed against the fragrant cigar.
“Yes, value.”
Kyrie stared at him, and when he met her gaze, he abandoned the notion of lighting it altogether.
Casting his eyes to her head one last time, he casually tossed the cigar into a container in the corner.
“I warned you, didn’t I?”
That statement sounded like this – See? I was right.
You wasted your efforts. You invested your worth in the wrong place.
Even as Kyrie struggled to cast aside the reprimand echoing in her own voice, the duke went on in that calm, unfeeling tone, as though delivering a death sentence.
“The man you so desperately clung to has found something of greater worth.”
‘……’
“In your already precarious position, what happens if your value drops any further?”
Without meaning to, her lips parted slightly. Lexion’s face, the moment he’d chosen Elise and discarded her, surfaced in her mind.
The duke, though likely unaware of the full details, seemed to have grasped well enough that she’d been cast aside.
“If you intend to keep courting his favor,”
And that she was painfully desperate to do so.
“Stop picking at your wounds. If you want to preserve what little worth you have left.”
His words were as indifferent as appraising the price of a commodity.
Kyrie opened her mouth to retort, then realized, belatedly, that he wasn’t entirely wrong.
‘…Yes. I’m a thing.’
At least, in Lexion’s eyes.
He’d never had any obligation to honor a promise made to something so insignificant. There was no reason for a man like him to keep his word to a mere plaything.
‘Perhaps.’
Perhaps the duke was right.
Instead of clinging blindly, she should have maintained a careful distance, drawn Lexion in by making him chase her.
Like lovers in any proper courtship, she should have balanced the push and pull.
But she had never known such grace. She’d never possessed the luxury for such games, not when it came to Lexion.
And now, that left her feeling a cold, bone-deep loneliness.
‘Ha.’
She tried to laugh again, yet what escaped was a bitter, twisted smile.
Unable to bear it, Kyrie covered her mouth with a trembling hand, only to realize the duke was still seated nearby. She hurriedly steadied her breathing.
‘I don’t want him to see.’
Not this man. Not the one who had so swiftly discerned her weakest spot. She didn’t want to show him the most pitiful side of herself.
In truth, had the duke not intervened that day, perhaps she would have thrown herself at Lexion, resolved to settle matters by any means.
The mere thought made fresh heat rise to her forehead.
‘What now?’
While she struggled with that thought, the duke rose from his seat and walked to the door.
Now that she was awake, it was clear that she was expected to leave.
