Chapter 5
Fear and hatred are emotions that can go hand in hand. There must be countless people in this world who both fear and hate the same target.
Perhaps Anaide could have hated Fernir rather than feared him.
However, her emotion toward him was clearly fear. He could stride over and take her life at any moment, and from now on she would always have to live seeing his face.
It would be a lie to say she felt no anger toward the one who killed her father, but just standing before him extinguished even her will to fight.
Because some fears erase even hatred.
While hatred makes one lift their head proudly toward an enemy and straighten their spine, fear breaks and bends all of that.
It was the same now.
A heavy presence. A gaze that clung even in darkness.
Anaide’s head kept sinking downward. She couldn’t see her opponent, yet he was observing her so thoroughly he might as well be dissecting her. Even in the darkness, this gaze alone reached her skin vividly.
The helplessness spreading with eeriness, and the emotion toward one who had become an unknowable existence—these were things Anaide had felt when looking at her father at some point.
How devastated she had been when she first learned that even fierce anger was only permitted to humans with strength.
But even that devastation easily died out like a dying ember. It was fear more familiar than hatred.
Rolling her eyes that hadn’t yet adapted to the darkness, Anaide chewed her lips.
Soon firm arms wrapped around her waist. Anaide tried to climb onto the bed herself, but Fernir pushing her legs onto the bed was faster.
When he released the startled and stiffened Anaide from his embrace, her incredibly thin torso collapsed into the pillow. Fernir murmured in a low, sunken voice.
“Why are you surprised?”
The low, quiet voice wasn’t the only problem.
“It’s not like you don’t know what I’m about to do.”
The real problem was his searingly hot body temperature.
The heat proving someone was close was not just surrounding but suffocating her. As soon as both hearing and touch were stimulated, dry saliva repeatedly fell down her throat.
When she gripped the soft bedding like a rope, Fernir’s lips met hers as if he’d been waiting.
At first it was a stable kiss like breathing life into someone. Even when the contact that began with her lower lip continued to her teeth, the movement remained exploratory. His breathing was careful enough to surprise even Anaide.
It was when their tongues touched and twisted.
Fernir’s head separated once and reached again. As he buried his face deeply, Anaide’s breath began to be irregularly sucked into him.
Soon, as if to swallow all her breath, Fernir’s tongue roughly stirred inside her. He repeatedly pressed and toyed, then fiercely took it away. The series of caresses invaded her neck and shoulders the moment they left her lips, even going below.
When he lifted his head from her upper body, her entire body was already flushed red.
She touched just below her collarbone with trembling hands.
So he swallowed, licked, sucked, and…
And what else had he done?
She couldn’t tell what had happened. No, strictly speaking, she was aware of what had happened but lacked the energy to trace back through it.
The wick of her thought circuits had been half-burned away long ago. Though it was more intense than expected, everything was flowing in a strange direction completely different from the violent path she had imagined.
For the first time since entering the bed, she opened her mouth to utter a proper sentence rather than a moan. An awkward address for a queen to use with a nation’s king caught and fell from her flushed lips.
“Um, excuse me.”
“…What.”
“Can’t we just do it like this?”
“…”
Before she could grab Fernir’s forearm, his fingers soothingly stroked her thigh and slyly crept inward.
An unfamiliar sensation touched the soft area below.
“You’d like that?”
His subtly changed tone touched her ear and broke apart.
Fernir’s forehead pressed against hers. Though she couldn’t see his face, it didn’t seem like a good sign to her.
Her body tensed like pulling a taut rope. Fernir’s left arm lifted one of her legs at a right angle.
“This place… isn’t very wide.”
Hiccup–Anaide’s breath fell in syncopated rhythm like hiccups. Her toes curled and the blanket surface rippled finely.
The wet-filled sounds kept pulling her down below. Something felt like it would overflow.
It was when she buried half her cheek in the pillow to block her ears.
“Ah…!”
The small foreign sensation disappeared and instead a tight shock was applied from below. As she contracted her body with all her might, breath that could have been admiration or a sigh fell onto her rising and falling chest.
Anaide squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t even properly realized what was happening yet, but numbness surged up through her bare skin.
Fernir said nothing at all. Though she felt like dying, it was rather good that he no longer wagged his tongue in useless places. She wasn’t in a state to properly respond to his words anyway.
His body briefly separated from her reddened skin, then buried itself deeply again.
Something pulled out and entered, followed by a stinging sensation that scraped upward. Skin was mercilessly crushed and bodily fluids flowed and dripped stickily.
Hot breath continued to escape between her lips. Heat surged up to below her chin. Tears finally formed and flowed from Anaide’s reddened eyes.
Was it fortunate or unfortunate that it didn’t hurt?
What was certain was that these tears weren’t purely from pain. It seemed like they were tears from an indescribable, unfamiliar sensation she’d never experienced… In place of the vanished pain, a tingling feeling she couldn’t quite define surged in.
When Fernir’s hand that had been gripping her pelvis twisted to embrace her waist, the movements became increasingly large and rough. Intense sensations hotly melted her lower body.
Gone was his early attitude of lingering long even after penetrating—now there was no stopping. It continued spreading, spreading again, then thrusting.
“Make some sound.”
A suppressed voice cut through the heavy air. Though she hadn’t intended to resist, she shook her head and bit her lips for the first time since the candle went out.
She didn’t know. This was her first time experiencing it. It was incomparable to the small friction from before. This was completely splitting and shattering her body.
Anaide’s consciousness was already half-pulverized. She absolutely couldn’t collect herself. She wanted to grab onto something. Even if it was Fernir’s shoulder…
However, Anaide barely held onto the thread of reason that was about to snap, lowering the hand that had been reaching toward him to grip the bedding instead.
Her breath made metallic sounds. She needed to endure more, but had drinking been a mistake? Rather, the intoxication seemed to spread unfamiliar heat she’d never felt before to various places.
Even with her eyes closed, her vision flickered several times. When pushed to limits she couldn’t handle even while gripping and enduring, her body reacted first before she could properly grasp her rope-like consciousness.
Her leg trapped in Fernir’s arm struggled and then completely fell down.
Her knuckles stood out stark white. She coughed as if exhaling her breath while panting.
Her head rang. There wasn’t a single place that didn’t tingle.
She felt a touch wiping the tears pooled on her face. Between their touching bodies, an unsatisfied hardness pressed down.
Anaide blinked her blurred vision and placed her hand on his collarbone. Her fingertips slipped on sweat as they fumbled over his broad shoulders. She wanted to escape his embrace. If she stayed like this, she felt she would suffocate.
“Ah…!”
Then the arm behind her waist tightened more firmly. Though Anaide’s legs pushed against the sheets and retreated, Fernir, having lost his reason, slid in without hesitation.
It rustled noisily like fabric being crushed.
Her mind, unable to handle the deep pleasure, gradually sank below the surface.
Fernir came out of the room adjusting his collar.
Heat flowers from their earlier acts bloomed on his nape. Having calmed the excitement he couldn’t fully release, he took a deep breath and looked around.
In the corridor with only flickering candle stands, Fernir called his subordinate’s surname in a low voice, like summoning a ghost.
“Winklow.”
Then a spider-web-like white figure emerged from what had seemed like an empty wall, and a man appeared.
The man called ‘Winklow’ knelt on one knee before Fernir as if receiving knighthood. Fernir gazed at his silver hair reflecting the yellow light.
Marquis Winklow. As Fernir’s closest associate, he had devoted himself to Fernir since their time in the north. He also received Fernir’s trust due to his excellent skills, analytical ability, and loyalty.
And this time too, Winklow didn’t betray his lord’s trust.
He held up a small pill in his palm. Fernir’s eyes slowly darkened as he picked up the medicine.
“The experiment results?”
“All produced females. It matches perfectly with the results from three days ago, two days ago, and yesterday’s experiments.”
Fernir’s lips curved up slightly.
To others it might look like mockery or scorn, but he was satisfied with the meaningful results his subordinate had brought. He placed his hand on Winklow’s shoulder.
“Sorry to trouble you. I’ve already taken it, but I wanted to be certain.”
“Not at all. Your Majesty’s commands are always an honor for me.”
“Good, you’ve done well. You may withdraw.”
As Fernir gestured, Winklow saluted his lord and stepped back.
At that moment, spider-web-like white, transparent energy emanated from around Winklow. Using it to create a makeshift parachute, he dropped out the window.
The ability he used was similar to the ‘ballooning’ technique spiders use when crossing rivers and such.
Watching this, Fernir put the pill into a separate pocket he’d brought.
By extracting and diluting monster blood for research, then borrowing a little power from priests, even ordinary humans could gain magical abilities. Winklow’s ability to approach silently like a spider or fly temporarily was because he’d been injected with blood from a renowned spider monster.
The pill he’d researched and brought also contained powder made from monster blood.
Blood from a monster whose larvae developed so rapidly that it took only half a day from implantation to birth. Blood useful for couples who had trouble conceiving because it helped with fertilized egg and fetal development.
‘And the monster itself is a species that can determine the sex of its offspring.’
Fernir’s eyes narrowed.
This pill, which Fernir had already taken before mating with Anaide, was also medicine that would make him produce only daughters.
It’s the male sperm, not the female ovum, that determines a child’s sex. So if Fernir’s seed was periodically manipulated through monster blood, Anaide would never be able to bear a son.
She would ultimately be unable to fulfill the conditions of the proposal Fernir had offered, so she could never escape from him.
Forever.
Fernir had never intended to set Anaide free from the beginning.
