Chương 110: 44-2. Sick Love

I turned my head to the side, away from those eyes—blue and close and cold enough to ache. Her breath fell against my cheek. Light. Worse than any blade. There is probably no more absurd way to die than having the Grand Princess of an Empire press you into her mattress and quietly ask if you'll hold her.

What made it more absurd was that I still had to stay lucid through the whole thing, or tomorrow I wouldn't just be a footnote in the capital's gossip—I'd be a cautionary entry in the Empire's official historical record. I drew a breath. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"Erina. Don't." She didn't move. Those blue eyes stayed on me, the way you look at something that won't do what you want but that you can't simply crush. I made myself finish the sentence.

"If I hold you now, there's no walking it back." The air seemed to hollow out for a moment. The fragile thing that had been almost surfacing in her eyes—that small, unguarded edge of vulnerability—went very still. Then, quietly, it receded, like something sealed back under ice. Then she laughed. Very softly. Like shards of ice clinking against the rim of a glass. There was no shame in that laugh. No anger either. Only a kind of clarity that ran ice-cold down my spine—she understood, and I understood.

It wasn't that I didn't want to. It was that I had chosen to retreat. And for some people, that kind of calculated withdrawal cuts deeper than any outright refusal. She slowly released my collar and withdrew, rising from the bed with movements that were impossibly steady. The silver hair that had spilled loose around us she gathered back with one practiced motion; the wrinkles in her heavy velvet gown she smoothed away inch by methodical inch.

By the time I managed to push myself upright against the mattress, she had already taken the woman who had asked to be held and buried her completely beneath layers of formal dress, pearl ornaments, and flawless royal breeding. Standing before me now was only the Grand Princess of the Empire.

"Come here, Lord Rosa." She didn't look back. She simply raised one hand and gestured toward the sitting area on the far side of the room. Only a single bronze magic lamp burned there, its amber glow pressed low beneath an ornate shade, as if even the light understood that whatever was about to be discussed here was entirely unsuited to bright illumination.

Two high-backed ebony chairs faced each other across a small round table—rigid, unforgiving, the sort of furniture specifically designed for cutting emotions into neat pieces before negotiating their market value. I got off the bed and walked over in silence, taking a seat. Erina followed and sat across from me. The ice-blue layers of her skirt spread around the chair legs in overlapping folds, like a flower that had been frozen so long it had forgotten how to wither.

The silence that followed stretched well past the bounds of dignity. I kept my eyes on my gloves, trying very hard not to think about the lingering warmth where her body had pressed against mine. She sat with her gaze lowered, fingertips resting lightly on the armrest, as if waiting to see which of us would admit defeat first. Outside, waves struck the cliff face below the keep in steady, heavy beats—like someone had specifically hired them to toll my funeral bells.

I cleared my throat, attempting to pry open this exquisitely well-mannered death.

"Your High—""What just happened is over." She raised her eyes and cut me off with perfect composure. There was nothing left in those eyes of the earlier storm. No woman asking to be held. No novice who had called my name in a mountain monastery. No Erina who had slept fitfully in rattling carriages, frowning even in her dreams, wrapped in a shared cloak. Only a princess, calm to the point of cruelty.

"Now," she said, "we discuss business." The sense of foreboding that had been quietly gestating in my chest finally bloomed into full, terrifying shape. Of course. There was never going to be a soft landing tonight. When women of the royal line willingly expose their vulnerabilities, it's rarely because they genuinely intend to hand you their heart. It's usually to determine whether you're qualified to see it. And if you decline to take it—the conversation moves on to other commodities. Such as your life.

Or your political allegiances. Erina reached out and opened an unassuming dark blue velvet box that had been sitting on the table. Inside lay a dagger. The blade was narrow, silver-white to the point of sanctity, the pommel inlaid with the twelve-pointed sacred seal. It wasn't a weapon meant for killing. It was more like the sort of specialized royal instrument designed for slicing through propriety so people could bleed their loyalty directly into the imperial ledger.

I stared at that dagger and suddenly missed Jessi with desperate intensity. At least when that woman plotted my destruction, she usually had the courtesy to let me laugh first.

"Cedric." Erina spoke my name, her voice as light as if she were asking about the evening chill.

"Do you know why I summoned you here tonight?" I looked at her without answering immediately. She wasn't in a hurry. She simply lifted the dagger, her thumb tracing slowly across the crest on the hilt, caressing it like a piece of familiar jewelry.

"Because you are entirely too practiced at retreating," she said. Something twitched at the corner of my brow. Erina looked up at me, the faintest trace of a smile touching her lips. Not a warm smile. The kind that makes the air feel colder.

"At the monastery, you drew your sword." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"On the snow mountain, you stepped in front of me."

"In Angel City, you dragged me out of hell."

"But the moment we returned to the capital—one glimpse of crowns, family names, betrothals, rules—" She paused.

"And you started retreating." I didn't argue. Because she was absolutely right. It wasn't that I didn't understand what she meant. I understood it too well. Well enough to know there were places that, once I reached for them, would leave someone like me drowning before the first touch. Erina seemed to find her answer in my silence. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

"You don't have to hold me," she said.

"I will allow you one moment of cowardice." It sounded like forgiveness. It landed harder than any accusation. She placed the dagger flat on the table and pushed it toward me with one fingertip, slow and deliberate.

"But you will at least tell me where you intend to stand." I stared at the blade, and something heavy dropped in my chest. Here it comes. I'd been foolishly hoping all evening that tonight might actually be just about feelings. But looking at this, I could see clearly: the feelings had been nothing but the appetizer. The main course was what the royal family had always excelled at—using the most intimate, private things to open the door, then walking you to the one place you could never turn back from.

"What do you want to know?" I asked quietly. Erina watched me. In the lamplight, her eyes were like two patches of frozen sea.

"If the day comes when the crown and I are no longer pointing in the same direction," she said, each word weighed carefully before release, "which side will you protect first?" For a moment I genuinely wondered if my ears had malfunctioned. The question was enormous. And far too early. Enormous in the way a noose is enormous before it's been fitted—she was asking me to choose my own neck. The royal family really was something else.

When ordinary people negotiated loyalty, they started with salaries, fiefs, and honors. She had bypassed all of that and cut straight to the absolute bottom line: If the entire Empire tells you to stay away from me—will you help the Empire remember its priorities? I lifted my head and met her gaze.

"Erina, you can't just say things like—""Answer me." Her voice was level. Not a millimeter of give in it. And then I understood. She didn't just want an answer. Or rather—she wanted more than that. She wanted a position. A stance that, once I spoke it aloud, I could never fully argue my way out of, no matter how hard I tried. She had asked me to hold her earlier and I hadn't taken it. So now she was changing tactics, finding another way to anchor me to her side.

And this time, she wasn't planning on letting me retreat. My silence stretched on. Long enough for the waves outside to feel like they'd finished tolling an entire funeral service. Erina watched me for a moment, then reached across and took my left hand. Before I could react, she had turned my palm upward. Her white gloves pressed against my skin, cold as snow.

"Don't move." She looked up and smiled at me. That smile was thin, light, and devastatingly beautiful. Beautiful in the way that makes you suddenly remember you haven't written a will.

"This isn't punishment," she said softly.

"Only a reminder of whom you bowed to first tonight." The next instant, the blade sliced across my palm. Pain detonated. My breath came apart instantly, my fingers jerking back on pure instinct—but she held my hand down with surprising strength. Blood welled up fast along the cut, staining the dagger and spotting the tabletop, red enough to sting the eyes. I clenched my teeth and refused to make a sound. Perfect.

The newly reinstated heir of House Rosa—summoned to a princess's bedchamber, pinned to her mattress, then subjected to a localized blood ritual, all in one evening. If word got out, it could feed three generations of tavern storytellers in the capital. Should the Empire ever face a budget shortfall, I personally recommend the Ministry of Internal Affairs simply adapt my catastrophically unlucky life into a stage play and sell tickets.

Erina held my hand steady, apparently oblivious to the cold sweat gathering at my temples.

"Cedric," she called my name softly. I looked up and found her blue eyes resting on me, quiet and intent. There was no madness in them. No hysteria. None of the overwrought passion you'd hear in cheap ballads. It was precisely because they were so calm that the whole thing felt so profoundly wrong. She wasn't acting on impulse. She knew exactly what she was doing, down to the angle, down to the pressure. She knew it with enough clarity to be called elegant.

"If you cannot love me," she said, "then at least do not stand against me." My throat moved. Erina leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper, every word distinct.

"I do not want the loyalty of your lips."

"What I want is—no matter what I become, no matter what people say, no matter how many frown at my decisions, or fear me, or come to hate me—" Her fingertip pressed lightly against the edge of my wound. Pain shot up my arm, pulling every tendon taut.

"Do not be the first to betray me." In that moment, I finally understood what she truly resembled. Not a princess. Not a woman. Not even someone turning ruthless after being denied. She was a catastrophe dressed in extraordinary finery. Crown, formal dress, silver hair, and immaculate breeding on the outside—and inside, something utterly quiet, utterly clear-eyed, and utterly unwilling to let go. She wasn't trying to cage me.

She was simply, very patiently, reshaping the world into a place where I would have nowhere else to go. I closed my eyes briefly, then forced my voice up through the roughness in my throat.

"…If that day comes," I said, "I will stand on your side." Erina looked at me, unsatisfied.

"Wrong address," she said gently. The breath caught in my chest. My continued survival to this point felt like a glaring oversight in the Empire's justice system. I opened my eyes and looked at her directly.

"I will stand on your side, Erina," I said quietly.

"If the day comes that you are crowned—I will be loyal to my Queen." This time, she finally smiled. Not the thin, icy smile from before. Something shallower. Quieter. And infinitely more unsettling. Like something she hadn't been entirely certain she could obtain had, in the end, settled neatly into her hands. She put the dagger away, then placed her other hand over my bleeding palm. Healing light spread from her fingertips—faint but steady.

The wound closed bit by bit beneath that glow; the bleeding stopped, the flesh knit back together. When it was finished, all that remained was a very pale white line, lying quietly across the center of my palm like a thread of silk. On the surface, I was whole again. But I knew this wasn't meant for others to see. It was meant for me to remember. Every time I made a fist from now on, I would think of tonight first. The silver hair spilling around me. The cold of her gloves. The bite of the blade.

And that sentence more binding than any confession of love—if you cannot love me, at least do not stand against me. Erina released my hand and settled back into her chair, her expression already restored to suggest nothing had happened here at all.

"You may go now, Lord Rosa," she said mildly. I looked at her and almost asked: That's it? But thinking it through—what else was there? She had already taken what she came for. The embrace could go ungiven. The comfort could remain unspoken. She wasn't even in a hurry for formal recognition. What she had wanted first was loyalty. A position. A guarantee that every time I looked back, I would remember this blade before anything else.

If this woman ever went into commerce, the Empire would be bankrupt within a generation. I stood up slowly. Erina didn't look at me again. She simply lowered her head to smooth imaginary wrinkles from her skirt, her voice as light as if she were mentioning the weather.

"When you leave, convey my apologies to my father," she said.

"Tell him I am unwell this evening and will not be joining for dinner." I stood there and looked at her for a moment. She remained perfectly upright in the lamplight—ice-blue dress pooled around the chair, silver hair cascading softly, expression composed and serene—as if the interrogation that had nearly come apart at the seams, the blade, the oath, had all been nothing but a fever dream my exhausted mind had conjured to torment me. But the pale line across my palm was still there. So I knew it wasn't a dream.

The heavy wooden door closed with a clicking sound, burying Cedric's footsteps in the long, dark hallway. Inside the quiet room, Princess Elena stood frozen. Then, a sharp, choked gasp broke from her throat, twisting instantly into a terrifying, manic laugh that echoed against the stone walls. Tears of raw humiliation and ecstatic fury welled in her wide, hollow eyes, spilling down her pale, flushed cheeks. For the first time in her life, the empire's crown jewel had been denied.

She had given him her heart, her status, even her own body—yet that mere subject of hers, her savior, had dared to walk away. Her gloved hands trembled; one clawed frantically at her blue dress, while the other traced her own face, her fingernails digging into her flesh as saliva trailed from the corner of her manic grin. She had never been taught how to grieve, only how to possess. If she could not have his heart willingly, she would simply have to break his wings.

"Cedric..." a broken, shivering murmur finally escaped her parted lips, heavy with an unnatural thrill.

"You'll still love me, won't you? You have to... you have to..."