Episode 92
At the sudden question, Killian simply stared at her instead of answering. Rowena urged him on.
“Answer me. You said it yourself.”
“Gladly.”
It was a brief, clear answer, but the resolve within it was firm. Rowena quietly met his blue eyes and nodded.
“All right.”
“……”
“I’d like to go in and rest for today.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than Killian signaled to the maid standing behind them to attend to her. As she brushed past him, Rowena hardened her resolve.
* * *
Late the next afternoon, Killian received her summons. When he came out to the courtyard after being told she had something to say, Rowena was already seated at ease, admiring the garden.
“Rowena.”
When Killian approached and made his presence known, Rowena glanced sideways at him and went straight to the point.
“I thought about it a lot yesterday. Why you’re doing this to me. And what I should do.”
She did not want to admit it, but the shock she had received yesterday was still vivid. Everything the countess had said was true. To erase someone completely and forget them was only possible when one had no lingering attachment to that person at all. Though she had laid down every expectation and hope, somewhere in a corner of her heart, the girl she had been at twenty still existed.
It had been her first love. Though it had torn her to shreds and trampled her underfoot, it had still been a first love intense enough to seize and shake her entire short life. Even after every last fragment had been swept away and only ashes remained, that fact did not change. To erase the remnants, she herself had to let go of every lingering feeling. And acknowledge the baseness crouching deep within her heart.
While Rowena gathered her thoughts, Killian sat across from her and watched her intently. He did not urge her to continue, nor did he pressure her with his gaze; he seemed content merely to keep her in his eyes.
“I don’t want to become entangled with you again in any sense. I’ve told you that over and over.”
Rowena lifted her lowered gaze and finally spoke again. Killian nodded.
“I told you before what a mistress is. That in the end, she’s cast aside.”
“A mistress is also someone who struggles desperately not to be cast aside. I’ll use every means I can to hold you by the ankle.”
“Even if there is someone by my side?”
After a short pause, Rowena posed the question casually. Even without naming that “someone,” both of them knew who it was.
For a moment, Killian’s eyes turned savage as the face of the man who had boldly declared in front of him that he would take Rowena back came to mind. But he soon hid his fangs and answered quietly.
“It doesn’t matter. Even if you try to throw me away out of guilt toward him, in the end, I’ll make it so you can’t let me go.”
“You’re saying you’ll struggle?”
Rowena smiled faintly at his confident expression and asked. Killian nodded.
“Then go ahead and try. If you don’t want to be abandoned.”
No sooner had his assent come than Rowena overturned the black tea in her hand. Killian, startled unlike himself, sprang from his seat and came toward her, but only her foot was wet; her expression remained composed.
After confirming Rowena’s unchanged expression and her unharmed skin, Killian belatedly growled.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I wanted to see your resolve.”
Looking up as though observing his expression shift rapidly from surprise to worry, then to anger, Rowena tossed a handkerchief at her feet.
“Wipe it. On your knees.”
As if doubting his ears, Killian froze like ice. Rowena sat elegantly with her legs crossed and leaned back deeply against the chair. Settling into a languid yet arrogant posture, she gestured once more toward the handkerchief with her eyes.
“Or is kneeling before a trivial woman too difficult for your noble pride, Your Highness?”
“……”
No answer came. So it was too much after all. Rowena was about to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen on the top of her foot as Killian stood motionless like a plaster statue.
“I suppose I did something pointless. Then what we just discussed is—”
“Is this all?”
“What?”
With a short scoff, Killian dropped to one knee and placed her foot on his thigh. He lightly grasped her ankle with one hand. As Rowena flinched and instinctively tried to pull her foot away, he soothed her by gently kneading with both hands from her ankle up to her calf as though massaging her, then slowly unfastened her garter belt. His nails lightly trailed down the skin where it had been pressed, and he peeled the silk stocking from her thigh to her calf, then down to her ankle.
She thought he would simply pick up the handkerchief at her feet and wipe away the cooled black tea, but what came next was utterly beyond imagination. Rowena’s face turned deathly pale.
“W-what are you doing right now!”
“Shh.”
At his next action, Rowena unconsciously covered her mouth with one hand. Instead of using the handkerchief, Killian slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket and began to slowly lick up the top of her foot with his tongue.
At the damp, hot, yielding sensation, a tingling feeling surged up her spine as though an electric current had run through her entire body. At the same time, the skin his tongue touched prickled.
Carefully cupping her heel with one hand and supporting the back of her knee with the other, Killian passed over the smooth top of her foot and kissed the soft curve of her shin.
With every small kiss that followed, Rowena clutched the hem of her dress and held her breath. The nerves and muscles of her entire body turned of their own accord toward the man kneeling before her, licking her leg. She could see his lowered long lashes, and his hands, gentle yet firm.
“S-stop……”
Feeling her tense skin, Killian followed the trails of bitter black tea upward. Perhaps too startled by the sudden stimulation, her hands trembled faintly on her lap.
Above him, Rowena’s cheeks were pale as she looked down at him with horrified eyes. She was so short of breath it was almost suffocating.
“Stop.”
Her heart was pounding madly from shock. It was to the point that she felt an auditory hallucination, as though she could hear the sound of her own heartbeat. As if expelling a stale breath, Rowena spoke with all her strength and belatedly pushed his head away. But drained of strength, her resistance was weak. Killian lowered his head again and meticulously kissed each of her small toes before finally looking up.
“I’m doing what you told me to.”
“This isn’t what I wanted.”
“In any case, I’m wiping away the black tea.”
As if asking whether the purpose was not the same, Killian tilted his head maddeningly and picked up her stocking again. Rowena snatched it from his hand as though taking it by force, her cheeks flushed, and stood.
“I’ll say this clearly. I don’t need such a willful, spiteful mistress!”
“I told you earlier. I’ll struggle in every way possible so I won’t be abandoned.”
She was about to turn her back and walk away when his hot breath touched her shoulder. Unable to pull her into a tight embrace, Killian wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and whispered.
“I did my best in my own way.”
“……”
“So, how was the resolve you saw in me?”
Resolve. It was the word she herself had just spoken. Rowena, who had been about to shake off his hands, stood still and blinked silently.
A moment ago, she had been swept away by his unexpected behavior, but she must not forget her purpose. She was determined to toy with him until not a shred of lingering feeling remained, and the moment Cedric returned with Lauren’s medicine, to cast Killian aside without mercy.
“Fine.”
Rowena turned around and pressed her raised index finger against his chest.
“I don’t know what whim has come over you, but I’ll play along.”
“Rowena.”
“Instead.”
Cutting off Killian’s words, Rowena stated her condition clearly.
“The limit is one week. If you can’t shake me, and if I end up abandoning you to the very end, accept it then.”
“……”
“If not, the offer is off the table. Your chance disappears, too.”
At her unwavering words, pressed down one by one as if with force, Killian released the hand that had held her. Veins stood out on the back of his hand, and his mouth hardened stiffly.
In exchange for accepting him as her mistress, she was telling him to give up obediently if she abandoned him. Just as he was about to retort that absolutely could not happen, he recalled the time when he had drifted without promise through a vast black sea.
If he got her back, he had intended to bind her so tightly she could not even breathe as she pleased and hide her in the deepest place where no one could see her. He had meant to use Damian as a hostage, allowing her to see him a few times a month as if bestowing charity, and in exchange, make her live forever as his woman.
But the moment he saw those green eyes looking up at him, deathly pale above the fallen mask, every vow melted away like snow. And in the place where they vanished, the truth he had tried so hard to turn away from lay bare.
Like a man gradually poisoned by a deadly toxin without even realizing it, he could no longer treat the woman before him carelessly, nor wield her according to his own tastes.
He had bound her here through pleading and threats, but watching Rowena refuse not only to exchange words with him, but even to look him in the eye, was agony for him as well.
Even if it was anger and deception, the woman now glaring straight at him was far better.
Even if he knew what that one week meant.
“……What if I refuse?”
“Then there’s nothing to be done.”
At the answer that slipped through his teeth as though he were being contrary, Rowena shrugged and withdrew her hand.
“We’ll pretend none of this ever— Why are you doing this?”
Just as she turned to leave again, a strength incomparable to before embraced her from behind.
“Let me go!”
“Fine.”
As she struggled to escape, the low word made her stop.
“If that’s what you want, then let’s do that.”
He had not the slightest intention of giving her up. But he also had no intention of letting go of the chance that had finally been placed before him.
He would use every means and method to turn her back toward him again. If that failed, it would not be too late to think about what came afterward then. Killian drew in a deep breath of the scent he had encountered again after so long.