Chapter 25
Chapter 25
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: Cul-de-Sac of Escape
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Daphne instinctively tried to get to her feet. The moment she kicked off the ground to flee, a hand seized hers. She tried to wrench it free, but a scream escaped her at the vise-like grip on her wrist.
Gritting her teeth, she was dragged right before Asherad. It felt like ages since she had last seen him. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to look at his face.
Daphne barely managed to lift her head and peer upward. Asherad’s face gleamed ghostly white in the dawn light. One might imagine a vampire from legend, feasting on human blood, looking just like this. He lifted lips red to the point of eeriness. As if poised to drain her blood at any moment.
Without thinking, Daphne let out a sigh as she spoke.
“H-how did you... get here...”
“Is that what matters?”
The voice was soft yet chilling. She had never realized a voice like that could inspire such terror. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm her.
Had his face ever struck her as so frightening before?
“Let me go.”
“...”
“Your Highness, please let me go.”
Help me.
Save me.
Love me.
Daphne had never once demanded any such thing from Asherad. This was the very first time she had ever asked him for anything.
Let me leave. Let me go.
Her first request signified the severing of their bond. Knowing full well it was futile, Daphne pleaded all the same. Asherad twisted the corner of his mouth upward.
Asherad glanced up at the sky before bursting into a small laugh. To Daphne, it felt like scorn, but it was little more than a touch of madness.
“No.”
The man gazing at Daphne with gleaming eyes spoke tenderly.
“What am I to do? I don’t want to.”
Every hair on Daphne’s head stood on end. At her terrified expression, Asherad whispered affectionately.
“Come along, Daphne.”
“...”
“If you wish for that man you love to remain unharmed.”
Her lips quivered at the murmuring voice. Fabian. His face swirled through her mind. The escape plan had failed.
It meant there had been a leak somewhere. For him to be lying in wait here like this, the plan must have been compromised long ago.
Which meant something terrible had likely befallen Fabian. Trembling violently, Daphne clung to Asherad, who stared fixedly at her.
“Please.”
“...”
“Please, just spare Fabian.”
In that instant, she felt a savage yank on her arm. His face remained impeccably composed without a hint of disarray, yet his dragging grip was utterly brutish.
The hand clutching her wrist had veins bulging prominently. Pain shot through her as if her wrist might snap, but Daphne offered no resistance.
The place she was dragged to was all too familiar.
The Crown Prince’s chambers.
In that dimly lit room where she had always felt a sense of peace, she became once more a bird locked in its cage. The moment she entered, Daphne frantically looked around.
Might Fabian be here? Where could he be?
“Your Highness, where is Fabian... where is he?”
Surely they hadn’t thrown him in a dungeon? What was she to do? Asherad gazed down at her with an inscrutable expression.
Frustration welled up in her.
“Your Highness, Fabian... mmph!”
Asherad seized the hair at the nape of her neck and abruptly crushed his lips against hers in a rough kiss. Daphne’s eyes flew wide.
The dry, soft sensation against her mouth caused her lips to part reflexively. Asherad did not miss the opportunity.
Something moist swept across her lips. Daphne couldn’t even clench her teeth, fearing she might bite his tongue. Like prey surrendering utterly to a predator, she simply accepted his kiss.
The slick texture of his tongue teasingly grazed the roof of her mouth. Even she knew this much about the intimacies between man and woman. Asherad was kissing her.
Asherad... kissing her...
Only when their lips briefly parted could she snatch a breath. Her body growing limp, she desperately tried to shove him away. When she raised her hands to push, her wrists were captured and slammed against the wall with a thud.
“St... ah!”
She cried out for him to stop, but as if resolved to silence her, his kisses only grew more ferocious.
The harder she thrashed, the tighter his hold constricted around her body. Their saliva smeared across lips and chins. Hot breaths mingled, filling the air with searing heat.
“Mmm, hngh!”
Tears welled in Daphne’s eyes. Once the torturous kiss finally ended, she could at last face Asherad. Her once-pinned-up hair had long since come undone, and her wrists remained pinned after her struggles.
“Fabi...”
“Why did you try to run?”
His voice was crisp and clear, as if the fervent kiss had never occurred. Unlike Daphne, who gasped for air, his face was chillingly composed as he regarded her. His green eyes, lit by the small lantern’s glow, burned brightly.
“You promised you wouldn’t run again.”
He continued in a low whisper.
“Tell me.”
He yanked back the hair at her nape. Tears glistened on Daphne’s face. Was he demanding an answer? Was he furious?
“Look at me.”
His thumb stroked the wrist he gripped. Daphne truly wondered if this man might devour her whole.
“You said you’d stay by my side.”
“...”
“You said you wouldn’t leave. That you’d remain with me.”
Was that the reason? Was he angry over something so trivial? Daphne gazed at Asherad’s face. She still couldn’t fathom what he was thinking.
Yet his inscrutability struck her as absurd. Daphne parted her trembling lips.
“That’s because...”
“...”
“You deceived me.”
And so, for the first time, she defied the man who had been her entire world. Asherad, the sole ray of light amid that hellish ordeal. She thought she might die. Yet somehow, she didn’t believe he would kill her.
He’d had countless opportunities. A man like him wouldn’t grant an easy death to someone who had humiliated him.
That was why she could speak her mind. Face-to-face with Asherad, her expression twisted, Daphne said.
“You knew who I was from the start.”
“...”
“You hated me.”
“...”
“You despised me. That’s why you toyed with me. With me... with me...”
“...”
“You didn’t truly like me.”
Tears streamed down Daphne’s cheeks. Yes. The emperor’s vile touches, the ways Asherad had isolated her from behind the scenes—none of it mattered.
It was simply that affection.
That affection, bestowed like rain after a drought, had been a lie. Meant only to mock her.
“So that’s why I’m running.”
“...”
“I want to escape this place. Your father sickens me. And now, I don’t even want to see your face.”
Asherad was worse than all the others who had shunned and tormented her. He had isolated her, forced her to depend solely on him, treated her like a dog.
She recalled the book she had once read aloud to him on training dogs.
The most effective way to make a disobedient dog fixate solely on its master was to keep it with the master in a world brimming with hostility.
That had been Daphne.
In this alien place where everyone was her enemy, she had come to gaze only at Asherad’s kindness.
He had tamed her just like that dog, then demanded she never leave, that she stay by his side. All while knowing she harbored feelings for him, knowing she clung to him.
Asherad silently looked down at her. As he tilted his head slightly, shadows obscured his face, making it hard to read. Yet his luminous eyes almost seemed wounded.
Or perhaps that was merely what she wished to see. His shadowed expression remained hidden. Just as she began to suspect from his downturned lips that he might truly be hurt, a thunderous sound assaulted her ears.
“Ha, hahaha!”
For the first time, Asherad unleashed a booming laugh. Goosebumps raced down Daphne’s spine at the sheer volume. Clutching his stomach, he laughed.
As if beholding a grand comedy, his laughter rang clear before his gaze settled on Daphne.
“Daphne.”
“...”
“Aren’t you utterly brazen? Expecting me to like you, of all things.”
“...”
It was as if a mask had slipped away—Asherad wore a twisted grin. As Daphne’s lips parted slightly, his thumb traced their soft curve.
“You dare hope that I would like you?”
“...”
“Didn’t you know what your mother did? That your very existence nearly hurled me into the abyss.”
“That’s...!”
She truly hadn’t known.
That her existence had threatened Asherad. In her memories, her mother had been frantic to return to the palace, desperately scheming to drag Daphne along.
Were it not for Fabian, she never would have learned.
Daphne stared at him in a daze. Yes, it was brazen of her to hope for even a sliver of affection from Asherad. Laughable, her sense of betrayal.
“So, that’s why I’m leaving.”
Even so, their ill-fated connection was no reason to prolong the misery.
Daphne wished to purge her feelings for Asherad, to break free from it all and start anew. She had endured torment enough.
Thus, she hoped he would show mercy and release her. Gazing at his distorted face as his fingers toyed with her lips, Daphne spoke with hollow eyes.
“I was wrong. Wrong to be born to such a mother. Wrong to threaten Your Highness’s position.”
“...”
“So, let’s end this. Please.”
Daphne was exhausted. She realized it had been wrong to expect anything from him at all. The moment Asherad made her see she had no right even to that bitter sense of betrayal, she simply wished to die.
Lifting her pallid face in his hand, Asherad said.
“Who decided it ends?”
“...”
“It can’t end. Not ever.”
Gazing at her tear-streaked face, Asherad leaned in closer. Fearing another kiss, she turned her head away, but he pressed his body and face even nearer.
He whispered into the ear bared by her turn.
“I, Daphne...”
“...”
“I like that brazen side of you.”
“...”
“I love you.”
At the most horrific timing imaginable, Asherad confessed his heart. To Daphne, it rang as yet another cruel jest.
A brazen love she had once craved, flung back at her now only to toy with her further.
“So, accept me.”
Asherad buried his face in her neck.
Tears spilled from Daphne’s face. She loathed this confession with every fiber of her being, yet her foolish heart yearned to believe its sweetness all the same—twisting her features in anguish.
Asherad drew Daphne gently toward him. She knew the bed waited behind her.