Chapter 21. Only the Bed

“This…… bastard……!”

Patrick, enraged, lunged at Calyx. Calyx didn’t even assume a defensive stance. As if he knew all too well what his position was.

With the sole thought of preventing bloodshed, Lottie threw herself between the two men.

“……!”

Before Lottie, who blocked him with her arms spread wide, Patrick froze in the position of raising his fist.

The same was true for Calyx. Faced with the delicate figure standing with her back to him, he forgot what he had been about to do just a moment ago.

Despite causing great confusion for both men, Lottie remained unaware.

So tense was she that she stared with wide eyes at the man standing right in front of her.

— If you were this sick, why didn’t you say something? Are you satisfied making me look like a heartless husband?

Stupid Charlotte Ebenscher. After all that, you still can’t let go of those memories?

“Go ahead and hit me, Your Highness.”

Lottie’s voice was calmer than ever, fueled by anger at herself.

“Or will you use that fist to strike your own face again?”

Patrick’s eyelids trembled. His eyes asked how she could possibly know that.

Lottie had no intention of answering that question.

Instead, she spoke words she had kept in her heart for a very long time, each syllable pronounced with clear voice.

“If you want to gain Her Majesty the Queen’s approval, first accept your inferiority complex.”

“……!”

“Your attempts to belittle others are pitiful and pathetic.”

Even Calyx behind her could be felt flinching at her direct expression.

Charge her with treason and exterminate three generations of her family, then. In that case, she was prepared to run to Her Majesty the Queen and tell her in detail how her son would ruin this kingdom in the future.

“……”

With an expression that seemed to ask how she knew this, Patrick didn’t immediately fly into a rage.

After looking at Lottie with confused and suspicious eyes, he glanced at Calyx standing behind her.

Calyx was smiling with a face that mixed elation and pity. That smile whispered to Patrick.

‘It seems I’ve won again.’

“Damn it……!”

Unable to control his anger, Patrick kicked the side table next to him. The table and the items on it crashed loudly to the floor.

Patrick left the room, breathing heavily. Then, a strange silence lingered in the room for a moment.

“……”

Calyx was about to call out to Lottie, who still had her back to him, but decided against it.

He had a strange feeling that if he touched that back, it would crumble like a sand castle.

Calyx’s gaze turned to the mirror placed diagonally across from him.

Lottie’s face was reflected there.

Her light green eyes were wide open and trembling. Calyx immediately sensed that those eyes were desperately avoiding looking somewhere.

He quickly figured out where that was.

It was toward the door where Patrick had just disappeared.

“……”

With the feeling of having discovered a truth he shouldn’t know, Calyx blankly stared at Lottie’s back.

Her body, dressed in a thin silk nightgown, looked even thinner and smaller than usual. That body kept trembling.

She seemed to be suffering, trying to distance herself from emotions of unknown origin, but unable to shake them off.

The elation that Lottie had chosen him over Patrick slowly began to cool.

The place where his sense of superiority had disappeared was filled with an ominous premonition that even he found difficult to explain logically.

— What if I have someone I like?

If those words hadn’t been a lie to push him away.

If there was something between her and that person he least wanted to think of at this moment, something he didn’t know about……

* * *

Patrick, who had disappeared with a demeanor suggesting he would behead Calyx right then and there, gave no further notice afterward.

There were no soldiers coming to arrest Calyx, not even officers who should have received a report.

Calyx thought that his and Lottie’s threats must have worked. And he was confident that the bloodshed at Blue Brick would remain just a rumor occasionally circulating among the servants’ lips.

Since the situation hadn’t been completely resolved yet, Calyx had to be detained at Blue Brick for one night under the pretext of a visit.

“I apologize that we couldn’t accommodate you in a better room due to the sudden circumstances. We will do our best to ensure you have no discomfort during your stay.”

An attic room where the servants stayed.

Calyx, who had been looking around the single room with its faint smell of mold with a curious expression, smirked at Isabelle’s words.

Her voice was strangely polite yet strangely prickly.

Was there anything true in the old lady’s words? Calyx felt he could now see through Isabelle’s true feelings a little.

“Not at all. This is the best guest room I’ve ever stayed in.”

The words, which couldn’t possibly be sincere, came out naturally.

Isabelle realized that this young man had not only seen through her petty spite but was also teasing her.

With a face that had turned red, she bid him good night and hurriedly left.

‘Click.’

Once alone, his mischievous expression, like that of a boy, cooled into an emotionless mask as if it had never existed.

He lay down on the uncomfortable bed.

He closed his eyes to sleep, but opened them again shortly after.

While waiting to fall back asleep, tracing the slanted ceiling with his eyes, the commotion outside quieted down, and even the servants all fell asleep.

He was still awake, his gaze wandering somewhere on the ceiling.

What he had started to shake off his thoughts had instead made his mind even clearer. His clear mind relentlessly pursued the ends of her memories.

Surely you’ve only met the crown prince twice, yet why do I feel like you’ve known him for a very long time?

Why did I see layers of lingering attachment in your entire body as you avoided him?

He felt the urge to go find her, who would be sound asleep by now, and wake her up. He could see himself pouring out all sorts of incoherent words.

And also his terrible self, who would eventually devour her lips after catching her as she tried to run away again.

He forcibly closed his eyes.

This was the only way to cut off his desire that raced without end.

But even with his eyes closed, he was concentrating all his senses to find where she might be sleeping.

It seemed he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight after all.

‘Knock, knock.’

At that moment, a small knocking sound numbed all his nerves.

Just as he realized his mind had stopped, he heard the knock once more.

He got up from the bed in a somewhat hurried manner. His body walked with the same stride as usual, but his heart had already dashed and smashed through the door long ago.

He twisted the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

There stood Lottie with a shawl draped over her shoulders.

“I thought you were asleep and was about to leave…… I mean……”

She was holding a small medicine box in her hand.

She must have deliberately waited until everyone was asleep to come here. Even when he tried to stop himself, his thoughts wouldn’t cease. The desire he had tried to cut off ignited again.

It was unbearable. No, he didn’t want to bear it.

He gently took her hesitating wrist. He tried to hold it as painlessly as possible, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded.

He pulled her in.

He closed the door loudly, making her efforts to avoid being discovered by anyone seem futile.

She looked up at him with a surprised expression, her back against the door.

Her shoulders, covered only by an evening dress, trembled slightly. Her shawl must have fallen outside when he pulled her in.

“If you knew what I want to do to you right now…… you would despise me again.”

I want to devour those lips like a beast and kiss them until they swell.

I want to swallow all your hot breaths and make them circulate inside my body, and I want to pull those cold-shivering shoulders and embrace them until they’re crushed.

I want to rub skin against skin and imprint myself completely on your body.

If I can never have your heart, I want to remain in you even through contempt and disgust. If that’s how I can possess you.

‘Terrible man.’

With a mind as hazy as if struck by a fever, he barely suppressed his filthy desire.

However, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling Lottie’s hand that was in his grasp.

“……!”

The cold tips of Lottie’s fingers touched his split lip. Even with just that much contact, he was in turmoil.

“I will try not to touch even a fingertip until you leave this room. But if a situation arises where even effort is no longer enough……”

With each whisper, her fingertips brushed his lips.

Suppressing the intense urge to take them into his mouth, he placed something in Lottie’s hand.

It was a pocket knife he usually carried for self-defense.

“Stab me with this and run away.”

The shock Lottie felt at that moment would have been difficult to express in any words.

Lottie was not unaware of what it meant when a man tells a woman he ‘won’t touch even a fingertip.’

But given who he was, she couldn’t think in that direction at all.

Sexual desire?

‘That man, for me?’

It was nonsense.

What was clear was that whatever resided in those dangerous eyes, she could never back down.

Lottie recalled the purpose for which she had waited until everyone was asleep to secretly seek out this man. And she gripped the pocket knife in her hand even tighter.

The sensation, which she had expected to be cool, was somehow burning hot.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but let’s treat your wounds first. Is there somewhere to sit……”

Hoping her voice sounded as calm as possible, Lottie looked around the room.

Focusing solely on dispelling the awkward atmosphere, she forgot that this wasn’t a proper guest room.

“……There’s only the bed.”