CHAPTER 04……………………………………..
“They say he has blond hair that shines brighter than starlight, eyes so clear and transparent they look like pure lakes set in his face. His skin is like white jade, and his jawline—”
“Stop.”
“They say Marquis Leraje claimed he’d have no wishes left if he could be held just once in that broad chest.”
A broad chest. If someone like Leraje could be held in it, then the man must be quite large. And if he was large, he would naturally be strong. Physical build was a great advantage in combat.
Hope, long buried beneath the dirt, began to sprout.
“That good?”
“You too?”
“But you know how high Leraje’s standards are. He doesn’t even glance at ordinary nobles.”
“That’s true, but—”
“Aren’t the only ones he considers beautiful Duke Gremory, His Majesty, and the butler?”
“Exactly! They say he’s unbelievably beautiful. So much so that a lot of people let their guard down around him.”
“No way.”
“Anyway, if Leraje fell for him, then his looks are objectively guaranteed.”
Xenia barely managed to leave the area, pretending she hadn’t heard a thing.
What had sounded half like a joke among the servants became reality when the Demon King, for the first time in a very long while, marched out to the human world.
And whether by luck or misfortune, the Demon King and the hero never met.
Xenia was disappointed that her one and only hope hadn’t come true—yet relieved that it hadn’t been crushed.
Two years passed like that.
The swelling hope turned into impatience, and Xenia longed desperately for the hero. She wanted to hear news of someone having seen him in the demon realm, as soon as possible.
Just not—
“…Not in my bedroom terrace.”
Unable to believe what she was seeing, Xenia stood there in a daze for a long while.
The hero is in my room.
His face looked peaceful, as though he were asleep, but given the situation, he was clearly unconscious.
Seeing blood well up and ooze from his wounds, Xenia swallowed a sigh. She had no intention of leaving him on the floor, but her bed was precious.
To lay the hero on the bed—or more precisely, to prevent her bed from getting dirty—she stripped off his blood-soaked shirt and the trousers that had rolled around the terrace.
Then she dampened a towel and carefully wiped down the exposed parts of his body. Throughout the process, Xenia’s expression remained calm.
Living in the demon realm, surrounded by demons who wandered about half-naked, helped dull her reaction somewhat—but more than anything, she was simply exhausted.
“He’s heavy…”
His body was packed with muscle, making him absurdly heavy. And with him unconscious and completely limp, the weight doubled.
Grunting and straining, Xenia managed to clean him and drag his body up onto the bed.
“Other than his abdomen, it doesn’t look like he’s badly injured anywhere…”
After briefly inspecting him, she tilted her head at the sight of wounds that were already half-healed, unlike when she’d first found him.
She’d treated him in a hurry before moving him, but all she’d managed was to stop the bleeding a bit faster. That alone shouldn’t have healed him this much.
“Does he have exceptional regenerative ability?”
Having settled on that explanation, Xenia nodded and straightened up. For now, the worst-case scenario had been avoided.
Perhaps it was fate that the injured hero had appeared on her terrace.
“I’ll try healing him a bit more with my holy power… ah, there’s not much left.”
There was no one else in the demon realm with power like hers.
A power only a chosen few humans could wield—holy power.
Holy power healed humans and inflicted fatal damage on demons; it was the very reason temples existed.
But Xenia’s holy power was slightly different from the norm. Hers healed everyone, without discrimination.
Humans and demons alike.
And that very trait was why she’d been kidnapped by the Demon King.
Holy power that healed demons? The only saving grace was that her total amount of power was pitifully small.
“Still, this time it’s a bit disappointing.”
Xenia gauged how much holy power she had left. She’d already used some before moving the hero, leaving her with very little.
“I can’t use enough to knock myself out…”
If she passed out, there was no telling when she’d wake up. For the hero’s safety, that couldn’t happen.
So, even knowing it wouldn’t help much, Xenia decided to try anyway. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and placed her hand on the hero’s abdomen.
“Hah…”
A moment later, pale, sacred light flowed from her palm, wrapping around the hero’s wound.
For exactly three seconds.
She withdrew her power quickly, opened her eyes, and checked the injury.
“What is this?”
Her eyes widened at the unbelievable sight. The hero’s wound had almost completely healed.
Could it be…
Was the rapid recovery earlier not his own regeneration, but the result of her power?
No—just recently, she’d barely managed to heal even a small scratch on the Demon King.
“It’s not like this even when I healed my mother… so why—ah.”
The hero.
The man was the hero. The savior who had appeared in the world to defeat the Demon King—Xenia’s salvation.
“Maybe holy power affects him far more strongly than it does ordinary humans…”
But her awe was short-lived.
The servants’ whispers—that the hero was trying to cross into the demon realm—had been true. Alone, without allies, and in this condition, what had he been trying to do?
Looking down at the angelic face, Xenia shook her head.
There was so much she wanted to ask. But all of that would have to wait until the hero woke up.
So, for now—
“Let’s wipe away the blood.”
She decided to clean up the blood pooling around his wounds before it dripped onto the floor beneath the bed.
Once she’d cleaned him thoroughly, Xenia tossed a blanket over his body. Since she had no spare clothes to give him, he was still wearing only his undergarments.
Living among demons who had no consideration for human modesty had made such sights familiar—but familiar didn’t mean comfortable.
“…I’m exhausted.”
With a deeply tired expression, Xenia dragged over a plush chair from the side of the room.
Sharing a bed with a strange man—especially a muscular one who was practically naked—was uncomfortable in every sense.
Once the immediate crisis was handled, sleep rushed in all at once, but she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes. What if the hero woke up after she fell asleep?
He might mistake her for a demon and kill her—or flee and hide.
“Should I leave a note telling him not to kill me because I’m human?”
But would a hero who’d lost consciousness in enemy territory really be in the right state of mind to read a note upon waking?
And there was one more thing. With a sigh, Xenia rubbed her dry face and suddenly sprang up.
“I didn’t even lock the door.”
Hero or not, another demon could burst into her room at any time.
Xenia hurriedly locked the door and stared at it.
It looked solid enough not to break easily—but against a demon’s strength, it could still be smashed without much trouble.
Demons were terrible at controlling their strength. Whether angry, overly amused, or simply overjoyed, they tended to swing that overwhelming power around for all kinds of reasons.
That was why Eligos, the butler, always became absurdly busy whenever there was a festival, banquet, or the turn of the year.
Xenia remembered how shocked she’d been, helping him, at the number of broken door handles and doors in a single day.
Still, it’s better than leaving it unlocked.
She couldn’t exactly stick an unconscious person into the cold bathroom under the pretense of security.
She’d barely managed to move him to the bed while she still had some strength left; in her current state, there was no way she could haul him into the bathroom.
With an uneasy expression, Xenia stared at the door, then walked back to the hero’s side. His sleeping face looked impossibly gentle.
“When will you wake up?”
It was a tiny voice, one that no one should have heard. Yet, as if he had, the hero’s long, thick eyelashes fluttered.
Soon, gem-like, transparent blue eyes were revealed.
As his finely shaped eyes opened and met hers, Xenia’s first thought was that they were beautiful.
Blue eyes, clear and transparent like a pristine lake.
But as she looked into them, her brow twisted deeply.
They were as beautiful as his face—but utterly lifeless.
Are you kidding me?
Was it because she was used to the lively—if noisy—demons around her?
Or because he’d just woken up from a severe injury and wasn’t fully conscious yet?
No.
Those were the same eyes she’d often seen in people after her parents were killed by a demon attack.
Unable to hold back, Xenia spoke to the hero, who was looking at her with open eyes yet not truly seeing her.
“Your eyes… they’re dead.”
They looked like the eyes of a corpse.
The eyes that had been blinking as if trying to grasp the situation gradually slowed. At this rate, he would soon lose consciousness again.
He probably won’t remember this conversation at all.
As his gaze grew more unfocused with each passing moment, her assumption turned into certainty.
“You know… I need you.”
Seeing the hero she’d waited so long for with eyes like that made her feel as though she might burst. So she said what she never could have if he’d been fully aware.
“So… could you stay alive?”
She pulled the loosely tossed blanket up to his neck.
“I’ll help you as much as I can.”
So please—help me too. She spoke from the bottom of her heart.
“I’ve been waiting for you for a really long time.”
The hero, of course, didn’t answer and drifted back into sleep.
Listening to the soft, steady sound of his breathing, Xenia finally released the breath she’d been holding.
She’d thought all she needed to do was heal his physical wounds.
It seemed that wasn’t all.
