~Chapter 09~
“Ah…!”
Jekart stared at the trembling woman’s back with eyes that looked as though he’d gone mad. Moonlight spilling in through the window washed her pale skin in white. Perhaps she wasn’t accustomed to this kind of intimacy—her upper body kept collapsing forward. She had always been slender to begin with.
Tracing the faint outline of her ribs, Jekart slid his hand downward. The heat radiating from her soft flesh was unmistakable.
“Edith.”
The woman’s name—one he had never spoken aloud before—slipped faintly from between Jekart’s ragged breaths.
Any question of when or how this lovemaking had begun had long since faded to blank white. The pleasure that carved through his entire body along nerves and veins erased even the most natural doubts.
“S-stop…!”
Jekart reflexively wrapped a hand around the woman’s small chin as it jerked upward. Pulling her back, he devoured her plump lips as if biting into them. Their deeply locked mouths burned with heat that no longer seemed to belong to either of them.
Jekart, who had been driving her relentlessly toward her limit, suddenly froze—only after the woman’s bowed head was flung back once more. The small body filled with him twitched cutely, shuddering again and again.
Following the sweat-dampened curve of her back, Jekart pressed kisses down her skin—soft, lingering pecks—until he bit gently into the tender flesh near her shoulder blade. It was only a light bite, but her skin bruised easily, leaving a red mark almost instantly. That trivial mark sent a dizzying sense of fulfillment through him. Only after leaving similar traces along her slender nape and shoulders did he finally roll her onto her back.
Shadows cast by her soaked eyelashes flickered over her reddened eyes.
Edith. Edith Lindel.
Instead of calling the name circling endlessly on his tongue, Jekart lowered his head. The woman had been about to speak, her lips parted invitingly.
It was probably, “Stop, I can’t anymore.” She had sobbed those words over and over while clinging to him.
Her plea—one he could never grant—sweetened his mouth along with her heated breath. Jekart held her firmly, forcing her open as she struggled to endure. He felt her small tongue stiffen in surprise where it was deeply entwined with his.
Each time he pressed in inch by inch, the woman’s hands gripping his shoulders tightened. By the time they reached the edge, her knuckles had turned white.
Jekart took one of those hands and lightly pressed a kiss to it.
For a fleeting moment, he thought this tenderness wasn’t like him at all—but the woman clinging tightly around him quickly erased the thought.
Her sweat-soaked body began to move again, swaying to his rhythm. The tempo, which had started slow, gradually quickened until it was wild, like a charging stallion.
The dizzying moment came for Jekart as well.
His mind flashed pure white as every nerve fiber in his body convulsed sharply.
And then—along with a sticky sensation—Jekart opened his eyes.
The surroundings, when he looked around blankly, were absurdly silent. Only his ragged breathing escaped, heating his lips.
His heavy eyelids blinked slowly, still unfocused. As consciousness gradually returned, the murky haze clouding his dark eyes cleared.
A hollow laugh slipped between his hot lips.
“…Ha.”
Grinding his teeth, Jekart sat up in bed.
After a quick shower, he grabbed a cigarette he’d tossed somewhere in the living room and put it between his lips. Lighting it, he inhaled deeply until his cheeks hollowed. When the cigarette burned halfway down, he let out another bitter chuckle.
No matter how he thought about it, it was ridiculous.
It wasn’t enough that he thought of her from time to time—now he was even having filthy dreams like this.
If this was going to happen, he should have just killed her back then. On that beach. Faster. Cleaner. Just as planned.
He didn’t think about why he hadn’t. Nor about the vague, unfathomable emotion that had seized him when he faced her. He deliberately avoided those thoughts—because even if he dug deep enough to find an answer, it felt like it wouldn’t be one he wanted.
Had he been intoxicated by that fragile, fading breath? Or was it because the woman’s fingertips that touched him through the mask had been unbearably tender?
Since that day, she had lingered chaotically in his mind. To the point where he was now dreaming trash like this.
“…Crazy bastard.”
Jekart slowly exhaled the cigarette smoke he’d been holding in. It wasn’t a word he liked to use, but it truly was a shitty night.
The Next Morning
Jekart sought out Marcus. The bloodshot veins standing out in his eyes were proof enough of his state of mind from the night before.
“Who? Edith Lindel?”
“Yeah.”
“Why her?”
“She’s the only one in the files you gave me with no information at all.”
“Oh.”
Marcus replied casually as he flipped through the documents again.
“It’s a name a captured resistance member once confessed, but that’s all we ever got. She never showed herself, so we didn’t bother digging deeper.”
“……”
“Want me to look into it?”
After a brief pause, Jekart answered.
“No.”
Then, as if the hesitation hadn’t existed, he immediately changed the subject.
“How far has Rachel gotten with decrypting the documents she acquired?”
At the word decrypting, Marcus grimaced and grabbed his forehead. His glasses slid off and clattered onto the desk.
“Ha. That’s what’s driving me insane.”
“It’s complicated?”
“Yeah. Looks like it was written using an Enigma machine.”
At the word Enigma, a low sound escaped Jekart’s lips as well.
The Enigma was a typewriter-like cipher machine that substituted input characters with different letters depending on settings such as the plugboard configuration, rotor arrangement, and numerical variables. Its security was extremely strong—using multiple layers of substitution—making decryption impossible without knowing the settings. Needless to say, those settings were recorded in codebooks shared only secretly among users.
“Damn it, I don’t know. I’ll just tell Rachel to go find the codebook. Let her suffer.”
That was when Jekart let out a thin smile.
“I’ll get it.”
Marcus hurriedly pushed his fallen glasses back up, staring at him in shock.
“What?”
“I’ll find it.”
“You? What’s gotten into you? You never move unless it’s a direct order.”
“I think I know where it is.”
In Jekart’s mind, the room where he’d first seen the woman that night unfolded clearly.
At the time, he’d barely noticed—but on one side of the desk in that room, there had unmistakably been an Enigma machine.
＊＊＊
“Are you really… sure this is all right?”
Perel asked Edith. She had just finished changing into the janitor’s uniform Karon had delivered.
“About what?”
Her voice was clear and calm.
“That it isn’t too dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better to look for another way? The comrades who were supposed to join us keep getting delayed—my gut feeling isn’t good…”
“Perel.”
Edith stopped at the door and turned to look at him. His eyes—neither fully red nor black—resembled the color of wood.
“Someone has to do this. To take down the King, the Queen and the Bishop have to move first.”
“……”
“It’s not because I have some great sense of self-sacrifice. I’m just the most suitable since my identity is hard to trace while undercover. The others have taken on missions for the same reason until now, haven’t they?”
As she spoke, Edith hid her subtly trembling hands behind her back—where he couldn’t see them. So that he wouldn’t notice the fear she was desperately concealing.
Even so, the tension in Perel’s face didn’t ease. Because that wasn’t the only reason he was worried.
“Lady Edith.”
“Yes?”
His gaze settled on her eyes—the smile she forced there, the reddened whites, the faint swelling of her lids.
That was the real reason for his concern.
He could guess all too well what kind of night the woman, pretending so hard to be calm, must have endured.
Perel, who had been about to say something, ended up smiling with a sigh instead. No matter what he said, she would only answer that she was fine.
“…Please be careful.”
“I will. And find out why the others are delayed.”
“Yes. Understood.”
“Thank you.”
Edith smiled once more in gratitude and resumed walking.
It was the bishop’s first move toward checkmate.
＊＊＊
The moment she stepped out of the mansion after Perel’s send-off, Edith erased the smile that had lingered on her lips. Her steps slowed, as though heavy sandbags had been tied to her ankles.
The truth was…
I’m not okay.
Clenching her still-trembling hands, Edith finally admitted it to herself—though the reason differed greatly from Perel’s worries.
What made her not okay wasn’t today’s dangerous mission…
It was—
If you see him, you’ll die.
Because he was the man she’d seen on the beach a few days ago.
A man who looked exactly like Maximilian.
Of course, Maximilian was dead.
Officially, he had fallen in the Battle of Schwern. Unofficially, during a classified operation.
No remains had ever been found. For a brief time, Edith had clung to that thread of hope as well. But—
“Among the members of the special operations unit your husband commanded, not a single individual’s whereabouts have been confirmed to date. It appears they were all killed during the mission.”
She wanted to deny it—but it was the truth.
No matter how elite they were, he had led only about forty men into one of Hasmal’s highest-security facilities.
She didn’t know exactly what kind of facility it was, or what their objective had been. Only that all communication was severed immediately after infiltration, and not even a distress signal was received.
What death could be more certain than that?
So Edith extinguished, with tears, the small flame of hope that had briefly reignited in her heart the night before. It wasn’t the first time—she’d done it countless times over the past three years.
That kind of futile hope—that he might still be alive—only hindered Edith, who had to protect Leon alone.
So, Mac. There, and in my memories—please rest in peace forever.
Until the day we meet again.
Next
