Episode 6
“How could someone who confesses his love so desperately end up killing you…?”
Kallian spoke in a voice that sounded like he was barely holding his anger back.
Asterophe shook her head hard.
More than anyone else, she knew the truth.
Billish’s sweet words were nothing but tools to use her.
“He’s trying to use me. My feelings!”
Frustrated, Asterophe hit her chest.
Kallian didn’t even notice that she was hurting herself.
He gently brushed over her reddened skin and spoke softly.
“I understand why you want to resent Crown Prince Billish.”
“I also understand that you might still love him.”
“But neither the Crown Prince nor His Majesty are people you should hate.”
“I was the one who forced you to come here to Serpwood. But even if you act like this, I can’t send you back there. And I can’t bring myself to hate you either.”
His hand rose gently and stroked Asterophe’s cheek.
There was sadness in his eyes.
He was misunderstanding everything.
He thought she was still grieving over a love that never came true.
That she regretted coming to Serpwood and was trying to make him hate her so he would push her away.
Asterophe grabbed Kallian’s scarred, solid hand tightly.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not going anywhere. Even if I die, I’ll die here, in Serpwood, as Grand Duchess Asterophe Lunet Onyx.”
“I don’t love Billish Numa.”
“You expect me to believe that? Lope, I’m not that foolish. And more than anything, you don’t need to hide that from me anymore. I knew everything from the beginning when we married.”
Kallian spoke as if he was ready to accept all of her.
Asterophe shook her head.
No.
She couldn’t explain this burning rage inside her with words.
She pressed her lips to his palm.
Her long, thick eyelashes trembled.
“Don’t forgive me so easily.”
“Lope…”
“Don’t treat my betrayal like it’s nothing. Get angry. Scold me. Be furious.”
“You’re my husband. You have the right to do that.”
Asterophe didn’t want to repeat her past mistakes, not even by accident.
If she ever started going down that path again, she wanted Kallian to stop her.
She wanted him to tell her firmly that the Grand Duchess should never act that way.
Not to die for love.
But to survive together.
Tears fell from Asterophe’s eyes.
They were tears of regret she hadn’t been able to shed in front of Kallian’s death.
Kallian didn’t fully understand the meaning of those tears.
But he could tell she was suffering.
He felt that something violent and painful had pierced straight through her heart.
Asterophe had changed.
It was as if the woman she used to be had vanished completely, and someone new had been born.
At the center of it all was a pain too deep to explain.
Who had hurt her this badly?
Billish Numa?
Or someone else?
Kallian desperately wanted to know the cause of her pain.
But in front of the woman crying while pressing her soft lips to his rough hand, what did any of that matter?
Kallian gently caressed Asterophe’s cheek as she cried with her eyes squeezed shut.
He wiped away her tears, then softly pressed his lips where the tears had fallen.
His kisses followed the path of her tears.
For the first time, Asterophe accepted his kiss without trembling.
Even on their wedding night, she hadn’t been able to look him in the eyes.
Back then, Kallian had known she couldn’t accept him.
Their first night had been awkward and clumsy.
She had seemed like she might break at any moment, so Kallian had focused only on protecting her, suppressing his own desire.
The year others called “newlywed bliss” had been painful for him.
Every day, he crushed his growing feelings flat, forcing them down.
He believed his love was a one-way road he could never walk fully.
And he had accepted that.
But now, Asterophe was rejecting everything he had resigned himself to.
She was asking him to be jealous.
To show rough, imperfect love.
To express desire.
For the first time.
Kallian moved his kisses slowly from her cheek toward the corner of her lips and spoke quietly.
“Am I really… allowed to feel that way toward you?”
Asterophe slowly opened her eyes.
Before her, the huge man had folded himself down and knelt.
She gently touched his cheek with her small hand.
“If you weren’t the frozen treasure of the North—”
“If you weren’t the Onyx Grand Duke of Serpwood, then no one would be allowed to feel that way about me.”
It was too soon to say she loved him.
But she belonged to him completely.
At the moment of her death, the name she had screamed was his.
What she felt was deeper than love.
Clearer than love.
A debt she had to repay.
A vow tied to revenge.
‘If you gave me my past life, then I’ll stake this entire life on you.’
Thinking that, Asterophe pressed a short kiss to the sharp bridge of his nose.
Kallian couldn’t endure it.
The small hand on his cheek.
That brief kiss.
He lifted her into his arms.
Asterophe instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck.
Her soft dress fell beautifully.
He buried his face against her pale neck and whispered.
“Lope, my Grand Duchess.”
His voice, overflowing with love, was hot.
Not the painful heat of flames—but the heat of life.
The sensation of a beating heart.
Of blood flowing.
Asterophe’s thick black hair spread across the white bed.
She reached out toward Kallian, who loomed over her like a shadow.
‘Make me feel alive. Let me feel my heart beating, my blood flowing. Kallian Onyx.’
She couldn’t say the words out loud.
Instead, she ran her hand over his shoulder.
She pulled him tightly into her small arms.
In the moment he revealed his love without holding back, she felt more alive than ever.
Right now, she and Kallian Onyx were alive.
Not as traitors.
Not as a villainess.
But as the masters of Serpwood.
Asterophe closed her eyes.
Cold tears slipped from the corners of them.
When she opened her eyes again, Asterophe was alone.
She noticed a note Kallian had left on the bedside table.
His handwriting was neat.
[Please forgive me for leaving you alone. I had to attend the afternoon council. You look lovely whenever you sleep.]
There were no flashy words like Billish’s.
Yet Kallian’s sincerity was clear.
Now, Asterophe could finally tell the difference.
Between Billish’s false sweetness and Kallian’s quiet honesty.
She held the short note for a long time.
She still couldn’t say she loved him.
She didn’t dare.
‘Kallian knows nothing. Not how I killed him. Not how miserable I made him. Not how he died standing on the blood of the knights he cherished…’
If he ever learned the truth, he wouldn’t love her like this.
He wouldn’t forgive her.
So this life couldn’t go in that direction.
More than anything, that path would destroy the Lunet family.
The memory made her frown.
Her parents.
Her two brothers.
All lost because of her.
Even in death, their bodies had been mocked in the central square of Renirun.
The proud Lunet family reduced to street trash overnight.
That pain was still vivid.
Holding Kallian’s note, Asterophe returned to her room.
She carefully placed the note into the deepest drawer.
Then she spread out a blank sheet of paper.
Her conservative family had never truly accepted Kallian as a son-in-law.
They treated him only as the Northern Grand Duke, ruler of Serpwood.
Her two older brothers, who loved her deeply, had been furious that she—destined to be empress—was sent to a frozen wasteland.
And they too had been used by Crown Prince Billish.
They believed his sweet lie that she would someday return as empress.
‘Yes. In our family, Kallian was always an outsider. My brothers never hid their hostility. As if they might draw their swords at any moment.’
That couldn’t happen again in this life.
Last time, those blades had turned toward her brothers instead.
She had to make them favor the Onyx family.
Should she bring them to Serpwood?
Or should she go to the capital, Sodel?
After thinking for a moment, Asterophe gently moved her pen.
[To my beloved brother, Berlo.]
The recipient was Berlo Lunet.
Her eldest brother.
And a fine knight.
