Chapter 7
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Kallion set down the documents and turned his gaze toward the window, beyond which darkness had settled. Tonight was the fifteenth, the night he had promised Juliana.
Since accepting her proposal, he hadn’t encountered her once.
As promised, they hadn’t interfered with each other in any way. It would be more accurate to say they had lived as though the other didn’t exist.
He recalled the last expression he had seen on her face.
Those cold crimson eyes without even a trace of lingering attachment.
She looked as though she were the one who had been forced into marrying him. When in truth, he was the one who had been forced into this marriage.
A self-deprecating smile slipped through his lips.
‘I thought, unlike me, she welcomed this marriage.’
He knew better than anyone that she had been harboring a one-sided love for him all this time. There was no way he could have failed to notice those innocent and straightforward gazes when she had never even tried to hide them.
He also knew that she had volunteered for this marriage herself.
Unless she had some other purpose…?
It had been a childhood meeting Juliana probably didn’t even remember, but when he hadn’t known she was a daughter of Heister, he had found her rather adorable.
When they met again after she had grown into a proper young lady, she had seemed utterly smitten with his appearance. Though he couldn’t understand how she could fall for a man from an enemy house.
Heister.
The enemy house that had killed his mother.
In order to eliminate him, who had been born with the strongest ability in generations, Heister had attempted to assassinate him countless times. In the end, his mother, who had tried to protect him, had lost her life in his place.
At the memory of his mother’s murder, pitch-black fury filled his eyes. Soon, a dark violet energy began surging from his body.
Startled by the sight, Layla flinched and called out to him.
“Lord Kallion…?”
As the dense energy of darkness surrounded them, Layla began choking, unable to breathe.
Only then did Kallion belatedly realize that the power of the Dark Spirit was leaking from him, and he hurriedly withdrew it.
“My apologies.”
The pressure had been intense enough to make an ordinary person wet themselves, but Layla forced a smile as though she were accustomed to it.
“It’s alright.”
The pitch-black energy subsided, but his gaze remained dark and heavy, like that of a beast.
After his mother’s death, his ability had instead grown even stronger, and Heister had merely succeeded in creating an even more powerful monster.
Only then had Heister finally backed down and attempted negotiations, but there was no chance the fury boiling within him toward his enemies would simply subside.
His father, on the other hand, was different.
His father, who wanted peace and an end to all the turmoil and cold war, readily accepted their proposal.
The fact that House Heister was a house close to the Imperial Family probably played a part as well. The Imperial Family, which governed the Holy Spirit, and Baldomer, which controlled the Dark Spirit, had also been on poor terms for a long time.
Even the banquet where he had first met her had been a Heister banquet he had been forced to attend.
Had he known she was a daughter of Heister, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to concern himself with her like that.
“Lord Kallion, it’s gotten quite late. Perhaps you should rest for today…”
Kallion, who had been lost in thought, raised his gaze at Layla’s voice.
Layla stayed beside him through the late nights he worked as routinely as eating meals.
He felt bad for making her stay with him, but he didn’t want to leave the office. If he left this room, he would have to go to the room where Juliana was waiting, just as they had agreed.
Uncharacteristically, he found himself reluctant to keep that promise.
‘If I go in after that woman falls asleep, sharing a bed is still sharing a bed.’
With that thought, Kallion leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes.
“I’ll get some sleep for a while.”
At Kallion’s indifferent words, Layla looked worried.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable resting in your room?”
“I’m more comfortable here.”
A shadow fell over Layla’s face as she looked at Kallion.
Poor man. How difficult must it be to live in a marriage with a woman he doesn’t even want?
And a woman from his enemy’s house, at that.
As a daughter of House Sorento, a long-standing vassal house of Baldomer, Layla also knew House Heister very well.
The cold war between the two houses had lasted for over five hundred years.
And Kallion had lost his own mother in the midst of it.
The only one who had become a sacrifice between the two houses, forced into reconciliation to end the cold war, was poor Kallion.
Meanwhile, there was that foolish woman who openly showed affection for her master without even caring that they came from enemy houses.
Wasn’t this no different from marrying your stalker?
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