Chapter 20
The mountains were riddled with cliffs hidden under snow. She knew this from experience. It was dangerous. The alarm blaring in her head grew louder.
“Father has a soft streak, you see, so he could never go this far himself.”
Danian muttered something cryptic as he advanced on Tina, one step at a time.
“The Military Academy, you know.”
When he was close enough to breathe on her, his expression changed entirely. The gleeful grin had vanished.
“It is a truly wretched place. Nobodies who happen to score a little higher strut around like they’re somebody.”
Still backing away, Tina heard a stone tumble off an edge and plummet into depth below. She did not need to look behind her. One more step, and she would fall.
“But with someone like Marquess Gillion, an old man with nothing but money? Getting a few test scores adjusted at the academy is child’s play.”
“Brother, can we please go back and talk about this…”
“Ha! To think I’d meet my sister’s future husband in a place like that—what incredible luck!”
Tina could see greed and excitement tangled together in his grin, which climbed beyond all limit.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pull you out before you actually die.”
Those were the last words Tina heard before she fell from the endless cliff.
Her body was flung into the void as though hurled. Frigid wind seized her clothes; the dry crack of rock striking rock grazed her ears. She could not even scream.
“Ah…”
By the time she opened her eyes, she was already at the bottom. Tina woke into agony that crushed her entire body. A grinding pain radiated from below her waist, and her left ankle had twisted so badly it was already swelling.
After a long stretch of confusion, Tina was able to piece together where she was. She lay at the bottom of a cliff. Just like before. Alone.
A biting wind gusted through the gaps in the rock. Danian’s words about frostbite were beginning to feel less like idle threats.
Her brother meant to abandon her here and return at just the right moment. That is, the moment when frostbite was about to claim a limb but not her life.
“Hah.”
The instant she understood this, resignation and helplessness crashed over her at once. Unlike last time, the thought of escape never even entered her mind. If Danian had put her here, then everything that followed would go according to his plan.
All Tina knew was that her eyes kept falling shut, and that if she really did die like this, the family would be furious.
Only the thought of Rus worried her. If she died, their anger would reach him too, and that thought tugged at her. He was just a small creature. She was supposed to protect him. She had promised to stay by his side…
Her eyelids sank heavier and heavier.
How much time had passed? Tina opened her eyes slowly to the feeling of something thick and soft wrapped around her body. The pain crawling up from her legs persisted, but at least the bone-rattling cold was gone.
“…..”
Tina looked around. Through blurred vision, she could make out a low flame flickering.
She blinked several more times. Behind the wavering light, a shadow emerged, and as her eyes slowly found their focus, the shadow resolved into the unmistakable shape of a person.
Tina stared, tracing the form beyond the flame. Hair black as ink. Skin so clean it seemed to gleam. Features unmistakably sharp, yet somehow wrapped in a strange gentleness.
He was watching her without a word. His gaze was calm, but through it flickered something cautious. Was it her imagination? She sensed in him a kind of deliberate distance. An effort not to let his eyes linger longer than they should.
‘Did that man… save me?’
Tina struggled to bring her vision into focus. She wanted to see the man across from her properly, but her heavy lids kept drooping and rising of their own accord.
“..…”
Since the man watching her said nothing, the silence stretched on. He did not look away, but he came no closer, so Tina could only see him through the wavering firelight.
Who was he? Why had he saved her? Unanswerable questions drifted through the dizziness.
“…The blizzard won’t last long.”
Then, breaking the long silence, a low voice resonated along the cave walls.
“You— agh!”
The next instant, Tina tried reflexively to sit up, only to cry out at the pain that shot through her leg. That voice was not unfamiliar. No, it was all too familiar. A voice she could never forget.
“W-wait! Don’t come closer.”
“…..”
The man, who had started toward her as if by instinct, stopped the moment she shouted.
“You…”
Tina knew this voice well. This deep, settling timbre was the very one she had heard every night in her dreams.
‘No. That’s impossible.’
She told herself over and over as she slowly raised her head. And then, at last, she saw his eyes clearly.
‘Red.’
The redness before her was no illusion, no trick of firelight dancing in the dark.
“Who… are you?”
A trembling voice spilled from Tina’s lips.
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