Tamed Monster - Chapter 127

“You wouldn’t understand, but… there’s a very serious reason I can’t let you leave the castle anymore. It’s not that I don’t feel like it. It’s genuinely dangerous. So could you stay here quietly until I say it’s all right?”

After she stayed put and things settled down, he planned to leave the Empire with her. Lost in that rosy vision, Kuinan paid no heed to Sylvia’s wishes at all. Much like how an ordinary male monster never bothers to confirm a female monster’s consent. Sylvia thought she would never truly understand this creature.

“…All right.”

She answered that way, but she intended to try again and again. Even if it meant having her ankles shattered, just as he’d said.

No matter how impressive the monster’s outer shell looked, Sylvia wasn’t fooled. She hadn’t even been on good terms with her real husband to begin with, and it wasn’t as though she adored Kuinan’s appearance to the point of losing her mind.

…Though, when he smiled softly at such close range, it was impossible not to feel how exquisitely crafted his features were.

If she set aside the filthy contempt festering inside her, she couldn’t deny his allure. But Sylvia was clear-headed now. Whenever her resolve wavered, she forced herself to remember the moment she’d driven a dagger into the monster’s neck. The way his flesh had melted away, revealing his grotesque true form beneath.

“Why… do you hate me… this much?”

His voice, splitting apart ugly and thick with resentment, came back to her as well.

When she traced even that memory, a strange discomfort stirred in her chest. Sylvia told herself it was nothing more than revulsion born of contempt. She had to believe that, only then could she keep her hatred of him perfectly intact.

Even the kisses that brushed against her in the dead of night, while she struggled half-asleep, could not possibly be real. She refused to acknowledge them. The moment their lips met and warm liquid flowed into her mouth, her uncanny body settled as if it had been waiting for it—and Sylvia noticed, yet pretended not to.

The unidentified substance was briny, sweet, and so warm it spread heat through her from the inside out in an instant.

Deep down, Sylvia knew. She knew what it was, and what the monster was doing to her. His incomprehensible muttering—If you die, I won’t survive either—was starting to make sense. At least, her subconscious understood it perfectly.

What a strange relationship it was. One side clung desperately to love, while the other was trapped in a position where she should have been dragged along, yet she resisted stubbornly, rejecting that love outright. Her hatred of him outweighed even the fear that refusing him might lead to her death.

“Sylvia.”

The tall man approached her, cheeks faintly flushed, gazing down at her intently. It had been well over two weeks since she’d been confined to this cramped bedroom. It was nearly a month, probably. Aware that she must be suffocating, he offered sweetly.

“Shall I let you go for a walk?”

That was why she couldn’t help likening her situation to that of a pet. The monster wasn’t treating her as a wife. He was treating her like a kept animal. Even the lapdogs doted on by obsessive noblewomen would likely receive better care than she did.

Sylvia’s voice trembled thinly.

“Yes. Please let me go for a walk.”

Pride didn’t matter right now. Escaping his grasp was all that mattered. She still hadn’t heard from the family she treasured more than her own life. But Sylvia already knew. She knew exactly what would be written in the letter her sister was surely sending her at this very moment.

[Don’t worry about us. Just run.]

Even if her sister didn’t fully grasp what it meant that the Duke was a monster, she’d at least sensed the grave danger Sylvia was in. It hurt to burden her sister with such news just as she was settling into a new life, but Sylvia didn’t regret it.

Once she escaped this place, sold the jewels she’d siphoned off to secure funds, and found the right moment to reunite with her family, they could live comfortably enough. It wouldn’t be the refined life of nobility. But they could live as well as any wealthy commoners. That was the life Sylvia truly wanted.

“What are you thinking about right now?”

The sharp question cut straight through her thoughts of family. Sylvia came back to her senses, realizing with a pang of regret how long she’d hesitated to leave the castle. Perhaps meeting the monster had been a blessing in disguise. It had stripped away desires she should have abandoned long ago and helped her reclaim what truly mattered.

‘As long as my sister doesn’t resent me…’

As long as she didn’t curse her for marrying a man who turned out to be a monster, demand to know what that meant for her own dream of becoming a knight, or lash out at Sylvia in blame.