The Dialectic of Master and Slave - Chapter 254

Volumes 1-4 + Side Stories of DMS are available uncensored on ko-fi! ※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

“Hah—nh! It’s not like I—ahh—couldn’t—!”

“Was it snakes that you liked? If you wanted a snake in here because you like them so much, then just say so. I’ll call a mage and have them turn my c**k into a snake for you. Since you seem to like black snakes, I’ll make it black.”

This man—apparently, he’d gotten petty after hearing her say earlier that the snake-themed chastity belt looked nice.

She knew he had a possessive, obsessive temperament, but she hadn’t expected him to be jealous of an inanimate object. Jaha was floored.

“Should I add bumpy, scaly ridges too? Would you like that more every time it goes in? Snakes have two d***s and really long mating sessions—should I match that too?”

“Enough—hng—just stop. Before I—ah—put the chastity belt back on you.”

She had no patience left to entertain this nonsense, so Jaha cut him off sharply. He stared down at her with shimmering eyes before speaking again.

“Then how about putting a gag in this mouth? With my tongue.”

It was a transparent ploy, but she figured it was still better than noise pollution. Jaha closed her eyes. The beast who got what he wanted laughed into her throat before sealing their lips together.

As dizziness swallowed her senses, just before her rationality slipped away, Jaha lamented:

Really, is nothing ever easy with you?

When she opened her eyes, Jaha faced a pitch-black world and realized she had been asleep.

When did I fall asleep?

Her throat felt scorched, so she sluggishly got up and reached toward the bedside table. Drinking the lukewarm water quickly quenched her thirst, but it also woke her up completely.

Leaning her upper body against the headboard, Jaha lowered her gaze. She was sure she had pushed his arm aside when she got up, yet somehow, her leg was trapped again. It felt—how should she put it?—like having the hem of her pants grabbed, pleading don’t go. The culprit himself was fast asleep, though.

In the darkness, Jaha stared intently at the man’s face.

Her thoughts were sucked into a moment from the past—back to when she had regained all her memories and resolved to drive a dagger into his heart.

Jaha had been utterly, unequivocally serious. If that wasn’t sincerity, then nothing in this world was.

She had intended to take revenge with her entire being. Not just out of justification, but with a sense of duty—that it had to be done. But the moment their eyes met, the moment she faced those lost, childlike eyes glistening with tears, as if he had already foreseen his fate, a surge of scorching heat welled up in her chest.

The instant she learned the truth, she had thrown every shred of affection she ever held for this man into a furnace. Yet, some part of her heart remained stubbornly unmelted…

Memories of the days she had been happy, of loving and being loved by him, resurfaced, blurring her vision. But that didn’t mean she could bury the past and forgive him.

Jaha let go of the fork she had been clutching. It clattered loudly as it fell onto the plate.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

She desperately swallowed her tears, unwilling to let him see her cry.

“It’s a saying from where I come from. It means paying back exactly what you’ve suffered. Understand? I’ll return it to you in kind.”

From that day on, Jaha became his master, and he—Jaha’s slave.

The first thing Jaha did with the money she earned from selling jewelry at the gem shop was summon a mage.

“Carve a contraceptive seal onto this man’s lower abdomen.”

“W-What? That’s—that’s something only done to prostitutes or s-s*x slaves, how could you— Th-That’s absurd!”

The mage was aghast at Jaha’s request. After one glance at Rikanan, he couldn’t even meet his eyes properly—clearly, he knew his identity. In that case, his stubborn refusal made sense. There were few mages bold enough to brand such a humiliating mark onto the body of the late emperor’s kin.

Just as Jaha was considering whether to find another mage who wouldn’t recognize him—

“Do as she says.”

Rikanan spoke indifferently. The mage, who lacked the audacity to defy the late emperor’s decree, carved the contraceptive seal with a face as pale as if about to faint. And the moment the task was done, he truly collapsed and was carried away by the servants.

Jaha stared at the fox-like pattern now etched over the well-defined muscles of his abdomen, recalling the humiliation she had felt.