The Sand Bride - Side Story 2.2

“A-Ah, no.”

That deep, deep concern even affected their nightly affairs, to the point where Esther refused him for the first time when Karzhen tried to take her. Although she trembled with fear, she stubbornly shook her head and curled her body. It was to the point where Karzhen looked down at her with a bewildered face.

“What did you just say……?”

“L-Lord Karzhen, you mustn’t move vigorously until all the poison is gone.”

When Esther, who had accepted him quietly every time, refused him for the first time, Karzhen felt flustered rather than angry. And he felt even more so upon hearing the reason, because Esther was worried about him, not herself.

“Because usually, snake venom circulates through the blood, and if you move, the blood flows quickly through the body…….”

“…….”

“C-Circulates…… So, that’s why…….”

Under Karzhen’s gaze, which was staring intently at her with an absurd face, Esther somehow managed to continue her words. It couldn’t be helped. To her knowledge, physical relations were not good for someone poisoned.

Furthermore, the movements Karzhen showed when he usually held her weren’t gentle or slow, no matter how charitably she looked at it, so that would be even worse.

“For the time being, I’d like it… if you just slept…….”

Karzhen looked down at her with a dazed expression and his mouth agape, but Esther finally said everything she had to say. And before Karzhen could show any reaction, she quickly got up from the bed, straightened her clothes, and placed a blanket over Karzhen’s body. It was a very thick cotton quilt.

She didn’t stop there; she even groaned as she lifted and covered him with a thick, heavy leather fur, so Karzhen ended up looking like a person buried in the ground, with only his neck poking out above the quilt and the fur. Only then did Esther pull a chair from nearby, place it next to the bed, and sit down.

“Then… please sleep well.”

“Ha…….”

At those words, Karzhen finally burst into a hollow laugh. The way Esther looked down at him was exactly like a caregiver tending to a patient. It was that kind of gaze, stained with worry mixed with despair, as if looking at someone terminally ill who might die at any moment.

This gaze, which was beyond bizarre and something he had never received in his entire life, eventually made Karzhen lie down quietly and try to sleep.

He was inwardly in a state of confusion because he had never received such a look—that is, something like worry—from anyone. However, his dissatisfaction at not being able to roll around with Esther as usual remained, so his grumbling didn’t disappear.

“……I don’t know if I’ve kept a woman to hold in my inner palace or a doctor to nurse me.”

With his usual personality—or rather, the person others knew him to be—he would have gotten annoyed, telling her to stop talking nonsense, or would have done what he wanted while getting angry. But he didn’t do that. No. He didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t doing it because he didn’t want to.

Karzhen could have forcibly crushed her and rifled through her body like before, like the day he first saw Esther on that desert, but he didn’t.

Instead, he tapped the spot next to him on the wide bed and said:

“It’s distracting, so if you’re going to stay, lie down here.”

When he felt Esther blinking and looking at his face, Karzhen, who had turned his head away without realizing it, continued speaking hastily for no reason.

“Or else just get the hell out.”

After that, he was taken aback by why he had given such a command. There was nothing else he wanted to say, but anyway, he didn’t want to say those kinds of words.

But Esther didn’t leave the room. She carefully sat down, leaning her back against the headboard of the bed, trying her best not to touch the quilt and fur Karzhen was covered with. She looked ready to bolt outside and call someone at any moment.

Finally, within the warmth of the thick, heavy, sand-like blanket, Karzhen watched Esther’s hair hanging down long. Seeing even that sand-colored hair, he felt the illusion that he was truly buried in the desert. But it was warm, and a peaceful feeling circulated through his entire body.

In that state, Karzhen thought that he truly didn’t know what he wanted to do anymore.

While his mind was clashing with all sorts of thoughts, his body was just lying there, feeling as if he were someone who had fallen into a sand pit, struggling and then losing strength, falling helplessly down, further and further down.

‘Why on earth is that?’