What Became of the Tyrant After the Pregnant Empress Left - Chapter 239

Kazhan dragged a hand down his face. He hadn’t known love could be this violent.

All his research claimed love was universal—that everyone carried a torch for someone, eventually. That even the fiercest flames had to cool with time. He’d read countless treatises on how people cycled through lovers like seasons.

At that moment, he knew every word was a lie. This fire—this consumption—wouldn’t fade with time. Instinct screamed it would only burn fiercer until he died.

Then again, he’d never been ordinary. Standard measures didn’t apply.

Ysaris had taken root in his barren world like nothing else. Every shred of his humanity traced back to her. Without her, he’d still be a corpse walking through a grayscale hell.

She was the boundary between life and death. At least, to him.

So of course he’d loved her.

Whoever she chooses…

‘Do I have any right to stop her?’

A fist of ice clamped around his heart. His thoughts fractured, too frozen to connect.

Ysaris hadn’t even mentioned marriage, yet he felt perched on a cliff’s edge. Just imagining her accepting some highborn’s proposal made his blood boil backward.

This couldn’t stand. Playing her knight, orbiting her like a moon—it wasn’t enough.

He went to her room half-mad, past caring about consequences. If she cast him out, so be it—losing her to another would kill him just as dead.

Either way, spiritual death awaited.

So—

He stood before her, a condemned man.

His throat closed. Whatever choked him now defied naming.

Since meeting Ysaris, he’d reclaimed so many feelings—joy, surprise, happiness, rage, fear—but never sorrow. He hadn’t wept since escaping his mother’s clutches.

He didn’t recognize the wetness on his cheeks. This wasn’t grief.

What flooded him instead—

Hunger for her. Self-loathing for his worthlessness. Resentment that she owned his heart so effortlessly. Dread of what came next. Despair that he’d never be enough. Hope anyway.

And love, raw and undeniable.

A single tear fell, rough-hewn by the storm inside him.

A covenant.

The greatest honor Cain Jenut would ever know.

…Back then, he’d thought nothing could surpass that happiness.

Months later, Kazhan learned the hard truth, becoming Ysaris’s lover didn’t solve anything.

Their relationship stayed secret. He remained a step behind, forced to watch her charm nobles at court.

He endured it—because her brightest smiles were his. Her whispered “I love yous,” the press of her lips—his alone.

Once, they went further. A princess guarding her purity for marriage, yet choosing him—the awe of it nearly shattered him.