What Became of the Tyrant After the Pregnant Empress Left - Chapter 48

“…Your Majesty.”
Ysaris stared down at Kazhan, who was rubbing his face against her comparatively cooler hand. His labored breaths were hot, and he seemed out of his mind. Naturally, there was no response, and her futile call dispersed into the air.
If she was going to kill him, she had to act now. This moment, when he couldn’t even regain his senses despite repeated calls, was the best chance to kill a formidable knight.

Gulp.
Swallowing dryly, Ysaris took a deep breath in and out. She wrapped her hands around Kazhan’s neck but hesitated to apply pressure.
Murder is murder, and he is who he is. The weight of killing her husband, the ruler of the continent, made her hands tremble.
What if she didn’t kill him in one go? What if Tennilath’s blood saved him? What if the knights found this place? What if it was revealed that she killed him?
What if…
“Ys… saa…”
“…!”
Ysaris was startled by Kazhan’s call. She froze, her breath stopping, and was about to pull her hands away when he grabbed her. With his barely movable right arm, he held her left arm.
“Your… Majesty. This is, that is…”
“Ysaa…”
Ysaris, hastily trying to explain, noticed something strange.
He called her Ysaa, not Empress. His eyes were unfocused and vacant. He wasn’t questioning the situation.
It seemed Kazhan wasn’t fully awake. Or perhaps he couldn’t be.
“Phew.”
Ysaris exhaled deeply to calm her anxious heart. As her thumping heart settled, what surfaced was a sense of discomfort.
Until now, her husband hadn’t called her by her nickname, let alone her name. Considering he did it when they fell off the cliff was one thing, but hearing him call her nickname even while waking up from sleep stirred feelings of displeasure.
“I never gave you permission to call me by my nickname.”
There were only two people allowed to call her Ysaa.
Cain and Bariteon. The former was dead, and the latter had been killed by Kazhan.
So it was only natural for her to hate hearing her nickname from Kazhan’s mouth.
“Ysaa…”
But he, as if not hearing anything, made the same mistake again. Even in his foggy state, acting contrary to Ysaris’s wishes irritated her. The long-standing anger, which subconsciously contributed to her decision to kill Kazhan, flared up red and hot.
Her slightly withdrawn hands wrapped around his neck again.
“Your Majesty, you always did that. Never once did you grant a request for my sake. You took away my people, my rights, my dignity, and now you still have something left to trample on?”
“…”
Kazhan remained silent. He only looked at her with a dazed face, caught between reality and dream.
“If you liked my body so much, you should have made a doll in my image. If it had no life, it would have always obediently clung to you, never resisting.”
“…”
Kazhan still said nothing. Ysaris’s upper body leaned in, shifting her weight to her hands.
“Ugh…”
“I hate you, Your Majesty. I hate you. You always force yourself on me, use hostages to threaten me, disdain and humiliate me, yet you cherish my body! The one who will eventually kill me, I hate you! Do you understand?”
Kazhan slowly blinked his eyes at Ysaris’s unusually raised voice.
His ears had been ringing and his head buzzing, hearing her voice but not comprehending the words. Like being submerged underwater, everything was filtered, including the sensation of being strangled.
The only thing he could perceive was the sight of Ysaris, illuminated by the moonlight.
She blurred in his hazy vision, overlapping with the past.

‘It was suffocating.’
‘So, truly, suffocating…’
“…Beautiful.”
‘Because she was beautiful.’
He smiled.
“What…”
He reached out to the now motionless Ysaris. His left arm wouldn’t obey him, but his right arm could move, albeit with excruciating pain.
His fingers, moving slowly, touched the cheek of the woman strangling him. The careful caress, the look in his eyes, and the tender way he called her name were heartbreakingly gentle.
“Ysaa.”
Like Cain Jenut once did.
“…!”
Ysaris held her breath.
She didn’t understand why. She was the one strangling him, yet she felt as if she were the one being choked.
Was it because the red eyes reflecting her image looked so unusually warm? Or because his voice calling her was unbearably affectionate?
The déjà vu she had felt fleetingly the night before gnawed at her mind. It seemed to be confusing her senses.
The one dying beneath her hands felt like Cain, not Kazhan.