She spent two full days locked inside Kael’s bedroom.
Kael, for his part, handled everything from within it as well. Which was to say — he didn’t leave either. His stated reason was that he needed to be at her side to nurse her injured leg.
‘Nurse me. Right. He knows perfectly well I was faking.’
He ordered all three meals brought to the bedroom — breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And he went even further, citing her supposedly delicate joints as grounds for feeding her himself.
She had assumed it was a joke.
It was not.
“…?”
“Open up.”
“Wh — what is this — I can feed myself. My hands are perfectly fine.”
“But your leg isn’t.”
“I don’t eat with my legs. And I’m not a child—”
“You’re a baby.”
“…?”
“Weren’t you the one demanding to be fed just the other day? Speaking out of both sides of your mouth now, are we?”
“Oh, that’s — stop teasing me!”
“Wasn’t it the physician’s explicit instruction?”
“…”
“That your joints are on the delicate side, and you mustn’t strain yourself.”
And so, with every mealtime came a fresh wave of dread — waiting, tense and sour, for the moment he might suddenly turn on her. She accepted each spoonful he offered with a gnawing sense of the absurd.
‘What on earth is this. I am literally a pet being hand-fed by its keeper.’
As if the hand-feeding weren’t enough, he had all his documents swept into the bedroom and conducted his work from there too. Trapped on the bed for the entire day, she was thoroughly bored. She didn’t want to ask him to entertain her, though — her fear of him remained very much intact. Asking him to play would only invite trouble, and if he got any ideas about doing to her even a fraction of what he’d done to the heroine in the novel, the consequences would be catastrophic.
So she lay plastered to the bed, blinking slowly, and watched him work with a blank sort of fixation.
Even in the thick of his work, he always somehow sensed when her gaze landed on him. He would look up and meet her eyes.
Every single time, she flinched.
‘Shouldn’t I be used to it by now…’
And every single time their eyes met, his red irises curved at the corners.
It was unsettling.
Why did he keep making that face? The way he studied her at intervals — observing her the way a scientist might observe a fascinating specimen — was deeply strange.
But they were the only two people in this room. She couldn’t help but look at him.
Truthfully, seeing him absorbed in work was something of a novelty.
“Are you bored?”
“What?!”
“You keep glancing over here.”
“Yes. Well. Lying here like a dead rat in a bed will do that to a person.”
“Hm. No tantrums now. You were acting like a baby earlier.”
“…!”
“The whining and demanding. Could you do that again?”
“Excuse me?”
“‘Do this for me, do that for me.’ That was rather endearing, actually.”
“I am never doing that again!”
‘He’s genuinely deranged.’
Something is seriously wrong with this person.
She stiffened against the headboard at his words, back going rigid, staring at him with an expression she couldn’t quite arrange into anything more composed than petrified.
His face wore the look of a predator observing its very interesting, very captive prey.
The dynamic between them was clear. He was confined to the bedroom in name only — within it, he moved freely. But the moment she so much as lowered a foot toward the floor, he stopped her with the firm authority of a keeper overseeing a prized animal. She truly had to spend both days entirely on the bed.
The previous evening, Hugo had appeared at the bedroom door carrying a tower of books taller than himself. He had apparently told Kael that she loved studying — a false piece of intelligence — and Kael had commanded him to sweep the entire library.
“Ka — Kael? Why on earth did you bring all of those in here?”
“Hugo mentioned you enjoy studying?”
“Oh…”
“Pick whatever you like. Say the word if you need more.”
Hugo entered the bedroom with a face that had gone distinctly red, sorted the dozens of books by subject, and arranged them in a neat row beside the bed. He was visibly exhausted, mopping sweat from his brow as he worked.
‘She felt genuinely bad. And somewhat mortified.’
Throughout all of this, Kael didn’t spare Hugo a single glance.
That wasn’t all.
When she said she wanted to shower, Kael volunteered to wash her himself.
“Um… Kael, I want to take a shower.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
“What?! Go where?”
“You said you wanted to shower.”
“But why are ‘you’ coming?”
“How is a patient supposed to shower alone.”
“Oh my — you’ve lost your mind! No! Put me down! Right now!”
Kael scooped her up and began walking toward the bathroom.
She thrashed and shouted with everything she had, until he finally shook his head and set her down.
It was the first and last victory she claimed during her two-day captivity in Kael’s bedroom.
And then there was the strangest thing of all.
He obviously knew her sprained ankle was a lie. He knew. And yet — for the entirety of both days — he didn’t lay a hand on her.
He simply… held her at night. Wrapped around her entirely, as though she were a beloved pillow he’d grown attached to, and slept.
He was Kael. He could turn at any moment without warning. He always defied her expectations in some unfathomable direction.
So she didn’t let go of the tension or the quiet dread until she was absolutely certain he was asleep.
Both hands folded neatly on her chest, lying in perfect stillness like a figure on a tomb.
He was the one who’d accused her of tempting him when she so much as existed. She wasn’t going to give him anything to work with.
He held her close with her face tucked against him, and breathed slowly into her hair, into the curve of her neck.
“You smell nice.”
“Ah… yes.”
‘…That’s your own soap. From your own bathroom.’
That was all.
She hadn’t applied any special scent. And yet it apparently smelled good to him. Her entire body had gone rigid.
But that was genuinely all. He didn’t do anything.
‘Why isn’t he doing anything?’
He’d been entirely willing to spring at her regardless of location up until now. Why the change? They were alone in his bedroom, lying on his bed together — why wasn’t he taking the opportunity?
It was strange. She had assumed the whole physician scheme was groundwork for another round of revenge, and had braced for it.
Kael was truly an incomprehensible man.
“Ivelina.”
“Yes…”
“What do you say to one more night?”
“Good heavens… absolutely not. An unmarried woman, spending three nights in a man’s house — even if he is a… tentative sort of fiancé.”
“Tentative?”
“I mean — not quite official yet… that kind of arrangement.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes. Even an unofficial fiancé is still a bit much when it comes to three nights…!”
“Understood.”
“Right. Sleep well…”
The breathless conversation finally ended.
The hands she’d been holding so carefully on her chest were damp with sweat.
‘Absurd levels of tension.’
She lay perfectly still and waited for his breathing to even out. Only once she was certain he had fallen into a deep, genuine sleep did she finally, cautiously, let herself drift off too.
The sleep was shallow — anxiety kept pulling her back toward the surface — but mercifully, nothing came for her in the night.
* * *
Confined to his bedroom, she made up her mind all over again.
She would.
She absolutely would.
Get broken up with by Kael, no matter what.
She had spent two days experiencing it firsthand — a life of being tended like livestock in a private enclosure.
The captivity was finally over.
Today was the day she escaped from the Hardeion Duke’s bedroom.
She had been buoyant with relief — and then a sudden anxiety gripped her.
‘Surely he wouldn’t change his mind at the last moment. Surely he wouldn’t say she needed a few more days of treatment.’
* * *
