Chapter 14 · At the Fountain

A secluded corner of the garden where even the sunset passed by.

The two shadows overlapping on the water’s surface were frozen without the slightest movement.

Isadel pressed down the surging irritation and furrowed her brow.

It seemed the gods would ultimately turn away from her final prayer.

Cutting through the silence, Erhan’s sardonic voice flew in.

“Are you still caught up in childhood games?”

“…How did you know to come here?”

Isadel asked sharply.

At that, Erhan rolled up the neat sleeve of his uniform and approached leisurely.

“It’s obvious with you. When you’re angry, you run to the training grounds and swing a sword, and on gloomy days, you hide here and stand for hours.”

His mocking answer was steeped in an undeniable familiarity.

Whether she wanted to admit it or not, he saw through Isadel as if reading the palm of his hand.

That was what more than ten years of growing up within the same walls amounted to.

Even now, when they had come to hate each other most, it ironically made them the two people who knew each other best in the world.

Then Erhan’s nose twitched faintly.

It was because of the bittersweet yet honeyed scent that had seeped into the air.

“It seems you’ve even been drinking.”

Isadel’s lips moved to retort, but she soon closed her mouth as if in resignation.

Her reddened cheeks and hazy, unfocused eyes already proved everything.

Further excuse would only be pathetic.

In the end, Isadel let out a shallow breath and stubbornly turned her head away.

“…It’s my business.”

Having said that, she reached out as if groping through the air, but lost her balance and tilted heavily to the side.

Had it not been for the edge of the fountain, she would have tumbled straight to the ground.

Erhan watched each of her precarious movements and clicked his tongue inwardly.

‘She can’t even drink properly, so why bother.’

She was the type whose ears turned red from even a single glass of champagne.

How much had she poured down, for the sharp scent of alcohol mixed in the air to pierce his nose like this?

Leaning against the fountain, Erhan silently looked down at her as she sat there, soaked in alcohol and mumbling to herself.

Eyes that had lost their fighting spirit, and shoulders so thin they seemed they would break at a touch.

When she was always bristling with thorns and standing tall against him, and now—unarmed and disheveled like this—it weighed dreadfully on his mind.

His gaze traveled down Isadel’s face and stopped at her slender wrist.

Perhaps from struggling against the chains, or from being forcibly pulled—red marks from scraping were vivid in places.

It was as good as ruined by his own hands.

Yet looking at that wrist, torn and covered in scars, a corner of his chest ached as if cut by a blade.

Erhan settled down a step away from Isadel.

“So, did your goddess grant your wish?”

Despite the jeering words, his gaze would not leave Isadel’s wrist.

“Seeing as you’re still alive and well, doesn’t that tell you? She didn’t grant it.”

“…That’s a shame.”

“Are you mocking me right now?”

Her irritation at his words was brief; Isadel sighed as if in resignation.

“Actually, I didn’t even pray for you to die. I asked for me to die…”

“…Why?”

At Erhan’s question, Isadel answered calmly, as if speaking of someone else’s affairs.

“What would change if I killed you?”

“……”

“Would my dead family come back to life? Or would I regain the stolen throne?”

In her eyes, hazy with alcohol, neither vitality nor vengeance remained.

“Nothing would change. You, me, and Rastain too… we’ve already come to a place beyond turning back.”

Isadel’s final words burrowed deep into Erhan’s heart.

‘Nothing would change…’

With only the sound of water falling from the fountain filling the silence, Erhan clenched his fist tight.

The veins on the back of his pale hand bulged as if about to burst.

He would have felt less suffocated if she had at least grabbed him by the throat.

A void heavier than hatred pressed down on the air between them.

Within it, Erhan finally realized.

This was not the victory he had wanted.

Was bringing his enemy to their knees and watching their despair this hollow and cold?

Instead of the thrill of victory, only a pain that mercilessly clawed at the depths of his being rushed in.

“…Isadel.”

He knew he had no right even to speak her name, yet he called it without thinking.

But no answer came.

Before Erhan could even assume an unconscious defensive stance, Isadel’s hand sliced through the air with agile movement.

Without hesitation, she seized his uniform and in an instant snatched the silver pin lodged near his chest.

Then, throwing the weight of her body into it, she drove Erhan hard to the ground.

“Ugh!”

Erhan struck his head against the hard stone floor and let out a short groan.

But before he could even dwell on the pain, a sharp silver tip flew at his neck.

He instinctively caught her wrist and barely stopped it.

“What are you doing?”

It was a speed that would have pierced his artery had he been even slightly later.

“How foolish. Have you let your guard down again, caught by that cheap sympathy?”

A sneer flowed from Isadel’s bitterly curling lips.

Had the helplessness from moments ago all been an illusion?

In the eyes of Isadel pressing down on Erhan, instead of sorrowful tears, a vivid flame of madness churned.

With a single-minded determination to kill him, Isadel roughly pressed the silver pin down.

As the sharp tip of the metal dug into Erhan’s neck, bright drops of blood welled up.

“I command you—don’t do anything reckless.”

Erhan spoke without blinking an eye even at the threat touching his throat.

“How dare you give me orders!”

Isadel screamed and put strength into the hand holding the pin.

“You think wearing a crown makes you a real emperor? Even so, the fact that you’re a Hwa-in doesn’t change. You’ll always be neither human nor beast—just a drug that imitates people!!”

Knife-like words flew mercilessly at Erhan’s heart.

With each one embedding, invisible wounds seemed to deepen.

Yet he showed no sign of pain, no trace of agitation.

Instead, he quietly laid his own hand over hers on the pin.

“…Stop it. You’ll get hurt.”

Isadel sharply shook off his hand at once.

“Save your worthless concern.”

The cold silver tip dug deeper into Erhan’s skin.

At the wet sensation running down his neck, Erhan finally grasped the gravity of the situation.

Isadel Lacent was not a woman who bluffed.

The killing intent in her hand at this very moment was unmistakably genuine, and she truly intended to kill him.

In the end, he had to choose.

He had not wanted to use his Hwa-in power to rattle her mind this early, but at this rate, his life was truly in danger.

Erhan’s eyes began to ripple with a strange light.

“Let go of that hand.”

The Hwa-in power in his voice spread as if cutting through the still air.

A moment of stillness in which time twisted and even the sound of the fountain’s water was erased.

Now Isadel had no choice but to obey his command.

And yet.

Plip.

“…?”

Something cold touched Erhan’s cheek.

For an instant, he thought he had been cut.

But it was colder than blood, and sharper than a blade as it pierced his heart.

“Keuk… heuk…”

It was Isadel’s tears.

She was the woman who had never broken down—not during the brutally burned birthday banquet, not when she became his humiliating captive with everything taken from her.

And now that Isadel was crumbling wretchedly before his eyes.

The moment he saw those eyes, once filled with hatred, collapse in desolation, Erhan could do nothing.

The Hwa-in power he had summoned to subdue her scattered like grains of sand, and the grip around her wrist loosened.

Isadel sobbed.

“Now, please, just kill me…”

“……”

“Please… I’m begging you, kill me…”

Before Isadel’s wretched plea, Erhan could not utter a single word.

He could only look up blankly, like a sinner, at her begging him to kill her.

In the answerless silence, Isadel’s eyes stained with despair, and Erhan’s heart was slowly crushed.

The two gazes, pressed tautly together, wavered.

Perhaps the heavy intoxication had belatedly swept over her whole body.

The shadow of Isadel pressing down on Erhan crumbled powerlessly.

Clatter!

The bloodstained metal rolled indifferently across the floor.

At the same time, Isadel collapsed onto Erhan’s chest.

Erhan hastily reached out and cradled her head.

The fountain, now quiet, was filled only with the faint breathing of the two fallen on the ground and the gentle sound of water.

Beneath the cold water, only a single coin holding a wish that could never come true shone quietly.