Chapter 103
It was Kalian’s task to dress Angela in the new clothes Yvonne had prepared. With slow, deliberate movements, Kalian layered each piece onto her.
Angela couldn’t understand why her toes kept curling as her exposed skin gradually disappeared beneath the fabric. The moment the last button was securely fastened, she flinched her shoulders like someone startled. It was because Kalian’s fingers had brushed against her neck, tickling like a flame.
Was that intentional? Angela’s eyes, which had been following Kalian’s hands as he attended to her, now turned toward his face.
But the Kalian who had raged with a ferocity fiercer than the black panther that had bitten Angela had already returned to the face of a composed gentleman.
She scrutinized his eyes, nose, and mouth carefully. Not a speck of selfish desire was visible. He was simply focused on adjusting her attire.
So, perhaps it was just her imagination, she thought, as she began to avert her gaze.
“……!”
Suddenly, Kalian cast off his gentleman’s mask and pressed his lips to Angela’s. It was a kiss that pleaded with deprivation. It revealed a bottomless regret, as if the fact that they had just been skin-to-skin meant nothing, as if Angela was still lacking.
“Lord Kalian……, are you not ready yet?”
It was only when Vigo’s impatient voice came from outside that Kalian began to rein in the affection he had exploded forth like a burst. Of course, it took a bit more time to fully compose himself.
“Lord Kalian……? Miss Bilton……?”
Vigo’s voice once again filtered heavily through the tent fabric. This time, it carried an even greater urgency.
It was understandable.
‘Lord Kalian, you and Miss Bilton need to come out. His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince has arrived at the barracks and is waiting.’
‘……Understood. Tell him to wait a moment.’
A considerable time had passed since that brief exchange of report and response—far too long to call it “a moment” even in jest.
That was why they had started dressing in the first place, but they had completely forgotten due to another kiss. However, it could no longer be postponed.
“At this rate, Sir Vigo might just keel over.”
Angela gently urged Kalian, who was pressing his forehead against her rounded one. Even hearing her voice pushing him away, Kalian couldn’t bring himself to separate from Angela. Finally, with a deep sigh, he straightened his posture.
Kalian roughly adjusted his sleeves and collar to tidy his appearance, then cast a contrasting careful gaze over Angela from head to toe. After that, he spoke.
“Just fix your hair and come out.”
With those words, Kalian turned away. But he hadn’t taken many steps toward the outside before he stopped.
“Ah.”
As if he had forgotten something to say, Kalian turned back toward Angela. And then.
“Do it roughly.”
Leaving behind those incomprehensible words, he exited the tent.
Angela blinked, staring at the swaying entrance, then began gathering her hair to tie it up. The golden strands slipped through her fingers several times as she neatly arranged them.
It was at that moment that an incredulous laugh burst from Angela’s lips. She had suddenly understood what Kalian’s words meant.
They were on their way to meet Ian. So, don’t put too much effort into it. Don’t look pretty in another man’s eyes.
“Tch.”
Angela’s lips curled up as she slightly loosened her grip on the bundled hair.
* * *
Angela was astonished to discover that Ian, who usually just grinned incessantly, could express such a wide range of emotions in such a short time.
Wondering where to start her story, Angela eventually brought up the abused child. It wasn’t intentional, but since she now held one of Ian’s secrets in her hand, it seemed fair to offer one of her own.
Even so, she didn’t think it was a story worth detailing at length, so she condensed the parts she deemed unnecessary and omitted as much as possible the uncomfortable sections. Yet, this was the reaction.
Ian’s emotions, which had started with anxiety, passed through melancholy to become profound sadness, then shifted to misery in a moment of shock, and then to anger. The final destination it reached was fear. Ian was looking at Angela with eyes drenched in terror.
Angela thought it was because she was right in front of him. To most people, Angela would be nothing more than an unidentified dangerous entity.
A tongue that slaughtered a pack of red wolves with a single word, a body temperature colder than a corpse, regenerative abilities beyond human limits. If one viewed reality coldly, in the eyes of others, Angela and Grace would be no different.
Don’t look at me like that.
It was something she couldn’t say to Ian. When she had discovered her own changes, hadn’t she trembled in fear herself? How much more so for others? Angela humbly accepted the fear directed at her.
“Ha……, what do I do?”
Ian finally spoke after quite some time had passed. He swept back his silver hair, which marked his noble lineage, as if it annoyed him, and uttered words that were quite at odds with the expression on his face.
“I’m so pissed off, Angela.”
It wasn’t something to say while dripping fear like sweat across his face. So, naturally, she was about to dismiss it as bravado when.
“You……!”
Ian suddenly leaped up from the simple table set up inside the tent, grabbed Kalian by the collar, and yanked him to his feet.
“You almost lost her completely.”
The chairs where Ian and Kalian had been sitting toppled backward weakly, and the crude cup on the table, placed instead of a fine teacup, sloshed and spilled its tea.
As if none of that mattered, Ian bit his lip hard and glared at Kalian. Only then did Angela confirm the true nature of the fear filling Ian’s eyes.
It wasn’t that he was afraid of Angela. He was afraid of having almost lost Angela. It wasn’t facing her that scared him. It was the fact that this moment of sitting face-to-face might never have come that had terrified Ian.
As she gradually extracted the embedded fear from his gaze, what remained in Ian’s eyes was a blazing rage. Even so, she couldn’t understand why it was directed straight at Kalian.
“Ian, let go.”
Angela said it like a command. It was no use. Instead of words of refusal, Ian tightened his grip on Kalian’s collar even more.
Perhaps because it was the Crown Prince’s hand, Kalian didn’t shake him off and stood there submissively. Naturally, the standoff between the two prolonged. To Angela, it was a collision with an unknown cause.
“You were by Angela’s side all along, so what the hell were you doing?”
Ian demanded in a voice distorted as if crushed by something heavy.
“Your so-called fiancé, huh.”
“Ian.”
Angela furrowed her brow and called out to Ian in a stern voice. With that short utterance, Angela was taking Kalian’s side. That was precisely why Ian’s menacing grip refused to release Kalian.
Angela probably wouldn’t realize it unless it was spelled out for her. The target of Ian’s current anger wasn’t Kalian, but in fact, himself.
“You, of all people, should have known.”
Only Kalian, the one enduring it, understood that these words were also a self-reproach from Ian.
“How could you let Angela die like that?”
Ian was venting his frustrations on the person in the world who resembled him the most.
“You worthless bastard.”
All the accusations were directed at Ian himself.
How could he not have known, after spending all that time together under the name of friendship? How could he have wandered off somewhere, leaving Angela in such a situation, only to return now? He felt ashamed of having harbored unrequited love.
The wave of self-blame crashing over him was plainly visible.
“You don’t deserve to be by Angela’s side.”
“Ian!”
Angela narrowed her brows sharply, as if to say, don’t say such things. Glancing at her distorted face, Kalian wished Ian would pour even harsher condemnations right in his own face. He wanted to be pointed at and blamed, even if it was like this. It was something Angela would never do.
Angela’s face, twisted for Kalian’s sake, was like an indulgence granted to him. He was grateful for it, yet sorry. He wished she would curse him thoroughly and then forgive him.
Angela had blindly embraced it all—his pathetic ignorance, the countless instances of turning a blind eye without realizing he was causing hurt. She held Kalian as if she didn’t know how to hate him.
However, contrary to the wish he had begged for, Ian released Kalian all too easily. He shoved him away by the collar, and his hand, dropping to his waist, clenched into a tight fist. Kalian was prepared to take a punch if it came flying, but no such thing happened.
Instead, Ian’s hand slowly relaxed its strength and cautiously sought out Angela’s fingertips, grasping them gently.
“Just a moment……. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t forget to ask for understanding. Kalian watched the scene with a feeling that being hit would have been better.
Even when a gentleman greets a lady, he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. Wasn’t that the very first thing Angela had taught Kalian? It was such an ordinary, everyday act. Yet, he hated it.
Ian could only intrude after his own mishap. Not yet. As long as Kalian was alive with his eyes wide open, Angela was his woman. Just as Kalian was her man.
But why did this sense of defeat wash over him?
Kalian couldn’t tear his eyes away from the two hands that were touching.
* * *
‘Count, give us the room.’
At Ian’s request, which was no different from a command, Kalian was practically chased out of his own tent and now leaned against a tall tree not far from it, using it as a backrest.
Angela, who had just emerged from the tent, spotted Kalian without difficulty and headed straight toward him.
Kalian, who had his eyes gently closed, sensed Angela’s footsteps and slowly lifted his eyelids. Their gazes met.
Angela silently looked at Kalian before sitting down beside him, her hip touching the ground. Silence stretched between them like the long shadows at sunset.
“……Since you’re not asking, should I not say anything?”
It was Angela who first broke the silence, as if in competition. Kalian replied in a somewhat grumpy tone that didn’t match his still face, blended into the quiet landscape.
“Did you receive a confession or something?”
It seemed he no longer intended to hide that Ian liked Angela. Well, yeah. Ian had already shown quite a bit of it.
Until the words to clear the room came out, Ian had exhaled affection toward Angela like breath. It was beyond the level of friendship.
Things like how he wished he could have gone through it instead, or that her pain hurt him more—words that Kalian might say to Angela—he uttered one after another. It was behavior clearly meant for Kalian to see.
However, what Ian said to Angela after chasing Kalian out wasn’t a confession, but an abrupt denial.
‘Angela.’
‘Speak.’
‘I’ve never confessed to you.’
He had never said “I like you” directly to Angela’s face. It was true, but she couldn’t understand why he was suddenly saying that. As Angela just stared, Ian continued.
‘So, there’s no answer for you to give me.’
Ah. It means don’t reject me. Angela understood Ian’s disjointed words.
Even so, it bothered her. No matter how much Ian hung on to Angela, there was nothing for him in return. Angela had never even imagined in her dreams giving her side to anyone but Kalian.
In Angela’s life, there was only one man: Kalian. So, it would be better for Ian to quickly fold his feelings and find another woman.
The thought of Ian taking a fine woman as his wife made her want to congratulate him rather than feel jealous, so there really was no hope for him.
‘My feelings are mine, so I’ll handle them myself.’
But Ian spoke firmly, as if he had peered into Angela’s mind. His action of tapping his chest with his palm was filled with bold confidence.
‘Since it’s a feeling I never told you about, you don’t need to worry about it.’
Ah, no. It’s not “don’t reject me,” but “don’t mind it.” In case it makes her uncomfortable.
‘Angela, you just think about your own matters.’
Ian grinned again. It was the face he always showed Angela.
