Chapter 115
Amid the howling gale, the lone figure standing tall was Angela. Her slight frame seemed utterly insignificant compared to the burly men around her. Yet her presence was so vivid it bordered on overwhelming.
It was as if the entire world lay under her command. With every step she took forward, the wind grew fiercer, and the temperature plunged sharply.
The soldiers, struggling to hold onto their fraying nerves, stared at her. In most of their eyes, fear was etched deep into the centers of their pupils.
But there were others who looked at her differently.
These were the soldiers who had already owed her their lives once before, beneath the flames.
They gazed at her with eyes full of worship, as if she were a goddess incarnate.
Brushing past those conflicting gazes as though they meant nothing, Angela soon positioned herself between Kalian and Dominic.
“It’s dangerous!”
The moment Angela’s back entered his line of sight, Kalian reacted with a sharp cry. His movements to shield her followed in an instant, swift as lightning.
But a single gesture from Angela halted him dead in his tracks. The pale hand she raised toward him conveyed her intent with unmistakable clarity. Kalian ground his teeth, yet he couldn’t take even a single step further.
Sensing that his approaching footsteps had stopped, Angela slowly lowered the hand she had lifted. Then she gazed endlessly at Dominic standing before her. At the eyes of the man who looked back at her with such emotionless detachment that the word *father* felt like a cruel joke.
Unthinkingly, Angela turned her head back toward the direction from which she had come. There, encased in the cold ice, was a woman whose heart had frozen solid. She must surely be dead by now. Angela had made her that way. And yet… why…
Turning her head once more to face forward, Angela keenly observed Dominic. He had straightened his posture, disrupted by the arrow she had loosed, and now gripped his weapon anew. He was poised to attack. The intent to kill radiated from him clearly.
He had not strayed an inch from Grace’s grasp. Dominic’s limbs were still bound by the cords she had fastened around them. Even in death, her life force had not been severed.
“Ha… ha…”
Angela let out a hollow laugh. She had put off the thought of facing the real Dominic until Grace was gone, deciding then to confront what that might mean. She had considered it merely a postponement. And yet… it seemed it had all been nothing but a desperate hope.
She had harbored that hope. That in a world without Grace, Dominic would become a father to her.
Hadn’t there been moments that sparked such illusions?
He had spoken of her as his daughter, yearning to see her; he had pulled her into embraces born of longing; he had rushed into the flames to save her.
And above all, even after regaining his senses, hadn’t he declared her the heir to the Bilton family?
But it had all been for naught. In the end, all that remained was the man before her, raising his sword against her—as if it were the price of her greed.
The faint, wistful smile that had lingered at Angela’s lips vanished in an instant. At the same moment, the ground beneath Dominic’s feet twisted as if an earthquake had struck.
Then, from his staggering legs, unable to find their balance, tendrils of ice shot up like vines, coiling tightly around them.
Dominic raised his sword to shatter the ice, but it was a futile effort. The icy tendrils, like living creatures, sprouted anew wherever they broke, binding him again and again in an unyielding snare.
“What… should I do with you?”
Only after rendering Dominic utterly immobile did Angela murmur the question in a low voice. As was often the case with the doubts she harbored, no answer could be found anywhere.
What use was the power to freeze the entire world in white? When she couldn’t even erase a single trace of the dead.
Angela brought her clenched fist to her chest. Even there, Grace’s mark lingered. The scars that spiderwebbed across her skin in a crude lattice.
They would never fade in her lifetime. Did that mean she would never peer into that man’s true heart for the rest of hers?
The thought was one she didn’t want to entertain, and in that instant, Angela bit her lower lip without realizing it. A bead of blood welled up, trickling over her tongue and into her mouth. The metallic tang filled her senses, wrinkling her brow just as—
An arrow flew straight into Dominic’s chest. Angela stared blankly at the scene, then slowly closed her eyes and opened them again.
It had to be a mistake; she believed that if she did so, something would change. But the only change was the dark stain of blood blooming in a circle across Dominic’s chest.
* * *
The battle erupted without warning. Beginning with the arrow that struck Dominic, hundreds more rained down upon the Phaelon lines. As they barely managed to fend them off, the Taran Kingdom’s forces surged forward like a tidal wave.
The Phaelon troops, unable to form proper ranks, had no time to regroup before they were pushed back relentlessly. They flailed desperately amid the enemy ranks, not even knowing how things had come to this, fighting just to stay alive.
“Kill even one more of them! Don’t let a single one escape alive!”
At that moment, the Taran commander bellowed like a beast. Then, as if the words were a command to himself, he severed a Phaelon soldier’s throat. His eyes were rolled back in frenzy.
It was because those wretched curs had dared to assassinate their king.
For days on end, they had waited for the order to attack. But after the report of their first battle’s defeat reached the palace, no response had come from the royal court. As a result, the battlefield had remained eerily peaceful.
Inevitably, even the commander was only human; he couldn’t prevent his vigilance from slackening over time. In order to reclaim the Halyang region as the king’s decree demanded, he had endured without respite in his armor—until now, when he finally shed it for the first time.
With the oppressive weight lifted from his body, he felt he could breathe again at last. As his limbs relaxed, the tension ebbed away, and drowsiness came crashing over him. He was about to stretch out and catch some proper sleep for once.
But in that brief interlude, the outside erupted in clamor. What good omen could a commotion in a warzone possibly bring? Anticipating a Phaelon ambush, the commander burst from his tent without fully donning his armor.
“What the hell is this racket!”
Before he could even hear a reply to his shout, the commander confirmed the Phaelon camp with his own eyes. And he stood frozen, too dazed to notice that no answer was forthcoming.
The region was cold by nature, but when had it ever turned into an eternal glacier? He couldn’t tear his gaze from the blinding white landscape.
It hadn’t been like this when he headed to his tent. Between the camps of the Taran Kingdom and the Phaelon Empire stretched ordinary earth, dotted here and there with sparse blades of grass pushing through the chill. But now…
“What… impossible…!”
A sheet of ice so clear it could mirror his face had taken its place.
Perhaps he had dozed off without realizing and was dreaming this madness. That was the most realistic thought he could muster in the moment.
Yet upon hearing the sentry’s report that the area had been ablaze just moments ago, he couldn’t afford to lose his composure as a commander. This wasn’t the time to gape in confusion like his men.
He dispatched a scouting party at once. They were not to get too close, but to venture near enough to gauge what in the world was happening.
And soon after, the scouts returned—bearing the frozen corpse of their king, Rasil.
“Th-the…?”
The body was badly damaged, but not so mutilated as to be unrecognizable. The ring passed down through generations to the kings of Taran gleamed unmistakably on his index finger. What surer proof could there be?
But why was their king here, of all places?
Kneeling beside the grotesquely frozen corpse of the monarch, the commander could draw only one conclusion in his mind.
*It’s the Phaelon Empire’s doing.*
That explained why the palace had issued no orders thus far. No, why it couldn’t.
With that, the commander rallied the entirety of Taran’s forces and descended upon the Phaelon encampment.
Even if it ended in defeat, like the first battle, it didn’t matter. Phaelon had committed an outrage they could never overlook—cowardice be damned.
He cleaved the neck of another Phaelon soldier.
* * *
Fierce combat raged on. In one chaotic corner of the fray, Angela knelt, pressing both hands firmly to Dominic’s heaving chest, murmuring like a incantation as his breaths came in ragged gasps.
“If you die like this, I’ll never forgive you. I won’t even give you a grave, you know that? I’ll toss you out on the back hill like trash. I’ll make sure you’re restless even in death.”
Her hands, once white as snow, had long since soaked through with blood, dyed a deep crimson. It meant the sleeve she’d torn from her arm to staunch the flow had served its purpose—and that the blood seeping from Dominic was far from ordinary in volume.
“Don’t die like this. Not now… not yet…”
Of all moments, it had happened the instant she’d bound Dominic in her icy chains. Angela couldn’t endure it.
And as his chest pierced through, she realized it at last. Why she hadn’t severed him clean. Why she’d clung to their bond, excuses or no, with stubborn resolve. Why she’d quietly nurtured that hidden hope.
Because if she lost him, Angela would have to admit Grace was right—that she was nothing more than a petty thief. She’d have to concede that someone had arbitrarily stolen flesh, bone, and blood to forge her existence, with no one willing to offer their own in return.
How long could a tree survive, uprooted? It was bleak. That’s why she wanted to keep him. Survival instinct, pure and simple. So…
“So… not now.”
Angela shook her head.
“You know how unreasonable I can be.”
Stubborn, just as she said—her head tossing with unyielding force.
“I won’t allow it. I won’t.”
Denials tumbled out one after another.
“No.”
Her eyes rimmed red, crimson veins threading vividly through her irises. Her lids swelled as if ready to burst. Then came the tears at last.
An uninvited guest, barging in without a knock—Angela couldn’t chase it away in time. Droplets fell in steady patter onto Dominic’s face.
“Not yet…”
And the words she let slip.
“Don’t… make me an orphan…”
A secret she’d buried in a corner of her heart, unknown even to herself. Having finally dragged it forth, Angela dissolved into wrenching sobs.
Perhaps from all the postponement, the dam had burst. Like an unyielding sea, her eyes brimmed anew with water even as she emptied them, wave after relentless wave.
As she wept, her innards twisting in knots, Dominic’s hand rose to graze her cheek. The fingertips felt cold, even to Angela.
Her lips quivered as she accepted the touch, still and silent. For a long while. The hand, which had lingered with a ticklish wander, finally slipped downward, as if drained of strength. Fearing it might be the end, Angela’s tear-streaked eyes flew wide.
But the fingers she’d thought would fall limp halted precisely at her heart. *Tap-tap*—a sluggish gesture, peculiar to the ill, pointing to the proof of life nestled within her flesh.
“If I give you this…”
Dominic gazed at her with eyes brimming in poignant longing.
“You could live, couldn’t you…”
Just like Grace.
