CH 170

Excessive Punishment (1)

“I have somewhere to go.”

It was a stubborn tone. She even felt compelled at first glance.

“Are you going to visit your brother in Cadis? Have you not been resolute in saying that you will never meet him, who has been coming for days?”

He wasn’t even agitated. He was just asking calmly, as if trying to confirm the truth.

From his questioning posture, she had felt something prickly within her. Lily’s eyes and the tip of her nose grew cold. Her anger swelled like sorrow.

She counted the number of times Dandelion came to the castle. She had endured the bitterness in her mouth as if bile had risen, and sent him back. While she looked at him too.

What was the process of tearing apart pieces of her life that she thought meant everything?

A sharp resentment mingled between her messy emotions. She muttered to herself, “I’m going to a place out of your sight… The thought of being in an awful relationship again…”

After a brief pause, he muttered in a slightly dreary low tone, “It doesn’t seem like a good decision for you, so think again, Lily.” This time, he was cautious, his tone almost like the one he used to comfort her.

“It’s not like that. I’m not going to Dandelion. In the future…”

His eyes narrowed slightly at the firm refusal.

If not Cadis, where?

There was nowhere to go.

Where do you want to go, what do you want to run away from?

Just before being engulfed by the ominous energy, Lily spat her words out first, “I will go to the chapel in the Taurus Mountains. I heard that Priest Nerva is there.”

Finally, his expressionless mask cracked, so briefly that no one had noticed.

Maybe, it was patience and self-control that he was practising before the stone walls broke down layer by layer in front of her

The result was the same.

No one standing there noticed what was boiling behind that indifferent expression like an iron shield.

“Who told you that Nerva was in my land?”

It was a voice that became colder as if it had fallen on frost. He was about to add something, but just shut his mouth.

Isn’t it something she can figure out right away without even asking?

As he concluded the reasoning, his mood subsided even more.

His reaction continued to deviate from Lily’s resolve and expectations. Her headache began to develop, and a deep wrinkle formed between Lily’s beautiful forehead. “I don’t know why that’s important now. Anyway, I… I am going.”

“So far…” He shut his mouth tightly. All the anger in his eyes soon faded.

The day they parted. Wasn’t that the look she saw at the end of their parting on him?

“Talin. Take the madam to the room.” He turned away.

His back was obscured by the mist. His back. It was his back again. It was like a gray wall this time.

“I will not go!”

Vlad stood tall and stopped.

“You said I can do anything I want to do.” Lily was afraid to speak, and the hot blood passed through her forehead and heated her up. She couldn’t help it. That was the only one shabby card left in her hand to use so she could go out. “No matter how unreasonable it is… You said you would listen to me if I wanted to. You….”

He paused. It was as if someone had driven an iron rod in him, and he was so stiff that even a small breath could not be felt.

Lily cautiously took her steps towards him. The sound of her shoes rustling against the dirt floor signaled him, and he turned around.

She couldn’t even let out a small sigh.

His eyes, disguised as an indifferent expression without humanity, were miserable. It was as if she had thrown him on the dirty floor and torn him to pieces.

“Were you even serious, Vlad?”

There was only a slight trembling at the tip of his words. “Do you really want to get out of my sight?”

Lily stopped. She had a stomach ache. For some reason, she felt a little embarrassed. She heard it through her mouth, and she realized that she had sounded a lot harsher than she intended.

“So far…”

“You must not leave me.”

“…”

“Didn’t you say that? That you won’t leave me. You told me directly.”

He also knew that the words from his own mouth were coming out all wrong. It was an appeal, and it was nothing more than a tangled mass of uneasy emotions.

“Then how could you…” Vlad pressed on. “Are you thinking of punishing me like this, Lily?”

He didn’t know what to do with his face, his voice, the unsettling feeling rearing its head within him

“Punishment… To go that far…” Lily teared up.

The more she looked, the more she hurt, but she couldn’t avoid his gaze. Even in her unhappiness, she was healed by his side. He was such a man to her.