RAMHM Chapter 39

I Will Have You

The carriage—not quite fine enough for a count's estate—rattled and shook as mercilessly as my body within it.

'Cowan has always been His Highness Prince Rhodness's dog. As far as I know, he's never once left the Imperial Palace since His Highness took him in. Perhaps you're mistaken?'

'Perhaps you're mistaken?'

'Perhaps you're... mistaken...'

Thwack! I threw open the window to the cold wind. My face froze—ice against skin. If I didn't do even this much, I wouldn't be able to bear it.

'Cowan must have grown quite a bit since I last saw him. I'd be so happy if you brought him to the Grand Ducal Estate.'

'Cowan?'

'The puppy you secretly kept at the villa.'

'Ah, that one. I'm planning to have him well cared for at the estate until your body recovers. What if you overexert yourself trying to walk him and fall ill?'

Instead of tears—pain. My frozen face felt like it would shatter. I couldn't even think the word confused anymore.

Was there ever anything I truly knew?

All those moments I'd let pass without suspicion, excused by claims of illness—they burst forth like sparks, searing my body.

I don't even know what spirit possessed me to come here. The estate loomed like an abandoned house, sinister energy coiling through the air. The Count's servants stood lined up on both sides of the entrance as if they'd been driven out.

"M-Madam...!"

"Madam!"

Beginning with Marge, the servants greeted me fervently, their faces like they'd met their savior. I barely managed to gather my wits and looked around more carefully. At the estate entrance—not just luggage carts but dozens of knights on horseback had formed ranks. It looked like someone's traveling procession.

"Madam, inside—!"

"Welcome, Countess Acacia."

Before Yona could finish speaking, the Grand Duke's aide-de-camp, Sir Jimskehr, emerged from within and bowed in greeting.

"We've been waiting."

The arrangement made me feel like I'd become a guest in my own home.

The view inside the estate was even more spectacular. The first-floor lobby that should have been bright as noon was dim and shadowy, with only weak light illuminating the area around the sofas—silent as if not even a mouse would dare pass through.

In the center of that silence, in the only bright spot, sat Novian. Legs crossed like the master of the house, head resting on his arm propped against the sofa's armrest—he slowly lifted his gaze as my presence registered. Those eyes, as expected, weary at the corners. Those sharp blue irises glinting in the weak light.

I approached him, meeting that gaze. I didn't even greet him, but he didn't seem to care. He simply grabbed a paper lying carelessly on the table and tossed it toward me—almost like throwing it away.

"!"

Startled, I caught the fluttering paper before my eyes and pressed it against my chest. Novian shot to his feet and approached me threateningly. I instinctively stumbled backward until I stopped at the railing connecting to the second floor.

He moved closer still, looking down at me as if pinning me in place. Close enough to hear each other's breathing.

"I told you to refuse the position as Crown Princess's lady-in-waiting."

"......"

"Did you think I have no eyes in the Imperial Palace?"

I looked up at him, trembling, unable to even breathe. Novian ground his teeth, spitting out each word.

"Not only did you insist on becoming the Crown Princess's lady-in-waiting, but what? While I'm away from the Grand Ducal Estate, you're dispatched there as an Imperial representative? Receiving mourners at the Grand Ducal Estate? Do you find me so laughable?"

My legs trembled beneath the voluminous dress skirts. I'd seen Novian's rough side many times since becoming Bliea, but this was different. There was something murderous in his intensity—I couldn't even swallow dry spit until finally managing to breathe.

"Is this because I won't indulge your absurd desire to become Grand Duchess? Is that why you keep acting so insufferably?"

His expression as he looked me up and down held not a trace of sympathy, his tone utterly dismissive. I slowly lifted the paper pressed against my chest. Doris must have worked quickly—Novian, who was supposed to leave for Ellaconian today, had clearly received this official document about dispatching an administrator before his departure and come here in fury.

I clenched my trembling hands into fists. His unexpected visit made cold sweat seep into my palms from tension.

"...You're right."

"Are you joking?"

"You made me your mistress directly, and there's no proper mistress of the house—what's wrong with wanting to live at the Grand Ducal Estate where you are?"

"You don't seem to know your place. Shall I enlighten you?"

"...!"

Novian grabbed my wrist roughly and yanked me toward him. Pain struck—as if the slightest pressure would snap it clean through.

"Make such demands only after you've fulfilled your duties."

"My... duties?"

"If you're going to be a mistress, then warm the bedroom like one."

"!"

Had my heart already been ground to pieces? Novian's voice was vicious and threatening, the content shocking beyond measure—yet tears didn't surge up like before. Instead, my head cooled as if doused with cold water. As my heaving chest from tension settled, even the pain in my captured wrist faded. Not that it didn't hurt. I'd simply grown accustomed to pain.

"...Have I not fulfilled my duties?"

"Not even once."

"...!"

Bliea had never spent a night with Novian. So that's why she'd been so desperate. How hollow.

"Whoever you rolled around with before—things will be different with me. You'll learn clearly that getting abandoned is the mistress's fate when she tries clumsily to string a man along."

Would that really be true? If Novian met women only for physical relations, he wouldn't have needed the troublesome Bliea. Why keep a mistress who resembled his dead wife—the wife he still claimed to love—close enough to issue such threats, unless he was that desperate?

"I'm not even going there to live—why are you so agitated? This wasn't even my choice; I'm just going temporarily as an administrator. Looking more closely, this document was approved directly by Her Majesty the Empress, wasn't it? Rather than sending someone from a powerful faction to the Grand Ducal Estate and inviting political misunderstanding or unsavory rumors, she helped ensure that wouldn't happen. That's why she chose me—loyal and from a humble family. You should accept Her Majesty the Empress's will and show more respect to the wife of the loyal vassal you work so hard."

"Still running that mouth. What exactly are you scheming?"

"What could someone like me possibly scheme against you? I'm the one who's bewildered. This doesn't seem like such a bad proposal to me. As you said, if I want to secure even a corner of the Grand Ducal Estate someday, becoming friendly with the servants in advance wouldn't be bad."

Though I spoke with regained composure, Novian didn't lower his guard. Right where I'd see if I lifted my eyes—those glinting blue irises.

"Yes, so there was some petty reason after all."

Novian let out a deflated sigh and spoke with a faint smile.

"You're still holding a grudge about when the servants mistreated you, I see. In case you don't know, let me inform you—those servants were selected and sent directly by the Imperial household, like you. I can't easily dismiss them. So you'd better keep your temper in check."

Then he released my wrist as if throwing it aside. Blood that hadn't been flowing suddenly returned—an unpleasant, tingling sensation crawled up and down my arm. I grabbed the marked wrist with my other hand and looked at him.

"...Even if you can't dismiss them, you can still punish them, can't you?"

"This is the last time you act on your own. And..."

Novian, seated back on the sofa, swept the gossip papers stacked on the side table onto the main table with a rustle.

"Stop using the Second Prince to provoke me."

The torn-out portions of gossip papers contained small mentions—no larger than a child's palm—of stories about me and Rhodness.

"This is your final warning."

Final warning. As if granting mercy, he spat the words through narrowed, weary eyes—and the fury that had been churning silently at my feet began to boil without sound.

"...I'm curious about something."

Suppressing my rage, I slowly approached Novian as if speaking to him for the first time today.

"Have you ever raised a dog?"

The pounding of my heart—unfelt even during his earlier threats—felt like it would burst through my ribcage. Our precious memories. That most radiant period of my life I'd struggled to erase and discard, yet couldn't let go—the only thing I'd held onto.

Novian's sharp blue eyes narrowed slightly. One second felt like an eternity. Those words I'd been waiting for would emerge from between those parched, thin lips as he looked at me like I was a tiresome chore.

"...What nonsense."

Trying to hold back the feeling of all my blood rushing to my head and eyes, I forced myself to smile. With the desperate heart of someone clinging to a cliff's edge, I asked again.

"...Does that mean you've never raised one? Not even once?"

"Obviously not."

And Novian Trovika severed the last thread I'd been clutching at the cliff's edge.

"You've been acting truly strange lately."

I was falling—slowly, slowly down the cliff. His voice, already infinitely distant, no longer flowed completely into my ears. When a careful knock sounded at the front door, Novian rose, straightening his slightly disheveled clothing to perfection.

"Listen carefully. When this Ellaconian business is finished, and the funeral is over..."

Then he approached me—forced to smile with bloodshot eyes—and whispered at my ear.

"...I will have you."

You don't have the right to refuse insolently this time either. His voice, ground low, scattered into the air. I couldn't bear to watch his retreating back as he disappeared.

The door opened and closed. Cold wind wrapped around my body, but I felt no chill. My body was already trembling as much as it possibly could. Tears—colder and thicker than the outside air—fell plop, plop down my cheeks, frozen too stiff to even contort.

"...By whose authority."

By whose authority do you take me.

'You're not An.'

The first person I ever loved. Who shared my most radiant days. Who drew the future with me. My precious An...

"You're not. You're... not An."

You never were from the beginning. Isn't that right? At the bottom of the cliff—my soul, bleeding, the back of my head completely shattered.

Adrienne from that day, frail but happy, screamed from the cold dirt floor, from inside my head, until her throat tore. The sounds of the departing carriage and hoofbeats, the servants who'd been driven outside coming back in—I couldn't turn to face any of it. I stood in the middle of the lobby, trembling as if it were a desolate winter cliff bottom, listening to the screams of Adrienne from my younger days.

From the very beginning, to the very end... you deceived me. Didn't you?