Tamed A Blackened Slave Man - Chapter 79: Bitemark

“Pardon?”

A flustered sound came out of my mouth. I had obviously thought that the reason he came all the way here in the middle of the night would be to ask me to heal his heart disease, but here he was, saying this.

“Why was it that you took his hand instead of mine?”

His glare was sharp, like a viper. It felt like his poisonous fangs were prepared to sink into my neck at any moment.

Seeing that I gave him no answer, Damian curled up his mouth politely and added on.

“Even knowing that he was the one who had poisoned the Crown Prince……”

Trailing off, Damian stood up from his chair.

Standing up, Damian closed in towards where I was sitting. Resting his hand on the arm of the chair I was sitting on, Damian whispered quietly into my ear.

“I want to ask you why you chose that insane beast who is no longer your family.”

His heated breath tickled my ear, then faded away.

‘So Damian did bother to compare Cassadin to the poisonous butterfly because he knew that Cassadin was the real culprit of the Crown Prince’s poisoning incident after all.’

Damian was speaking in a confident tone. He wasn’t saying this without any hunches or evidence.

The way that they wanted to push Cassadin off the cliff was terrifyingly appalling. Whether that was Lillian or Damian.

Why did they want to hurt my people?

But if that was the case, then there was no reason for me to consider their side of the story as well.

“I’ve looked into the poisonous butterfly, the violo, that Your Grace mentioned the last time.”

Damian’s head tilted to the side at my statement. His gaze as he scanned me from top to bottom felt especially persistent today.

“It was quite fascinating. But there had been one thing that Your Grace didn’t know.”

“There is something that I didn’t know about it?”

“Yes.”

I smiled brightly. As soon as I heard that the war had broken out, I immediately marched up to the study on the third floor to read and reread whatever books I could find that had information on either Elsia or the violos.

Through that, I learned something. Something that Damian didn’t know.

“As Your Grace had said, the violo does, in fact, spray its poison onto and around flowers, especially fragrant flowers.”

“……And so? What is it that I know wrong?”

I smiled once again toward Damian. The violo was quite an odd butterfly. One that was just like Cassadin.

“But the violo’s behavior towards flowers that it likes is actually completely different from what it does to fragrant flowers. The violo never sprays its poison onto the flower that it likes. Instead, as if trying to protect that flower, it sprays its poison around the flower until all of its poison is depleted, and then lands on top of the flower after that.”

“……”

“And it stays there for the rest of its life.”

How beautiful could one creature be? Could one even truly call a butterfly that sacrifices its own life to protect the flower it loves a poisonous butterfly?

“……How interesting. I didn’t know this.”

One of Damian’s eyebrows arched up. He had intentionally compared Cassadin to a poisonous butterfly to belittle Cassadin. But it turned out that the comparison he had made was practically a compliment. At least, that was the case for me.

“Is that Milady’s answer?”

There was a strangely desolate, perhaps even lonely, tone to his voice. When I rolled up my eyes to see why he had made such a voice, his eyes curled into neat arches.

Damian raised his body from the overly close position that we had previously been in, which put him in a spot where the light from the candle on the table shone directly on his face.

His serpent-like eyes were now to be found Damian was merely peering down at the teacup in front of him.

After staring down at the teacup for quite a while, Damian brought the teacup to his lips. Then he tilted the cup so that the liquid trickled into his mouth.

With a clear clack, Damian set the teacup back on the table. Looking down, I found that the teacup was completely empty.

Damian was acting so strange today, to the point where I thought he might be sick somewhere. Normally, he shouldn’t have even touched the tea that I had served him.

But Damian accepted and drank the tea as if he didn’t suspect a single thing would happen. Damian couldn’t possibly have done that, not with his germaphobia.

‘Did the shock of losing the fighting tournament do something to his head?’

I actually started to believe that might have been the case. Was the Damian in front of me the actual Damian? Did the war that broke out today really have nothing to do with him?

But to say that he was completely unrelated, Damian had been far too calm when I mentioned the war earlier.

He’d only responded to what I had said to him and did not show even a hint of agitation. There was no confusion, joy, or anger in his expression; he just quietly listened to what I said.

‘In the past, the war had broken out a year and a half later. Was there a decisive reason why the Elsia Kingdom bothered to attack right at this time? How can Damian benefit from using the Elsia army?’

If Damian really was the one who moved Elsia, then he had basically just given Cassadin the wings for him to fly. There couldn’t possibly be a reason why Damian would give wings to Cassadin when he disliked him that much.

The only reason that would explain this entire scheme would be that Damian wanted to turn people’s attention from his heart disease to the war in order to cure it completely.

But after visiting me this late at night, Damian hadn’t asked me to cure his heart disease.

‘I wanted to see you.’

What Damian had said to me quickly flew through my mind, but I quickly laughed it over. Damian, who saw and treated people as tools, couldn’t possibly consider me a woman.

He would likely prance around happily with Lillian once he met her, just like he did in the past.

‘Is his objective to confuse me? He can’t be sick, so why is he doing this to me?’

One question led to another, which then led to the next. I sank deep into contemplation, even forgetting that Damian was sitting in front of me.

“Aren.”

The voice that called my name sounded sweeter than ever. When I snapped back into my senses and looked up at Damian, his lips curled into a smile.

“You’re finally looking at me.”

With a pleased smile, Damian leaned over toward me.

In that position, he reached out and took several locks of my hair and brought it up to his lips.

“……What is the meaning of this?”

My question made Damian smile as he responded.

“Your hair is quite soft.”

Damian’s eyes glittered dangerously as he brought my hair closer to his lips.

“You must have also done these things with your younger brother.”

Damian’s comment caused my heart to drop. Was he doing this right now to use my relationship with Cassadin as leverage?

“How incredibly disrespectful.”

I spoke as I stood up from my chair. When I did so, the lock of hair that Damian had been holding slipped away from his hand.

I looked up at the unbelievably disrespectful man. Damian tilted his head diagonally and inspected my face for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.

“Is he really that precious to you? Even though he is no longer family?”

Damian already knew everything about our relationship. If it was leverage that he was looking for, then all I had to do was not fall for it.

“Yes, he is precious.”

“……”

“So, if Your Grace touches even a single hair of Cassadin’s, I’ll let you know that I will never heal Your Grace’s heart disease ever again.”

But hearing that, Damian laughed quietly. The corner of Damian’s lips that had been raised began to sink down slowly, very slowly.

“I can’t believe a time has come when I envy that man.”

After his face had been completely rid of any hints of a smile, Damian suddenly buried his head into my nape. I wondered what he could have done that for, but then Damian sank his teeth into my shoulder.

At the same time, the shock from what had happened entered my mind, and the pain also swept its way in.

“Ah!”

Completely startled, I forcefully pushed Damian away from me.

Haah!

Damian, who was letting out a small sigh with a far too tranquil expression for someone who just bit my shoulder, looked completely insane.

“Your Grace, are you out of your mind?”

Damian began chuckling at my question. His laugh was so low and dark that I felt a chill run through my spine.

Damian’s bitemark was imprinted clearly above my collarbone. He had bitten so hard that there was a bit of blood seeping out of the wound. My body began trembling from both fury and humiliation.

“You come all the way here this late at night only to……..”

“Are you unable to heal yourself?”

I fell at a loss for words seeing Damian’s calm attitude.

‘Did he purposefully do this so that he can test my healing abilities?’

If I knew that Damian would have done something like this, I would have never opened the doors to the mansion in the first place.

“My healing abilities are not limitless.”

“……I thought that you obviously could.”

“Please leave now. I hope that we will not meet again for a while.”

Damian’s expression began to crumble.

“Hadn’t you said that you wanted us to reconcile before?”

“That was before Your Grace had done something bad to me.”

“Bad? Can this really be considered bad?”

Damian responded to me while staring at his bitemark on my shoulder.

He had most definitely hurt his head. If not that, then there couldn’t be any other explanation for how Damian could have tested my healing abilities in such a way with his germaphobia.

Glaring up at Damian, I declared to him.

“Please leave. Your Grace.”

Damian opened and closed his mouth several times, attempting to say something, then narrowed his eyes as he finally spoke.

“Did it really make you feel that bad?”

His gaze was still fixed on my shoulder. Damian then extended his hand toward it. Startled by his movement, I took a few steps back.

And seeing that, Damian’s face crumpled violently.

Why was it that he looked so hurt when I had been the one that actually got hurt?

When I shook my head to the side, Damian withdrew his hand and bowed his head to me.

“I did not know that you would be this upset. I sincerely apologize for causing you distress.”

After his apology, Damian let out a deep sigh, then added on.

“……I will return once Milady has settled down.”

Damian then quietly stared at me for a moment, then turned around.

Clack. The door to the drawing room closed.

Confirming that Damian left our residency, I immediately rushed to my room to erase the mark that Damian had left on me.

I opened the dressing table drawer, took out the ointment I had used on Cassadin on the first day we met, and applied it to my scarred collarbone. But Damian’s traces did not disappear.

‘What’s the point of being able to heal others? Why is it that I don’t have self-healing abilities?’

It was truly sickening to know that I had Damian’s trace left on my body.

The wound stung, but I could not stop rubbing more ointment into it. But no matter how much ointment I applied, the wound only hurt more and did not disappear. My reflection in the mirror looked furious.

‘And who’s calling who the beast?’

Damian didn’t have the right to call Cassadin a beast. To me, the one closer to a beast was Damian, not Cassadin.

Whether it was in the past or now, Damian was still no better than a nightmare to me.

After that incident, Damian hadn’t come to visit me, and I chose clothes that hid my shoulder as much as possible—clothes that hid Damian’s mark.

Unlike before, I could no longer freely meet Cassadin after he had become a Marquess. That was because the eyes of the Empire’s citizens were all focused on Cassadin.

The Emperor was already a sharp man to begin with. Even if we had once been family, that was no longer the case. If news about our relationship fell into the Emperor’s ears, then there was no guarantee of our safety afterward.

This was why, even though I wanted to see Cassadin, I held myself back. I trusted that Cassadin would be doing well on his own.

And that was truly the case. After Cassadin had come back from the first battle he had led with not a single casualty, the Emperor seemed to have decided to trust him, and had assigned him the role of Commander of the 2^nd Order of Knights. It was a historical promotion that had never happened a single time before and would never happen again.

Cassadin was soaring high into the sky without me. Higher and higher into the sky.

Now so high up in the sky that I could no longer reach him, Cassadin was shining bright enough to be blinding.

Whenever I walked through the streets, it was always news about Cassadin that I heard.

“From Marquess to becoming a knight commander as well? He’s incredible.”

“Why does it matter that he used to be a slave? It’s what he is right now that matters.”

“Sigh. It’s my wish to date someone like that before I die.”

“I wonder what kind of woman Sir Cassadin likes.”

It was now hard to find someone who mocked Cassadin for his past as a slave.

Of course, people criticized Cassadin at first, but when the pureblooded noble and Commander of the 1^st Order of Knights who had seen Cassadin fight in person praised and supported Cassadin, their numbers decreased significantly.

‘That’s good to see.’

I was happy that the people who were insulting Cassadin were gone. If I hadn’t brought Cassadin to our family, then he would still have been in that gladiator arena.

Though I thought it was a good thing that Cassadin was prospering, a corner of my mind was still imagining what would have happened if Cassadin hadn’t left our family and had stayed with me.

I was happy that he was doing well, but it saddened me that Cassadin was not next to me.

It was often the case that people realized that someone who was so naturally part of their life was actually precious only after they were gone. I was also desperately realizing the importance of Cassadin at the moment.

After my mind had become clouded while I was reading a book about Elsia, I went outside for a moment and looked at the people on the street.

‘That reminds me, what happened to Lillian?’

I hadn’t heard any news about Lillian after she left our residency.

What was she scheming this time? If she was the Lillian I knew, then she wouldn’t have gone away that easily.

I had ordered Sasha to go find out what happened to Lillian.

What she had learned was that Lillian was currently residing in a noble’s mansion within the capital. But she was unable to find anything else.

Time flew quickly, and it was now December.

Cassadin must have been busy for the past two months, as he didn’t send a single letter to me.

From the recent news I heard, apparently, the Emperor was going to open a banquet for three days as a reward for Cassadin and the Commander of the 1^st Order of Knights, who were the greatest contributors to making Elsia the Empire’s vassal state.

This was an event that hadn’t happened in my past life.

The day had been December 22th, which was when the year’s first snow fell.

I went outside to look at the snow when I heard the murmuring of the people walking through the street.

“I heard that His Majesty is opening a banquet for three days starting today!”

“There’s only a select few who were invited, right?”

“……No. Only those who are invited can come to the first and second days, but apparently not to the last day.”

“Then can commoners like us go too?”

“Are you stupid? How could commoners like us go to the palace? It only applies to the nobles.”

A banquet for three days? What else could I expect from the Emperor? I smiled to myself as I listened to the people’s conversations.

“I also heard that His Majesty is giving a special present to Sir Cassadin.”

“What present?”

“I don’t know. It heard it was… some woman?”

Thump. I hurriedly grabbed the shoulder of one of the people who were part of the strange conversation. Presenting the most innocent smile I could muster up to the group of men staring at me with widened eyes, I spoke up.

“Such interesting news. Can you also tell me about it?”