RTT-0

Prologue

“Madam.”

A dry voice cut through the night air.

It was a voice that never carried a trace of emotion, like that of a hollow tin knight.

And yet, why did it sound as though there was something in it now…?

“Litricia.”

Why did the voice calling her name seem to tremble with some emotion she couldn’t quite identify—anger, perhaps, or something else?

Even though there was no reason it should.

Litricia stubbornly kept her gaze lowered and bit her lip.

If she didn’t, she felt as though the feelings she had struggled so hard to conceal, the carefully composed mask she wore, and the tower she had painstakingly built would all come crashing down at once.

“Where could you possibly be going this late at night?”

But her averted gaze eventually rose toward the voice.

Perhaps that was only natural.

From the very beginning, Litricia had never possessed the means to turn away from this man who resembled the night itself.

The Grand Duke’s eyes, as though they could see through everything, were a vivid blue.

Meeting those painfully blue eyes, Litricia parted her lips.

“I’m leaving.”

At once, the space between the Grand Duke’s elegant brows creased.

The movement was so slight that an ordinary person might never have noticed it. But because the Grand Duke rarely revealed his emotions, even that tiny change seemed enormous to Litricia.

Soon, however, he erased even that faint reaction and looked up at the sky.

They had said it would rain for several days beginning tonight.

The clouds obscuring the moon were dark.

“It will rain soon.”

“…Yes. So you should hurry back inside.”

“And you?”

It was as though he hadn’t heard Litricia say she was leaving.

The Grand Duke strode toward her on his long legs and repeated himself.

“They say it’s going to rain.”

“…”

“So you should put me to sleep, just as you always have. You should stay with me. Shouldn’t you, Madam?”

Always.

That single word, emerging from his neat and elegant manner of speech, pierced unusually deep into her heart.

Always.

How had a word like that ever come to leave your lips?

Why had I made you use such a word when I could never remain beside you forever?

Feeling as though she might cry, Litricia instead forced the corners of her lips upward.

It was the kind of hollow smile the Grand Duke hated most—a smile she had trained herself to wear to conceal her true feelings.

With her increasingly thin, pale hand, she pushed against his firm chest.

“No, Killian. I can’t stay with you anymore.”

“…Litricia.”

His low voice rumbled like that of a strangled beast, but Litricia remained resolute and spoke again.

“I’m leaving. I told you that once a year had passed, I would leave this place.”

“I don’t recall ever agreeing to that.”

“Killian…!”

But as though the contract they had made a year ago meant nothing to him, the Grand Duke—Killian—reached out with his large hand and took Litricia’s luggage from her.

“My wife abandons me so easily.”

Abandons him?

That was absurd.

Litricia wanted to shout that it wasn’t true. That she could never abandon him.

Even when she had been told she had only one year left to live, she had felt strangely indifferent. Part of her had even thought it was for the best.

But he had filled that indifferent heart with the foolish desire to live.

How could she ever abandon someone like him…?

Yet instead of pouring out those true feelings, Litricia pressed her lips together and curved them into another beautiful smile.

Because if she didn’t—

her body, growing weaker as illness consumed it,

and her heart, which desperately wanted to remain here even if she had to invent some ridiculous excuse—

might shamelessly cling to his words as though he truly meant to keep her from leaving.

That frightened her.

So Litricia forced her smile to remain and repeated the words to herself.

She must not cling to him.

She must not hope that he would try harder to keep her.

The single year she had spent here had already brought Litricia more happiness than she deserved.

She shouldn’t be greedy for more.

Just as she steeled her heart with those thoughts—

“…!”

“You’re smiling like that again. I’ve told you so many times not to.”

In contrast to his emotionless voice, a warm hand touched the corner of Litricia’s mouth.

As though doing so could somehow erase her theatrical smile, his long finger slowly traced the curve of her lips.

“Whenever you smile like this, you always say something I don’t want to hear.”

“Don’t—”

“You truly do intend to abandon me.”

Litricia tried to pull Killian’s hand away as she told him to stop, but instead, he intertwined his fingers with hers and lowered his forehead onto their joined hands.

“…What must I do to keep you from abandoning me?”

“Please… let go.”

As Litricia tried to free her captured hand, a short breath escaped Killian’s dry lips.

“If I were to cling to the hem of your dress right here, crying and begging you not to leave… then—”

His lashes, which had cast a low shadow over his eyes, slowly lifted.

The deep, vivid blue of his gaze tightened around her like a restraint.

And just like that—

his stare ensnared even Litricia’s determination to run away.

Killian’s red lips slowly moved.

“Would you look back at me then?”