Alternative Title: Love, As Deadly As Death
“…Are you telling me to go die?”
“Even if you die, your child will live just as you wanted, so isn’t that a profitable deal? And as a bonus, you get to exact revenge on those who threw your entire life into turmoil.”
Ivan Wade Escliff, the Emperor of Escliff, smiled arrogantly. The large hand caressing her small face was nothing but warm and gentle. A stark contrast to the coldness with which he mocked a mother begging for her child’s life.
“You demon. I hate you. Now, truly…”
“Not as much as I hate your life, which is riddled with lies,” Ivan whispered sweetly.
Tears distorted by sorrow, hatred, contempt, and self-loathing dripped steadily onto the floor.
“I should never have met you…”
“It would have been even better if you never existed in this world.”
Two hundred years ago, God sent Amelia, a Priestess with black hair and black eyes, to the empire. The Priestess neither aged nor died, serving as the vessel that delivered God’s revelations to the land. No one ever doubted her existence.
“Die for your child—no, my child. If you possess such earnest devotion, even that damnable God will grant you death. Is that not so?”
No one, that is, except for the man standing before her. The man who had turned Amelia into a woman and taken her for his own.
Once, she had thought it a relief that he discovered she was just an ordinary woman. Now, she could no longer tell if that was truly a blessing.
