Upon hearing Charlotte’s words, Roel instinctively shot a glance at the beautiful girl sitting on the bed, coyly half-hiding behind a pillow, and he immediately felt a surge of heat racing through his body.
Self-awareness was a virtue that all humans should have, but Roel felt that Charlotte was really acting too dense at this moment. Had there been an impromptu examination on the subject, she would have failed horrendously.
To be sitting on the bed dressed in such a manner while saying such words with such an expression… Is she trying to invite me?
Roel shot a cold glare at Charlotte, and to her credit, the latter immediately noticed the mistake in the way she expressed herself. She quickly corrected herself in a fluster.
“I-I was saying that we ought to rest. I didn’t mean it that way…”
“Yes, I know. I’ll go and sleep on the sofa. You should quickly turn in for the night.”
Roel stood up to walk out of the bedroom, but unexpectedly, he felt a tug pulling him back. He turned around and saw an auburn-haired girl holding onto the hem of his shirt.
“How can you rest properly on the sofa? T-this bed is wide enough for two. It’ll be fine as long as we just take a side each!”
Those words were spoken with a meek voice. Having never seen anyone sleeping on the sofa before, it was beyond Charlotte’s imagination to fathom that the furniture could even be slept on. Besides, Roel was both the successor of the Ascart House and her fiancé, which made it even more inappropriate for her to allow him to sleep on such a thing.
Of course, these were just extrinsic reasons. There was a more intrinsic reason why Charlotte had chosen to stop him—it was an order from her heart.
There were two reasons why she had come to this place today.
One, she wished to reward Roel’s hard work over the past few days and give him a short break.
Two, she wanted to free herself from the restraints she had shackled herself with, the lingering desires that continued to plague her since her childhood.
It wasn’t as easy as it looked for her to face her trauma. Her heart still ached from the loss and great disappointment she felt. Even if their relationship was glacially cold, no child could sever her ties with her mother lightly. Her act of confiding in Roel was her way of venting her emotions and liberating herself.
But unexpectedly, it had triggered Roel’s feelings of indignance and sympathy. When he incubated the most beautiful butterfly of the night and affirmed the path she had walked on alone all of these years, she felt something long suppressed in the depths of her heart come gushing out irrepressibly.
It was the feeling of loneliness she had tried to clamp down again and again over the years. It was her weakness that she had tried to conceal with a strong front before others. It was the cold windows of winter and the lone shadow of summer.
When that butterfly unfurled its golden wings emblazoned with the insignia of a rose, Charlotte felt like she had been liberated too. For a moment there, she felt like Roel was her kin, as if they were old companions who had been together for many years.
Her rational self swiftly pulled her out of her daze, but that sensation still lingered in her heart, as if it was deeply imprinted there.
Had it been in the past, Charlotte would have never approved of spending the night in the same room as Roel. But now, the thought of having him sleep on the sofa pained her inexplicably.
While Charlotte was losing control of her emotions, dealing with all of these unfamiliar feelings never before experienced, Roel was having trouble trying to hold himself back physiologically.
Perhaps it was because she knew that she was going to meet her mother here, Charlotte had chosen to dress boldly. It was her symbolic protest toward the conservative Austine Empire and the toxic values they stood for. Regardless of why, it made her already fatal charm even more lethal.
In order to grab the hem of Roel’s clothes, Charlotte had to move her pillow aside and lurch forward, causing her body to plop down on the bed. Her large, misty emerald eyes were looking up at him, drawing him in.
The alcohol is a little too strong.
Roel quickly found an excuse for himself.
He thought that he had gained immunity toward beautiful women after having seen Alicia and Nora day after day for the past three years. Yet, he had never felt such a way before. It wasn’t just about Charlotte’s outer appearance; her pure, innocent eyes, which were at odds with her usual sharp, intelligent look, were also frighteningly powerful too.
Most importantly of all, her Origin Attribute was currently furiously stoking Roel’s darkest desires.
The Sorofyas was a large noble house with many family members, and most of them chose to adopt the Three Main Origin Attributes. However, those who possessed a greater degree of the High Elf Bloodline, especially Charlotte who had undergone the ‘Restoration of Primordial Bloodline’, would adopt the Sorofyas’ unique Origin Attribute instead.
The Loyal Origin Attribute.
Similar to the other Origin Attributes of the Sia Continent, the Sorofyas’ Loyal Origin Attribute grew through aligning one’s actions with the quintessence of the Origin Attribute. However, as the Sorofyas were rulers themselves, the concept of loyalty for them mostly applied to their own family and faith.
However, for the women of the Sorofya House, loyalty took on a different meaning when they got married. Its focus would shift from the Sorofya House as a whole to the family they built together with their spouse. In other words, they would be devoted to their husband, unyielding even to their death. Even the most stubborn mule couldn’t hold a candle to them.
This trait had become the source of tragedy for many daughters of the Sorofyas’. There were many nobles on the Sia Continent, but once a daughter of the Sorofyas’ chose the wrong person, they were bound to a life of misery.
This was also why Charlotte was so afraid of getting married. It was a path of no retreat for her.
Roel could understand where she was coming from, but in a twisted manner, it also incited a man’s desire to possess. If he could ensnare this innocent girl who had no experience with love whatsoever, he would have a lover who would never turn her back on him.
Perfect loyalty—these words carried some kind of sorcery that made Roel’s mind overheat. In the materialistic world of the circle of nobility, where debauchery was common, having a virtuous spouse who was solely devoted to one was the dream.
At this critical moment, the reddened Roel quickly summoned his mana and cast two spells on himself with a wave of his hand.
【Cold-blooded Animal
Corrects your thoughts with rationality, greatly reducing the chances of reckless decision-making in the spur of a moment.】
【Stiff Skin
Hardens your body to be as hard as stone. The side effects are also apparent—what has already turned stiff cannot possibly expand.】
One of the spells was to lower the heat, and the other one was to forcefully restrain his own body. Under the effects of the two spells, Roel shuddered a little as he lowered his head to look at Charlotte once more. Then, all of a sudden, he lurched forward.
“R-Roel?”
Roel snatched the pillow from Charlotte’s hand and put it in place before drawing her into a princess carry and laying her down properly on the bed. Then, he pulled the blanket over and covered her up snugly. His movements were so swift that Charlotte was left astounded.
“Roel, you are…”
“Sleep.”
“B-but you…”
“Listen to me. Sleep.”
“…”
Roel patted Charlotte’s head gently as he said those words. His attitude was so gentle that Charlotte found herself at a loss on what to say. She pulled the blanket up a little and hid the lower half of her face. After a moment of silence, she finally nodded her head slightly.
Seeing that Charlotte was finally listening to him, Roel heaved a sigh of relief. He extinguished the candle by the bedside before awkwardly maneuvering his stiffened body out of the room.
It was only after he closed the door behind him that he finally dispelled the two spells he had cast. He had never felt so exhausted physically and mentally before.
“That lass is really a tough one to deal with.”
Roel scratched his hair as he remarked helplessly to himself. He fell face-down onto the soft sofa in the lounge and thought about the irony of the situation he was in.
“For the couple who won the best room for the most brilliant butterfly to actually sleep apart, I guess we’re really one-of-a-kind, huh?” muttered Roel to himself.
While thinking about everything that happened throughout the day, the profile of an auburn-haired girl inevitably surfaced in his mind as his consciousness began to fade. Before he knew it, he had already fallen into a deep sleep.
…
It had been many years since Roel was last in the world of dreams.
This time, he found himself on a journey through a dimly-lit world. His starting point was a plateau filled with muddy puddles, as if it had been raining heavily just a moment ago. Bits of greenery dotted the land. There were old trees with branches so long that they curved down to the ground, looking almost like mysterious tentacles.
Just like the first time he arrived in this world of dreams, his mind was extremely fuzzy, incapable of formulating any rational thought. As if he was a puppet on a string—or maybe he was simply instinctively familiar with this plot of land—his body began marching forward on its own accord.
Weirdly enough, his movements were extremely precise, as if it had been carefully programmed beforehand. Not once did his feet sink into the puddles of mud despite his unthinking movements.
He walked on and on, stepping across nascent blades of grass, as well as the massive yet soft bodies of collapsed tree trunks. Time seemed to be a nonexistent concept here, and gradually, his sense of distance began to fade as well.
From time to time, he would encounter some enormous boulders that towered like small hills on the ground, and these boulders became landmarks that gave him a slight sense of progression. However, no matter how long he walked for, the sky still remained dim, not showing any hints of the passing of time at all.
He continued walking in such a mindless manner for an unknowable amount of time. He eventually arrived in the depths of a cluster of mountains, and beneath the shadows of the cliff, he found himself standing before a golden-haired woman sitting upon a golden throne.
The golden-haired woman slowly opened her eyes, revealing orange, catlike irises.
Roel felt as if his head had been dunked into the bottom of an icy sea all of a sudden, causing his senses to swiftly return to him. He soon regained control over his body once more.
“I never thought someone would be able to find me here.”
A cool, feminine voice sounded in Roel’s ears. There was hardly any fluctuation in her tone, but her words expressed surprise. However, that was soon replaced with disappointment.
“A child?”
It was a mutter that sounded no different from a sigh. She gazed at Roel with a hint of exasperation. It would appear that Roel’s childlike appearance didn’t induce much confidence in her. However, her curiosity was still piqued.
“A person as young as you was able to reach me, it looks like you’re quite a remarkable prodigy. However, the prodigies that have emerged over the past thousand years are as numerous as the stars in the sky, but most of them quickly end up dead.
“Just try to survive, won’t you? At least, until our next meeting.”
After saying those words, the woman closed her eyes once more, and Roel fell back into a deep sleep too.
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