Chapter 8
Belona pulled her hand free from his grasp and gave his chest a light push.
I won’t betray you, so don’t worry.
It was nothing more than a verbal promise, but apparently it was enough to give him a momentary sense of reassurance.
Instead of stopping her again, Deminic wrapped his fingers around the hand resting against his chest.
Their fingers intertwined, as if he had no intention of letting go.
His behavior made it seem as though she might run away at any moment, and her eyebrows rose instinctively. Still, Belona said nothing. She simply reached for the doorknob with her free hand and opened the door.
“Miss! You really don’t look well at all.”
At least her restless dream had worked in her favor. Even Rose could tell that she looked terrible.
Belona glanced discreetly to her right, confirming once again that Deminic was standing behind the door, watching her with his lazy gaze.
“…Yeah. I’m going to rest today.”
“Do you need any medicine?”
“I’m fine. Just give me that.”
She needed both hands to take the tray carrying a steaming bowl of soup and a loaf of freshly baked bread, but Deminic stubbornly refused to release the hand he was holding.
Without thinking, Belona frowned and shot him a glare.
Looking equally displeased, Deminic reluctantly let go.
“Miss, is there something over—”
“I want to rest until late this afternoon, so please come back much later. Thanks.”
The moment Belona rattled off her words and stepped back, Deminic quietly shut the door and leaned against it with his arms crossed, looking like a guard standing watch.
Judging by the way he tilted his head and listened carefully, he was making sure Rose had actually left.
“What exactly were you worried about? Did you think I’d scream for help and tell everyone there was a strange man in my room? Once I make a decision, I don’t go back on it.”
The moment Belona carelessly set the tray down on the table with a thud, Deminic’s cool, dark gaze swept over her.
“That’s good to hear. If you’d shown even the slightest sign of exposing me, I was planning to kill both you and your maid.”
His tone was casual, but his words were anything but.
Oddly enough, instead of being alarmed, Belona found herself laughing softly.
His attitude was so familiar that she couldn’t tell whether what she felt was relief or something else entirely.
“If you’re capable of doing that, then why are you still here?”
Exactly.
If he’d recovered enough to do something like that, why didn’t he just leave?
“I used what little strength I’d recovered to go back and retrieve that from my temporary hideout. I can’t travel through shadows again for the time being. You wouldn’t know, but it consumes an enormous amount of power.”
Only then did Belona notice the unfamiliar bundle of belongings lying on the floor.
This time, she was genuinely dumbfounded.
“…I don’t remember giving you permission to move in.”
“I’m warning you, don’t touch it. Those are items related to dark magic.”
“…You’re not lying about being unable to use your powers, are you?”
Deminic reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object.
The silver chain wrapped around his fingers looked familiar.
He opened his palm and revealed the necklace.
The transparent gem attached to it had become noticeably darker than it had been the previous day, glowing with an ominous, unstable gray light.
“If I’m going to follow your advice faithfully, then using any more complicated forms of magic is impossible right now. Honestly, even going out to retrieve this was pushing my limits. But I had to do it while I had at least some of my strength back.”
“…When you use dark magic, do you really not feel anything? It’s still your soul, isn’t it? Do you seriously feel nothing at all?”
Did he truly not realize that his soul was being corrupted? That it was shattering piece by piece until he would eventually lose his sanity?
“Not at all. If anything, the more I use my powers, the stronger I feel. Strong enough to obtain anything I want.”
His crimson eyes, filled with a strange and dangerous desire, seemed as though they might pierce straight through her.
“So that’s how you lose control. You don’t even realize that the power you’re using has already become something you can’t handle anymore.”
Perhaps the Belona of her previous life would have laughed at her current self.
How pathetic. Worrying about him now?
Maybe she would have mocked her mercilessly.
“So someone close to you must have lost their life because they used dark magic carelessly.”
He paused.
“Or lost their mind.”
Curiously, there was genuine concern mixed into his expression.
Anyone watching would have thought he was worried about her feelings.
“Think whatever you want.”
Belona answered sharply, as if she were describing him rather than herself.
Emotional conversations were still uncomfortable.
“Why won’t you tell me anything about yourself?”
“Because even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.”
Shaking her head, Belona smiled helplessly at his relentless determination to uncover every one of her secrets.
After all, by the next life, Deminic wouldn’t even remember her.
And yet, he remained strangely obsessed with learning everything about Belona.
“If you can’t trust me, then just kill me when that moment comes. That solves everything. Stop trying so hard to get close to me.”
“Whether it’s meaningless or not is for me to decide.”
His crimson eyes locked onto hers with such intensity that it seemed as though he intended to uncover every secret she had ever hidden.
“You’ve been talking about me killing you for a while now, but you keep saying it so casually.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“And it’s starting to stick in my mind.”
On the surface, Belona appeared more vibrant and alive than anyone else.
No one would ever guess that she possessed a far stronger longing for death than anyone around her.
But Deminic, surprisingly, struck directly at the heart of the matter.
“Do you actually want to die?”
If he ever learned that death itself was both her greatest secret and her strongest trump card, what kind of expression would he make?
Belona looked at the man who had killed her countless times, yet had never truly managed to kill her.
“At least not right now.”
Deminic could certainly be irritating.
But because of him, she genuinely wanted to continue this life a little longer.
She wanted to see where this version of him would go.
So, without realizing it, she spoke more honestly than she’d intended.
“So don’t die either. Stop being so arrogant. Those holy knights you fought were only the opening act. There’s one exceptionally talented holy knight who’ll eventually become a real problem for you. His instincts are incredibly sharp, so you need to be very careful around him.”
Davien’s divine power wasn’t actually the biggest problem.
She had originally been nothing more than an ordinary noblewoman, not someone born with divine abilities, so it took her a very long time to fully awaken her power.
However, there was one holy knight blessed with overwhelming divine favor, as though the gods themselves had chosen him to protect Davien, the messenger of the gods who had appeared during this era.
Even Belona, who had become disillusioned with the temple itself, couldn’t help but acknowledge that one kind-hearted young man who was goodness personified.
“So all I need to do is be careful? There’s no other solution?”
“You can’t kill him in advance. It’s already too late. His talent awakened a long time ago, and he’s just about to be formally knighted. He’s been wandering outside the capital as a knight apprentice, but…”
She paused.
“He’ll be back soon.”
After living through twenty lifetimes, you eventually learned that some things simply couldn’t be changed, no matter how dramatically you altered the future.
Like Ruils, the greatest holy knight of this era.
When he was still a child, he manifested divine power, was immediately taken in by the temple, trained as a holy knight, and transformed into one of the temple’s most loyal servants.
“So be careful. Do whatever you can to avoid crossing paths with him altogether. Most of the time, he’ll either be at the temple or away on missions tracking traces of dark magic. At least for now.”
She hadn’t expected a response.
Yet Deminic spoke sooner than she anticipated.
“Fine. I’ll officially recognize you as my ally.”
“…What?”
Belona had been absentmindedly rereading the dream she’d had earlier in her mind while flipping through her book, so it took her a moment to react.
When she looked up, her eyes immediately met his.
Apparently, he’d been watching her the entire time.
He was casually twirling a dagger between his fingers.
It looked strangely familiar.
When she stared at it, he placed it on the table with a soft tap.
“Think of it as a token of trust.”
Yekaros’s dagger.
It was the holy relic she’d used in the temple to protect herself from Deminic’s hypnosis.
Hypnosis required an intense level of concentration.
As long as she avoided prolonged eye contact while they were alone together, it hadn’t really been necessary.
More importantly, she’d never expected to meet Deminic again so soon, which was why she hadn’t bothered bringing it with her when she left the temple.
“As you said, if things go wrong, I can always just kill you.”
He said those words while wearing an expression she’d never seen before.
Across all twenty-one of her lifetimes, this was the first time she’d ever seen Deminic look as though he genuinely didn’t want her to die.
Belona suddenly remembered his earlier confession.
I have nowhere else to go.
Perhaps he still doubted her.
But at the same time, perhaps he genuinely wanted to trust her.
If that was the case, then she would give him the reassurance he needed.
“As long as you’re willing to trust me, and as long as you keep your promise not to harm the people around me… then I won’t betray you in this lifetime. I made the decision to help you, and I’ll take responsibility for that decision.”
In the room illuminated by the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, Deminic froze.
It was as though time itself had stopped.
He seemed particularly vulnerable to words like these.
Even though he trusted her enough to stay here.
Even though he had been the one to declare her his ally.
He still looked as though he expected her to betray him at any moment.
No.
As though betrayal was simply inevitable.
“It doesn’t matter if you continue to doubt me. I can prove it as many times as necessary.”
Becoming the one and only person Deminic could trust completely was perhaps a more significant step than she’d originally intended.
Still, it didn’t feel bad.
To her, this was only one life among countless others.
In reality, it had been a very casual decision.
Whether things worked out or fell apart, it didn’t really matter.
But Belona had overlooked one crucial fact.
Unlike her, Deminic only had one life.
And because of that, she failed to realize just how deeply she’d already shaken him.
She couldn’t have imagined, even after twenty-one lifetimes, that her actions would ultimately turn this life upside down in ways she had never anticipated.
