Grant me Your Grace Chapter 80

Dahlia lifted her foot and took a step forward. 

 

The parched desert sand crunched and scattered beneath her soles. She liked the feeling of it, softly giving way and pressed down gently with her foot.

 

She took another step forward. 

 

This time, instead of dry sand, something soft and damp tickled her foot. 

 

Looking down carefully, she saw something green beneath her feet.

 

It was grass. 

 

The very same grass she had trodden upon long ago, beyond the temple wall with Hissin.

 

Glistening under the moonlight, it softly curled around Dahlia’s foot, rustling as if it might scatter at any moment.

 

Why is this here? 

 

The moment the question arose, she sensed a presence ahead. 

 

Lifting her head, Dahlia could see a boy standing far off in the middle of the desert.

 

The boy was staring intently in this direction. 

 

Perhaps it was his tattered, ragged clothes. The moment she saw him, a sharp pang ached in a corner of her heart.

 

Dahlia stepped closer to the boy, one step at a time. 

 

The closer she got to the child, the lusher the grass tickling her soles became. She finally drew near enough to almost touch the boy. 

 

There, where the green grass had now grown high enough to reach her knees, the boy reached out a small hand to Dahlia.

 

The moment she took that scar-covered hand, the young boy transformed into the form of a man.

 

“Grant me your grace, Your Highness.”

 

Hissin. My forsaken salvation.

 

Pitiful and wretched, cursed and driven out by all.

 

“This is the kind of man you saved.”

 

My kind and cruel destroyer, who came to devour me whole.

 

“…!”

 

Something gently roused Dahlia from her slumber, and her eyes fluttered open. Unlike in her dream, a pitch-black darkness, devoid of even moonlight, enveloped everything, and a damp, wet sound was ringing in her ears.

 

“Hmm…”

 

Another lewd sound followed, and her ankle tingled. Dahlia let out a low moan, finally lowering her head as she felt a hand clutching her foot. Her eyes, now accustomed to the dark, captured the face of a man smiling softly at her.

 

Hissin was looking down at her.

 

“Have you awakened, Your Highness the Imperial Princess?”

 

With the same affectionate gaze as the day they first met, accompanied by an intoxicatingly deep voice.

 

“Hhng…!”

 

His hot, wet tongue licked its way up her ankle.

 

Watching Hissin press his lips to the top of her foot, Dahlia drew in a sharp, small breath. Her mind, not yet fully free from the dream, couldn’t properly grasp the reality before her.

 

Where is this? Why am I alone here? Where’s Bertha? Priest Hovan? 

 

My father and Brother Saltar?

 

The Baran Kingdom?

 

Her pupils, darting around in a panic, grew even more clouded with confusion. 

 

An unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar bed, an unfamiliar atmosphere. 

 

And most of all, the clean, unfamiliar garments clothing her body, replacing the bloodstained clothes she had worn before.

 

Hissin, who had been watching her, stuck out his long tongue once more and slowly licked his way up the round ankle bone.

 

“Uhng…!”

 

“Do not worry. All the things Your Highness is concerned about are safe.”

 

“Where… where have you taken me?”

 

Blink— 

 

Hissin, who had kissed her slender calf, lifted his red eyes and looked at Dahlia.

 

“Mohron.”

 

His red pupils, shimmering with the firelight, captured Dahlia’s startled face.

 

“Twelve years ago, it’s the country you people destroyed, the one with the last descendant of Janna.”

 

Mohron… Janna.

 

Those vaguely remembered names clawed at Dahlia’s heart and passed through in an instant. 

 

Unlike the Mohron Kingdom she had heard about from Miftah not long ago, Janna remained in her memory in a more faded form.

 

How could she forget that name?

 

The boy who was fed her first blood… was from Janna.

 

“Then, don’t tell me you…”

 

Dahlia, who had bolted upright, pulled her captured foot free from Hissin. 

 

Suddenly, the dream she had just had earlier came to her mind.

 

The prisoner boy in the underground jail, dying in the desert. The blessing that awakened her divine power, the beginning of the curse. 

 

The boy changed and became a man, and his face became none other than Hissin.

 

The man right before her eyes.

 

But Dahlia shook her head slightly as if she couldn’t believe it.

 

“That’s impossible. That person… he didn’t have red eyes like you.”

 

Her trembling fingertips touched the area around Hissin’s eyes. 

 

The crimson eyes that shone brightly even in the deep darkness were mysterious and beautiful enough to be unforgettable once seen. 

 

Even if it was during her childhood, if she had seen these eyes on the boy, she would never have forgotten them…

 

“I, too, had many things change because of that day.”

 

Hissin, having revealed his identity, no longer used honorifics with Dahlia. 

 

Instead, he enveloped her hand with his and gently kissed it again.

 

The rough spots on her palm were covered with moist mucous membranes. 

 

The lingering images of that unforgettable day gradually superimposed themselves over Hissin.

 

“Our Janna royalty also possess blood abilities like yours. They usually awaken upon reaching adulthood, but when I escaped from the Baran kingdom, my eye color had already changed.”

 

A bitter smile seeped onto the vivid red.

 

“Thanks to your father, I gained power at an age when awakening should be impossible. I suppose I should be grateful for this one thing.”

 

Hissin, who had sneered, again made soft, slick sounds as he left warmth all over her hand. The red spots that had covered it were completely washed away by the contact. 

 

Dahlia tried to break free by exerting force, but he allowed no further opening.

 

“Ah…!”

 

Instead, he pulled her arm, imprisoning her once more in his embrace. 

 

Burying his face in her neck, he ran his tongue over every place where there had been a red spot.

 

“Don’t you want to kill the Emperor?”

 

“St… stop, don’t…”

 

Even twisting her body, she couldn’t escape his solid arms. 

 

Hissin, having seized both her hands at once, bound her arms above her head so she could neither push him away nor hit him.

 

Trapped in Hissin’s immense embrace, Dahlia could only helplessly feel him erasing the pain.

 

“For over ten years, he has oppressed you and recklessly taken your blood.”

 

“Ugh…”

 

“Simply because he couldn’t pass the throne to a mere princess, he cast out the First Prince, who wasn’t chosen by the goddess, and imprisoned you to protect his paltry imperial authority.”

 

“Hft!”

 

A sharp sensation spread from the earlobe bitten between his teeth. Hissin’s low voice, flowing along the curve of her ear, was deeply saturated with suppressed rage and resentment.

 

“I could kill him for you right now, if you wish.”

 

Hissin, who had traced the outer rim of her ear with his tongue, curled up one corner of his mouth.

 

“Or perhaps you wish to kill your father with your own hands?”

 

“Don’t… do this… Send me back to Baran, back… Ugh!”

 

Crunch. Hissin gritted his teeth and bit down on the nape of her neck. 

 

Overwhelmed by these stimuli, as if he were imprinting his existence upon her, Dahlia could only helplessly fall apart.

 

“You say you want to return to that hell.”

 

“Ah…!”

 

Hissin, his hand full as he gripped her ample breast, stared directly into Dahlia’s tear-filled eyes. 

 

As his thumb circled and rubbed her nipple, she shuddered pitifully.

 

“I am here to erase your pain. What would you do, seeking a kingdom that is no more?”

 

“Ughh…!”

 

Hissin opened his jaw wide and bit down on her breast, cloth and all.

 

The quickly dampened fabric made the sensations in her breast even more acute. 

 

The hot tongue moving over the wet cloth was unbearably stimulating, causing Dahlia to shake her head wildly.

 

She tried to push his body away with her feet, but this only resulted in her legs being forced wide apart.

 

“Haa!”

 

Her waist twisted violently from the hand that covered her pubis. 

 

Hissin pinned her body with his own, making it impossible for her to even dare to close her legs, and roughly churned his fingers below.

 

“Ah, ahhh…!”

 

The fingers, arbitrarily digging into her insufficiently wet vaginal entrance, recklessly stabbed and churned at her inner walls. 

 

The moisture, forced out against her will, clung stickily to his fingers, wrapping around them as they scraped inside, painful and raw.

 

Plop! 

 

As he forcefully shoved his hand in, Dahlia’s mouth fell wide open. 

 

Hissin pushed his tongue into the gaping mouth, scraping the inner walls as if gripping them.

 

“Hmm, agh, aah…!”

 

The stimulation from below was so intense she didn’t even notice the tangled roots of her tongue being pulled taut. 

 

The gradually pooling heat, growing hotter, melted all her resentment towards Hissin, all her sense of betrayal, into a sticky, tangled mess.

 

It swallowed Dahlia like a swamp, under the name of endless sorrow and self-recrimination. She remembered the darkness she sometimes saw in him. 

 

The darkness looked lonely when he said he remembered nothing but his name. 

 

Back then, thinking it was loneliness, she had wanted to hold him just a little more.

 

It was a foolish thought. 

 

It wasn’t a simple, light emotion like loneliness or desolation.

 

Anger. Resentment. A desire for revenge. ..

 

For how long had Hissin, looking at the cursed Baran who brought ruin to his nation, dwelled on those terrible things?

 

What was he thinking as he looked at that Baran’s daughter, as he mingled their bodies and erased her pain?

 

“Ahhh… agh!”

 

The heat, expanded to its limit, burst all at once and spread throughout her body. 

 

Each time her intermittently trembling body tightly clenched Hissin’s hand, an unbearable whirlpool of emotion swallowed Dahlia.

 

Resentment towards Hissin, who had deceived her for so long. 

 

Guilt over the fact that his nation was tragically ruined because of the Kingdom of Baran. 

 

The sense of loss over losing her own Kingdom of Baran, the land she had lived in her entire life, because of those repercussions.

 

And the self-loathing directed at herself, for still craving Hissin’s body even in this terrible situation.