Grant me Your Grace – Chapter 94

Author: Nikss

Startled, Dahlia quickly tried to free her arm from Hissin’s grasp.

“Let go, don’t do this!”

But the large hands gripping both her wrists didn’t budge at all.

Instead, he pulled her arms tighter, pressing the glass deeper into her skin.

Blood that could no longer be contained by the cloth welled over, streamed down his body, and soaked the bed.

Dahlia’s eyes grew even wider.

“Stop, please!”

As Dahlia cried out, Hissin let out a faint, mocking laugh.

“If just this much blood was enough to make you panic, you should have looked for another way.”

Hissin cupped Dahlia’s cheek, wiping away her tears, and twisted his lips into a smirk.

“Or did you come here thinking you could take me by force—or at least by threat?”

“Hng…!”

Hissin seized the rounded curve of her hip where she sat atop him. Dahlia flinched as his thumb pressed firmly against her pelvis, a slow, deliberate rub.

Stifling an urge he had no wish to resist, Hissin guided her hand—the one still holding the glass shard—to his own neck.

“If you want to kill someone with such a small piece of glass, aiming for the vital points in the neck is quicker than trying to pierce the heart through bone.”

As he tightened his grip on her hand, the sharp edge of the glass sliced cleanly through her skin.

Blood welled up in sudden pulses, and Dahlia’s eyes flooded with shock.

“Please stop… Stop this, please…!”

Even as she sobbed and pleaded, Hissin didn’t release her hand. He watched her shaking her head pitifully, his gaze dark and settled.

He had known Dahlia would come to his room someday.

Ever since he’d left the door unlocked for her, ever since he’d intentionally let slip that this wing was his own quarters.

He had expected Dahlia to hide quietly, biding her time until the moment came to kill him.

For a moment, she had considered fleeing far beyond Mohron’s borders.

But from the start, her will to live had never been strong—she had no strength left to run anywhere and cling to life.

So then, the only thing that remained was the life of her enemy.

“Why hesitate now?”

Hissin’s grip on her wrist didn’t loosen, still pressing the glass to his throat as he spoke.

“Didn’t you resent me enough to want me dead? I deceived you, took your body, and in the end… killed every last member of your family.”

“That’s… because I have no right to stand before you without guilt either. Because of us, you lost your homeland and your family too…”

“A captive dares to speak of shared sorrow with me?”

Hissin let out a bitter laugh. But then he tightened his hold, pressing the shard deeper against his own flesh.

“Don’t hesitate. Kill me. If I don’t die— kgh…—you’ll only suffer worse.”

“No, I can’t…!”

Dahlia flinched as the glass bit deeper, pulling back instinctively.

But the force of her resistance only drove the shard further into his neck.

“I told you before. Willingly… I would die by your hand.”

After all, I too have no more desire to go on living. If the one who once saved me now takes my life… perhaps that is only right.

As Dahlia tried to let go of the shard entirely, Hissin covered her hand with his own, driving the glass even deeper into his throat.

“If what you want… is my life… then that too, I give willingly.”

“Ah, agh…!”

The glass pierced clean through his neck.

Sticky flesh gave way as the shard pushed inward, and blood pulsed out in heavy, gulping surges.

Hissin’s lips trembled, losing color, and Dahlia felt her heart drop like a stone.

Face twisted in anguish, she gripped the shard with all her might—the very one she had meant to release.

“Hng…!”

Hot blood streamed from the palm of her hand, torn open by the glass’s edge.

Mingling with Hissin’s blood, it quickly seeped back into his body. Flesh and muscle, once twitching, began to knit back together unnervingly fast.

Clatter!

The glass shard Dahlia threw down shattered into finer pieces against the floor.

A moment later, and the glass would have been trapped beneath healing flesh, sealed into a grotesque shape.

“Haah… haah…”

Dahlia gasped for air.

Looking down, she saw Hissin’s chest heaving just as fiercely.

Had he truly been prepared to die? Why?

For what purpose would this man—who should have found no satisfaction even in killing me—do such a thing?

While unanswerable questions tangled one after another, the drops of blood falling from her tattered palm finally ceased.

And then, the pain began.

“Hng…! Hngk…!”

A piercing pain shot through her throat, and Dahlia clutched at her own neck.

Struggling even to breathe, she choked on each gasp, while beneath her, Hissin watched her writhe in agony with terrifyingly cold eyes.

“Beg for your life.”

Hissin’s voice flowed out, low and dark.

“Kiss me and plead for me to take this pain away.”

The blood pooled beneath them seemed to seep even into the crimson of his irises.

“Tell me you need me!”

Was there any color more wretched than this?

Dahlia gazed with anguished eyes at that devastating hue—thickly gathering at the corners of his eyes, trailing down his temples.

So this is the fate we were destined for.

Cutting each other, healing each other, piercing each other again, and letting the wounds close once more.

Meaninglessly wounding and being wounded, until we wither away together.

Because looking at each other is unbearably painful, yet in the end, we cannot let go. Because in the end, we have no choice but to hold on.

Even if those thorns pierce all the way to the heart… in the end, I still long to be soaked in that blood—your blood.

“Hng…!”

Just as another wave of strangling pain threatened to blur her consciousness— Hissin muttered a soft curse, then wrapped a hand around the back of Dahlia’s head.

Tilting her head back, he pressed his lips to the crimson-exposed skin of her throat.

He parted his jaw and bit deeply into the nape of her neck.

As his teeth scraped against tender flesh, pain and release twisted together in a strange, intoxicating sensation.

“Hng…”

Dahlia let out a faint, trembling breath. Without meaning to, her hands tightened on the fabric of his clothes.

Did she want to push him away… or pull him closer?

She didn’t know. Thoughts and emotions tangled into a hopeless mess—nothing came to her clearly anymore.

Sobbing softly, Dahlia pressed her hands harder against him.

The questions that had haunted her ears for so long spilled from her lips before her mind could catch them.

“You said… I would be shocked if I knew. What… was it?”

The lips tracing her nape stilled.

For a moment, the man remained motionless, rigid. Then he let out a low breath, and a hot puff of air washed over her still-throbbing skin.

“You spent longer looking around the palace than I expected. I thought you’d come straight up to kill me.”

“Tell me. The one who stole the child and killed my clan… was it… my father?”

Dahlia’s voice trembled, fragile and pleading.

“Was that stolen child… me?”

Hissin said nothing. When Dahlia pushed him away, he yielded without resistance. She stared at his expressionless face with tear-filled eyes and asked again.

“Is it true… that the Emperor of Baran, to whom I pledged my blood… is the very enemy who oppressed and slaughtered my own kind?”

Reflected in his crimson irises, Dahlia’s face contorted in anguish.

Already knowing the answer, yet still hoping—still asking for more.

Hissin watched in silence as Dahlia desperately clung to a hope that had already shattered into piercing fragments.

In the end, he made the same choice he had made from the beginning.

“…No. I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s not a truth I know.”

His lips, parted after a long silence, spoke a lie—but of course, it didn’t work. Dahlia seized the collar of his shirt as if gripping him by the throat.

“Don’t lie to me! I heard everything… everything you said to Priest Hovan!”

Her tears fell one by one, scalding hot as they soaked into his clothes.

He felt the fabric, still stiff with dried blood, grow warm for a moment before cooling again, and he looked at Dahlia with eyes stripped of feeling.

No—he tried to feel nothing.

Until the very end, I must remain a sinner in your eyes, and you in mine.

That way, you won’t break.

That way, I can keep you bound to my side.

“What conversation could I have had with Hovan? Are you pretending to be mad now? That’s not amusing.”

Hissin tried to bury the truth without letting a single flicker of expression show.

Dahlia, still clutching his clothes, furrowed her entire face, forcing out one last question.

“Please, I beg you… tell me…”

Tears streamed ceaselessly from her reddened, burning eyelids.