It's Too Late for Regrets - Chapter 11.13

Rayan ended up holding Caesar and followed her movements with his eyes. It wasn’t hard to understand the look Ines gave him, but he couldn’t quite believe it.

“…Lie down? With my head on your lap?”

“If you don’t like it, forget it.”

“No, I’ll do it.”

He quickly denied it, but couldn’t hide his confusion.

“Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”

“…”

“No, sorry.”

He had no right to complain. Even so, Rayan looked at her slender thigh, which seemed like it might break if he so much as touched it, and hesitated a little more before finally lying down very carefully.

Caesar whined for a moment but soon rested his cheek on his father’s chest and began breathing softly again.

Rayan’s silver hair scattered over the hem of Ines’s yellow dress. He tilted his head slightly and deeply inhaled the scent coming from her body, then muttered to himself quietly.

“You make me too happy these days. That’s why I feel anxious. It’s always like that, but…”

His voice gradually grew sleepy.

Rayan took her left hand and pressed a kiss to her palm.

“…If you’re curious about something, ask me. You’re being this sweet because you want something from me, right?”

His steady breath tickled her palm.

“If I ask, will you answer honestly?”

“I can’t promise that.”

“…Then what’s the point.”

“Yeah. Actually, that was a lie.”

His eyelids slowly closed.

“I’m ridiculous, aren’t I? I made such a bold claim that I could give you everything.”

It didn’t even take a few minutes for Rayan’s breathing to become calm, proving that the only thing keeping him up these past few days was sheer willpower. The strength in the hand holding hers gradually faded.

In truth, there were many things Ines wanted to ask him.

When he conquered the capital of Jenaire last autumn—what had he seen there? What had happened? How much did he know about her, and what exactly did he know?

No—more than that…

She wanted to ask why he had gone out of his way to tie the darkness to himself, when it would have vanished on its own if left alone, taking her with it.

He must have known what it meant to become a host for the darkness, so why?

Because…

She kept thinking about him. She kept looking back. Even when she closed her eyes, his image stayed behind like an afterimage burned onto her vision.

‘Looks like I’m worried about this man.’

Ines coldly mocked her own heart for wavering like this.

‘How foolish.’

Back in the forest of Rosram, she had decided to follow her heart from now on.

And in the end, is this man the one her heart was leading her to?

Ines gently ran her fingers through Rayan’s hair as he slept completely defenseless.

Her hand boldly traced down the line of his nose and toward his lips, but he didn’t stir at all.

In sleep, he showed none of the usual pressure or madness in his eyes. Only his superior features remained, shining quietly.

Ines glanced over at Caesar, who was deeply asleep in his father’s arms, and parted her lips.

“What do you think, Kian?”

He was probably forbidden by Rayan from appearing in front of her, but even now, Kian was likely listening to her voice. He existed in the shadows—wherever darkness was, he could be.

“If I stay like this a little longer, with my memory not fully returned… maybe I’ll start wanting to save this man.”

If she returned to Jenaire, met with the shamans, and awakened their power, she could get Kian back from Rayan.

Freeing a human consumed by evil—that was the power passed down by the shamans.

Maybe that was the best way. Caesar liked his father. And she herself, to some degree, could no longer deny that she was starting to waver.

“…But more and more scenes keep coming back to me… and they stop me in my tracks.”

Ines recalled staring blankly at the empty bed in the dark room the night before.

She pictured again the scene that had surfaced when the fog of forgetfulness lifted.

<Promise me. In my country, I’ll give you everything you’ve never had before.>

She had.

<So everything you learned and wanted to do with the man you love—do it all with me, Ines. That’s what love means to you, right?>

That night she spent with Rayan.

As that memory returned, all expression faded from Ines’s face.

One of the vague thoughts she had when remembering the night, they were together in Rosram’s forest had been right—

Rayan was not a gentle man in bed.

<Uh, ngh, haah…>

Even when she cried from the overwhelming sensation, she was experiencing for the first time, he didn’t stop. He only occasionally wiped her tears away with his hand.

Their time together had resembled an animal’s mating more than anything else. When it was over, he left her alone and disappeared. She clearly remembered staring blankly out the window at the early dawn sky from the bed of a nameless inn.

And then there was the promise he made to her in the past—that she could have everything in his country. Now, recalling that promise, which had likely been a complete lie, made her skin crawl as if frost had settled on it.

She had seen him cry many times in front of her, had watched him beg desperately, and now he was lying with his head on her lap, sleeping soundly for the first time in days. But over Rayan’s sleeping face, the illusion from her memories slowly overlaid.

<You can’t run anymore.>

A savage moan filled with ecstasy, a voice that poured into her ears like burning oil.

“…When I remember everything, Kian… what will I think of this man?”

Ines finally looked away. She stared for a long time at the shadow of the great tree above the heads of the three of them.

Until Caesar shifted in his sleep, waking Rayan, and the man pulled both her and Caesar into his arms again and fell back asleep.

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