Chapter 63

“No matter how grand the things you offer are, I won’t do it. Because I’m not a demon.”

“Not a demon?”

A faint trace of laughter mixed in Cygnus’ voice.

“It’s not like you don’t know you’re a demon. Are you trying to convince yourself you’re human?”

At the sharp, piercing remark, Theo’s brow furrowed.

“It’s not that I’m trying to believe it—it’s the truth.”

Though he answered with forced composure, Cygnus’s cold, penetrating gaze saw straight through Theo’s resolve.

“So that’s why you haven’t tried to run away early on.”

If Theo had truly used the demon’s power, it wouldn’t have been strange if everyone here had already been dead long ago.

Yet the boy standing before Cygnus stubbornly maintained a consistent attitude.

He was trapped here without putting up any struggle, acting just like a truly ordinary child.

“Hmph….”

Cygnus raised a slender hand and stroked around his mouth.

It was an undeniable fact that the child before him was a demon.

On the day Grace abducted the goddess and staged the kidnapping, the number of estate guards who perished was a staggering fifteen.

After all, no ordinary child could kill a dozen or so grown adults in a single night.

The problem was that the boy himself refused to acknowledge that fact.

If that was the case, no amount of coaxing would be of any use.

It was an undeniably frustrating situation for Cygnus.

Desperate to avoid death, he wanted to proceed with things with as little risk as possible.

“I’ll give you some time to think about what is more beneficial to you.”

In the end, after much deliberation, Cygnus turned his back on Theo.

The young demon seemed to be denying that he was a demon, wishing to remain human.

Though Cygnus didn’t know what it was that made him hold out this way, his opponent was, after all, merely a child.

So, if he spent some time in the dark, cold cell, perhaps his mind would change.

Thinking thus, Cygnus left Theo neglected for days without food or water.

Even amidst the starvation that gnawed away at his life, Theo tenaciously held onto his sense of self.

“Have you thought about it?”

Returning to visit Theo once more, Cygnus felt certain of his victory as he looked at the boy collapsed limply against the wall.

There was no way a child could endure such a situation.

“……”

Yet, looking up weakly at Cygnus, Theo’s eyes were filled with the sheer willpower to never yield to anything.

“Holding out like this won’t do you any good.”

“I’m… not a demon.”

Theo answered Cygnus as if repeating it to himself.

In that frail voice, one could feel a fierce determination to remain human even if it meant death.

Watching Theo, an unpleasant emotion welled up inside Cygnus.

He could not afford to let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip away in vain.

He had to achieve his goal by any means necessary.

Time was marching on relentlessly, hot on his heels.

Tapping his fingers in impatience, Cygnus finally made his decision.

He couldn’t just sit around and wait for the boy to naturally turn into a demon.

He had to forcefully awaken the malice writhing deep inside him.

He knew all too well that doing so might put even himself in danger.

But wasting any more time was simply unacceptable.

“What a pity. Such an easy path was laid out for us, too.”

At Cygnus’s gesture, a guard stepped forward.

“I didn’t want to resort to this either, but time is of the essence, so it cannot be helped.”

Understanding his command, the guard briefly stepped away before returning with the necessary items.

Soon after, the door of the cell where Theo was confined slowly opened.

The guard sat Theo down in a chair and began tightly binding him with ropes.

Unable to resist due to his fading consciousness, Theo felt something sharp dig beneath his fingernails.

And then…

“Aaaaaargh!”

A cry of agony echoed through the silent cell.

***

A dark, damp space where not a single ray of light could reach.

Inside, Theo was barely breathing out faint breaths of air.

This was right after a round of torture designed to turn him into a demon.

It had already been five years since he first began enduring this torture—just enough to keep him from dying.

Though he himself couldn’t even gauge how much time had passed…

At any rate, he had barely managed to protect himself through five years of relentless battle against his own mind.

Even though whispers echoed in his ears every day, and the traces of a demon continued to sprout across his body.

Black stains, rising like shimmering heat haze, spread hideously as if about to swallow Theo’s entire body.

– What difference does it make to go this far? Don’t you want to kill those bastards right now and escape this place?

Once more, the demon’s voice urged on the exhausted Theo.

However, Theo ignored the voice and violently shook his head.

It was agonizing enough to make him want to give up right then and there, but he had to endure.

He had to do so to avoid disappointing Iris, whom he would surely meet again someday.

Whether Iris found him, or the other way around, he believed they would meet again.

That desperate, clinging hope was the only thing keeping him alive.

“Damn it!”

The iron bars of the cell rattled violently under someone’s forceful grip.

It was Cygnus, whose appearance had grown noticeably gaunt over the past five years.

Theo wasn’t the only one who had endured the agonizing passage of time.

Those years had been, for Cygnus, a suffocating torment in their own right.

Cygnus’s body was weakening day by day.

The premature death that had run like a curse through his family had finally caught up to him as well, slowly tightening its grip around his throat.

“Why, just why!”

No elegance or composure remained in him now.

His sunken eyes resembled those of a beast facing imminent death, and his parched lips could only ever let slip words of despair.

“Father, please return to your chambers now.”

Watching him with anxious eyes, Grace stepped forward to support him.

Having grown into a proper young lady of nobility, Grace had blossomed into a beauty who bore a striking resemblance to Cygnus.

Yet, beneath her outwardly flawless appearance, the exact same flaw as her father was beginning to take root within her.

Just like her father Cygnus, the terror of death was slowly creeping into Grace’s heart.

‘What on earth is death, that Father…’

The curse was repeating itself, inevitably.

“Attend to my father.”

Speaking with forced calm, Grace looked across the inside of the cell where Theo was confined.

The monster that had almost taken her life years ago was now barely breathing.

Grace’s expression twisted into something subtle as she gazed at him.

She was still afraid of Theo.

Yet, Theo was also the one target upon whom she could inflict pain whenever she pleased.

The reason he chose to remain a docile beast despite having the power to wipe away everyone right in front of him right now—

She knew the answer to that.

It was none other than a single person.

‘Just what on earth is that girl to him?’

In the past, Grace had experienced confusion regarding the relationship between Iris and Theo.

That was when she realized that Iris, whom she had assumed was Theo’s master, had no idea he was even a demon.

Though she hadn’t found the answer back then, she finally understood the reason now.

It wasn’t a matter of contracts or anything of the sort.

The bond connecting them, the reason Theo was so obsessed with Iris, stemmed from nothing less than his own unwavering loyalty.

She didn’t know what Iris had done, but Theo had taken it upon himself to offer a loyalty no one had ever asked for.

‘So the two of them being linked in such a bizarre way as a demon and a goddess was just a staggering coincidence after all.’

Recalling the strangely intertwined pair, Grace approached Theo.

‘If my hunch is right, my father’s approach was wrong.’

Theo would endure any amount of physical suffering whatsoever.

Grace could see that clearly by watching Theo, who actually pulled it off, and her despairing father.

What he needed was a different kind of torture.

A pain powerful enough to overturn even his own will and reason.

“Aren’t you curious about how the goddess is doing?”

At Grace’s words, Theo’s crumpled body on the floor jerked violently.

It was the first time in a full five years that he had heard about Iris.

“Me too. Since it’s been five years, it wouldn’t be strange even if the temple had changed its mind and decided to hunt you down and wipe you out.”

Seeing Theo react precisely as she had anticipated, Grace continued.

“Of course, that would be inconvenient for us. We haven’t achieved our goal yet. So… we’re thinking of assigning someone to her.”

Though her words were clearly meant to provoke Theo, the content wasn’t a lie.

The Miller family genuinely needed insurance.

They needed a way to keep track of the temple’s movements and the goddess’s heart at any given moment.

“Someone close enough to the goddess to watch over her from the very closest distance.”

The sound of leg irons dragging across the floor grated on Grace’s nerves.

Theo, who hadn’t budged no matter what they did to him until now, was moving of his own accord.

“……”

Eyes resembling pools of blood stared straight at Grace.

Meeting that gaze sent a chill of forgotten terror running down Grace’s spine.

Even so, she couldn’t stop here.

“The person to whom one reveals their most honest feelings is, naturally, their lover.”

Grace instinctively stepped backward.

The learned terror inside her forced her body to move on its own.

And it was an excellent choice.

For Theo, standing on the absolute brink of a rampage, reached a hand out toward her.