The Witch Didn't Raise the Tyrant That Way - Chapter 6: My Heart Has Grown Too (1)

When I regained consciousness, my arms were bound above me.

“Is this… kidnapping?”

It had happened while I was trying to escape from the palace. But leaving the palace wasn’t a crime, and no official representative of the royal authority, such as a guard, had formally arrested me. That meant… the chances of this being a kidnapping were high.

But why?

What would they want from me?

Money?

I was caught right as I was leaving the palace, so… was I still inside? Or had I already made it out?

But for a kidnapping, I was being treated rather gently. I was resting on something soft—almost like a bed, with a large pillow supporting my back as I lay half-reclined.

With some effort, I forced my heavy eyelids open and took in my surroundings. Thankfully, my eyes weren’t blindfolded, and since it was still nighttime, the darkness didn’t hurt my vision.

“…What is this?”

What came into view was a scene I couldn’t believe.

Because…

“This is… my home?”

More specifically, it was the bedroom in my forest cabin.

A shiver ran down my spine. Had I been brought all the way to the forest? It was several hours’ ride by horse. Could that much time have passed?

Last time I checked, a dose of the sedative made people sleep for about three hours…

No, that wasn’t the issue.

How did they know where my home was?

Who… who could have brought me here?

“Is… is anyone there?”

I managed to raise my voice, trembling with fear.

In that moment, from the darkness where I had assumed no one was, there was movement.

A large shadow began to stir and slowly approached me.

When I saw the massive figure emerging from the shadows, I froze. My eyes widened in shock, as if they might tear apart, and I couldn’t even blink until he stood right before me.

“…Lyn.”

The man called me by my old name, one that only a single person in this world would know, and gently brushed his hand against my cheek with a gaze filled with tenderness.

It was Kyle.

“I guess I wasn’t enough for you.”

“…….”

“I don’t know… I thought something about you seemed off lately.”

Kyle’s face, with his gaze lowered to meet mine, was tinged with an odd languor. His expression had a faint air of disillusionment, as if a quiet sense of emptiness lingered in his eyes. Or perhaps it was just an illusion, the effect of the full moon casting deep shadows across his face. The pale light illuminated his face, framed by his long, flowing hair, making him look unusually ghostly.

Kyle laid a finger flat against my eyelashes and gently tickled them.

“When I heard you were sneaking around the main building dressed as a maid, I wondered why you were doing it.”

…So he had already caught on back then. My eyes froze in shock.

“Nothing happened there, did it? I told them to execute anyone who dared to spread nonsense about you.”

“W-What?”

“Where could you have possibly gotten the wrong idea? Or maybe the maids were pretending to report your activities to me while acting as double agents.”

His hand, which had been idling near my temple, brushed against my cheek. His fingers, laid sideways, grazed the fine hairs on my skin like a feather, and a chill shot down the back of my neck.

“Not that it matters. The important thing is…”

His fingers slipped lower, tugging on the ribbon at the front of my maid’s uniform, untying it with a single smooth pull.

“…that in the end, you tried to leave me.”

“Kyle, I… That’s not—”

“I tried to make you like me. And if that was too hard, I thought I could make you pity me—or at the very least, keep you satisfied enough with my cock that you wouldn’t think of leaving. But I guess I wasn’t enough for you. Isn’t that right?”

A button beneath the now-loosened ribbon popped open with a soft click.

Kyle’s voice remained as gentle as a melody. His face, too, betrayed no outward malice except for the faint exhaustion that hung about him.

Yet, it didn’t feel like he was talking to me. Instead, he seemed to be speaking to himself, his hands idly playing with the fabric of my clothes as if he were handling a doll.

“Should I have chained you up? Maybe I shouldn’t have untied your blindfold or your hands. I let you roam the forest and stay cooped up in the lab because that’s what you seemed to want. In the beginning, I didn’t even want to let you out of the bedroom. Maybe I shouldn’t have given you any clothes, so you’d have no reason to go anywhere. I even considered seveLyng your tendons so you wouldn’t be able to walk by yourself… but I knew you’d hate that.”

A shiver ran down my spine.

This wasn’t the Kyle I knew.

Every word he uttered was so cold, so horrifyingly cruel, that fear rose in my throat, nearly choking me.

Yes. Kyle was angry. His rage was so icy that it had frozen his expression into a mask, making it nearly impossible to discern.

As I sat there paralyzed by fear and confusion, my wide eyes trembling, Kyle calmly continued undoing the buttons of my shirt, all the way down to my waist. Through the gap in the fabric, a silk negligee stretched taut over my chest came into view. Kyle slowly ran his fingers over the material, tracing the fabric that connected the two peaks of my chest.

“But what can I do? You keep trying to leave me.”

“I… I?”

“You might say that I left you first. But the only reason I left the forest was because you told me I needed to reclaim the throne. So even back then, you were the one who pushed me away.”

“…….”

“And now, after I’ve brought you here, you’re trying to leave me again.”

Kyle’s gaze was fixed on his own fingers as they traced the fabric. He spoke without even looking at my face, his voice steady and detached.

“What do I need to do to make you stay?”

“Kyle. We—”

“I even knew you were taking contraceptives. Maybe I shouldn’t have moved the lab. I should’ve kept you away from herbs, made you eat only what I gave you, and filled your womb relentlessly with my seed. If I’d done that, you’d have been pregnant by now, wouldn’t you?”

The chilling words made my mouth go completely dry.

What on earth was Kyle talking about? I couldn’t understand it.

Was this really Kyle? The Kyle who used to quietly watch me with tender eyes? The one who said he got headaches when he couldn’t be close to me and sought comfort in my touch?

I looked at him with bewildered, contorted eyes, but Kyle didn’t even glance at me. Instead, he muttered to himself, as if he were reciting his own thoughts aloud.

“Yes. I should do that, even now. I was too obedient, doing everything you told me to, like some foolish child who couldn’t let go of old habits. I never should’ve done that in the first place.”

“Kyle, listen to me for a moment—”

“I’m not listening to you,” he said harshly, his voice rasping like a blade scraping against stone.

Then, with a piercing glare, he fixed his gaze on me. His red eyes, which had seemed subdued and dark moments ago, now burned vividly, almost ferociously. For an instant, they even seemed possessed by a ghostly, malevolent glint. That was when I realized—everything had gone horribly wrong.

I had never seen Kyle like this before.

“You’re not leaving here anymore.”

Kyle said this as he held out a long ribbon he had apparently prepared in advance and shoved it into my mouth as a gag.

“I’m not leaving, and neither are you.”

He wound the ribbon around the back of my head and my mouth five or six times, tying it tightly behind my head. The knot was so firm that it pulled my head slightly backward.

“You like my cock, don’t you? I’ll give you plenty of it.”

Then he removed the pillow supporting my back, causing me to recline halfway. Grabbing my legs, he spread them apart and yanked me toward him. My skirt bunched up, riding over my hips.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re fed regularly. Everything except contraceptives. I’ll feed you with my cock, fill you with my seed—until you’re carrying my child.”

With both hands, he ripped apart the waistband of the maid’s uniform, splitting the buttoned section below my hips. Then he tore at the fabric over my shoulders, exposing my upper body.

“And even after that, I’ll keep feeding you. Once you’ve given birth, I’ll make you pregnant again. And again. That way…”

Finally, he ripped open the front of my negligee, leaving my bare chest exposed.

“…you’ll stay by my side forever.”

Kyle gripped both my ankles as he concluded his declaration.

“Forever.”

That word… in a different context, it might have sounded like a romantic confession. But given the situation, it only terrified me.

My eyes reddened with tears. His crimson gaze, glowing with an eerie intensity as he looked directly at me, felt alien and frightening. I couldn’t hold back the sobs that started trembling out of me.

The gag muffled my cries, reducing them to strained, choking noises. My fear only grew, making my whimpers sharper, more pitiful.

I was terrified. Not a single thing Kyle was saying sounded sane. It felt like he had completely lost his mind—and it was because of me.

Seeing Kyle like this, consumed by such a twisted obsession, was devastating.

Could my time with him have left him so warped? At first, it had been his insomnia, but in hindsight, his symptoms were always rooted in his obsession with me. He wouldn’t let me leave, insisted on constant physical intimacy, and tried to keep me perpetually in his grasp. Now, his words spoke only of tearing tendons, withholding clothes, and forcing me to bear children endlessly to keep me tied to him.

I couldn’t understand why Kyle was so obsessed with me. What had I done to make him this way?

But the reason I couldn’t stop crying, the reason I couldn’t contain the overwhelming sadness spilling out of me… was, in truth, something else entirely.

I sobbed uncontrollably, tears falling in torrents as I gasped for air. I didn’t even notice that Kyle’s expression had softened.

“…Why are you crying?”

The man who had seemed like he would yank down his trousers at any moment and force himself into me stopped abruptly. He released my ankles, which he had been holding tightly in each hand, letting them fall limp to the bed.

“You’re the one who cast me aside. You’re the one leaving me now. You’ve abandoned me over and over again… If anyone has the right to cry, it’s me. So why are you crying?”

His unexpected words managed to quiet my sobs for a moment. I glanced up at Kyle, only to see his face trembling, as if he was on the verge of breaking down himself.

“Do you… really hate me that much?”

He propped himself up, his hands planted on either side of my waist, and leaned closer. His crimson eyes, filled with tears, looked desperately into mine, clinging to me like a lifeline.

“Do you still see me as nothing more than some helpless little boy? Is that why, no matter how much I tried to please you, it only disgusted you? Is that why you left me?”

“H-heuk…”

“I left when you told me to, didn’t I? I thought that maybe, the next time we met, you wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about me, just as I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to leave me again. I built all this—a home so grand that it makes others bow their heads before me. I thought it would be enough. But… do you still hate me?”

As he finished speaking, his lips trembled, and then he lowered his head.

“Lyn… please.”

He buried his face against my chest and, hunched over me, began to weep.

“Please… love me.”

Like a plea, like a prayer.

Though Kyle had grown into a towering man, his massive body shook and quivered, curled up against mine.

It wasn’t until both of us had cried ourselves quiet that Kyle finally raised his head.

By then, the eerie, almost supernatural light in his crimson eyes had vanished, leaving only a somber, subdued gaze. He gently removed the gag from my mouth, then freed my wrists.

Kyle stripped off the tattered remnants of the maid’s uniform that he had ripped earlier and dressed me in his own shirt, carefully buttoning it up.

It dawned on me that Kyle was still dressed as he had been at the banquet. Earlier, when he had tried to force himself on me, he had still been wearing the royal knight commander’s formal uniform—a ceremonial outfit reserved for grand events.

But now, he had long since discarded his jacket and sash. He dressed me in his shirt, then embraced me against his bare chest as he leaned back against the headboard of the bed. Though I was no longer bound, his muscular arms encircled my waist so tightly that I couldn’t move. His hold on me felt less like dominance and more like desperation, like a man clinging to the last thing he had.

And… his hands were trembling.

“I… I heard everything,” he murmured.

“About what?”