The Witch Didn't Raise the Tyrant That Way - Chapter 6: My Heart Has Grown Too (3)

“You’re getting married, aren’t you?”

“…….”

“You’re right. It’s a good idea. I mean… you can’t keep wasting time with someone like me, right?”

His voice wavered as he spoke, betraying the emotions he struggled to contain.

He was right. Even if I stayed with him, even if I continued to cling to him without leaving, I could never stand proudly at his side. At best, I could be a mistress; at worst, just his handmaid in the eyes of others. Was he really willing to force me to endure that humiliation, just to keep me by his side?

The fact that he so desperately wanted me stirred something in my chest, yet the future that awaited me—one filled with misery and disgrace—left me unable to feel even a shred of joy.

The pitiful confession of the man I had given my heart to felt like it was choking me. That’s why, in the brief moment of calm when he seemed to have settled down, I resolved to somehow persuade him. My attempt to escape had failed, so it was time to plead with him to let me go willingly.

I would appeal to the last shred of humanity that might still remain in the man I had known since childhood.

“The duty to produce an heir… You can’t fulfill that if you keep… doing this with me. If you want to avoid having a child who might get caught up in political strife, wouldn’t it be better to have children only with your queen? And also…”

I bit my lip before forcing myself to speak again.

“I don’t want to be your second.”

“Why not?”

“…….”

“Why don’t you want to be my second?”

“Well…”

Kyle lowered his head slightly, trying to meet my gaze. When I finally looked up to meet his eyes, his face glowed with desperate hope, as if he had realized there was a chance of hearing the answer he wanted.

I hesitated for a moment before blurting out quickly,

“Fine. Your plan worked.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means… I think I’ve come to like you. The you that you are now—not in the same way as when we were kids.”

“Lyn.”

“That’s why I don’t want to be your second. If I didn’t have these feelings… Of course, even then, staying by your side in this state would be wrong, and I would have wanted to stop somehow. But now… now it’s even harder to stay.”

I lowered my head and spilled out the words in a rush. After making this unexpected confession, a wave of embarrassment hit me like a storm.

“A-and… I’m sorry I couldn’t fix your insomnia or your… erectile dysfunction. But I did leave something behind for you. Did you… not see it?”

“What is it?”

“It’s a medicine I made.”

“Medicine?”

“It’s a potion. If you apply it, you should be able to… you know, function again.”

“Hah.”

“You know, like the tingle potion we tried before? I just tweaked it a bit, so it’s safe. And it works. Really.”

“It works, huh?”

I nodded faintly, my head hanging low.

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“Did you test it with someone?”

“What are you saying?! I… I tested it on myself!”

Instinctively, I lifted my head to protest, but the memory of testing it came rushing back, and embarrassment overwhelmed me. My head dropped again, and I could feel the tips of my ears burning. Kyle, who could clearly see them, must have noticed how red they had become.

A soft, disbelieving laugh floated around me, as if he couldn’t help but find the situation absurd.

“Lyn.”

Kyle loosened his arms from around me and shifted to sit directly in front of me. Kneeling on the floor, he clasped my hands in his, holding them gently but firmly. Then, lowering his upper body, he gazed up at me.

“Can you… live without me?”

“What?”

“No, you probably can. But… I can’t live without you. I’ve never once imagined a life without you.”

The look on Kyle’s face as he said those words was filled with more emotion than I had ever seen from him before.

Tear-filled eyes, a face twisted as if he were about to burst into tears, crimson irises that looked like the drowning hues of a fiery sunset… and beyond them, the fierce blaze of passion burning bright.

It was such a mesmerizing sight that I almost let myself believe that Kyle truly loved me. But I couldn’t afford to waver.

“So, what are you saying? You want me to stay in the palace? As your personal handmaid, mistress, or whatever I am right now?”

“Lyn, listen—”

“Listen to what? You know that’s the truth. Sure, I was happy to see you again after all this time, and yeah, I was shocked to learn that you… felt that way about me. And yes, we ended up… like this. There were good times, happy times. But this isn’t mine. It’s not my life.”

“Why isn’t it yours?”

“You’re getting married.”

“Yes.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m getting married. So why are you leaving me?”

Unbelievable. This conversation was starting to feel like a game of twenty questions, and it was making me furious.

“Kyle.”

I shook off his hands and grabbed his shoulders firmly.

“Did I really… raise you to be like this?”

“Will you stop saying you raised me—”

“Why do you keep humiliating me like this? The whole world already scorns me as a witch, and now you’re making a mockery of me too? Sure, I’m a nobody, a person without status. No one would care if I disappeared one day. But how could you even think of keeping someone like me locked in your bedroom for the rest of my life, serving you endlessly, while you have a proper wife elsewhere? Just because I like you, does that mean I have to put up with everything you do?”

As I spoke, anger surged within me. Was this basic reasoning something I had to spell out for him?

Was it because he was a king and I wasn’t even a commoner that he thought he could do whatever he wanted with me?

And when I tried to escape, he tied me up and gagged me because I didn’t say goodbye?

Then, he tried to force himself on me.

Then, he said he’d imprison me forever and use me like some breeding tool.

The more I thought about it, the more furious I became. My breath grew ragged, and my shoulders began to tremble.

Sensing this, Kyle tried to take my hands gently.

“Lyn. Please calm down.”

“Calm down?!”

I smacked his hands away, shouting at the top of my lungs.

“Did I say anything wrong? You—you said you were going to get married!”

“I did.”

“Exactly!”

“To you.”

“What?”

His casual response left me utterly stunned. I let out a loud, disbelieving laugh.

“What kind of nonsense is this? Are we playing pretend? I’m talking about you marrying the queen!”

“Yes. You’ll be the queen.”

“…What?”

What… kind of nonsense was this? It felt like hearing a ghost cracking peanuts.

I stared at him in complete disbelief, my expression frozen in shock.

“How could I possibly become queen? I don’t even have a title, and even if you made one for me, I’d still just be a commoner.”

“Not anymore. You’re about to become a duke’s daughter.”

“What…?”

“The Duke of Edelsbach. Starting next month, he’s your father.”

I gaped at him, utterly dumbfounded.

What Kyle explained next was this:

From the very beginning, he had brought me to the palace with the intention of marrying me. However, since my lack of status meant I couldn’t even qualify as a candidate for queen, and because I didn’t see him as a man at all, he had devised a plan to change that. Claiming insomnia as an excuse, he had started sharing his bed with me. Then, using his supposed erectile dysfunction as a pretext, he narrowed the physical distance between us by kindling my curiosity about intimacy.

“But the insomnia was real… I mean, I can sleep, but barely, and not nearly as well as I do when you’re with me. And it’s true that I can’t… get it up for anyone else.”

“…….”

At the same time, he had begun searching for a noble family that could grant me the status needed to become queen. He had specifically looked for a high-ranking family—preferably a marquisate or duchy—whose title was significant enough to prevent anyone from belittling me. He had also sought a family with whom I shared even the slightest resemblance, be it in eye color or hair color. The final candidates were the houses of Edelsbach, Orlando, Schoenfeld, and Balzen.

In other words, the families of my maids.

The reason Kyle had been so busy after bringing me to the palace, often returning late at night, was because he was in the process of narrowing down which family to select. That meant he had taken me in first, then relentlessly pressured his advisors to find the right family to adopt me.

In the end, the Duke of Edelsbach had been chosen. The day Kyle summoned me to the audience chamber was when he had first proposed the terms of my adoption to the duke. Negotiations had dragged on for some time but were finally resolved just recently.

This wasn’t the usual kind of political marriage where a person marries into a family of status. Instead, Kyle had flipped the concept—he had chosen who to marry first and then secured a family to back them.

Was this the infamous determination of a tyrant at work?

“Status, huh. So this is what you meant when you said you’d take care of it…”

But.

“You didn’t think to ask me first?”

“…Do you hate it?”

“…….”

He asked this with eyes filled with a desperate light, almost pitiful in their plea.

I wanted to say I hated it, but when I thought about it rationally, there wasn’t anything to hate. If anything, the solution was so flawless it felt unreal.

Still, I couldn’t accept it so easily. Instead of agreeing, I let out the last remnants of my resentment.

“You could’ve at least told me. If you had…”

Then I wouldn’t have felt so wretched. But I couldn’t finish my sentence. Tears welled up again as I recalled the past few weeks of anguish, thinking he was preparing for his wedding night with someone else.

The tears I thought had dried up now fell freely once more.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle said, lowering his head to meet my eyes as he gently wiped away the tears clinging to my chin.

“But… I didn’t want you to choose me for the wrong reasons.”

“H-heuk…”

“If I’d told you that I was already negotiating with the duke, you would’ve… even if you didn’t really like me, you would’ve just accepted it as inevitable.”

“…….”

“You’re thoughtful and considerate of others, so you would’ve pushed aside your own feelings and just gone along with it.”

…As much as I wanted to protest, he wasn’t wrong. I stayed silent, unable to deny it. That didn’t mean my sense of injustice was any less sharp, though.

“I wanted to be with you as soon as possible. I wanted you to imagine a life together with me. So I made you stay here. But I hoped that you’d choose to stay because you liked me. Not for any other reason.”

“And yet… you kept doing those things every day.”