The contact of entwined tongues and mingling saliva was excessively sensual. Her senses were becoming abnormally heightened.
With her legs losing strength, Terzia nearly collapsed onto his knee, which was still positioned between her thighs. An unfamiliar pleasure clawed at her back for the first time in her life.
A sensual breath escaped through her parted lips. With unfocused eyes, she pressed her heated body against him. There was no other way to quell the excitement coursing through her body.
‘I feel… strange…’
She wished he would touch her more, deeper, harder.
Terzia’s impatient movements were fully conveyed to him. He, who had been leisurely caressing her neck, paused for the first time.
The moans spilling from her moist lips were particularly sweet. His initial intention to taste lightly and withdraw flipped like a switch.
With considerable force, he grasped Terzia’s chin. Pressing her dimple with his thumb, he widened the gap between her lips and plunged mercilessly into the moist interior.
“Mm, uh…?!”
The movement of curling around and sucking the small tongue trying to escape was fierce. Terzia felt as if he was determined to devour her, and her vision darkened. Yet, there was nowhere to escape.
Terzia tightly closed her distant eyes.
It was the first kiss that felt as if her soul was being swallowed whole.
The very next day, news came that Terzia’s ‘friend’ had left for a distant place.
Without a single word to her.
It was only by late evening that Terzia, finally waking up, was dumbfounded by the unexpected news.
“He left… just like that? So suddenly?”
There was no explanation, no letter, not even a common line of news, just a sudden disappearance.
It was three months later that Terzia learned he had left, mixed in with a punitive force dispatched to exterminate the evil spirits of the White Mountains.
‘Surely, if I wait, I’ll hear from him. At least a letter…’
But after that, she received nothing.
Truly nothing.
As if there had never been anyone by Terzia’s side from the beginning.
And so, six years passed.
The Girl Who Summons Evil Spirits
It was a morning no different from any other.
A fresh spring when flowers were in full bloom and leaves were sprouting, as the last cold snap of winter retreated.
“Wake up, young miss! Pretending to sleep won’t work. The sun is high in the sky. Get up now!”
Terzia struggled to lift her eyelids. Through the curtains firmly drawn back by her nanny, Lira, she could see the sun hanging in the eastern sky.
“Dr. Houdane will visit at noon. The Count threatened that he won’t stay quiet if you postpone your regular check-up again.”
“I’m really fine, I tell you.”
The source of her troubles wasn’t around anymore. She wriggled back under the covers.
“Just five minutes, nanny. No, ten minutes…”
“Young miss!”
“I have low blood pressure. It’s hard for me to get up early in the morning.”
“That’s all the more reason to get up and prepare for the doctor’s examination, isn’t it? Your medicine has run out, and you need to start taking it again from this evening. Come on, hurry!”
Once again, Terzia was half-dragged and pushed into the bathroom by Lira, who displayed her terrifying strength.
The drowsiness refused to leave her. Lira lathered a towel and gently scrubbed Terzia’s pale, translucent skin.
Her beautifully rounded breasts and slender waist belonged to a woman in her prime. The scrawny body that had been as thin as a stick just a few years ago was now gone.
Terzia rubbed her sleepy eyes and asked.
“Is today some special day?”
“Indeed it is. A very special news has arrived.”
“What news? Did Father get a raise? Did your salary go up, nanny?”
“Oh, that sounds lovely. But no, it’s not that.”
As Lira began to pour warm oil on her nape and massage it firmly, Terzia stopped joking and squirmed like a fish pierced by a harpoon.
“Gently. Be gentle. That’s a sensitive spot.”
“I know. You’ve always been sensitive about these white marks right here on your neckline. I wonder when these marks appeared?”
The two spots on the skin just below her jawline, right above the steadily pulsing vein, could be considered the most intimate and sensitive part of Terzia’s body.
Six years ago, when these scars first appeared, she knew the moment she returned home and discovered the faintly glowing spots in the mirror. This was her nineteenth birthday gift and farewell present.
From that day on, she also bid farewell to the beings that had persistently followed and tormented her, so it was a gift in that sense.
Terzia, who had been absently touching her neck, stood up from the bathtub.
“I’m done with the bath. Please prepare my meal.”
After finishing her chaotic morning routine, she went down to the breakfast room where her meal was neatly laid out.
Terzia’s father, Count Brandel, as usual, did not join her for breakfast. As he had done for the past 30 years, today too, he had risen at dawn, skipped breakfast, and left for the imperial palace. He was the Minister of Finance for the Brom Empire and a model of a diligent civil servant.
As Terzia took her seat, her nanny quickly placed the kettle on the tea pot. With cute popping sounds, the water began to boil on its own.
‘I’m tired.’
Despite receiving Lira’s attentive massage, the back of her neck still throbbed. Even though she had become incomparably healthier than her childhood days of struggling with anemia and low blood pressure, mornings were still an ordeal.
Lira hummed as she poured tea into the cup. Terzia picked up her fork, glancing at her expression.
“Tell me now, nanny. About that special news. That’s why you’ve been excited all this time, right?”
“Well, don’t be surprised, young miss.”
“How amazing could this news be?”
As she indifferently replied, breaking the yolk of her poached egg with her fork, a bombshell dropped from Lira’s mouth.
“The First Division of Elka is returning.”
The fork made an unpleasant sound as it bounced off the table.
Seeing Terzia’s dumbfounded expression, Lira beamed and drove the point home.
“Lord Arfair is coming back. Your fiancé who left six years ago, young miss!”
*** *** *** *** ***
Arfair. Lord Arfair. Sir Arfair.
All these titles refer to the same person.
“Lady Brandel, have you heard the news from the imperial palace?”
Ariana, the youngest from Marquis Roderigo, asked with an excited smile. Terzia swallowed a sigh and put on a public smile.
“The imperial palace is always bustling with various news. Speaking of which, I heard the administration is announcing a new ordinance on increasing birth rates…”
“Oh, come on, don’t pretend you don’t know! I mean the news about Elka’s return!”
Ariana Roderigo was a young lady with no sense of subtlety. Terzia felt exhausted less than ten minutes into the tea party.
“Yes, I’ve already heard about it. It’s a joyful and fortunate event.”
Elka was a special military group of the Brom Empire. As a powerful nation holding the hegemony of the continent, Brom had various military organizations, but Elka was an elite group selected from the most skilled individuals.
As a group of similarly strong individuals, Elka had no clear hierarchy, and their missions were never ordinary. The targets they faced were not ordinary humans.
The mission assigned to Elka six years ago was far from ordinary. It was a mission to exterminate the evil spirits and beasts of the White Mountains, the Western border of the Empire, and the base of the black magician who controlled them.
The details were classified, and the general public could not know them. It was only known that dealing with evil spirits with swords and spears was impossible, and thus, an unprecedented large-scale punitive operation was launched with all five divisions of Elka dispatched.
Since the capital could not be left unguarded, the four divisions of Elka, the empire’s top force, had returned sequentially over the past six years.
And finally, this year, the First Division of Elka was scheduled to return last. Lord Arfair was part of that division.
“You must be happy, Terzia!”
A noble lady sitting right next to Terzia clapped her hands and exclaimed joyfully.
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