I Will Die for You, My Darling! - Chapter 36
Chapter 36
‘My arm feels broken, but the rest is fine.’
She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but it seemed her luck had turned sour. To have fallen from that height with such minor injuries…
‘The world is against me.’
Arietta pressed her hand to her forehead.
“Does it upset you that you woke up?”
His voice was heavy, dry, laced with sarcasm. Normally, she would have indulged him, but right now, the fact that she hadn’t died was too much to process. She was too preoccupied with her own affairs to bother with a pleasant response.
Arietta, offering no reaction, pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them.
The blatant disregard was a novel annoyance. Isaac couldn’t help but remember Arietta from over a decade ago, fixated on the ailing Seia while he stood right beside her.
The Arietta who had weaseled her way into his life, disrupting all his plans, would simply push him out of her sight when distracted by something else. That was the most infuriating part. Pulling him in, then pushing him away, isolating him on a whim.
‘Look at me.’
Isaac stepped closer to the bed. Lost in thought, Arietta stared blankly at the opposite wall. He knelt on the bed, gripping her chin and turning her face towards him.
Their eyes met.
Long lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. Her pale grey eyes, visible between the lashes, seemed distant.
“Say you’re sorry.”
Strange. Arietta was awake, but his words seemed to fall on deaf ears. The body he held felt like an illusion. She didn’t even answer. Though their eyes were locked, it felt as if she wasn’t truly seeing him.
“What are you looking at?” Isaac’s voice sharpened.
Finally, Arietta raised a hand and stroked his cheek. Isaac flinched at the touch of her cold hand, a sensation he hadn’t felt in a while.
“I have some things to think about.” Her tone was soothing, yet strangely empty. A coldness seemed to emanate from within. Isaac’s mouth felt dry.
‘Is this the love you so desperately cry out for? Clinging to me when it suits you, then treating me like an empty shell when you’re bored?’
If so, this grandly revered emotion called “love” was rather underwhelming. Why did people worship something so shallow?
“What is there for you to think about?” Arietta only needed to stay put, waiting for the day Isaac would kill her. It was a mindless task. Thinking was a hindrance.
Her cold hand slipped from his cheek. She gently pulled her chin free from his grasp and fixed her gaze on the window.
“There’s a lot you don’t know, darling.”
‘I hold within me a lifetime several times longer than yours, a lifetime you can only dream of.’
Isaac, oblivious to this fact, was once again ignited.
“I know everything about you. I know you better than you know yourself,” he growled.
Dismissing it as meaningless noise, Arietta exhaled slowly. It was frustrating that she was still breathing. Her desire to die remained unchanged. It was simply as if she had encountered a difficult problem, having to redo something she had already failed at.
Her eyes, open for the first time in weeks, refused to look at him. Isaac found it absurd that he craved her gaze. Just as he was about to snap at her, fueled by his mounting irritation, Arietta’s mouth moved ominously.
‘What is she trying to do now?’
Isaac reacted with lightning speed. His hand shot out, pinching and forcing her cheeks apart.
“Cough!”
Arietta, who had been about to bite her tongue, was thwarted. Only then did she look directly at him, her face contorted with a malevolence Isaac had never seen before.
Something snapped inside him.
He pushed her down, his hand tightening around her slender neck as he crushed his lips against hers, forcing his tongue between her chapped lips.
‘Go ahead. Try to bite me again.’
Arietta’s heart pounded wildly, as did Isaac’s. In that volatile moment, the kiss was anything but romantic.
