Episode 25. Not Sure If It’s Love or Hate
He wanted to treat her cruelly.
To crush her pride until nothing was left, then approach her tenderly once she was in tatters.
That way, she’d look only at him for the rest of her life.
…Just like he had, that first time he met her in a pool of blood.
But at the same time, he also felt an urge to protect her, to keep her pure, untouched by the filth of the outside world.
To kiss her pale feet every morning, looking into her eyes, and offer her the finest things.
Pride finally realized it.
His feelings for Delphine were neither the innocent love of youth nor reverence for a saint.
It wasn’t the pure loyalty he had felt when he first decided to marry her.
It was perfect ambivalence—love and hate twisted together.
Feelings buried and built up since childhood, impossible to distinguish between affection and loathing.
Perhaps even from the moment he decided to marry her, that sentiment had already existed in his heart.
By keeping her in what had now become the Pride estate, as his wife, he was trying to permanently engrave the reversed power dynamic between them.
The blizzard, known as a storm of madness, continued to blow through the open window.
His body had gone cold.
So had his once feverish head.
‘A guest, in this weather…?’
Finally prepared to face him, Pride slammed the window shut.
“A woman?”
Curled up tightly in the study, Delphine asked.
Betty, handing her a warm cup of tea with a worried expression, nodded quickly.
“Yes. It was a woman.”
Then, watching Delphine’s reaction carefully, she hesitated before continuing.
“Um… earlier… I didn’t interrupt anything, did I…?”
“No. Not at all. You saved my life, Betty.”
Delphine answered firmly, then turned her gaze toward the window.
Thick snowflakes had already begun to fall.
Once the blizzard started in full, no one in the empire would be able to walk the roads.
A woman who came in such weather…
Who was she, and what was her relationship to Ioan?
“Um… Madam, about that guest…”
Betty, still lingering near the study door, spoke again.
“Yes? Speak freely. We’ve saved each other’s lives now, haven’t we?”
Delphine made a half-joking comment with a touch of self-deprecation.
Betty didn’t remember Ioan, but she remembered clearly how Delphine had saved her life on the day of the rebellion.
“I’m not sure I should say this, but…”
At last, reassured, Betty confessed the words she had been holding back.
“…The guest seemed quite familiar with the master.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she knocked on the gate in this weather and just said, ‘Call Ioan for me.’ Like that…”
Delphine’s eyebrows shot up.
She called him by name?
Could she be someone who also knew the “previous” Ioan?
“…Did she seem like a noble?”
“No. Definitely a commoner. Or maybe even lower.”
Since Betty had worked in noble houses for years, her judgment was likely accurate.
A lowborn woman, and close enough to Ioan to call him by name… Could it be?
Delphine was lost in thought when—
“And also, I thought I should mention… her appearance, it was kind of…”
Betty cautiously added, watching Delphine’s stiffening face.
“What is it? Just say it.”
“Well, her red hair… and her eye color, they were kind of…”
Betty said hesitantly, her face tense.
“…They resembled yours, miss.”
“What?”
Betty quickly backtracked.
“Of course! I mean just the features. Her looks were nothing like yours. I mean, she was okay-looking, but—”
Delphine’s eyebrows rose again before she even realized it.
“She’s nothing compared to you, of course…”
Worried she had offended her, Betty babbled on. But her voice grew distant.
A woman who came through the storm.
A face that resembled her.
Delphine frowned and inwardly cursed her runaway slave.
Ioan. Just what the hell have you been doing all this time?
Pride stared coldly at the woman before him.
Dull, reddish-brown hair.
Muddy green eyes like a swamp.
He had met her at a cabaret in District 3, back when he roamed the streets like a stray dog after leaving the Pembroke estate.
The woman, clearly anxious, cried out quickly.
“You… You’re Ioan, right? You remember me?”
Pride didn’t respond. His lips curled in distaste.
Unpleasant though the memory was, he hadn’t forgotten that night.
It was the first time he ever tried to hold a woman.
Back then, Delphine was too far out of reach.
A sacred being, untouchable by someone like him.
He thought maybe if he slept with another woman, he could forget her.
He remembered seeing this red-haired woman by chance and thinking that.
Though it didn’t help at all.
A bitter smile crept onto Pride’s lips.
The woman mistook it for agreement.
She clung to him, rubbing her body against his arm.
“You wanted me back then, remember? I mean, you left before anything happened, but…”
Just like she said, it hadn’t gone anywhere that night.
Even seeing her naked only reminded him of his mother—who had sold her own child for a few coins.
His lust, his every emotion, only ever responded to Delphine.
Like a dog trained to drool at the sound of a bell.
No, truly, he was a dog.
A filthy mutt in heat for a saint.
“Is everything just a transaction to eyes as lowly as yours?”
He shouldn’t even react to being called lowborn anymore.
Pride’s mouth twisted with self-disgust.
“At the time, I thought you were just some border guard or something. Not that it’s bad, I mean…”
The woman kept rubbing up to him.
“But people say you’re a marquis now! Super high-ranking!”
Pride scanned her from head to toe with icy eyes.
There was only one reason he hadn’t thrown this woman out already.
How did she remember what happened that night?
The “previous” him should have been erased from everyone’s memory.
Though he had been warned that deeply emotional memories might remain.
Still, there was something that didn’t add up.
Delphine.
Not only did she remember his past, she wasn’t even affected by the “Marquis Pride” brainwashing.
…Why?
He could understand why she remembered the old him.
She had always cared for him like a loyal dog, when she was lonely.
…She had no idea that was exactly what drove him away from the estate.
But the fact that the marquis brainwashing didn’t work at all—why?
What did I pay to make that happen…
Pride clenched his teeth.
Meanwhile, the woman kept talking, mistaking his silence for acceptance.
“So anyway… I forgave you for leaving me that night.”
“…”
“So if we finish what we didn’t start back then, I’m okay with it…”
That was the final straw. Pride’s face openly twisted in disgust.
“Leave.”
“W-what?”
“I’ll forgive today’s rudeness once, for the memory of that night.”
His voice was icy and sharp. The woman flinched, then scowled.
“Oh, right. You married the most beautiful woman in the Empire or whatever. So that’s it? I’m not good enough anymore?”
Pride stared at her with deep revulsion.
It was revolting.
This woman reminded him of everything he had discarded along with his slave past.
Vulgarity.
Rudeness.
Selling one’s pride for money.
Learned helplessness.
Nothing about her resembled Delphine.
He wanted to be a true nobleman—at least in front of her.
So he would keep playing the role.
He would never return to the slave boy who crawled through blood and mud.
“Does your pretty wife know?” the woman taunted. “What you’ve been doing in District 3?”
Pride instinctively reached for his waist.
But his familiar sword wasn’t there—he hadn’t gone out today, so he wasn’t armed.
Still, that wasn’t the only way to kill.
As he calmly looked for a clean, bloodless method, the woman kept flapping her tongue.
“Or what? The infamous devil that even God can’t save—he spares red-haired girls now?”
Ah. Pride realized it.
That’s why this woman dared to act so smug.
She believed he wouldn’t kill her.
With an emotionless face, Pride slowly raised his hand.
Her reddish-brown hair was annoying, but it wasn’t her hair—wasn’t that rich, pure crimson.
“I-Ioan…?”
The woman finally sensed danger and stepped back in fear.
He hadn’t wanted to commit murder in her house again, but…
It can’t be helped.
Just as Pride reached out to the woman’s neck like he was swatting a bug—
“…Lord Pride?”
A graceful voice called gently from beyond the drawing room door.
