Episode 14: Same Bed, Different Dreams (4)
“…Pardon?”
“The expression to climb to the top of the temple refers to having sex while burning herbs that heighten the senses to the extreme. To borrow the words you used the first time we met, saintess… I will carry you and run all the way to the top of the temple means that you will burn so many herbs that your vision goes hazy while you engage in a filthy—”
Hashana hastily clapped a hand over Iskandel’s mouth.
Apparently deciding one hand wasn’t enough, she brought up the hand that had been clasped with his and pressed it over his lips as well.
The alley was so narrow that they couldn’t even walk side by side.
Because Hashana had practically lunged at him to clamp his mouth shut, the two of them ended up tangled together.
With her hands stacked over his mouth, their breaths mingled and their gazes locked.
‘Should I bite her?’
A mischievous impulse flickered through Iskandel as he parted his lips.
Unaware that he was guiding her fingers between his lips, Hashana only pressed down harder.
As he savored the warmth of her fingers gently pushing between his lips, he met her eyes.
The heat in those slender fingers carried nothing but embarrassment and panic.
The blue eyes that had sparkled with pure curiosity now swirled with self-reproach, somewhere between ‘I want to cry’ and ‘I want to die.’
He had been debating whether to bite the fingers caught between his lips or to lick them, but the malice suddenly drained out of him, and he let out a soft, helpless laugh.
‘I feel like trash, doing this to a naïve girl.’
The spite drained out of him, and heat took its place.
It felt as if the warmth from Hashana’s fingertips had seeped through his lips and set him on fire from the inside.
When Iskandel swallowed, his throat bobbing as he grew aware of how parched his lips were, Hashana, who had half lost her senses, suddenly snapped back to reality.
“I understand what you were trying to say. Even if I said it without knowing, it’s still… still far too embarrassing, so please promise you won’t say another word about it.”
Iskandel blinked once in answer.
Hashana hurriedly pulled back her hands and quietly curled them into fists.
Now that the moment had passed, the sensation of his hot lips against her palms came back to her with startling vividness.
She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her skin and poured out apologies yet again.
“I’m sorry.
I’m sure you were trying to warn me to be careful with my words… It was my mistake not to recognize your consideration, and it was also my mistake to rudely cover your mouth just now.
I apologize.”
“There is nothing for you to apologize for, saintess.
You used the expression without knowing, and in Durgtah, it certainly doesn’t carry that meaning.”
“Of course not.
It doesn’t.
Absolutely not.
Really.”
“Of course, the way you suddenly pounced on me and crushed my mouth shut was a very grave discourtesy, I must say.”
Drawing out his words, he glanced down at where her thigh and his were still pressed together.
Hashana let out a silent scream and scrambled back several steps.
Iskandel, inwardly regretting the loss of that soft pressure and sweet warmth, finished what he had been saying.
“We’ll call it even for the rudeness I showed you when we first met. Both incidents are now erased from the record.”
Hashana, who had retreated so far that their outstretched arms couldn’t touch, nodded quickly.
She was so mortified she wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.
‘Why couldn’t Rsanda or Karasvati have told me something important like this!’
She screamed inwardly in frustration. Find the original chapter at g.com.
‘The guard captains are all too busy tripping over themselves to take the night watch, and the citizens just say yes to anything I say… No wonder I have no sense.
Aside from covering his mouth and pinning down his leg, did I do anything else rude?
I didn’t, right?’
Resentment, self-reproach, and self-mockery chased each other in circles.
Without realizing it, she kept backing away until her heel bumped lightly against the city wall.
Faced with a literal dead end, Hashana instinctively scanned her surroundings.
‘No… I can’t keep this up.
I have to distract the prince.
With anything.’
Fortunately, she was the Saintess of War.
To win a war, one had to respond swiftly to any unexpected situation.
Focusing as if on a battlefield, she searched for an excuse to change the subject and soon found a breakthrough.
With renewed confidence, she pointed with her index finger.
“Your Highness, would you come over here for a moment?”
Iskandel, who had been standing still and watching her without moving to close the distance, asked quietly in return.
“Is it all right if I come closer, saintess?”
“…Why would you ask something so pointless?”
The mutter slipped out before she could stop it.
While Hashana was still reeling, he had already regained his composure and answered her question with a relaxed expression.
“You fled so far away in an instant.
I was just standing here regretting that I had frightened an innocent saintess with useless knowledge.”
“Fled?
Have you forgotten that I am the Saintess of War?”
When Hashana bristled, Iskandel’s lips curled more mischievously.
“You said yourself that you’re a pacifist, even though you’re the Saintess of War.”
“I simply dislike fighting. No matter the situation, I never run away. Who’s scared?”
As if to prove it, she practically ran toward him and grabbed his wrist.
“As an apology, there is something I would like to give you, Your Highness. Let’s go over there.”
Pretending to give in, he let himself be led out of the alley by her hand.
“Over there.”
He followed her pointing finger and drew in a small breath.
Between the high outer wall of the fortress and a building, lengths of purple cloth hung from loosely strung clotheslines, fluttering in the light breeze as if to welcome him.
None of it felt real.
The sight of that purple fabric slowly billowing against the backdrop of sand-colored buildings and a bright blue sky, the radiant woman who let go of his wrist without a second thought and walked into that scene—none of it felt like reality.
All the effort he had put into regaining his composure was wasted as he fell into confusion again.
He had taken just one step out of that stifling, beige alley, and yet the sudden explosion of vivid color that filled his vision was so overwhelming he couldn’t adjust.
Leaving him frozen, Hashana slipped between the gently swaying purple cloths as if she were melting into them.
“These are awnings I had dyed for the welcome banquet. I heard the Imperial ceremonial cloaks are purple, so I planned to put up canopies in the same color… but once we installed them, it was obvious they wouldn’t do, so we took them all down. The color was far too pretty to throw away, so I gathered them here instead. Only I use this path.”
Iskandel, who had been standing there like a statue, took one step, then another, as if pulled forward by an invisible string.
Hashana walked one step ahead, lifting the fluttering cloth out of his way so he could pass.
“It’s such a lovely color to look at, isn’t it? But when the sunlight came through the purple awning, everyone’s faces underneath turned this awful bluish color. I was so upset.”
He caught the corner of the cloth she had lifted and stretched it toward the sun.
The blazing midday light filtered through the loose weave, dyeing both Iskandel and Hashana the same shade.
Looking down at the woman, now bathed in the same violet hue, he spoke more honestly than he ever had before.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I just said that, didn’t I? That it’s very pretty to look at.”
‘I bet it would be even prettier to touch.’
He swallowed the words that would have earned him a slap and instead flicked the cloth playfully.
For some reason, that silly little gesture delighted Hashana, and she burst into bright laughter before speaking with great resolve.
“If you don’t mind, Your Highness, I would like to give you this cloth as a gift.
I think you should change your cloak.”
“My cloak?”
“Yes.
If you keep wearing that heavy fabric, you’ll faint before we even reach the Inner Fortress.”
“…I’m not that fragile.”
Compared to Hashana, who looked as if a strong wind might blow her away, Iskandel’s body was far more solid and well-built.
To avoid giving his wary brother, the crown prince, any excuse to pick a fight, he had pretended to spend his days burning herbs and reciting poetry, but he was actually quite confident in both swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat.
He snorted as he brought his arm up alongside Hashana’s, which was barely a handful thick.
“Even to the eye, I am sturdier than you, saintess, and I am sturdier than I look. And yet you would change my cloak for fear that such a robust man might collapse?”
Hashana nodded, not understanding in the least why he was suddenly comparing the thickness of their arms and insisting he was strong.
“Please accept it as my own small token of sincerity.”
Who in the world could say no to someone with such a harmless, beautiful face asking them to accept a gift
Convincing himself with that not entirely unreasonable excuse, he nodded.
Hashana’s joy shone brighter than the sunlight as she walked backward through the fluttering cloths, beckoning him along.
“Come with me. I hid the prettiest color all the way in the back.”
As he followed her hand, Iskandel suddenly swallowed a bitter smile.
‘If I were an assassin, I’d hide behind the cloth and slit his throat the moment he followed me in like this, completely bewitched.’
He kept doing things he would never normally do.
It was ridiculous.
Even so, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the small white hand fluttering among the purple cloths.
‘There’s no one watching or judging me now, anyway.
It’s all right to act a little foolishly.’
He once again came up with an excuse that would never have convinced him on any other day, then took a long stride toward Hashana, who had already gone far ahead.
Driven by a surge of emotion, he swept aside several layers of cloth at once.
Hashana turned back to him with wide eyes.
Iskandel lifted his eyebrows in playful challenge.
“Did I just manage to startle the Saintess of War?”
Her blue eyes, which had widened to reflect the sky, soon curved into a gentle arc.
“I’ve been startled by you from the very first moment we met, Your Highness.”
It was a simple, matter-of-fact answer, yet his heart began to pound strangely.