The Cursed Beast Caught My Leash - Chapter 100

“…Stella.”

“I should have realized sooner that he was trying to send me away… I never expected it. If I had known, I, I…”

Stella gasped for breath, clutching the bed as she was tormented by a headache that showed no signs of subsiding. More than the aching muscles, the headache suffocated her.

She suddenly lifted her head.

“I have to go back.”

“…Go back?”

Alexio was momentarily at a loss for words as he watched his sister grow agitated the moment Islay’s name was mentioned. Stella’s gaze darted around frantically.

“Even if just for a moment, I have to see him.”

“You mean to say you want to return to Calis?”

“There is something I must do… At the very least, I have to finish what I have to say…”

“Stella, what are you talking about?”

“I have to meet Islay. I can’t just part with him like this. Besides, even without the priests, I can…”

“Estella!”

Stella, who had been rambling as if she had left her mind elsewhere, abruptly fell silent. Alexio clenched his fists, withdrawing his hands that had been hesitating to grasp her shoulders.

“We’ve only just reunited, I could only hold you in my arms again today, and yet you want to go back there? What exactly is so important that you must return?”

Stella opened and closed her mouth soundlessly, as if she had lost her voice.

There was no fear or dread in her eyes when she thought of Islay. Rather, a blind determination to return to him could be seen.

Alexio silently watched his unstable younger sister for a moment.

Feelings for that barbaric northerner? If any emotions were to exist between them, they should be anything but rosy.

Alexio did not fully understand what had happened between Stella and the northerner, but he knew the critical points.

Sent to meet Prince Hendrik under their uncle’s orders, Stella had nearly suffered a terrible fate, only to be taken to Calis at the hands of Islay Peruno, whom she had encountered by chance.

But that was not salvation. She had been kidnapped for the northerner’s own needs.

Alexio knew well that Stella had not been treated like a cherished princess at Largo Palace. And no matter how well she had been treated in the North… Feelings? Love for that beast of a man? How utterly absurd.

In the end, Alexio had to accept what he did not want to believe.

“I never once heard how you were doing, Stella. Of course, I never thought you were living happily. Just as I had to push myself to my limits every day, you must have been tested in your own way.”

“……”

“People pushed to their extremes will try to adapt, whatever it takes. It’s an unconscious survival instinct, a way to protect oneself.”

Stella blinked vacantly at the empty space before her. Slowly, as her focus returned, Alexio’s face filled her vision.

“I’ve heard that sometimes people confuse emotions. Fear and dread mistaken for a racing heart, a fleeting act of kindness disguising desire as something more.”

“……”

“Stella. You met that man at a time when you were struggling. That’s why, without even realizing it, you were drawn in. But that…”

After hesitating, Alexio continued, “That was not love.”

He worried that his words would only further confuse his already dazed sister, but he still held her small hand tightly.

She had been tossed around, unable to find stability anywhere. That was why she had been deceived—why she had mistaken the hands that sought to possess her as warmth.

“That is not love. Just as Calis is not where you belong.”

“No. Don’t say that…”

Stella shook her head, gripping the blanket tightly.

“I wasn’t mistaken. What I felt was sincere.”

“Stella.”

“Why do you think Islay let me go? He didn’t want me to sacrifice myself. He…”

“Sacrifice? What do you mean?”

“The legends of the cursed Peruno are all true. If I offer my ‘Mind’s Eye,’ Islay wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, but he never wanted that. He didn’t want me to be in pain…”

As Stella continued speaking, Alexio could not hide his bewilderment.

He had once deciphered the nonsensical ramblings of drunken pirates without issue, yet now, hearing of Peruno’s curse and mythical ‘Mind’s Eye,’ he found it almost laughable.

More than anything, the word ‘sacrifice’ was what caught his attention.

From the way she spoke, it did not seem that anyone had coerced her into making such an offering. Did that mean she had willingly intended to throw herself away for Islay Peruno?

“This is absurd, El. Were you really going to give yourself up for that man?”

“Dora reacted the same way at first. She said she couldn’t understand why I had this ability, why I had to sacrifice myself for Pernuo….”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

Stella fell silent under Alexio’s burning gaze. He muttered under his breath, his tone at odds with his composed face.

“Somehow, I could hear the regret dripping from his voice when he said he’d return you. So that’s what it was—he was reluctant to let go of the chance to use your blood for his sacrificial rite. That heretic.”

“…Islay hesitated to let me go?”

“Snap out of it, Stella. The idea that beast is your fated mate—”

“Please, don’t call Islay that…!”

Before Alexio could finish speaking, Stella shouted, shaking off his hand. Then she flinched, her shoulders drawing inward. A strange unease crept over her, and her gaze dropped.

“……”

At first, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Beneath the right sleeve of Alexio’s shirt, something metallic gleamed. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was a prosthetic, implemented from the middle of his forearm down to his five fingers.

She recalled the way his touch had felt unusually cold whenever he held her in his arms, just as he always had in the past, even when she was half-asleep.

So it was a prosthetic. He had lost an arm…

Stella, who had been about to protest further, felt the resistance inside her wane like a dying flame. Alexio, who had noticed where her gaze had landed, took a measured breath before speaking in a calm voice.

“I was taken hostage by pirates in Haverport. We were searching near their nest when they caught me. In the end, I managed to escape, and we succeeded in the operation that followed.”

“Haverport…”

“At least it was my right hand that was taken. I’m left-handed. I did use my right hand when holding a pen, though… Do you remember, Stella?”

He even pulled up the corners of his lips in a teasing smile. That playful smile was for her sake, to keep his fragile younger sister from worrying.

Stella, who had been staring at his stiff, cold hand, murmured in a daze, “Playing catch… You used your right hand when throwing the ball.”

“That’s right. You remember.”

Recalling the same memory, Alexio laughed aloud.

When they were no more than seven or eight, the siblings had often rushed to the garden to toss around a leather ball. Whoever dropped the ball would have to carry the other all the way back to the palace as a forfeit.

Being left-handed, Alexio had intentionally used his right hand for such active games.

It must have been because he didn’t want to sadden his younger sister. So that she wouldn’t have to struggle carrying her heavier brother on her back.

Looking back, Stella realized she had never lost a single match. She only remembered being carried home on his back, small and weightless.

Those were peaceful days. Days of an innocent childhood that had no idea their fates would twist just three years later.

Stella instinctively reached out her trembling hand toward Alexio’s prosthetic but hesitated and withdrew it. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Just as Alexio had hesitated to grasp her shoulders earlier, when she had been trembling in confusion.

“I’m fine, so don’t make that face. You endured in your place, and I did in mine. In the end, we survived.”

Alexio slowly grasped her shoulder. It was a careful, light touch without force.

“Let’s go back to our land, Stella. I swear on my life that I will build you a safe home. Even if the sky collapses, I will never force you into a marriage of political duty.”

“……”

“But never forget who you are. You are a direct descendant of the royal family of Lassa. You must hold pride in yourself. You must never throw everything away for the sake of a single person.”

A single person. Stella blinked as she mulled over his words.

To her, Islay was her one and only. To Stella, who had stepped out of her narrow cage, he was her entire world. Even though she had little to her name, she wanted to give him everything.

But she could not bring herself to say that out loud. The metallic prosthetic gleaming before her kept the words locked in her throat.

“Don’t you want to see the priests of Largo Monastery again?”

“…Ah.”

“My informants are gathering them from where they’ve scattered. Once we return home, you’ll be able to see them.”

The priests had been Stella’s teachers, her childhood companions, and the trusted aides of their late father, the king. A faint glimmer of light returned to her downcast eyes.

…But.

But what about Islay? The man who was surely suffering, even now?

The deadline for his fate was the coming winter, but just imagining him battling the monster within himself every day made her heart ache unbearably. She felt like she was being swept away by an overwhelming tide of sorrow.

“So please, I beg you. Do not abandon your family, Stella.”

“……”

“Come home with me.”

Alexio pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. And so, the long-awaited reunion came to a close—one where Stella never once uttered Islay’s name.

But Stella had already learned what it meant to desire. She could not give up either the one-armed brother she had reunited with after ten years, or the man whose very name set her heart racing.

As she blinked slowly in Alexio’s arms, the light in Stella’s eyes grew just a little bit brighter. A determined glint, as if she had made up her mind.