Chapter 5: Misunderstood Hearts

Ever since that moonlit confession in the golden wheat fields, something had changed. Not in Fera—her heart still burned with betrayal, confusion, and the weight of being a slave—but in Nick. He became more attentive, more careful, more… tender.

Fera noticed it first in the small things. He no longer gave her orders—he requested. His tone softened when he spoke to her, his gaze lingered with a warmth that made her skin crawl. Not because it was unpleasant, but because it felt undeserved. She was his slave. She was supposed to serve him. Why was he treating her like something precious?

She brushed it off, at first. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe he was playing a long game. After all, the man she swore to kill—the one whose family had ordered her parents’ deaths, whose very existence represented the destruction of her house—could not truly love her. He was simply toying with her, wasn’t he?

But Nick wasn’t playing.

He watched her closely. Every emotion that flickered across her face, he seemed to catch and file away. If she looked cold, he offered his coat. If she looked tired, he asked the carriage to stop. If she sighed, he listened. He treated her not just like someone important, but like someone irreplaceable.

Fera did not know how to react.

He began to seek her company more and more. Late at night, when they were alone in the manor or camped during their travels, Nick would ask her to stay a little longer. He’d sit beside her, lay his head on her lap, and quietly ask her to pat his head. The first time, she had frozen stiff, unsure if this was some new form of humiliation.

But his expression was too sincere. Too boyish.

He asked for nothing more.

Sometimes, he would gently wrap his arms around her waist and pull her close—not with desire, but desperation. Like a man reaching for light in an endless night. There were no kisses, no wandering hands. Just a warmth in the embrace, a silent plea not to be left alone.

Fera let him.

Not out of affection, but out of calculation. She couldn’t strike him down now, not with the magic binding her. But if she kept him close, if she made him trust her more, there might come a day when she could end him.

And yet, even knowing that… something about his touch made her freeze. Not out of fear, but confusion.

Nick had grown up an orphan, burdened with the title of Duke at the age of seven after his parents were assassinated in a political scandal. He had no warmth in his childhood. No arms to run into. No laughter echoing in the halls of his estate. Perhaps that was why he clung to her. She was his comfort, his stability, his imagined happiness.

And he didn’t hide it. He recited to her poems from books he had read—soft verses about love, about longing, about gentle mornings and peaceful nights. She pretended to listen, nodding where appropriate, her mind elsewhere. Each verse felt like a chain around her neck. Each word of devotion a blade to her pride.

To him, they were secret lovers. To her, they were prisoner and jailer.

Nick did everything in his power to protect her. He refused to let her accompany him on dangerous missions. When she insisted out of duty, he relented only after assigning five guards to ensure her safety. When she trained, he watched with anxious eyes, flinching at every injury. He brought her silks from foreign lands, sweets from cities she would never see again, books he thought she might enjoy—even though she hardly touched them.

But none of it could reach her heart. Not yet.

Because all Fera could see was the chain. No matter how soft the silk, how sweet the candy, or how kind the words, she was still a slave. And no amount of affection could erase the pain of what she had lost.

So, she smiled faintly at his poems. She let him rest against her when he was weary. She spoke gently when he looked too tired to bear the weight of the world.

But inside, she reminded herself: This is not love. This is obsession.

She had lived her entire life learning how to manipulate power, survive politics, and stand at the edge of war. No one had ever taught her what love looked like. And if this was love—this strange, tender thing—then she didn’t know what to do with it.

In truth, she believed he was simply using her the same way nobles always used others. That he had confused possession for affection. That his love was just another form of control, just another method of tying her down.

She didn’t understand him.

And she didn’t understand herself.

But every time he held her, every time he smiled at her with that rare gentleness in his storm-grey eyes, something in her heart trembled—and that frightened her more than anything else.

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