"Is this why you suddenly asked me to end things between us?"
Before Juliet could respond, Lennox seized her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh. His lips curled into something cruel — not quite a smile, not quite a snarl.
"You didn't want to get caught running off with my child, did you?" His grip tightened. "You were trying to steal him from me."
"…So that's why you followed me."
The color drained from Juliet's face.
*So that's how it is.*
*Well, of course. Nothing else could be expected from him.*
She felt like an utter fool — because even now, even after everything, some wretched, stubborn part of her had flickered with hope. For the briefest moment, she had expected different words. The words she had ached to hear through every one of the seven years she had spent at his side.
*What the hell did I expect from him?*
A bitter laugh echoed inside her chest, never reaching her lips.
"Do you really think I would dare steal a child carrying the Duke's precious blood?"
She knew exactly what blood ties meant to a man named Lennox Carlisle. She had watched it firsthand — the greedy relatives who had abandoned the young heir into the very furnace of war. She understood how lineage could be wielded like a blade, and how easily it could cut the one who held it.
A dark curiosity stirred within her.
*How would he react if I told him the truth — that I'm carrying his child?*
*Would I be dragged away and "dealt with," the same as that woman who once brought a child to his doorstep?*
But Lennox Carlisle had never cared whether he produced an heir. That was precisely why he favored fleeting, weightless affairs over the binding chains of a legal marriage.
Still, over the years, a steady procession of women had appeared at his gates, children in tow, each one claiming the Duke's blood ran through their veins. Everyone in the empire knew the Carlisle line well — red eyes and black hair, unmistakable as a brand.
Yet no one knew what became of those women and children once they crossed the Duke's threshold.
Some people even whispered openly that it was Juliet Montagu — cunning, calculating Juliet — who had disposed of them.
They were wrong, of course. Juliet herself had no idea what had happened to any of them. If anything, she was more desperate for answers than the gossiping masses ever were.
"No," Juliet said quietly, her head sinking low. "I didn't steal anything from you."
Her voice was steady. Hollow. Resigned.
But his next words drove her into a deeper darkness.
"Then what exactly were you planning to do with that ***bastard***?"
Lennox's lips twisted with a mocking smile, his tone light — as if the word cost him nothing at all.
"Lennox!"
Heat flooded Juliet's cheeks — not embarrassment, but raw, burning resentment. She bit down hard on her lower lip, willing herself not to blink, because if she blinked, the tears gathering along her lashes would fall, and he would see them.
It wasn't enough. Nothing was enough to hold back what churned inside her.
"…Juliet?"
"Let me go."
---
It seemed her lover was far more furious than she had anticipated — not out of heartbreak, but because she had dared to leave without a word. Like a piece that had slipped off his chessboard without permission.
*But why does he act this way?*
He had never been the kind of man capable of loving someone, of fearing their absence. Love had never mattered to him. The only thing Lennox Carlisle had ever truly cared about was his work — his wars, his territory, his empire of ice and iron.
*That is why I could never allow myself to mistake his attention for love.*
Perhaps this was closer to the frustration of a man whose trained hound had slipped its leash — not grief, not longing, but the irritating sense that years of effort had gone to waste.
An annoyance. A disruption.
***Never*** affection. ***Never*** love.
But even if that were true — even if Juliet had inconvenienced him — it did not give him the right to treat her this way.
The realization settled over her like a stone dropped into deep water. Seven years. She had stayed by his side for *seven years*, and this was all she had earned.
*But I don't think Lennox is the kind of man who would ever understand that.*
---
"Fine. I'll believe you."
The words came suddenly, cutting through the silence like a blade. Juliet stood trembling, barely holding herself together, when the man gazing down at her with that strange, unreadable expression spoke again:
"But then you must come back to me." He paused. "Marriage, or whatever else you want — I'll give you all of it."
Juliet's face went blank. Every trace of emotion drained from it like water from cracked glass.
"What did you just say?"
"Damn it — I'll do whatever you want. Marriage. Playing family. ***Whatever it takes***."
Though Lennox's voice remained perfectly controlled as he repeated the words, something inside him pulled taut as a bowstring. A gnawing hollowness opened in his chest — an unfamiliar, unwelcome ache he refused to name.
"So come back with me."
*Please come back.*
He stepped forward and pulled her against his chest — more gently than he had ever held anything in his life.
Lennox was so rattled that he didn't even notice the impossible thing that had just happened: for the first time in his existence, he had *asked* a woman to stay.
He had been excommunicated from the Temple. If he chose to marry now, the resulting uproar would shake the foundations of the empire. Clergy would protest. Nobles would scheme.
*But does any of that matter now?*
If they refused to grant their consent, then there would be war. He was the Duke of the Northern Territories, commander of an army no force on the continent had ever broken. The Emperor himself could not conquer the North — so what could a handful of priests hope to do?
He didn't believe in God. He certainly didn't believe in the sanctimonious drivel of God's so-called servants.
None of it mattered — so long as Juliet could not escape him again.
Once he arrived at this conclusion, everything clicked back into place. Order restored. Problem solved.
"…Marriage?"
"That's right."
---
But Juliet did not smile with joy. She did not cry from surprise or overwhelm. Despite being offered the position of Lady of the North — a title that countless women before her would have killed to claim — she simply stood there.
And looked at him with ***empty eyes***.
"What about the child?"
"Do as you wish."
Lennox dragged a restless hand through his black hair. It wasn't a particularly appealing prospect — a man damned by the Temple continuing his cursed bloodline. Besides, children were loud, demanding, distracting creatures. But he supposed that if this child turned out anything like her… it might be bearable.
He studied Juliet's motionless figure. She stood as though frozen mid-step, caught between one world and the next.
*If we had a child, she would never try to run from me again.*
The thought settled into him with quiet satisfaction.
Juliet was vulnerable. Fragile. Like a very small animal — a bird, perhaps, cupped in the palm of his hand.
The comparison surfaced unbidden, and with it came a strange melancholy he hadn't expected, pooling in some dim corner of his chest he rarely visited.
---
"Indeed," Juliet whispered. "Until the very end…"
Her lips — red as rose petals, trembling almost imperceptibly — parted wide.
"You will be cruel."
"…What?"
"How far will you go to make someone unhappy?"
"*Cruel?*"
For a brief, disorienting moment, Lennox thought he had misheard.
Just one day ago, this woman had pressed herself softly against his chest, warm and yielding as a spring breeze. Then, half a day later, she had coldly deceived him and vanished without a trace.
It was *Juliet Montagu* who had released his hand. It was *she* who had walked away and left him standing alone.
So which of the two of them could truly be called cruel?
Lennox parted his lips to argue — but the words wouldn't come. They died somewhere between his throat and the open air, strangled by something he couldn't identify.
"Juliet?"
She stood perfectly still. Tears slid down her cheeks in thin, silent streams, but her expression never changed — not a flinch, not a grimace, not a single crack in that terrible composure.
It was the look of someone who had reached the very edge of their endurance and stepped quietly beyond it. Like clear water spilling over the rim of a glass already filled to the brim — no violence in the overflow, only inevitability.
Juliet cried without making a sound.
He knew — with a certainty that settled cold in his gut — that these were not tears of joy. These were not the tears a woman sheds when she receives a proposal.
Lennox stared at her, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he did not know what to do.
"What will happen if I come back?" Juliet's voice was flat. Distant. As though she were speaking from the far side of a wall.
"What are you talking about?"
"What will change between us if I go back with you now?"
"*Change?*"
Lennox's eyes narrowed. The question caught him off guard — a strike he hadn't anticipated from a direction he hadn't been watching.
Juliet had never asked him things like this. Not once, in seven years.
*The future is uncertain. Ambiguous.*
*But it doesn't matter. I don't want her to become different.*
The Juliet Montagu that Lennox knew was a girl with smooth, luminous skin, soft lips that tasted sweet, long lashes that trembled when she looked up at him, and dimples that appeared in her cheeks like small miracles.
*And that was enough for me.*
She never demanded his love. She never complained. She never forced him toward anything he didn't wish to give.
"Nothing."
The word fell like a stone into still water.
Their relationship would not change. And that was precisely what he wanted.
Juliet Montagu would remain his lover. They would return to their residence in his northern lands. Whether through marriage or a child, he would simply construct a stronger cage — one she could not slip free of again. All problems solved. All variables accounted for.
*Right now, if she just nods her head—*
"Lennox Carlisle."
But Juliet did not nod.
"I want to end this. Right now."
"…Juliet?"
"I don't love you anymore, Your Grace."
*If nothing changes, it means I will spend the rest of my life fearing the day he throws me out.*
"I'm tired of this."
---
At that moment, a train roared into the platform, its shriek of iron and steam swallowing the silence between them.
"Your Grace."
Juliet shook her head slowly, then placed both palms flat against the chest of the man still holding her. She pushed — hard — and he stumbled back a single step, more from shock than force.
"I know that somewhere in this world, there is a woman willing to learn humility. A woman who will kneel beside a man like you and never rise."
*Flutter.*
Without warning, a multitude of blue butterflies erupted into the air around her — dozens, then hundreds — their wings shimmering like scattered moonlight on fresh snow. They appeared before Lennox could reach for her again, a living curtain of sapphire and light.
The butterflies stirred first around the hem of her skirt, then spiraled upward in a slow, luminous tide, rising higher and higher until they concealed her entirely. Through the veil of trembling wings, Lennox could see nothing — and it was clear they had no intention of letting anything get close to her again.
Beyond them, the woman turned toward the train that had come to rest beside the platform. She walked to it with steady steps — unhurried, unbroken.
Then she paused. Turned one final time.
"But it will ***never*** be me."
Juliet's lips curved into a smile — quiet, devastating, and achingly beautiful — as she met the frozen man's eyes.
"When I told you I didn't steal anything from you, it wasn't a lie."
She realized, with sudden clarity, that she held the hilt of a sword in her hands. The only weapon that could leave a mark — an *indelible* mark — on a man who had always remained untouched by everything, who had walked away from everyone without looking back.
This single, irreversible chance was hers, and it was ***now***.
With a movement as natural as breathing, Juliet rested her hand against her empty stomach and spoke.
"Because this child is not yours."
She laughed — bright and clear and ringing — lying to him for the last time.