The question made Lysandra lower her head. The image of her father shouting at her, calling her a time bomb, began playing in her mind again like a broken record.
“Because I’m tired,” Lysandra whispered. Tears welled in her eyes once more. “I’m tired of being told to hate someone I’ve never even met. I’m tired of being ordered who to despise and who to protect. I’ve been locked inside the palace for hundreds of years, taught to become the perfect goddess, but he treated me worse than a prison inmate.”
Aerion stared at Lysandra. His anger and wariness gradually faded, replaced by curiosity. He could see the deep emotional wounds in the girl’s eyes. Wounds that felt strangely familiar.
“Your father locked you up?” Aerion asked.
“More than that,” Lysandra sobbed softly, covering her face with her palms. “He made me feel like I was an anomaly. Something defective. I’ve carried a curse since birth. Anyone from the divine clan who touches my skin feels unbearable pain, as if their life is being ripped away. Mother could never hug me. My best friend couldn’t hold my hand. Father... Father only saw me as a disgrace that had to be hidden.”
Aerion fell silent for a long while. He stared at his own right hand, vaguely remembering what had happened before he’d completely passed out.
“Wait,” Aerion interrupted, his voice turning much more serious. “You said... anyone who touches you feels pain as if their life is being ripped away?”
Lysandra nodded slowly. “Yes. That’s why I hesitated to help you earlier. I thought my curse would make you die faster.”
“But I didn’t feel any pain,” Aerion said slowly. His eyes fixed intently on Lysandra. “When I held your hand... when you channeled that healing magic directly into me... I didn’t burn. I didn’t feel any pain.”
Lysandra looked up and wiped away her tears. “I know. That’s what made me cry tears of joy earlier. For the first time in my entire life... there was someone who could hold my hand without suffering because of me.”
Aerion looked at his left chest, where the glowing dragon emblem had appeared. His thoughts raced.
“That’s not all,” Aerion continued, his voice now sounding like a murmur to himself. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always had a mysterious pain in my chest. It feels like an icy needle stabbing my heart whenever I use my full power. The demon healers said it was an inherited curse from Valerius’s bloodline. Nothing could cure it.”
Aerion gazed into Lysandra’s silvery-blue eyes.
“But when you touched me... the pain disappeared. Completely. Your body’s scent, your magical energy... they didn’t just heal the wounds from my blade. Your magic soothed the pain that had tormented me for decades.”
Lysandra gasped. “Soothed your pain? But... how is that possible? A god’s life energy and a demon’s dark aura are complete opposites. Father said we were like water and fire. We could never unite without destroying each other.”
“Maybe your father is a liar,” Aerion said sharply. “Or maybe he’s hiding something far greater than the mere ‘curse’ you carry.”
The word “liar” made Lysandra’s chest tighten. She wanted to defend her father. No matter what, Aetherion was her parent. But faced with all the reality before her now, the wall of trust Lysandra had built around her father was truly beginning to crumble.
“If Father lied about this... does that mean I’ve spent hundreds of years suffering for nothing?” Lysandra’s voice broke. “I stayed away from Mother because I was afraid she’d get hurt... I cried alone every night because I felt like a monster... and all of that... was a lie?”
Seeing Lysandra trembling from the mental shock, Aerion let out a long breath. He knew all too well what it felt like to be betrayed by one’s own family.
“My world and yours may be different, Lysandra,” Aerion said, his tone far gentler than before. “In the Dark Kingdom, my father, Valerius, killed his own brother for the throne. My uncle tried to kill me today because he saw me as a threat to his power. Family isn’t a refuge. Family is where the sharpest knives are hidden.”
“But my father is a god... he’s supposed to uphold the truth...” Lysandra whimpered, though her argument sounded terribly weak.
“Being a god or a demon is just a mask. Beneath it all, there’s only the fear of losing power,” Aerion cut in firmly. “Your father didn’t lock you up because your curse endangered other people. He locked you up because you endangered him. He’s afraid of you, Lysandra.”
“Afraid of me? I have nothing but this curse!”
“We’ll prove that later,” Aerion replied. He forced himself to stand, though he was still a little unsteady. “What’s clear is that you can’t go back to your palace now. If your father is truly hiding a secret this enormous, he won’t hesitate to punish you even more harshly if he finds out your curse doesn’t affect me after all.”
Lysandra looked up at the tall young man. “Then where am I supposed to go? I don’t know my way through this forest. My wings are broken. I have nowhere else to go home to.”
“You don’t need to ‘go home’ to that prison,” Aerion said. He extended his large hand toward Lysandra—the same hand that had desperately gripped her wrist earlier. “Come with me. Once I’ve fully recovered my strength, I’ll find a way out of this forest to the neutral borderlands. You can find out who you really are without your father interfering.”
Lysandra stared at the hand he offered. Her heart began pounding again. In her world, touching a man’s hand, especially the hand of someone from an enemy race, was an unforgivable sin. But right now, every rule she had been taught felt like nonsense.
With a slight tremble in her hand, Lysandra accepted Aerion’s offer.
Their skin touched again. There was no flash of magic. No pain. Only warmth flowed from Aerion’s palm through Lysandra’s entire body, giving her a sense of security she had never received from her family’s luxurious palace.
Aerion carefully pulled Lysandra to her feet, making sure not to hit her injured wing. Once they stood facing each other, a slightly awkward silence settled over them. Only then did they realize how insane the situation was. A Goddess of Life and the Dark King’s heir—two eternal enemies who should have been killing each other—were now saving each other and holding hands in the middle of the Forbidden Forest.
“We need to move,” Aerion said, breaking the silence as he slowly released her hand. A faint sense of loss appeared in Lysandra’s eyes when the warmth vanished, but she quickly hid it. “The light from the emblem on my chest was too bright. Magic that powerful must have attracted the attention of creatures in this forest, or worse, patrols from the border.”
Lysandra nodded in agreement. She smothered her small campfire with a handful of dirt. “You’re right. Father must’ve already sent out a massive search party to find me. If they find me with you...”
“I’ll be executed first, and you’ll be locked up for the rest of your life,” Aerion finished with a bitter, crooked smile. “Come on. The forest is denser to the west. Moonlight can’t get through there, so we can use the darkness to hide.”
Aerion had just turned around to lead the way when a sudden rumble shook the ground beneath their feet. It wasn’t coming from inside the forest, but from the sky above.
Lysandra looked up in panic, her eyes widening with fear as she peered through the gaps between the enormous leaves.
The sound of extraordinarily massive, heavy wings tore through the silence of the night. Not one or two wings, but dozens. The air around the forest suddenly felt far denser and more oppressive.
TOOOOOOT!
The war trumpet of a golden dragon horn split the sky, echoing in a high pitch that hurt the ears. It wasn’t an ordinary trumpet. It was the command horn of the Divine Realm’s elite forces.
“No way... this soon?” Lysandra muttered, her face turning pale in an instant.
“That trumpet is from your clan?” Aerion asked, his hand reflexively gripping the hilt of his sword even though he knew he wasn’t ready to fight again.
“It’s the trumpet of the main hunting force,” Lysandra said, her breathing quickening as her body trembled violently. “Caelus... my brother, the War God. He’s intervening personally.”
Aerion cursed in the ancient demon tongue. The War God was not an enemy who could be taken lightly. If those forces searched the forest, it was only a matter of time before they found the two of them. And with Lysandra injured and Aerion not yet recovered, this was a death sentence staring them in the face.