Holy Night: My Husband is Definitely a Paladin - Chapter 289
TL: Elphie / PR: Marm
âWhat does this mean?â
For a moment, her mind went completely blank. She understood the wordsâher brain registered their meaningâbut she couldnât process them any further.
Frozen in place, Irene read the sentence over and over again.
Countless repeated copulationsâŚ
Panic crashed into her, overwhelming and delayed.
âW-What are you talking about?!â
With a startled gasp, she flung the paper away as if it had burned her fingertips.
Then, realizing what she had done, she scrambled to retrieve it, her hands shaking.
Her eyes darted around in panic, but thankfully, no one else was around. Everyone was still preoccupied with the Hand of Appraisalâs sudden outburst.
Shoving the paper deep into her pocket, Irene turned on her heel and hurried outside.
She nearly ran. Only when she reached the secluded rear garden did she finally stop.
She slipped into a secluded corner of the gardenâone without flower beds, a place rarely visited by others.
Pressing herself against the rose bushes, Irene pulled the paper from her pocket once more.
Her hands trembled so violently that she nearly dropped it several times while unfolding it.
The crumpled paper smoothed beneath her fingers, and her eyes scanned the words again.
Still the same. Post-binding, countless repeatedâŚ
Her gaze slowly shifted to the ring still snug around her finger.
It was only after the death of the creature, whose face she still couldn’t remember, that she became aware of its existence.
But what if her memory was unreliable? What if she had possessed this ring long before that moment?
“Post-binding⌔
The timing wasnât the issue. The issue was what had supposedly happened after the binding.
Irene inhaled deeply, forcing herself to steady her breath. She needed to calm down and think this through rationally.
After thinking about it, she wondered ifâŚ
ââŚMaybe the Hand of Appraisal had gone mad?â
Even after reaching that conclusion, the tremor in her voice refused to fade.
Copulation. Countless times. That couldnât be right.
She and her pair, Michael, had never gone beyond holding hands.
âWell, we did kissâŚâ
But surely, that didnât count.
And it hadnât even happened that many times, especially not enough to count as copulation!
Irene tried to recall their relationship.
Even just this morning, Michael had stopped by her room.
Unlike other pairs who often shared living quarters, the two of them kept separate rooms.
Once, Irene had casually suggested they share a room, and Michaelâs face had turned so red she feared he might burst. It took him a long moment before he managed to respond, voice strained.
âIrene, you shouldn’t trust people so easily.â
Then, as if sealing his own fate, he had leaned in and whispered against her ear.
âUnless youâre ready to tame a beast.â
And before she could even react, he had turned on his heel and fledâso quickly, it was as if he were running from his own words.
Even the mere suggestion of sharing a room had left Michael flustered and red-faced.
If she had ever been intimate with someone, there was no one she could imagine besides MichaelâŚ
But the very thought was so absurd that her confusion refused to settle.
“The Hand of Appraisal must have made a mistake.”
It had been acting strange even before she arrived, moving erratically, almost feverishly.
The artifact had been in the Fortress for centuries. If it had started malfunctioning, it wouldnât be all that surprising.
And yet in all that time, the Hand of Appraisal had never once recorded a false reading.
So if it had told the truthâŚ
Ireneâs gaze dropped back to the ring.
One of the reasons she kept forgetting its existence was because it felt so natural, as if it had always been there.
Like it was a part of her body, not an object she had acquired.
Until now, she had assumed the ring had appeared sometime during the week she went missing.
But what if she had been wearing it for far longer than she realized?
âBut I havenât been with anyone, have I?â
At that moment, something flashed through Ireneâs mind.
“Unless that dreamâŚ!”
Her face turned scarlet in an instant.
Latelyâno, ever since she returned to the Fortress after going missingâshe had been having strange dreams.
They werenât surreal or abstract like dreams often were.
In them, she still lived in the Fortress, still spent her days with Reyna, Cynthia, and the others.
The only difference was that in the dream, Princess Cecilia held great power, enough to be terrifying.
But Irene had simply assumed that was her mind exaggerating recent worries. After all, dreams werenât always logical.
But that wasnât the problem. The problem was something else entirely.
“Ah, ugh, uhhâŚ!”
In those dreams, every single night, without fail, she had s*x with someone.
It wasnât forced. Her partner was always careful with her, yet relentless in his embrace.
And he wasnât always gentle.
“S-Stop⌠ah⌠ahh!”
At times, the pleasure was so overwhelming that she could barely breathe. She wished he would slow down, give her a moment to recover. But instead, the man in her dreams only grew rougher, pushing her to the very edge, again and again, until he wrung every last cry from her lips.
Whenever she woke from those dreams, Irene would lie there, unable to move for a long while.
Her entire body felt drained, her mind hazy, as if she had truly gone through it.
Worse yet, she could still feel the dull ache lingering in her body, exactly where she had felt it in the dream.
