“Beautiful roses have thorns, but there’s always at least one person who reaches for them, willing to risk getting pricked by the thorns.”

The Marquis narrowed his eyes at Liv’s remark.

“Then I would praise that person for their commendable bravery.”

The slow, languid voice urged Liv on.

“Would you like to try it, Teacher?”

“Are you okay with that?”

“What’s there for me not to be okay with? In the end, you’re the one who’s going to bleed from the thorns, not me.”

His arrogant assurance made Liv chuckle without realizing it.

“The rose will also feel pain when its branch is cut.”

Being fully armed with thorns means being much more cowardly than others, after all.

Then, wouldn’t it be the same for the Marquis?

“The branches of the roses that are cut will eventually wither, my Lord.”

Steadily, the smile faded from the Marquis’ face, which had looked so relaxed as though he were on a relaxing boat ride. And finally, it was replaced by the cold, expressionless look that suited him best.

“So you’re just going to watch with your eyes?”

He shifted as if to rise from his seat. At that moment, Liv reached out and grabbed the Marquis’ moving hand.

Her touch was timid compared to the Marquis’ nonchalant touch on her cheek. The moment the Marquis lifted the corner of his mouth as if to sneer, Liv grabbed the end of his white glove and yanked it.

The glove came off smoothly.

Seeing his bare hand, which she had gazed at with pleasure-stained eyes, with a clear mind was a new sensation. Since the Marquis didn’t brush Liv’s hand away, she got a chance to look down and touch the man’s hand very closely.

Each finger had prominent knuckles, and the back of his hand was covered in blue veins that extended up his arm. His palms were rough; the calloused hand was not pretty at all.

It was the hand that rubbed Liv’s privates, probing deeper, and paralyzed her reason. She knew how strongly it gripped her flesh.

Liv, who had been curiously tracing the veins on the back of his hand, pressed her thumb between his fingers. There was a scar between them that was hard to see unless from up close.

“I guess you’re curious about that, huh?”

The Marquis, who had been silently letting Liv take his hand, subtly twisted his lips.

“I remember holding a blade with my bare hand and almost cutting my finger off.”

Fiddling with the scar between his fingers, Liv looked up and locked eyes with the Marquis.

“Did you win?”

The Marquis raised his eyebrows as if he had heard something unexpected. After a brief pause, he replied in a slightly lowered voice.

“Yeah.”

Liv broke into an innocent smile at the answer.

“If so, this scar is a medal of victory.”

With a quick movement, the hand of a man who wore the indelible medal of victory grabbed Liv by the nape and pulled her into his arms. Liv, having lost her center of gravity in an instant, tumbled forward into the Marquis’ arms.

An urgent breath, no longer as relaxed as it had been a moment ago, crashed into Liv’s lips. A torrent of kisses rained down on her, more forceful and violent than ever before.

In the quiet greenhouse, gasping breaths echoed faintly.

***

The first scars on Demus’ body were from the military academy.

Academies in general were closed spaces, but military academies in particular operated under their own rules.

A world of their own, where there was no flexibility in doing things that might be acceptable elsewhere.

While power is often the logic behind any group of boys, in the military academy, power and status coexisted.

The students with both naturally established themselves as predators, those with only one or the other showed off their backgrounds, and those without both were at the bottom of the ranks as prey.

When Demus first enrolled at the academy, he was a prey.

Indeed, he had talent, but compared to the children of noble families, who were nurtured from an early age, he was more like a gemstone in the mud. He had to go through a lot of hardship before he could wash away the mud and become a jewel that could truly shine.

The rules of the academy forbid dueling with real swords, but the predators, naturally, were not bound by such trivialities.

Hot-blooded boys wanted stimulating events, and to fulfill that need, they often drew real swords. At the tip of those swords stood the preys. People like Demus.

Demus was naked in front of his opponent, who wielded a real sword.

That day, he almost cut off a finger from his grip on the blade. The school nurse recognized the wound from the blade on Demus’ hand and turned him over to the disciplinary committee. The reason for this was that there was evidence of academy rules violation. Not surprisingly, the person who swung the sword at him got away with it.

Luckily, Demus avoided being expelled. Although he was disciplined for violating academy rules.

Well, there was such a time.