Chapter 163: Show me

The door opened with a quiet creak, releasing a dense, suffocatingly potent scent that hit me full in the face—a fragrance so concentrated it made my head spin instantly.

It was something floral, sickly sweet to the point of excess, where the aroma ceased to be pleasant and began to weigh heavily on something primal deep within—a place that craved only silence.

Magnus pulled me down the dim hallway, illuminated solely by the partially open door ahead. Even that light was so faint I could barely discern the floor beneath my feet, stepping cautiously behind him, almost on tiptoe.

The closer we drew, the more a fine, nervous tremor shook my body, leaving my mouth bone-dry. What is he hiding in there? The question still circled in my mind, even as the answer loomed just steps away. And that was precisely what terrified me—he had asked if I would run away once I saw it.

We halted near the door, and I felt his body tense. It wasn’t the rigid readiness of a powerful predator preparing to strike—a posture I had already learned to read—but something else. Something almost human.

His hand tightened around mine, squeezing almost to the point of pain. I squeezed back silently, letting him know I was right there beside him, guided by an instinct that told me he needed this far more than his pride would ever allow him to admit out loud.

A heavy exhale escaped his chest. His shoulders slowly eased.

He pushed the door open.

It took every ounce of strength I possessed to hold my ground and not recoil a step backward. The scarlet glare that burst forth was so overwhelming that the entire world narrowed into a single, pulsing hue, drawing a choked, bewildered gasp from my lungs.

Roses.

An endless, sprawling sea of roses.

Exotic, deep crimson blooms, almost obsidian at the base of their petals, wove like a living tapestry inside the glass dome. They climbed the walls, cascaded from the ceiling beams, and blanketed the floor—transforming the entire chamber into one vast, breathing, wildly alive sanctuary.

The suffocating scent reached a fever pitch here, so thick it felt as though it was sinking into my skin, soaking through to my very core. The absurd, dizzying thought struck me that I would never forget this scent as long as I lived—that it had already permanently etched itself into my soul: this fragrance, this crimson light, this wild, impossible garden.

Magnus pulled me forward through the narrow, living path carved between the blossoms. Gazing around, I realized only then that the glass dome had been dark merely from the outside. From within, everything was clearly visible through the frosted glass, and near the apex of the roof, a slightly ajar transom window admitted a faint trickle of breeze—though it proved utterly futile against the heavy scent.

Fresh air simply did not exist in this space; it had been wholly consumed by the flowers, dissolved into their suffocating perfume.

Shielded behind Magnus’s broad shoulders, I couldn’t see what lay ahead until he came to a sudden halt. Turning around, he placed both hands firmly on my shoulders. He searched my eyes, a rare look flickering across his face—something I had never seen in him before.

Doubt.

He was holding himself at the edge of an abyss by sheer strength of will, holding his breath as though weighing one final time whether he should truly go through with this.

"I didn’t want you to see this..." he said quietly. Hearing such hesitation in Magnus’s voice felt stranger than any feral growl he had ever uttered. "Think carefully."

"I’m sure," I replied, not breaking eye contact. "Show me."

His expression twisted for a fraction of a second in a grimace of raw pain, which he promptly smoothed over, as if crumpling a piece of paper and discarding it. Without letting go of my hands, he slowly stepped to the side.

My mind struggled to process the sight before me, refusing to piece it together because it defied all logic.

A massive, rectangular pedestal of white stone occupied the center of the dome, surrounded on all sides by a dense wall of living roses like an altar in a sacred temple. Resting atop the stone slab lay a naked woman.

She looked as if she were merely sleeping.

So exquisitely and lifelike was she sculpted that my feet moved forward before my mind could stop them. Only upon leaning closer did I realize it was a statue—carved from marble or a similar fine stone.

I froze.

"This is..." I breathed out, unable to finish the sentence.

"It’s you," Magnus cut in, his voice muffled on a short exhale. When I whipped around to face him, his eyes were fixed somewhere off to the side, avoiding my gaze.

"Why?" My throat constricted, the word scraping painfully past my lips. "Why do you have this here, Magnus? Is this why you wanted to buy my body from Askold?"

"Yes," he answered simply. That single word carried so much weight that an invisible hand seemed to tighten around my chest, squeezing harder with every passing second. "I wanted you to be here forever. With me."

He turned back toward me and took a step forward, his large, warm palms cupping my face, forcing me to meet his gaze. He searched my eyes for a reaction, desperately seeking a sign as if his very life depended on it.

Reaching up, I pulled him down toward me—he was so much taller, having grown even more imposing over the years—and buried my face in the crook of his neck, simply breathing him in. That familiar scent of dark tobacco and wild sweetness filled my senses, a scent that would forever mean safety to me.

I held him tighter, feeling everything inside me tremble—shattering into pieces before instantly reforming into something stronger and far more right. His presence stitched closed the hollow wounds I had grown so accustomed to living with for years.

Every action he had taken toward me was dismantling the ghosts of our past. He wasn’t erasing the history violently, but slowly, the way gentle waves wash away writings in the wet sand until nothing remains—no hatred, no lingering agony.

Looking at this place, this breathtaking, obsessive shrine of crimson roses, I understood that this was his true penance. Not hollow words that cost nothing, but profound, undeniable actions.