Just imagining it, an eerie sensation as a snake’s scales ran through his body. His hand around hers tightened involuntarily, and Killian twisted his lips. He stared into her sparkling green eyes, wondering what her intention was in saying such a thing, but all that came back to him was a cold gaze.

“Would you do that for me?” she asked.

“Do you want me to?” Killian replied.

Rowena nodded, her face not changing expression, despite the pain she felt from his grip on her hands.

“You said I could be honest with you. Killian. I am a bad mistress, and I’m asking because you seem to like it more that way. So, will you suffer without me? Feeling that your heart is ripped out of your chest and you can’t breathe?”

Her eyes gleamed with a strange, unfamiliar eagerness. The flush of her cheeks, which were as porcelain, and her plump red lips made her look as if she was life itself. Killian, who was watching his mistress intently to find out what she was up to, pulled his hand, letting her out of his grasp.

“Dead people are dead people. I have no taste for consoling myself by holding into the memories of a corpse.”

“Then what about your late fiancée?”

Her voice was so small that he thought he had misheard her. But before he frowned, wondering what this had anything to do with the current situation, Rowena made the first move.

“Oh, I’m so sleepy. Killian.”

“…….”

“I’m taking a nap now. Wake me when we get there.”

“Sure. Come here,” Killian said, pulling Rowena, who was trying to sleep in her seat next to him, and gesturing for her to lay on his lap.

“This is a bit…” Rowena began.

“Sleep.”

Killian covered Rowena’s eyes while she still had that bewildered expression on her face. As he had done before when she had nightmares, and exactly just like he did to their son the previous night.

Now, it didn’t matter what she was dreaming about in her beautiful head. Even if she planned to escape, there would be no one to help her, and the guards he positioned around her would keep a watch on her at all times. He made sure that she wouldn’t see them, of course, in order to not scare her off.

Whatever escape Rowena planned, all he needed was time. Now that he knew who was behind this, he had no intention of delaying any longer.

He was going to make it all up to her, a compensation so great that any mistake he had made five years ago would be erased without a trace, and she would never even think of escaping.