As evening gradually fell, the heavy snow outside showed no sign of stopping.
A thick layer had already built up on the ground, nearly reaching Lux's calves. Every so often, someone had to go clear the snow piling up around camp.
Even with the stove warming the tent, and the silk blankets helping hold in heat, there was still a chill clinging to everyone that would not quite go away.
"Hah..." Lux hugged her arms and shivered, her breath turning to white mist as she looked outside. "I really miss soaking in a hot spring..."
Honestly, Luke missed it too.
But where in a place like this were they supposed to find a hot spring? Forget a hot spring, they could not even manage a proper hot bath.
He really hoped the mess at the border could be resolved as soon as possible.
At that moment, Lux noticed that Shyvana's cloak looked very thin, and could not help asking, "Shyvana, aren't you cold?"
Shyvana instinctively shook her head. "I'm okay."
Lux thought for a moment, then blinked. "Why is your skin reddish-purple?"
Poppy's skin leaned blue, but she was a yordle, so that was normal enough.
But Shyvana looked human in every other way, yet her skin was that color. It was hard not to be curious.
"Well..." Shyvana parted her lips, unsure how to explain it.
"Can you stop acting like a curious little kid for five minutes?"
Luke shot Lux a glance.
Lux also noticed that Shyvana looked a little uncomfortable, so she smiled awkwardly. "It's okay. I was just curious. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."
Shyvana knew Lux meant no harm, so she smiled back. "For some special reasons, I was born this way."
"So that's it."
Lux did not press further and soon found a place to sit, thoroughly bored.
Not long after, she started yawning.
In weather this cold, with snow falling this hard, there really did not seem to be anything to do except sleep.
As darkness deepened, the women gradually returned to their own tents, and places were also arranged for Katarina and Shyvana to rest.
As Katarina prepared to leave, Luke called out to stop her. "Katarina."
Katarina paused, turned back, and gave him a questioning look.
Luke smiled. "If you're not busy, want to talk for a bit?"
Katarina obviously was not busy, and she could not think of any reason to refuse, so she nodded.
At that point, only the two of them remained in the tent. Luke gestured for Katarina to come sit closer.
He had thought about her for a long while and decided he could not keep pretending to be clueless.
Keeping a Noxian assassin by his side was basically no different from keeping a ticking bomb beside him.
They would be heading to Hill City soon, and he obviously could not let her follow them there without any precautions at all.
Katarina sat down nearby and waited for Luke to speak.
The distance between them was perfect. If she wanted to, she could swing her dagger at the man in front of her at any moment.
After a moment's thought, Luke asked first, "How did you get the scar over your left eye? If it's too personal, you don't have to answer."
"It's nothing." Katarina's gaze flickered slightly. "I was careless once. During a hunt, I underestimated my prey and got my left eye slashed."
Luke nodded in understanding. "So that scar can't be removed?"
"It can," Katarina replied, "but there's no need. I want it to remind me at all times never to underestimate any prey again, in battle or otherwise."
"That's a good way to think about it."
Luke nodded again.
Though personally, he thought it gave her a certain extra edge.
Then he changed the subject. "What was the name of the village you used to live in?"
"The Satu Tribe." Katarina used the name of a tribe she had heard on the road had been wiped out.
"The Satu Tribe..." Luke repeated it, seeming to think for a moment. "I've heard of them. A neutral tribe, if I remember right. When Noxus invaded, they stubbornly refused to submit and were wiped out in the end."
By the time he finished, he let out a sigh.
Katarina fell silent at the appropriate moment, a faint trace of grief emanating from her.
"My condolences." Luke sighed again, then suddenly said, "I've actually heard that the Satu Tribe had a rather unique skill."
Katarina paused. She knew absolutely nothing about that.
This prince really did know about the Satu Tribe?
If this kept going, wasn't she going to slip up?
Just as she started feeling that something was wrong, Luke casually said what the special skill was.
"If I remember right... they could reach over their heads and touch the nostril on the same side with the opposite hand."
Katarina paused again, thinking, What kind of special skill is that?
Luke went on, "I don't know how they managed it, but it really is impressive."
Katarina instantly came up with an explanation. "Because my people specialized in short weapons, having longer arms gave us an advantage. We trained that way to make our arms longer."
"Amazing." Luke sounded sincerely impressed as he looked at her.
His face practically screamed, Can you show me?
But he did not say it out loud.
Which left the choice to Katarina.
After explaining that much, not demonstrating it would have been hard to justify.
So Katarina raised her right arm, brought it behind her head, forced it around, and with a faint crack, her fingers successfully touched the right side of her nose.
Luke could not help saying, "I think I just heard something."
Even though the pain in her right arm was excruciating, Katarina kept a calm face. "It's nothing. I'm just out of practice. It was a good stretch."
It felt like her arm was about to dislocate. Was that really a special skill normal people had?
"I see. Still, that's incredible. I definitely can't do that."
Luke looked at her with admiration.
Katarina gave him a faint smile, thinking, If you dislocate your shoulder, you could.
Just then, Luke seemed to remember something and stood up. "Let me heat up some water."
He turned, added some water to the kettle, and set it over the stove.
While he was not looking, Katarina quietly snapped her right arm back into place. Despite how close it had come to dislocating, she did not make a sound the entire time.
Once the water was hot, Luke sat back down and asked, "By the way, can I know your family's names?"
Katarina frowned at once, her eyes clearly asking why he wanted to know that.
"I don't mean anything by it." Luke spoke earnestly. "It's just that the Satu Tribe's spirit, choosing death over surrender, is something I deeply admire. I imagine you probably never had time to properly mourn your family while chasing revenge, so I wanted to put up a memorial here for your people. You don't need to thank me. When Demacians see something like this, we always help where we can."
That explanation completely shut off every excuse she could have used.
After a moment of speechless silence, she nodded and gave him a name. "My father was named Bokin, and my..."
Before she could finish, she saw Luke freeze slightly. "Bokin?"
Then he looked at her. "I know that name."
Katarina froze too. I made that up on the spot and you still know it?
Luke said, "Back when I was living near the Demacian border, I knew a man named Bokin from beyond the frontier. He was maybe in his forties or fifties. Could it be..."
"That shouldn't be my father." Katarina shook her head when she saw the hopeful look in Luke's eyes. "My father is already seventy."
That made Luke ask, "How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Twenty."
"So your father was fifty when he had you?"
Luke stared at her in surprise.
Katarina replied coldly, "Is that a problem?"
"Of course not." Luke let out an emotional sigh. "I just think your father must've been remarkably vigorous for his age. What about your mother? Around the same age?"
Katarina went silent for a second, then nodded.
Luke asked, "They had you late in life, so they must have doted on you."
Katarina nodded again, but before she could say anything, Luke suddenly slammed his hand down on the table.
Bang!
Even Katarina's heart jumped.
Then she saw Luke looking furious, like some hot-blooded crusader. "And yet they were slaughtered by Noxians when they should have been enjoying their old age in peace!"
"Noxians are a pack of motherless animals! Rotten to the bone, not a shred of humanity left in them! A bunch of damned beasts who deserve no peace in death! I'd call them what they are, trash! Filth! I don't know how many innocent people they've butchered, and they still think they deserve to be called human? They're nothing but walking garbage!"
He was really getting into it when he noticed Katarina sitting there in silence.
He frowned. "Why aren't you cursing them too?"
Katarina: "..."
Was that maybe just a little vicious?
The moment she saw the look on Luke's face changing, she immediately said, "I've cursed them in my heart countless times already."
"I get that, but here, you don't have to bottle it up anymore."
With a sympathetic expression, Luke reached out and patted Katarina on the shoulder. "Come on. Say what's really in your heart out loud. Everyone here will accept it."
Katarina opened her mouth. "All Noxians deserve to die."
"Exactly. Louder. Pour out your anger, your resentment, your hatred. Stop suppressing yourself and let it all out."
At that moment, Luke looked exactly like one of those motivational speakers preaching from a stage.
Katarina was persuaded. She suddenly raised her voice.
"Noxians are all bastard dogs! Every last one of them deserves to rot! I curse them all, may their children be born cursed, may every Noxian burn alive! None of those beasts are good for anything! They're all piles of stinking garbage..."
She kept cursing for several straight minutes without even pausing for breath.
Even Luke started feeling a little unwell listening to it. He had to admit, when women started cussing people out, the destructive power was no weaker than a man's.
Just look at Katarina, going on that long without repeating herself once.
Anyone who did not know better would have thought she hated Noxus to her very core.
By the time she finally stopped, Katarina rested there with her chest rising slightly. Her face was flushed, she was breathing hard, and the corners of her mouth twitched unnaturally.
Everything she had just said had landed squarely on her own head.
To keep up this disguise, she had really paid a steep price.
"Have some tea."
Luke thoughtfully poured her a cup of hot tea.
Katarina happened to be thirsty, so she accepted it and took a slow sip.
The warm liquid slid down her throat, and she immediately noticed something. "This tea..."
"Tastes good, right?" Luke smiled.
"It really does." Katarina nodded lightly, then took another sip.
As the tea settled into her stomach, she could even feel a warm current gradually spreading into her limbs.
"Then drink more." Luke looked at her gently and asked, "Does the Satu Tribe have any customs?"
"Customs..." Katarina paused mid-sip, then quickly made one up. "At certain times every year, we burn some of the animals we catch as an offering to Mother Earth."
"Really?" Luke immediately asked, "And after they're burned, do you still eat them?"
"Of course not." Katarina answered without thinking. "If they're offered to Mother Earth, then they're not to be eaten."
Luke looked puzzled. "But I heard the Satu Tribe treasured food. Wouldn't that be wasteful?"
Katarina paused, then instantly explained, "Mother Earth takes those offerings back and turns them into nourishment so more food can grow later. So it isn't wasteful."
Even she felt like that was a brilliant save.
But by now, she also felt exhausted.
Once you told one lie, you really did need ten more to cover it.
She finally understood that saying.
Luke asked curiously, "By the way, your movement skills and dagger work are both pretty good. Who taught you?"
"My father."
Luke sighed in admiration. "No wonder your father was still going strong. To raise a daughter this capable..."
Katarina: "..."
At that point, she was honestly speechless.
Why had she not realized earlier that this prince talked so much?
He told other people not to act like curious little children, and yet wasn't he the biggest one here?
He had to ask about everything.
Did his mouth ever stop moving?
Luke continued, "Do you have any other relatives?"
"I have a younger sister."
Then she saw the look in Luke's eyes change again, followed by another heartfelt comment. "Still going strong."
For some reason, Katarina suddenly had a powerful urge to pull out a dagger and stab this man.
Why did this prince keep fixating on that one detail?
Would any normal person chat about that with a woman whose village had just been wiped out?
Wasn't he basically stabbing at her wounds over and over?
Right as Katarina was cursing him internally, she saw Luke's gaze change.
The gentleness disappeared, replaced by a cold sharpness.
Every hair on her body stood up at once, and a chill ran through her.
Under that stare, Katarina suddenly felt as though she had been seen through completely.
As if every secret she had was laid bare before this man, stripped clean with nowhere to hide.
Her instincts screamed that something was wrong.
"We've chatted about enough nonsense. Let's talk seriously now."
Luke smiled faintly as he looked at her. "Why did you really come to Demacia?"
Katarina forced herself to stay calm. "What do you mean?"
"You already understand what I mean, don't you?" Luke countered.
Katarina's face finally changed.
She could not tell whether Luke had truly seen through her or not, and she did not want to gamble on it.
Luke noticed her arm moving slowly and remained where he was, utterly unhurried. "Don't bother. I put poison in the tea you just drank."
The moment those words reached Katarina, she knew her cover was blown, but it also made her want to laugh a little.
She had no idea how this prince had figured out who she was.
But since childhood, she had undergone the harshest possible training.
Other than sleep, all her time had been spent testing her endurance, agility, and tolerance for pain, all in the hope of forging herself into the ultimate weapon.
She had stolen many poisons from the most notorious alchemists in the city and tested them on herself in slowly increasing doses, gradually building up a tolerance far beyond ordinary people.
It could be said that by now, her body's resistance to toxins had reached an astonishing level.
Poison was the one thing she feared least.
A mocking sneer lifted the corner of her mouth as she looked at the prince across from her, so certain he had won. Her hand flickered, and a cold gleam flashed as a dagger appeared.
There were only two people in the tent.
This was the perfect time to strike.
But she was not planning to kill him.
She was going to take this prince hostage and drag him all the way back to Noxus as a trophy.
Luke stayed seated exactly where he was, not moving in the slightest. He even leisurely took another sip of tea.
"Idiot."
Katarina snorted coldly. Looking at the prince, who seemed full of openings, she moved to seize him.
But the instant her body moved, her heartbeat suddenly kicked violently. It felt as though her whole body had been hit by a shockwave, and she lost control, crashing straight to the ground.
Disbelief flashed across her eyes.
Her dagger hit the floor with a clear clang.
At the same moment, Katarina lay motionless on the ground as well.
Her face was still full of disbelief. She had tested herself thoroughly. Her body's resistance to poison was now extremely high.
Even if Luke had used a potent toxin, she should have had some resistance to it.
And yet at that moment, she felt like she had lost control over every part of her body and could not move even a single inch.
Then, starting from her heart, a crushing pain suddenly began to spread through her entire body, as though something inside her were being torn apart.
"You can still talk."
Luke looked down at Katarina on the floor with a smile.
Even though she could endure the pain, cold sweat was dripping from her forehead. She lifted her eyes and glared at him. "Why poison me?"
She was confused about too many things right now, so she could only start there.
Luke replied, "Because you're Noxian. Right?"
At this point, there was no reason for Katarina to keep acting. She asked, still unwilling to understand, "How did you know who I was?"
"I didn't need to know your identity. I only needed to know you meant harm."
Luke slowly sipped his poison-free tea and gave her his answer. "Or more specifically, killing intent. From the very start, I could feel the killing intent you showed toward me. And on the way back from outside, you kept secretly observing me the whole time. I'm this handsome, and the one thing you weren't looking at was my face.
"You kept looking at my neck. Add in that faint killing intent you kept giving off, and I'd have a hard time believing you were one of the good guys."
Katarina fell silent after hearing that explanation.
After a while, she said, "I had plenty of chances to kill you along the way."
Luke smiled confidently. "You never had a chance. Not once."
Katarina did not doubt that.
Judging by how Luke was behaving now, every opening he had exposed along the way had very likely been a deliberate test.
She had not expected herself to be so careless.
The careless part was not trusting Luke.
The careless part was failing to control her killing intent.
Humans had a kind of aura around them.
When one aura met another, the sharper person could sense it.
And the eyes were one of the clearest expressions of that aura, especially killing intent.
When someone stared at you with murderous intent, you instinctively felt uneasy, a prickling tension between your brows.
Sensitive people could detect that.
And to become a top-tier assassin, the first lesson was to strip away killing intent.
Any assassin trying to kill a target would inevitably have killing intent. It could never be removed completely.
And once it appeared, anyone with sharp enough senses would notice it and become wary.
Many seasoned, powerful assassins had fallen because of that very flaw.
That was why every assassin aimed to reduce their killing intent as much as possible.
Including Katarina.
That was also why she felt so unwilling now.
In the end, she really was still a failed assassin.
She had not even managed to hide her killing intent properly, and someone had seen through it long ago.
Though she had not come here specifically to assassinate Luke, once she learned his identity, the assassin in her could not help but be tempted.
And that single moment had completely exposed her.
Katarina blamed the failure on her own weakness.
But in reality, it was not really her fault.
Luke was basically cheating, with enhanced eyes and absurdly sharp senses.
Wait.
Katarina suddenly realized something and turned a cold look on Luke. "So you knew from the beginning that my whole identity was fake?"
Luke nodded. "That's right."
Katarina suddenly felt something surge from her chest straight to her head, then explode.
Damn it.
This prince had known from the very start that she was putting on an act, yet he had never exposed her and had even enthusiastically played along with it.
Katarina suddenly felt like a complete clown.
She had been so smug, so proud of her flawless acting, without realizing he had seen through it the whole time and was just watching her like a joke.
And in the end, he had thoroughly toyed with her.
The arm behind the head. The tribal customs. The jokes about her father being vigorous for his age.
All of it had been this bastard messing with her on purpose.
And he had even deliberately gotten her to curse Noxus so viciously. How was that any different from making her curse herself?
She was Noxian.
Once Katarina understood all of that, her chest felt like it was going to burst. She stared at Luke with a look that wanted to slice him into a thousand pieces, like she wanted to devour him whole.
How had a proper Demacian prince turned out like this?
If she could move right now, the first thing she would do would be to pull out a dagger and stab this bastard.
If looks could kill, Luke would probably have died hundreds of times by now.
"Don't look at me like that. Do you even understand which side of this situation you're on?"
Luke smiled faintly, looking perfectly at ease.
"At this point, what else is there to say? Kill me."
Katarina knew that if this man had wanted to, she would already be dead.
Even though more than two minutes had passed, she still felt no relief. That intense pain continued without pause, and even someone like her was starting to struggle with it.
If not for the inhuman training she had gone through since childhood, forging in her such an extreme tolerance for pain, she probably would have been screaming by now.
She could not help beginning to recall her failed life.
From the moment she had gained the ability to move, her life had become an endless repetition of training.
Smashing herself with rocks until her head bled. Eating poison until she fainted, hallucinated, itched all over, and suffered so badly she wanted to die.
Climbing to dangerous heights without equipment, then hurling herself down from them, sometimes coughing blood when she landed, only to be forced back together with healing potions.
Again and again and again.
She had walked the edge of death more times than she could count.
And all of that had bought her this body, refined and hardened through countless trials.
Yet until now, she had only ever been given one real mission.
And in her arrogance, she had failed even that one.
Her mission had been to assassinate an enemy squad leader. But because she had been careless, not only had she failed to kill the target, she had nearly gotten her father killed as well.
He had survived, but a large number of his finest assassins had died.
General Du Couteau had been deeply disappointed, and she had been thrown out of the assassin guild.
After she left, her father directly sent assassins to dispose of her, the disgrace of both their family and their organization.
Her mind had been so scattered that she had only noticed the attack when her eye was almost torn out, which was why a scar had been left over her left eye.
She had been careless enough to be wounded by some nameless cur from a second-rate guild.
Though in the end she killed those assassins, and eventually completed the earlier mission too, taking the target's head back with her.
But Katarina knew she had already completely lost her father's favor. There was no way to ever win it back.
There had never been much father-daughter affection between her and Du Couteau.
From the time she was little, it had always been one teaching, one training.
They were less father and daughter than superior and subordinate.
Other than the time necessary for instruction, there had been no other connection between them.
So Katarina did not really care whether she had his favor, or whether she could somehow recover some so-called family bond or fatherly love.
If anything, she resented him.
Because he had built her entire life and sense of value with his own hands, only to discard her just as easily.
From the beginning, the values instilled in her had been simple, human lives were worthless, and the family's honor came before everything.
She wanted to prove herself. She wanted to prove that she was not a failed assassin, not an assassin weaker than him.
Among assassins, there was only one way to prove one assassin was stronger than another.
Raise the other assassin's head high.
And her father was the strongest assassin in Noxus.
There could be only one strongest assassin, and Katarina wanted that title to be hers.
But not long after that, Du Couteau disappeared.
By all rights, Katarina, as his daughter, should have temporarily taken over his position. But after having already been nailed to the pillar of shame, she had no standing at all.
She was unwilling, but there was nothing she could do.
She knew that only by proving herself again could she wash away her earlier disgrace.
Before that, she needed Du Couteau to witness it, which meant he had to come back.
Katarina wanted to find him.
But while tracing clues about his disappearance, she discovered something even more unbelievable.
She felt her family was being dragged into a whirlpool.
Aside from the family's honor, the people she cared about most were her mother and her younger sister.
The only two family members she had left in the world.
Though because of her father, she had never been especially close with them.
But she cared.
She still remembered her mother singing lullabies to put her to sleep when she was young.
She still remembered the little sister who used to trail after her asking for candy.
Her family, and those two, were everything to her.
Now Du Couteau had vanished, while the family, her mother, and her sister were all trapped in a dangerous vortex that could swallow them whole with one wrong step.
As the only one left in the family with any real ability, she had to resolve it.
To investigate both this matter and her father's disappearance, she had followed the trail west until she ended up here, and she might even have needed to infiltrate Demacia next.
It was then that she happened to run into Luke's group.
She had thought her acting was flawless enough, and that killing enemies in front of them would prevent suspicion.
But she had never imagined that a single trace of killing intent would expose her so clearly.
Her father had been right all along.
Her life was destined to be that of a failed assassin.
Katarina truly could not accept it.
All these years, she had never relaxed for a single day. She had walked the edge of death again and again. She had given up so much. What had it all been for?
Was it really all so she could die here for no clear reason?
Was she really going to die here without any value at all?
The truth was still buried. Her mother and sister were still trapped in danger.
She wanted to live.
She wanted to prove herself.
She did not want to die.
That fierce will to survive did nothing to clear the neurotoxin from Katarina's body. She still lay there, unable to move.
In the end, she gave up.
Now whether she lived or died depended on a single sentence from Luke.
Seeing the look in her eyes, the one that seemed half resigned to death and half unwilling, Luke said, "I haven't even said anything yet. Why do you look like you're halfway to the grave already? I don't remember ever saying I was going to kill you. Besides, you did help us kill some Noxians. Doesn't that already make you a Noxian traitor?"
"To Noxus, they were just people with a little bit of value. To me, they were men under a rival faction. Killing them makes no difference at all."
Katarina replied coldly.
Human lives meant little to her. Noxian lives included, especially when they belonged to the opposing faction.
"You are pretty honest. If you just played along with me a little at a time like this, maybe I'd be in a good enough mood to let you go."
Luke smiled.
What Katarina said was true.
From what he remembered, Noxus had clear factional divisions. Because of its unique system, every powerful individual had their own private troops, broken into countless warbands under different commanders, all eventually forming a larger army.
Though all of them were under the authority of the Grand General, the power each individual held was substantial too.
The ability to command armies reminded Luke a bit of warlords.
And where power clashed, factions naturally formed and fought each other.
As long as it did not threaten the Grand General's authority, he would not interfere.
"Why do you talk so much? Either kill me or don't."
By now Katarina was utterly sick of Luke. She simply closed her eyes and waited for death.
Though really, it was more because the pain was becoming harder to endure, and weakness was beginning to sink in.
"The poison you drank was lethal. In about five more minutes, you'll die in agony."
Luke spoke at a leisurely pace. "But I have the antidote, and I don't actually want to kill you. So now I'll decide whether to spare your life based on your answers."
Katarina kept her eyes shut.
Luke did not care and continued, "Looks like you weren't actually here to assassinate me."
"If I wanted to kill you, I would've done it long ago, with all the openings you kept showing."
At that moment, Katarina genuinely regretted not just taking the chance and killing this prince outright.
The thought that she only had five minutes left to live made her realize that at a time like this, even she no longer possessed that completely fearless courage she had imagined.
As long as someone was human, they did not want to die.
She was no exception.
She simply no longer feared death itself.
Seeing her respond, Luke knew she still had the will to live. So he nodded. "Then what did you come here for?"
Katarina wanted to fight for the slimmest chance of survival, so she did not hide it. "My father disappeared. I came here looking for him."
"Still going strong, and now missing?" Luke muttered in confusion.
Hearing that, the corner of Katarina's mouth twitched, but she ignored it.
Luke then asked, "Your father disappears, and you come to Demacia. Why?"
"Because while searching for him, I uncovered something involving my family and my loved ones, so I followed the trail here."
Luke nodded in understanding. "So your father's connected to this, and he might've come to Demacia?"
Katarina said nothing, which was as good as an admission.
Luke continued muttering to himself. "You're an assassin, so your dad's the assassin version of a dad, which means he's probably an assassin too. An assassin traveling all the way to Demacia, you want me to believe he's not here to kill somebody? I'm not buying it."
That logic tracked, didn't it?
Once he had sorted it through, Luke looked at Katarina and clicked his tongue. "So doesn't that make you a traitor to your father too?"
Katarina gave a cold laugh. "I came here to kill him in the first place. He has no idea how much trouble he's brought down on the family and our loved ones. I'd be delighted if you found him so I could clean house myself."
To her, proving herself, protecting the family's honor, and safeguarding her mother and sister had become everything.
Anything that threatened those things would be cut down without hesitation.
Even if that person was the assassin father who had taught her everything she knew.
Now he was on the verge of disgracing the family, of dragging her mother and sister into danger. As his blood, her reaction was only natural.
Purge the house.
Otherwise, why would she have run all the way from Noxus only to be humiliated by this prince?
She was furious, but there was nothing she could do.
After hearing that, Luke could not help inhaling sharply. "Now that is some quality family love."
Father wanted daughter dead. Daughter wanted father dead.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
"Your answer passes."
Luke pulled a small pill from his clothes, walked over to Katarina, pried open her mouth, and stuffed it inside.
Her lips were soft, almost like candy.
The pill did not need to be swallowed. It simply dissolved in her mouth.
As an intensely bitter taste spread through her mouth, the pain wracking her body slowly eased until it finally vanished.
The feeling of having lost control of her body disappeared too, and at last she had her body back.
The first thing she did after getting up was swing her arm sharply. A dagger had appeared in her hand at some point, yet it stopped dead in midair.
She looked at the handsome face before her, still wearing that harmless smile, and clenched her teeth. Anger and helplessness mixed in her gaze.
She knew that from the very beginning, she had fallen completely into this prince's trap.
And now, the only way out was death.
But she did not want to die.
"The poison you took just now is called neurotoxin. I'm the only one with the antidote. It flares up once every twenty-four hours, so don't even think about slipping out of my sight to do anything you shouldn't."
Luke gave a rough explanation, then looked at Katarina. "Anything you'd like to say?"
"I want to kill you."
Katarina's voice was cold. "My life for yours, that seems like a good trade."
"You only get one chance, so think carefully. The moment I feel real killing intent from you, you'd better be ready to die."
Luke sat down with complete composure, picked up his tea again, and said casually, "The reason I left you alive is because a living you is worth far more than a dead one."
He had indeed sensed Katarina's killing intent, but it had never been fully solidified. It was more like an assassin's instinct kicking in.
Even the looks that little blonde menace gave him when she got mad could count as killing intent.
Real killing intent was ten times, a hundred times uglier than anything Katarina had shown.
So Luke knew the difference.
The reason he had not killed her was that from beginning to end, she had never shown any true killing intent.
After hearing that, Katarina said coldly, "My life is in your hands, yes. But don't think that means you can force me to do something like betray Noxus."
If pushed too far, she absolutely would dare stake her life on it.
Luke gave her an airy smile. "That's funny coming from the person who was cursing Noxus hardest just a minute ago."
That single sentence made the fire in Katarina surge all over again.
And she had nowhere to vent it.
Luke followed up, "And besides, if you're willing to sell out your father, doesn't that count as betraying Noxus?"
"It doesn't." Katarina answered. "What he's done threatens my family's honor and the lives of my mother and sister. It has nothing to do with Noxus itself. No matter who he's trying to assassinate, if he succeeds, there may not be much honor in it, but if he fails, the family will definitely be dragged down."
"Actually, those people would rather see him fail."
At that, Katarina let out a cold laugh. "The reason I'm telling you this is because I want to use you to draw him out."
Luke actually liked how blunt she was being. He leisurely sipped his tea and smiled. "Relax. In my eyes, you're just a little assassin who can't even hide her killing intent. I'm not expecting you to do much of anything. From now on, you're going to be my maid."
Those two sentences made Katarina's anger double on the spot.
And still, she had nowhere to put it.
It was infuriating.
She hated the feeling of having her life in someone else's hands, so she stared at Luke. "You can't possibly just want me as a maid. What else do you want me to do? Kill someone? Some Noxians, some Demacians, I can take care of either for you."
Luke blinked, then shook his head with a laugh. "You're overthinking it."
He genuinely did just want one more maid.
Katarina was indeed a good assassin, and given how much he had loved playing that mid-lane assassin in the past, plus the contribution she had made today, it was enough for Luke to save her a place.
He truly had not known that another assassin had already quietly slipped into Demacia.
Looks like he needed to write a letter and remind his father.
Though with Xin Zhao at the king's side, the chance of a successful assassination was basically zero, so worrying about it was probably unnecessary.
The information he had gotten today did help Luke a little, though only a little.
Better than nothing.
Looking at Katarina now, bristling like an angry cat, Luke thought for a moment and said, "Let's set the deadline as the day your father is found. When that day comes, I'll detox you completely."
Katarina still had her doubts, but she said nothing more.
What had happened today had hit her hard.
It had not broken her, but she definitely needed time to recover.
She still did not understand how she had suddenly fallen into a situation like this, where even her life depended on someone else's whim.
This prince already knew exactly who she was, yet apparently had no intention of making her do anything.
Katarina could not understand it at all.
What exactly was he after?
She could not shake the feeling that things were not that simple.
If after the afternoon she would have described Luke as deeply hidden, then after less than an hour of real contact, that had become deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply hidden.
He hid things too well.
So well that she was starting to question her own life.
Behind that absurdly handsome, harmless-looking face was an unbelievably dark heart.
Katarina truly regretted it.
She felt like she had completely fallen into a trap, and escaping it would be difficult.
If she had known things would turn out like this, she never would have gotten any funny ideas about using the army to slip into Demacia.
Now look at her.
She had not even made it in yet, and she had already been caught red-handed.
And her life was in someone else's grip.
Thinking back on the whole humiliating process of being toyed with by this bastard just now...
Katarina found herself in a miserable state where part of her wanted to die, and part of her really, really did not.
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