Chapter 16 Deception Returned
He stopped every servant he passed and asked for Chloe’s location. She had traveled alone, with no original servants, and none of them knew where she was.
He was able to recover his lost aspirations just as the blue sky was turning a dusky color.
Upon hearing that Chloe had returned from her outing, Callis headed straight for her room.
“What’s going on?”
Chloe asked, her expression pensive. Even her expression was intriguing now.
She waited for the moment when despair would overtake the face of virtue.
“I have something to tell you.”
Callis said, feigning seriousness.
“We need to call it quits.”
“Call it quits?”
“We need to end our relationship.”
A faint color flashed across Chloe’s face.
“That means… Your Highness wants a divorce?”
“Yes.”
Chloe’s face brightened even more as Callis confirmed, and he barely held back a smirk.
“Good, then we can go ahead and start the process…”
“There’s something I need you to do before that.”
“Go ahead.”
He took his time, gauging her reaction.
Among the many emotions, joy and anticipation were the most prominent. The emotions would be immediately subdued by the words that would follow a moment later.
“I would like you to bring me His Majesty’s consent.”
Chloe’s face fell, as Callis had predicted.
But with a quick turn of her head, she found a way out.
“I thought you didn’t need the consent of the governing authority if the couple is of one mind.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Are you saying you want to make things bigger?”
“No, of course not. I mean…”
Still, it would be impossible to escape Callis’s clutches.
He has decided to offer Chloe something she can’t touch, something irresistible. A contract between him and the Emperor.
Something Callis had been designing for a long time, and now, in the wake of the revelations, it was crucial.
“There is a contract between His Majesty and myself. To divorce you would technically be to break the contract, and I fear that would anger the Emperor.”
“That’s something I’ll have to talk to him about later.”
“No, no. No. And what if you should betray me?”
“My leaving this place will have nothing to do with His Majesty, I dare say, so you needn’t worry about anything else…”
The rambling excuse was tiresome to Callis’s eyes. Snorting lightly, he cut her off.
“Come on, Chloe. You’re being so uncharacteristically stubborn, when all you had to do was accept my terms. Why are you going back on the easiest thing in the world?”
“…”
“Oh, are there some unavoidable circumstances?”
Waves rippled in his oceanic eyes. Callis felt an inward thrill of pride as the annoyingly steady eyes fluttered.
He shuffled to his feet. Clumsy, parting legs quickly closed the gap between them.
“For example, that His Majesty does not grant us a divorce.”
He broke to level with his opponent. He bent to whisper in Chloe’s ear.
The chill in his voice sent a shiver down her spine.
“You…”
It seemed to sink in.
Callis pulled his face away in disbelief. He wanted to see her reaction, which was raw.
“What the…”
She tried to continue, but all she could do was stammer. Even her once confident voice became muffled and hard to understand.
Taking advantage of the momentum, Callis took another step forward. When she drew closer, he took another step forward, as if he were plastic.
Finally, with nowhere to go, she touched the wall.
“Chloe!”
He slammed into the wall with great force. The wall rippled in response, pushing her away.
“Did you think it was funny to play with me?”
“…”
“Did you really think the royal family would grant you a divorce? You know better than anyone what divorce means in the kingdom. A princess of the royal family daring to ask… Has she really lost her mind?”
Now that he thinks about it, there were a lot of strange things.
She’d gone in the royal carriage and returned in a different carriage. A carriage that wasn’t shabby, but didn’t look like it belonged to the royal family.
Besides, if the Emperor had approved of the divorce, she wouldn’t have returned to the mansion. She would have been enjoying the royal life in luxury, and then she would have sent word to the duke that she was going to leave.
“I see you’ve been to the temple, too. Why, the Emperor refused, so you’ve been begging the High Priest!”
At the same time, the High Priestess contacted Callis, saying that she had seen Chloe’s name in the guest book. It was the moment when everything came together.
The foolish woman had tried every trick in the book, but it was her fate to lose.
“You should be talking. Chloe, don’t talk. It would make me so happy to see you die like this, just for letting a secret out.”
Callis rubbed the back of her hand across Chloe’s cheek. The unnecessary touch started at her cheek and traveled down to her shoulder.
“Okay. Suppose you were divorced somehow, I wouldn’t want to leave you in disgrace at the palace. Who would take you? You’re not worth the price of admission.”
Clicking his tongue, Callis added, “Who would take you?”
The word brought back memories of Chloe’s life in the shadows.
‘I’m sorry, Princess. I’m just not ready.’
Callis left for his travels, skipping the ceremony. When he returned, he joined Chloe for the belated ceremony.
But that night, when he returned from his bath, he told her no.
He left her blushing with embarrassment and busied himself with smearing her bed with the blood of the beast.
She was deeply embarrassed, but because he was, she didn’t force herself on him.
After all, how could she argue with the man who’d initiated it?
“You see, Chloe, a foolish woman like you is in my clutches, and with nowhere to turn, all you can do is rot here in silence! Better a vagabond, a shell of a duchess, than a vagabond, don’t you think?”
The corners of his mouth slowly lifted. When he sees Chloe’s despair, he smirks.
Suddenly, Chloe realizes everything.
He’d gone to the trouble of deceiving her, of pulling off the whole thing.
It wasn’t to save Chloe’s face, or to prevent him from being a bad guy.
The gleeful devil had been setting his trap for a long time, dreading this day.
***
Dylan approached him as he lay on the bed.
“Your Majesty, a letter.”
If any letter could arrive at this hour, it had to be hers.
Kuhn snatched the letter from her coldly. He barely gave Dylan a moment to leave before he began to read.
His hazel eyes darted back and forth, unsure of what to do. His gaze flicked to the bottom of the letter, then upward again.
“Hey, are you upset about something?”
The subtly rounded handwriting was cute. A woman’s voice, one he hadn’t heard many times, seemed to echo in his ears.
‘Worrying about nothing.’
Still, he was pleased that she seemed to be agitated by him. Unable to suppress a smile, Dylan finally spoke up.
“… Who are you corresponding with?”
Dylan looked as if he’d been defecating on the sidelines. His lord’s bizarre reaction was astonishing.
A smile, His Majesty’s smile!
He didn’t smile so brightly when Dylan told him he’d decapitated the enemy leader.
“There is. Someone who wants to get you off that damned rat.”
“… What asshole?”
“Someone you should be helping.”
He had the good grace to answer twice, just to make sure he was in a good mood.
“And someone who should be helping me.”
“Helping His Majesty?”
Dylan repeated.
My God, there is someone in need under this heaven.
Thinking he must have heard him, he was startled again by his lord’s nod as he followed.
“Then why are you exchanging letters? Is there any help that can be found in writing?”
“To make acquaintances, first of all.”
“And then what?”
“Waiting for my savior to extend a helping hand first.”
Kuhn replied solemnly. Dylan’s questioning grew tiresome.
“… Why doesn’t His Majesty go to help first?”
Dylan’s curiosity, on the other hand, was unquenchable, for he had never seen his lord take an interest in anyone else.
The more he listened to the answer, the more curious he became, and he became an unintentional question mark killer.
“If I am the first to reach out, I will be nothing but gracious to him.”
Kuhn muttered, looking at the letter in his hand.
His self-proclaimed efforts to help Chloe will not be rewarded. At best, a title of grateful man, at worst, a lifesaver.
Satisfied with the status, the Princess wouldn’t even consider what Kuhn might offer later.
“But I want to be more intimate than that.”
But the opposite is true.
If she finds her own answers and realizes that she needs him first, if she realizes that Khun is the only one who can set Chloe free.
She’ll do anything to have him.
“So I’m waiting, waiting for you to help.”
Kuhn is waiting for that moment.
But he’s also terrified.
The moment Chloe comes to him, the moment she reaches out to him, he will forget everything.
His power, his honor, his strength. He’ll forget everything, and he’ll be left with nothing but his instincts and his shell.
And with what’s left of him, he’ll throw it away, give it up, and help her.
You will. Just like Chloe of old.
This man of arrogance will become foolish beyond measure.
