Chapter 11
Chloe held out a pill about the size of a fingertip.
“How am I supposed to take this?”
“Just chew it and swallow.”
He examined the sleeping pill closely, noting it looked more like a biscuit than powder or a capsule, then popped it into his mouth. Other than the lack of sweetness, it tasted just like chewing a biscuit. There was no sense of it being bitter or harsh.
“…Well?”
His eyes, usually lowered, now stared straight at him. She seemed to be observing even the slightest change in his pupils as he deliberately furrowed his brow, leaning slightly towards him in concentration.
“It doesn’t taste like anything.”
Her yellow eyes blinked, a subtle disappointment evident. While he had suspected she had some skill from watching her rummage through the medicines as soon as the door closed, the woman before him was indeed quite proficient.
If she had been a maid to the empress, she couldn’t be a fallen noble, so where did she acquire such skills?
“Aren’t you feeling sleepy?”
Luke, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbed his stiff neck and nodded lightly.
“It’s not effective at all. Did you use mild ingredients?”
There was hardly any change; he might as well take another painkiller. The lack of the nauseating feeling he got from strong sleeping pills was perhaps its only advantage.
“No. I even received recommendations from a physician and only mixed strong ones…I’m sorry I couldn’t meet your expectations, Your Majesty.”
There was no inflection in her slow, drawn-out tone. Its monotonous cadence stuck to Luke’s ears, almost as if he would miss what she was saying if he didn’t concentrate.
He shook his head, brushing away her dress that concealed her neck from his view.
“Keep talking.”
He hadn’t expected a miraculous sleeping pill that would work wonders. Luke whispered as he touched his ear.
“Anything, just keep talking.”
“What do you want me to say…? Do you need more explanation about the medicine? It’s useless anyway since it’s not effective…”
The words were uncertain, but her face remained expressionless. Pale, thin, devoid of expression, slow in speech and action…
She’s really like a ghost.
Looking at the objectively unappealing woman, Luke clenched his left hand a few times. There was still warmth in his palm.
It felt so warm, as if it would feel good to embrace that corpse-like figure. Honestly, he had let his guard down easily.
“If I hold her in my arms, it feels like I could fall asleep.”
He casually thought, licking his lips. Maybe he should try holding a hot water bottle. Anyway, he wasn’t completely taken by Gideon yet.
He hadn’t reached that point yet.
Just leaving his mark on her neck must have tested Gideon’s patience to its limit. If he said he would hold her in his arms…
“It could be fun.”
He wondered what future would unfold, whether he would die or if Gideon would commit suicide, but Luke suppressed it.
“Your Majesty, may I take my leave now?”
Of course, suppressing meant he would now refrain from directly laying his hands, implying his words…
“No. I told you to keep talking.”
…didn’t fall within the bounds of refraining from seeing or hearing. At least not for Luke Olfenseter.
“If you have nothing to say, then sing. I want to hear it.”
As he lit a painkiller in stick form again, replacing the completely ineffective sleeping pill, the woman’s eyes dimmed faintly, showing incomprehension.
“Your Majesty, that medicine really…”
He pushed the smoke into her lungs while staring at the budding lips. In that moment, a deafening ringing echoed in his head.
*Beeeeep.*
Tap, tap, the woman’s voice faltered.
“Still…?”
Her yellow eyes drew closer.
“-? Thi…is…”
Her hand gripping his cheek pulled the stick from her lips. Caught off guard, he stared as if entranced by her twitching nose and blinking eyes, experiencing auditory hallucinations for the first time in a long while.
“Luke…”
The stick she had been holding in her lifeless lips was caught. As she sucked it in long enough to stretch her cheekbones, she raised her head.
“No problem-, -,…Your-, -?”
She removed her hand from his cheek and turned away.
“Don’t go.”
Was this what he had said? No, more importantly, who was he talking to right now?
“Luke, I’m in pain…”
Amidst the chaos of all senses being haywire, only the woman’s sobbing cry rang clear.
“Don’t do this to me. Luke, it hurts…I’m in pain!”
“Chloe…”
As he wiped his lips on the cheek he thought would be wet, in the moment he felt the lack of moisture on the soft cheek, a strong force pushed his shoulders.
“Your Majesty!”
“…Ah.”
A heavily creased face was caught between the blurry lines of his vision. In that moment, his head felt like it was splitting. But the realization that it wasn’t reality came late.
It felt just like a dream.
As he finally managed to piece together his thoughts amidst the tangled mess, his mind cleared. He recalled what he had to do if it was indeed a dream. Fragmented memories pricked at his mind.
Screams, a burning mansion, Chloe, crying, a prison, filthy bars, blood…
The body in his arms struggled. As he momentarily focused on the strangely vivid sensation compared to previous dreams, the body in his arms suddenly went limp.
“Your Majesty, are you all right?”
“Your revenge is…, Luke, …”
He heard it, but it was an unfamiliar, chilling declaration. He lazily glanced at the figure before him in the hazy sight, fading like smoke…
It can’t be.
He recalled what he must do.
“Your Majesty? My words-!”
Reaching out, he knocked the apparition before him and straddled it, grabbing the wrist pushing him away. He felt warmth in the flesh and the hard bone beneath it. Would it hurt? It probably would.
What he had to do. He twisted the caught wrist forcefully.
“Ah!”
He felt the bones grinding. As he pushed his finger into the open mouth, the wet tongue brushed past his finger. He needed to stop it.
“Don’t bite your tongue.”
He looked around frantically, but his blurred vision hardly functioned as eyes. While blocking her from biting with his fingers, he clumsily tore his shirt with the other hand, stuffing the cloth scraps into her mouth.
The sense of relief at preventing her from ending her life was fleeting. He was once again consumed by the familiar fear.
Unable to use his hands or bite his tongue, but he still had legs. What if she sought out a place to die? Should he break her legs? No, maybe he should crush her shoulders first.
Why do people, so easily, die…
He whispered as he slowly tightened his grip on her shoulders.
“Your life belongs to me.”
You have a duty to bear my pain, Chloe. Look at the sins your father committed. You can’t abandon me. It’s only fair…
Like a stubborn child, he clutched her shoulders tightly. It was a moment of hesitation before exerting more force.
A strong hand grasped his shoulders. Almost simultaneously, a sharp sword tip passed by his nose, and he fell backward.
“Ah!”
With the ominous sound of iron slicing through air, the sword embedded itself into the hard floor near his ear.
And then the opponent’s fist struck his jaw.
* * *
“Kyung, Kyung! Snap out of it! Senior Edant! Senior!”
“Stop it, Kyung!”
Gideon, with his eyes rolling back in their sockets, was punching the emperor. Leartis, the youngest of the imperial guards who had followed Gideon to report palace affairs, tried to stop him despite repeatedly getting pushed away.
Although his efforts to intervene before his respected senior committed a greater sin were futile, it was insufficient to stop Gideon, whose mind had gone astray.
“Even you, try to do something!”
Leartis could see for a moment the woman with snow-white hair lying on the ground momentarily twitching.
From her disheveled hair and clothes to her broken wrist and the cloth stuffed into her mouth.
Anyone could see she had narrowly escaped a dire situation. Leartis refrained from looking closely and turned his head. He could understand his respected senior’s outburst.
“Gideon…?”
As the woman spat out the cloth from her mouth and faintly called Gideon, his body suddenly froze, as if his previous futile attempts to restrain him were lies.
“Why are you… Why…”
Glancing briefly at Edant Viscount, who was staring at the emperor with disbelief, and Leartis, the woman hesitantly opened her mouth and then bowed her head deeply. She looked confused.
More like someone who encountered an incomprehensible puzzle than someone shocked by nearly facing a dire situation.
Leartis momentarily criticized himself for thinking such a thing. Different people would react differently to shock, so he shouldn’t assume the poor woman wasn’t shocked just because she didn’t seem to be.
“Wife…”
Gideon, who had separated from the emperor, lifted the woman who had fallen away from him. Only then did Leartis, who had finally breathed a sigh of relief, hurriedly run to support the emperor. But even before him, Edant Viscount, who approached the emperor first, looked at the emperor with suspicious eyes.
“Lord Viscount, what’s happening-.”
“Your Majesty is asleep.”
“-What?”
Leartis, who knew about the emperor’s insomnia, looked at the emperor lying with his mouth wide open, his lips torn.
It was true.
In the midst of the pounding fists and the loud shouting, the emperor was sleeping as if dead.
Between the barrage of punches and the noisy screams, unbelievably.
