The Lady Of The Red Moon (9)

No one could tell how much time had passed. That strange span, which could have felt like a lifetime or a mere instant, had ended nonetheless.

Kaiston, standing dazed, lowered his gaze to Liris kneeling on the ground and to his dying subordinates. The first thing that caught his eye was that the bodies, once darkened and invaded by poison, had become clean.

“Liris…”

Kaiston muttered weakly. While Saik and the knights, suddenly alert, hurried to check their comrades’ conditions, Kaiston kneeled beside Liris and steadied her shoulder. Startled, he noticed that about half of her hair, which fell limp to the side at his touch, was dyed black. He pressed his cloak’s hood back down over her and gathered her into his arms.

Because the knights present were strictly ordered to keep silent, rumors about Liris were suppressed. The knights who had nearly died recovered cleanly without a single wound, and by that evening they were walking around as if nothing had happened.

Kaiston went about his usual duties, but it was clear he was deeply unsettled. Saik did his best to shield his commander from concerns and handled matters himself unless they were critical.

Liris slept as if dead for a week. Each night Kaiston sat in a chair and watched his slave, who had taken his bed and slept soundly. Though there was no guarantee she would awaken, he was certain she was recovering. Her hair, darkened previously, was slowly returning to its original color.

So when she finally woke that night, opening her amber eyes, he did not startle; he only watched her quietly.

“Master…”

Liris spoke first. She reached out instinctively because his face looked so exhausted as he looked at her.

“Master… you look tired.”

“You…”

Kaiston said in a very low voice.

“You kept me from sleeping, didn’t you?”

He took her slender hand that reached for him. It displeased him with its smallness and softness, as if it would crumble with the slightest pressure.

“I’m sorry, Master.”

He stared at her slightly parted lips and murmured as if in pain.

“Liris. Who on earth are you?”

The sacred power that, even in the Aikadum Empire’s imperial family, is said to be born only to chosen princesses. Even if one was exiled to the Empire’s northernmost backwater, one could not be ignorant of such a thing. In fact, he had known that long before his kingdom came under the Empire’s rule. Such beings were practically a disaster for the Empire’s enemies.

“Master. I was born with sacred power. I shouldn’t have been, but because I was…”

Liris told her master the words she had always prepared to answer if asked.

“So I became a slave. For the crime of being born with a power that must not be coveted.”

Kaiston watched her speak calmly.

“Maybe it could really be… that I’m a princess?”

“Is that so.”

“Yes, Master.”

Her gentle smile showed no other meaning. After a long silence, Kaiston looked down at the hand he held.

“Whatever answer you gave, this time I intended to believe you. After all, you used that power to save my men’s lives.”

Liris stared at him silently. He gently laid her hand on the bed and rose.

“I’ll bring you something to eat, so rest.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Kaiston slowly turned and left the room. His feelings were tangled; an inexplicable anxiety tightened around his throat. A servant approached the motionless man in the corridor and asked if he needed anything. He ordered that Liris be given porridge and left.

Liris, lying on the bed and listening to his footsteps fade away, closed her eyes wearily. Her heart ached at having to deceive him. He would have no choice but to believe her words. There was no way he would think a princess of the Empire would be here as a slave. Yet she knew it would be the subject of constant doubt due to her being the owner of that sacred power.

Such suspicion would be harsh for a man with clear hostility toward the Imperial Court. Though she had spent only two days with him, it was easy to see how pleased he had been by her presence.

Attachment is a powerful thing. Moreover, the Emperor had taken everything from him and allowed him to possess only her. He would continue to do so for now, until she became the most important thing to him. How would he act now? Would he push her away and keep distance, or try to possess her completely?

Her thoughts drifted to the Aikadum Empire’s capital, Darkan, many miles away. She wondered how things on the Isles had changed since her disappearance. The greedy men who sought to grasp her and seize the throne—how frenzied they must have been when she vanished. A bitter smile touched Liris’s lips as she thought of them.

‘Kaiston Crunel. He’s someone I’ve watched for a long time.’

So far her father’s choice had not been wrong. The former crown prince of an enemy nation was, for now, the best alternative.

“Aaah, haang, ah…”

The woman’s cries echoed throughout the wide hall. The man pinned her shoulders to the floor as she rode on his knee, lifting and thrusting his hips; he gripped her waist and moved roughly. The slaps of her raised hips against his pubis sounded loud.

“Hah… hot…! Aaah…!”

Perhaps displeased by her moans, the man grabbed the woman’s underwear from the floor and stuffed it into her mouth.

“Quiet at last.”

Despite his violent movements, the man’s blue eyes were ice-cold. His dark-blue uniform, his member buried in the woman with only his belt loosened, and the woman’s pale nude body formed a stark contrast. The fluids running from their joined parts dripped onto the floor.

The man, gripping the woman’s platinum hair, thrust his member into her forcefully several times, and her wet entrance trembled in spasms as it took him.

“Hrrumph…!”

A dark-red column left her body and splattered a cloudy liquid across her pale buttocks. The man looked down at the woman panting on the floor, casually wiped himself with a towel prepared nearby, and straightened his clothes. He stepped toward her head, bent down, gripped her platinum hair, and spoke in an irritated voice.

“She’s not very similar, is she?”

The woman’s hair, closer to blonde, was far from the dazzling platinum of his memory. He ignored her as she wiped and dressed with the towel he had tossed and walked to the throne at the innermost part of the hall.

“We searched the Isles thoroughly and found the woman who resembles her the most. Please be satisfied to that extent, Your Highness.”

A brown-haired middle-aged man, who had been standing silently to one side, finally spoke.

“Ah, yes. It can’t be helped. Well done, Marquis. If we’re too satisfied, we won’t feel the reward of finding her, will we?”

The man on the throne, Raiden, twisted a smile. After the woman left the hall, a young knight entered and hurried to Raiden’s side.

“Your Highness.”

“You’re finally here, Rick. Have you learned anything?”

Raiden straightened and looked down at him.

“It seems the Crown Princess did not merely leave the palace.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She has left the palace in the status of a slave.”

“What?!”

Raiden sprang up from his seat.

“What insane talk is that?”

“We assumed it was a trip and tracked her, but we couldn’t find any clues. Slaves don’t leave traces, you know.”

There was a reason their vaunted intelligence network had failed. Even if she was dressed in rags, the princess would still be noticeable, but because she was treated as an object, a slave, she could not be found anywhere.

“Damn it. Has Millen been told?”

“He has probably noticed by now.”

Raiden, nervously splashing water on his face, glared with his blue eyes and ordered, “Find out where she was sent by any means necessary. Use every method at your disposal.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“I must see His Majesty.”

The brown-haired middle-aged man, Marquis Kyril, said gravely, “Will His Majesty be willing to speak?”

“In any case, if she is gone, my claim to the succession rises highest. I need to know what he’s thinking.”

The thought of facing the sly Emperor irritated Raiden, but left with no other choice, he hurried out of the hall.

Even the Emperor’s only nephew and second in line to the throne would have to obtain permission to audience the Emperor. But Raiden, unwilling to delay, stormed into the Emperor’s study. He glared fiercely at the knights who tried to block him and ground his teeth.

“Tell him this concerns the Crown Princess and that I demand an audience immediately.”

“Your Highness, sorry, but Sir Millen is presently with him.”

Raiden frowned at the knight’s words. Millen Grandis, son of Grand General Luther and second commander of the imperial knight order, was the candidate for the princess’s husband pushed by the noble faction, and he already had a private audience with the Emperor.

“Still, tell him it’s His Highness.”

The knight’s expression hardened at Raiden’s forceful words.

“Your Highness, no matter who you are…”

But the knight’s protest was cut off by a voice from inside.

“Enough! Bring that one in too!”

At the Emperor’s command, the knight shut his mouth and stepped aside. After throwing the man a glance, Raiden entered the Emperor’s study.