Chapter 40
“…Pardon?”
“It’s… worse than you’d think.”
Along with those incomprehensible words and a farewell asking her to take good care of it, Anna hurriedly left. She looked as though someone were chasing her.
Venya was simply bewildered. She couldn’t understand what that meant at all.
‘What is she telling me not to be surprised by?’
As she headed to the bathroom where Giselle would be, Venya sank into thought.
Whatever Anna’s words referred to, it surely would not be more shocking than what she had heard in Giselle’s room.
Thinking that, Venya entered the bathroom without taking it seriously. And at the sight that entered her eyes, she widened her eyes without realizing it and ended up inhaling sharply.
“What on earth is this…”
Unable to continue speaking, Venya stood there blankly and stared at Giselle, who was soaking in the bathtub.
The woman’s body, as she sat there blankly like someone whose soul had been butchered, was covered all over with marks of being bitten. There were bite marks as though she had been bitten by a beast, and large handprints remained red on her waist.
The worst parts were her neck and the insides of her thighs. Her thighs had not merely been left with marks from how much they had been bitten, but were bruised blue, and her neck, where the rope marks had still been clearly left just before dawn today, was now so full of bite marks that the traces of the rope could not be seen.
While Venya lost her senses at the utterly unexpected sight, Giselle, who suddenly turned her head with an expressionless face, looked at her.
Her parched lips moved wearily. No emotion could be felt from her chillingly blue eyes. Unlike before, her eyes were frighteningly empty.
“…Will you close that for me?”
“…Ah, pardon? Yes!”
Venya’s voice, only belatedly coming back to her senses, rose in surprise at itself for an instant. She quickly locked the bathroom door. Only now did she begin to understand Anna’s incomprehensible words.
‘This was why she told me not to be surprised…’
Giselle’s body right now was in a state beyond ‘worse than expected.’ With her in that state, it was only natural that the maids who cherished Giselle terribly couldn’t bear to touch her.
Steeling herself, Venya rolled up her sleeves and approached Giselle with the rough towel prepared in advance in her hand. However, just before the towel, soaked in bathwater where a lively rose scent rose through the hot steam, swept down Giselle’s dry shoulder, she suddenly stopped.
It was because a cloudy white liquid, clearly belonging to someone, entered her eyes, something she had not noticed when looking from afar.
Venya’s brows naturally furrowed slightly.
‘Did Master really do such a thing to Miss?’
Just how much had she hated him for his fiancée to hang herself from a tree and barely survive? Venya could fully understand the despair Raven must have felt the moment he heard the news.
She could tell just by the expression she had seen when she falsely reported it to him.
The fact that the person one loved had chosen death because of oneself was enough to make a person miserable. It was also natural for him to get angry or become emotionally agitated.
But no matter how true that was, this was going too far.
An indescribably complicated emotion welled up in Venya’s chest.
On one hand, she pitied Raven and felt sorry for him, and on the other hand, she was disappointed in him. Even if she had been threatened, she also couldn’t avoid the guilt that the situation had reached ruin because of her lie.
Venya tried hard to quietly press down and swallow the emotions whirling inside her. Just then, Giselle suddenly spoke to her.
“Thank you, Venya.”
An unexpected compliment dropped before her eyes. Venya’s gaze turned toward Giselle.
Her face, which until just a moment ago had been dry and lifeless, looked terribly unbothered.
Because of that, for an instant, Venya even thought that perhaps she was dreaming. But Giselle’s eyes, leaving behind the blank gaze touching her, calmly closed.
“Thanks to you, I was able to see His Highness after so long. Besides, I stimulated his emotions quite a bit too.”
“……”
“If we keep doing it like this from now on, I’ll be able to reach my goal soon. It’s only my guess, but I don’t think it will take very long. Your guilt won’t last very long either.”
After finishing speaking, Giselle laughed.
A smooth and gentle curve, as though painted, hung around her lips. Venya felt chills rise along her spine.
Right now, Giselle was just as out of her mind as when she had toyed with her own life to win Venya over.
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