Chapter 8
A space full of moisture. Was it still the bath?
The fact that no one tended to her even when she collapsed felt like a statement of her position. She bit her lip.
“Ah,”
Her torn lip stung for some reason.
No, she knew the reason…
‘Huu, ah, ah…!’
Sensations that had covered her body seemed to surge back. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders.
Good heavens, ah…
It was a dream. It must have been a dream. That priest clearly said it.
He said in dreams, the things I fear swell and assault me many times over…
So it must have been a dream. It couldn’t have been real.
It couldn’t.
‘Hueu…!’
There’s no way she, uttering such absurd sounds, could have held onto that man’s thing.
“Ugh.”
Thinking of it made her nauseous.
The sensation of those blunt, hard things pushing into her mouth, her palate, down her throat was vivid.
Too vivid, even for a dream.
“Ugh…!”
She dry-heaved again, but nothing came out.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t eaten properly, so there was nothing to bring up.
—Click.
The door opened then.
“…?”
Only then did Delonas’s blurred vision clear slightly, allowing her to look around.
The place she was in was not that space where the event she didn’t even want to recall had happened.
It seemed to be a bathroom still, but it looked more like a private bath, similar to ones she had used in the imperial palace.
Then the owner of this bath must be here.
“…!”
Just as she thought she might see that ugly, rough man’s thing again and tightly closed her eyes—
“You’re awake. The cleaning?”
It was the priest’s voice. A rustling sound of cloth suggested he wasn’t undressed.
“Not yet…”
“Not yet?”
The priest’s voice sharpened.
“I haven’t been awake long.”
“‘Haven’t’?”
The priest’s voice rose.
“Do you not know where you stand now? Do you still think you are the imperial princess of Beakin?”
The priest was clearly mocking her as he spoke.
“You will never again have the occasion to speak down to people. Consider yourself fortunate, by the grace of His Holiness the Pontiff outside the door, to have avoided punishment.”
“…”
Seeing her bite her lip, the priest gave a nasty smile.
“You dislike it? Then go ahead, drop your sentence endings and act as you please. You’ll learn the world has many forms of punishment… Ah, but perhaps you already know?”
As he said this, the priest’s gaze unmistakably bore into her lower abdomen.
“…!”
Whether they had given her leftover clothes or not, she was wearing a robe that didn’t fit and kept slipping off. She tightened it anew.
The priest gestured.
“Then shouldn’t you go greet the one you are to serve?”
The word ‘Yes’ wouldn’t come out. She pressed her lips into a tight line.
Then, she followed his gesture and moved her feet.
Even that was humiliating.
Of course, as an imperial princess, she wasn’t particularly strong in her sense of authority.
But where had she ever received such treatment before?
The situation she still wanted to believe was a dream, those sensations hadn’t even faded from her mind yet.
—……
As the bathroom door opened silently, the study appeared directly before it.
This layout of a study with an attached bathroom was something she hadn’t seen in Beakin, making her flinch.
At most, she thought it would lead to a quiet, deserted corridor or a preparation room like a dressing room, but to appear like this, in such attire, in a place with so many people…!
Just as she was tightly clutching her robe—
“Greet His Holiness the Pontiff.”
The priest’s rough hand pressed down on her head.
Forced to lower her head, she barely raised it, and a man came into her view.
Golden hair so bright it seemed almost white under the light, with eyes beneath it that were slightly lowered, hidden because he was doing something.
Instead, long eyelashes and broad shoulders were the first things she saw.
His body was so solid and wide that the long, broad stole priests usually draped over their shoulders looked narrow.
And below that…
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