Chapter 41
It was clumsy, but because of that, all the more seductive.
Arzeletta, recalling the sensations of when ruffians had once swept their eyes across her body, presented herself with as much secrecy as she could muster.
She laid everything down, pleading as if placing her existence atop a display stand.
“I… didn’t see anything. At that time, I—I was hiding and praying. To the great and merciful god of Impellias.”
Ragnar’s gaze, which slowly traced down Arzeletta’s eyes, nose, and lips—her face that seemed not of this earth—and the tempting bare skin glimpsed below, was sharp.
Ragnar asked again.
“Praying?”
“Yes, I, um, I was hiding… and praying.”
Arzeletta brought her hands together in front of her.
Through the worn and faded cotton garment, her pale skin faintly showed.
“I was praying. I’m certain it was then.”
“You just suddenly start praying in a place like this? In the middle of doing laundry?”
“Strange men were chasing after me.”
At the unexpected response that followed, Ragnar’s brows drew together.
With an unbelievably cold expression, he looked down at the woman who had submitted before his blade.
“So I—I was so scared that I… prayed…”
“……”
“That the merciful god would protect me, my body… and that, in Your Lordship’s, um, sacred land…”
Her eyes, as she spoke as though confessing a sin, were filled with moisture.
Dressed in tattered rags, with her hair undone and without proper adornment, Arzeletta’s appearance was all the more precariously pure.
It was the face of someone who seemed not to know falsehood.
The eyes, trembling in fear, held the truth. It was not an act.
To Arzeletta, fear was as familiar as breathing.
“Committing r**e in my domain is punishable by death.”
“Y-yes, yes.”
Arzeletta bowed her head with desperate nods.
Her entire body expressed submission.
“Because I didn’t want to be punished, and because I didn’t want to commit a sin in your Lordship’s holy land, that’s why…”
A cold gaze swept over Arzeletta thoroughly—from the tips of her fingers and toes, to the frayed edges of her clothes and the ends of her hair.
Arzeletta offered herself to that gaze without resistance.
The gaze that touched her body was as cold as ice.
If there was anyone who could freeze a person with just their eyes, Arzeletta thought, it would be Lord Ragnar.
Hiding her face behind the black hair that flowed over her shoulders, Arzeletta recalled the pain she had witnessed in Theogrim.
What kind of heart would it take to endure that gaze every night, to withstand brutal lashings for a crime not even committed?
No answer came from Ragnar.
Arzeletta trembled, her small shoulders shaking as if cold.
Anxiety and fear. A primal terror that froze her like a small herbivore before a predator.
“…You’re saying you were washing these rags.”
A stained bundle of laundry dropped in front of Arzeletta with a soft thud.
As she lifted her head from where it had been pressed to the ground, Ragnar was dusting off his clothes, as if shaking off filth.
“It seems what needs washing isn’t only the clothes here.”
Arzeletta’s innocent eyes followed Ragnar’s violet gaze. Soon, her face flushed red with shame.
The lord’s gaze was fixed on her tattered, worn-out garments. What he had deemed rags—she could only guess.
Expressionless, Ragnar raised the hand holding the sword.
“……!”
Arzeletta trembled as the cold blade touched the nape of her neck where she was crouched.
Would he kill her? Would he, considering her a filthy, lewd presence that defiled his domain, just sever her neck like this?
Even if that were the case, there was no way to resist. This man’s word was law, and his judgment was divine.
The blade, precariously resting on her neck, drew a thin, vivid red line across her pale skin. Then, sliding down, the tip of the sword cut the fabric barely hanging off her shoulder.
Her ragged clothing slipped to the ground with a rustle.
Before she could even grab the falling cloth, her body was exposed under the white sunlight.
Using both hands, Arzeletta barely managed to cover her abruptly revealed chest. Her eyes shimmered as she looked up at Ragnar.
His cold violet gaze was fixed not on her front, but on her back—burned black.
“…….”
Like a sinner, Arzeletta revealed her wounds before Ragnar.
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