Chapter 149
“….”
“Did it take too long for me to tell you?”
Blake’s face contorted at the sight of her drooping the corners of her eyes apologetically.
Angelina reached out to him.
“As you said, I kept wearing it and waited. I’m good, right?”
She whispered, caressing his face. Smiling broadly just like when he first tied this for her.
“I listened well, and this really protected me.”
At her softly delivered words, Blake could no longer hold back. He abruptly stood up and pulled her waist toward him.
He held her tightly.
Angelina felt like she could crumble in his embrace. Though it was just a hug, she felt an overwhelming sense of fullness.
Holding his back firmly, she whispered.
“Thank you for protecting me, Blake.”
Angelina conveyed the words she had always wanted to say when she met him again, filled with her sincere feelings.
Her ticklish voice penetrated his cochlea, and he felt something snap in his mind.
He roughly lifted her chin and devoured her lips.
The lips that whispered such intensely sweet words were just as sweet when taken into his mouth, as if they would melt.
“Ha.”
A breath burst from between her briefly parted lips. The short, startled breath, the hot breath touching her lips and chin, even the strength pressing into his shoulders with her surprised hands.
Everything about her drove him crazy.
“I like it… when you pat my head.”
“I like it. When you pat my head.”
Perhaps he had known all along.
Because it didn’t make sense that the girl cherished by Marquis Flaubert would be abandoned in the Dark Forest like that. Because her hair was different and her appearance didn’t match his memories.
Maybe he had been deliberately ignoring the instinct he had felt from the beginning for various reasons.
Despite priding himself on his good intuition, he had foolishly failed to recognize the most important person right in front of him.
“Angelina…”
A voice that seemed to tear came out through Blake’s throat. Without waiting for her response, he consumed her lips again.
He traced the soft lips that would burst with the slightest bite with the tip of his tongue, then delved inside. She too invaded his interior, eager and ready.
Their soft lips moistened each other’s, and their breaths intertwined.
Like slowly dissolving candy in his mouth, he pulled the plump flesh that had entered him further into his mouth and rolled it on his tongue.
In the gap that briefly opened while gasping for air.
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
Angelina’s feverish voice scattered.
Both in recalling memories.
And in delivering this greeting.
Though it was too late…
“I missed you, Blake.”
“Angelina.”
The two had certainly seen each other today, at the theater, and before that. But this was a different kind of longing.
Like a decade-long thirst finally meeting rain, though they had been seeing each other, the dizzy emotion of having missed each other was a feeling only the two of them could understand.
“Thank you.”
Thank you for being alive.
I… missed you too.
Filled with emotion, he overlapped his lips with hers again.
Tok-dok, tok-dok.
The previously unlit bushes lit up, spreading a milky way around the lake.
As the two gazed at and desired only each other in the midst of the starlight, as if detached from the world, the night of the ball was deepening.
***
“Kuhak!”
A handful of blood burst from Ante’s mouth. He barely managed to steady himself as his body staggered while clutching his heart.
It was because the magic he had just tried to use had backfired, and the attack had returned to him intact.
A desolate basement.
Red magic circles filled the walls and floor. And the crimson energy flowing from them bound Ante.
“Did you really think we wouldn’t know?”
In front of him stood a woman with her arms crossed, looking down at him. Until just a few dozen minutes ago, she had been the center of attention in the ballroom.
“Since when…!”
The woman in the glamorous dress smiled unpleasantly, slightly covering her lips at Ante’s bloodshot gaze.
“Aiden has been under my care since birth. His moods have always been easy to read.”
She meant that she had been able to figure out their plans because she noticed the change in Aiden’s behavior.
“That stupid bastard… Kugh!”
Ante spat out another basin of blood.
“My, my… It seems our Tower Master forgot that magic cannot be used carelessly in the palace.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
He spoke through gritted teeth and spat out a strong curse.
“Does His Majesty the Emperor know what you’re doing?”
“Oh my, are you trying to speak?”
The Empress covered her mouth and laughed elegantly.
“Can you?”
“Ugh…!”
Ante’s consciousness blurred once again from the pain squeezing his heart.
‘How on earth did this get here…!’
This magic that felt like it was tearing his muscles was the ‘healing’ spell he had experienced at that ‘temple’ 18 years ago.
Pain so severe that one could go completely insane if not careful.
He couldn’t understand. This power should have disappeared from this world, destroyed along with that temple.
That was why he had followed the Empress without suspicion when she suggested changing locations when he went to meet her.
But suddenly, the reappeared spell magic pressed down on him, and in a moment of carelessness, he had been brought here.
“Aren’t you curious? What would the Tower Master’s cute rabbit recall if she saw this power?”
A threat that if he spoke in front of the Emperor, she would reveal all secrets to Angelina.
“Nonsense…!”
As Ante was about to burst out in anger, the Empress moved her hand toward him. She skillfully used the power flowing from the spell magic circle to attack him.
“Kugh.”
He bit down hard to avoid screaming. Sweat poured like a waterfall, but he swallowed the pain.
However, as if mocking his efforts, the Empress covered her lips and laughed.
“Have you grown? Back then, you screamed so loudly the temple shook, and my ears were quite numb.”
“Ugh… So this is it? The reason you’ve been quietly living while pleasing the Order all this time?”
“Hoho.”
The Empress laughed meaningfully.
It was enough of an answer.
The reason she could manipulate the Order and the reason the Order went along with her cleanup.
Because she knew how to revive this power that had been used in that temple, and the Order could help with this.
A symbiotic relationship based on purely selfish reasons.
“Phew… Because of you all gobbling up the sacred objects, I had to take quite a long detour.”
Speaking as if she was tired from too long a walk, she smiled and tapped the mirror she was holding.
“Now what are you…”
Ante’s breath caught as he frowned.
It was because of what was reflected in the mirror – the ballroom.
-Kyaaaak!
Monsters were running wild.
Ante’s face hardened.
People were frantically running around, and among them, Blake and Aiden were controlling the crowd and evacuating them.
“It’s the scene I was expecting, so why aren’t you smiling?”
The Empress spoke in a tickling voice. Her mockery was palpable.
It was true that the monsters rampaging in the hall were part of their plan.
However, the monsters currently running wild were not the ones they had prepared.
It meant something had gone wrong.
“…Release this.”
“Oh my?”
“Release this before I kill you!”
The man who wouldn’t even let out a scream under torture now shouted loudly. He twisted his body violently.
The chains dug into his skin, drawing blood, and the more he tried to use magic, the deeper the Empress’s spell magic dug into his heart.
His face was as fierce as the god of death.
But the Empress smiled with satisfaction.
“Now you look more like your true self.”
Reddened eyes, blood-soaked clothes.
“Release it!!”
“Hohoho.”
The Empress burst into loud laughter at Ante’s pale, bloodless complexion.
In their mirror, fallen Catherine and Angelina supporting her were reflected.
***
“That crazy Empress…”
Angelina frowned as she held the unconscious Catherine in her arms, watching the rampaging monsters.
‘Can she really move exactly according to predictions like this?’
Despite her expression, her mind was calm.
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