Chapter 99
Only around then did Cynthia finally come to her senses and hurriedly check whether Segleninde had done anything to her body.
She worried that perhaps she wouldn’t be able to walk, but her legs and feet were perfectly fine. Every part of her body—arms, hands, and everywhere else—was intact, without a single part missing or injured.
“That’s right. You wondered at first where all this meat came from, didn’t you? There’s a livestock pen in the backyard. I built it to provide meals for entertaining human guests. I’m planning to expand the operation even more from now on.”
“I, I see.”
“Now, open your mouth. Ah.”
Sure enough, a piece of meat cut so small that even a child wouldn’t get such a tiny serving was placed into Cynthia’s mouth.
Starting with the tender meat, which left no lingering aftertaste as she swallowed, soup, salad, bread, fruit, and so on, were all steadily fed to Cynthia through utensils held in Segleninde’s hand.
Cynthia, with a stiff face, ate a few bites before finally asking,
“…Why did you let me live— haahp.”
“If you eat quietly and behave, I’ll get around to telling you. You look dissatisfied. Should I cut the meat bigger?”
“…Yeah.”
Cynthia gave up trying to get answers right away and decided to just obediently eat whatever he gave her.
At any rate, she was glad to be alive, and she was glad that Segleninde took her opinion and cut the meat bigger. Although, since she chewed it for so long, he soon started cutting it small again.
But even as Cynthia nearly emptied her plate, Segleninde didn’t offer much in the way of conversation.
He made her drink water from time to time, and at the end, he thoroughly wiped her mouth with a napkin. Then, all of a sudden, he threw her a question.
“I’m asking purely out of curiosity, but why did you lie about being my fiancée?”
“…Before that, I want to ask something too. Was your amnesia real?”
Perhaps because her stomach was now full, Cynthia regained some strength. Overcoming her fear, she cautiously raised her doubts, and Segleninde, who had set her properly on the bed, replied calmly.
“To answer first, it was real. I still don’t remember why I lost my memory. But at least when I first met you, I truly didn’t know what I was or what kind of being I was.”
The servants left the room, pushing a cart stacked with empty dishes. The maids stood by quietly, and Segleninde, without even glancing at them as if they were merely furniture in the room, spoke as though he and Cynthia were the only two in this space.
“Here’s my guess, if you don’t want to explain, just pick the right answer from these. First, you knew who I was from the start. Second, you lied because you were scared of me and wanted to survive. Third, you thought that, in the end, I would kill you.”
“…If I say it’s all three, will you be angry?”
Now he had regained his memory, and Cynthia had been exposed as a fake fiancée.
And since he was still a duke, sooner or later he’d learn all about House Obel. That she was raised as merchandise to be sold off from a family collapsing under the weight of the lord’s gambling debts, and yet dared to lie to him just to save her own life. When she thought about it, she couldn’t understand why she was still alive.
Feeling anxious, Cynthia began to suspect the reason Segleninde had fed her such a full meal. Wasn’t it to fatten her up before eating her?
Hunched over with a face as pale as a condemned prisoner awaiting execution, Cynthia fiddled with her hands, while Segleninde, watching her, slowly opened his mouth.
“…I only remembered I was the master of this manor quite late. Even after that, it was strange. There was nothing at all that came to mind about you, and that made me suspicious… I never imagined you’d deceived me.”
He smiled. His face was flawlessly beautiful, but to Cynthia, he only looked like a demon beckoning her from the gates of hell.
Was she supposed to just prepare to die now? Would it be better to die cleanly rather than becoming a honey jar of b****t milk and c*m for him to suck dry until her life ended, just like in her dreams? She didn’t want to be treated like that by the man she’d once secretly cared for.
Or perhaps, something even more dreadful might await her.
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