Chapter 40
5. Trial
The bedroom was draped in the shadows of night. Curtains, fluttering even without a breeze, drew the pure white moonlight into the dark room. The bright light encroaching upon the bed woke Elena.
‘I was definitely in the middle of changing my clothes…….’
Her last memory was closing her eyes for a moment due to dizziness. Who had laid her down here? She looked around, but there was no sign of anyone, and the room was so dark it was difficult to make out her surroundings.
The only sense that remained sharp was her sense of smell.
‘The smell of blood.’
As she pushed herself up to identify the source of the metallic scent, the curtains billowed violently along with the sound of the wind rattling the window. In the space where the darkness receded, a human silhouette was revealed.
A body as beautiful as a sculpture. A handsome jawline and dark blond hair.
“Your Grace?”
As she expected, the person emerging from the darkness was Duke Conrad. However, he was a bit different. Unlike the calm hair she had seen during the day, his locks were disheveled, and his neat shirt was hanging open, revealing a solid chest.
“Yes. Elena.”
His low-register voice was still beautiful, but it carried a terrible sense of wrongness. ‘Elena.’ Was he the kind of man to call her name so familiarly?
“I’ve come to be saved by you.”
The moment she faced his approaching face, her suspicion became a certainty. Elena gasped as she saw vivid blood-red eyes instead of the green ones that usually shone like a refreshing forest. He laughed, sweeping his long bangs back as if to flaunt his crimson eyes.
<At night, the Devil takes over my body.>
The person before her was not Duke Conrad. It was the Devil that had devoured him.
“Are you disappointed that it’s not the real Duke?”
“No. Not at all.”
Elena hurriedly shook her head and tried to prostrate herself on the bed. No, she tried to, but with a short gesture of his hand, her jaw was jerked upward as if caught on a hook. The forced movement made her neck ache as if it might snap, but she couldn’t even blink.
“Keep your head up. Showing me your pretty face will entertain me much more than an exchange of greetings meant for humans.”
He was a man who used to smile sorrowfully yet beautifully. His gaze toward her had been purely professional, and he hadn’t even raised his voice when he was resentful. But what about the man before her now?
“The Saintess who came to devour the Devil is quite submissive. I like it.”
His laugh was cruel and beautiful. The gaze observing her face as she endured the pain was sinister, and his voice, mocking her by mentioning her alias as a Saintess, held clear amusement.
Although his hands had never touched her before, if it were Duke Conrad, at the very least…….
“Nghh!”
He wouldn’t have grabbed her jaw by force like this, pulling her so roughly that her neck vertebrae felt twisted.
Unable to cope with the sudden violence, Elena bit her tongue hard. As a burst of blood spread red, the Devil brushed his finger across her lips.
The man’s fingers were covered in sand-like blisters. They were the marks of holding an embroidery hoop to honor the dead. They were evidence of a kind and noble sacrifice.
The fact that her blood was staining them made her feel as if she were committing a sin. When she turned her head in resistance, the Devil let go immediately. Her body fell like a wooden doll with its strings cut.
Then, extreme agony poured over her. Crash.
“……!”
First, her legs were severed, and her arms were crushed under a boulder. A bright blue chill surged through her upper body, shattering it like powder, while fire caught her lower body, melting the flesh. Yet, there was no sound.
Depriving her of even the right to scream, the Devil admired the way she writhed on the bed, soiled with blood and flesh.
“Elena of Wellington.”
“Ah, ugh……!”
“Elena of Hermann, Swabia, and Esslingen. You’ve met quite a few.”
While Elena was dying, he plundered her memories with his power. The pain of a childhood spent starving from the moment of birth. The sense of liberation she felt the moment she threw herself to the Devil under the pretext of taking revenge on her biological father.
And today, the things she thought of while meeting Dieter Conrad…….
“You’re just as greedy as your biological father.”
Greed.
“Crawling in here for your own benefit, then lusting after the human the Devil has already devoured.”
“Uugh, aaah, ack.”
Elena, her inner thoughts exposed, flailed her severed limbs.
“If you wanted him that badly, you should have just spread your legs for him.”
“……Guh, hngh, hugh!”
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