Chapter 4
Lenasia looked down at herself slowly.
The dress, which had been soaked in muddy water and dried again and again until dustings of dirt crumbled from it, had been stripped off. After being carefully washed in water steeped with rose petals and pearl powder procured from somewhere, her body was now clothed in a thin lace gown. It was so sheer that calling it clothing was embarrassing.
‘He really does mean to take me.’
A reddish glow lit the spacious room assigned to the emperor. Lenasia sat on the bed, her heart trembling so hard it had gone numb.
If he found the night unsatisfying, would he kill her tonight?
And if he was satisfied instead, would she, a fake though she was, yet bearing the name of Aitalos’s sixth princess, have to sell her body like a harlot just to keep her life?
Her thoughts had not yet settled when the beaded curtain was swept aside with a soft rustle.
Just before he entered, Lena swallowed dryly.
Godfrid Brelin Hohenstaufen Taringit.
The man’s name, which had begun as merely “Godfrid von Taringit,” had grown long as he strung on the royal names of the Kingdom of Brelin and the Duchy of Staufen like trophies seized through his repeated conquests. By the time he reached the imperial capital, “Aitalos” too would likely be pried from a crown and added as another jewel adorning his name.
Fitting for a man who devoured lands and names like a monster, he was every bit a predator. Languor and sharpness, weight and swiftness, reason and madness. The wildness of a living, breathing thing from an untrodden field coexisted with a dry indifference honed and whetted until even the soul was ground away. The opposing sides of him shifted and revealed themselves like a double-edged sword, making it impossible to look away for even a moment. Around him, the thickened air trickled down viscously, laced with a faint scent of blood.
Infuriatingly, the man was beautiful. Lena only registered this the moment he entered wearing indoor clothes, his armor and sword set aside. Until then, he had been nothing more than a savage killer in her eyes.
“You’re looking at me with those sly, bewitching eyes.”
Lena was flustered. Bewitching? That had not been her intention at all. She had simply been overwhelmed by the emperor’s presence as he came into the room and had looked at him for a moment.
“Ah…”
But there was no time to deny it.
The emperor of Taringia gripped Lena’s chin with one hand to hold her still and murmured low.
“Is it because you want to live? Or do you want my seed in that place between your legs to mend your ruined circumstances?”
Lena’s face flushed red with humiliation. Seeing that blush, like a pure white flower warming to a rosy pink, Godfrid let out a quiet laugh.
“Princess Lenasia.”
The moment his lips spoke her name, Lena’s body went rigid.
He remembered exactly who she was.
He did not think of her as just some ordinary woman sent in to warm his bed. He had not forgotten the proposal he himself had made.
A large, hard finger brushed the nape of her neck, then teased downward over her stiffened body. When Lena flinched, the emperor chuckled.
“Surely the chaste princess is chaste here as well?”
His fingers had already slipped between her legs, and her face flushed so hot it could grow no redder. It was hard to believe that a man who spoke such vulgar words and acted with such lewdness was an emperor. She twisted her body in resistance, but she could not free herself from the arms that had somehow already coiled around her from behind.
“Ah, mm…”
At the unfamiliar sensation in her most private place, Lena flinched. Unwilling to let him see that she had reacted to such an overbearing touch, she pressed her lips into a flat line and held her body rigid. The man saw through her change in demeanor at once, clicked his tongue, and lifted the hem of the robe that barely covered her anyway.
Under the dim light, the woman’s shy body was revealed. Below her slender nape, delicate collarbones drew fine lines. Yet the pair of rounded mounds below were so full and luscious they seemed mismatched with her otherwise frail frame.
A calloused finger traced its way down those contours. She was lean enough that her ribs showed faintly, and her stomach dipped in a deep vertical hollow down the center.
The man slid his hand along the smooth curve toward her hips while taking a small n****e into his mouth.
“Ah…!”
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