Beguiling the Enemy’s Patriarch - Chapter 23

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 23
“I honestly can’t tell if you want to return to Lebovni or not….”
The way he sipped his tea with such unflappable composure irritated me all the more today. He knew nothing of what churned inside me, yet there he sat—effortlessly handsome, perfectly composed, utterly infuriating. I propped my chin on my hand and asked petulantly.
“If I said I didn’t want to go back, would you not send me away?”
“I don’t see why Belgot would appeal to you more than Lebovni. Surely Lebovni has priests of Raulus as well?”
By now, bouncing off such an impenetrable wall hardly fazed me. In fact, I detected something—a glimmer of hope so faint it made my eyes widen involuntarily.
“What if I had a reason?”
“What reason?”
“A reason why Belgot appeals to me more than Lebovni.”
Anticipation and hope bubbled up inside me. If I gave him a legitimate reason, he wouldn’t cast me out, would he? If that were the case, I could conjure a hundred reasons! I fixed him with gleaming eyes.
But Auredhian Belgot—not merely because he ruled an empire, but because he held the position of supreme authority in Laigar through an impenetrable defense—was far from accommodating. His answer came with unmistakable severity.
“I’d advise you against scheming so transparently.”
“Pardon?”
“What good could possibly come from lingering in a place where you have no connections and where your very nature doesn’t align?”
“Tch….”
Dealing with this man required a sturdy cushion beneath one’s backside to soften the inevitable rebound. I pursed my lips again.
“Could you show a crack in that armor sometimes? What kind of person is this impenetrable?”
“It’s already sufficient. I have no intention of revealing any further vulnerabilities.”
Auredhian cut me off decisively, as though the matter admitted no reconsideration. I bristled slightly. Sufficient? He merely pretended to indulge me while refusing to grant anything truly decisive—what was sufficient about that!
Of course, my protests remained internal, my outward composure undisturbed. I held my tongue obediently. No matter how accustomed I’d grown to being rebuffed, carelessly pushing forward risked being sent all the way back to Lebovni—a catastrophe I couldn’t afford.
Besides, I’d only begun scheming in earnest mere days ago. Yes, time remained. With that thought, I suppressed my impatience and, changing the subject, offered him a pretty smile.
“Come to think of it, you’re staying rather long today.”
The thirty minutes Auredhian had allotted me had long since elapsed. I leaned forward on the table and asked as I drew closer.
“It seems you’re not as busy as usual?”
“I’ve extinguished all the immediate fires.”
Auredhian answered slowly. The noticeably relaxed expression on his face indeed suggested liberation from mountains of administrative duties. Without thinking, my own face brightened considerably.
These meetings, occurring once every four days, had never exceeded half an hour—and truthfully, I needed only five minutes in his presence to recover my vitality, so thirty minutes was already generous….
Yet it remained insufficient. I’d been grateful for even this initial allowance, but that initial gratitude had long since vanished. Once every four days, thirty minutes. Hardly enough time to understand the man I meant to seduce. I seized the opportunity and leaned forward slightly, asking.
“Then will you stay with me a bit longer today?”
Auredhian regarded me with an enigmatic gaze. Within those reddish eyes lay something probing, almost searching. He asked quietly.
“Would you like that?”
“Yes!”
I nodded eagerly without hesitation. Then, beaming, I added.
“Hold my hand.”
“….”
“Embrace me!”
Auredhian exhaled softly. It was the same reaction he’d shown each time I made such requests during our previous meetings. Despite my cheerful persistence, he never once moved toward me. Except when I appeared genuinely unwell, Auredhian never initiated physical contact. He maintained a precise distance—never advancing a single step of his own, yet not avoiding my approach either.
In truth, there was no reason he should initiate contact. Proximity alone sufficed to ease my fatigue. For me, such requests had become mere habit, uttered without real expectation. Perhaps if I asked a hundred times, he might grant it once? A vague hope, nothing more.
Yet today felt somehow different.
“Hmm.”
Her languid eyes softened into a gentle curve. Auredhian, resting her head casually against the back of her hand, drew up the corners of her mouth. It was a smile as luminous as the silver strands of hair scattered across her forehead, catching the light. A face that made anyone who beheld it melt into warmth.
I forgot everything I had been thinking about until that moment. And only belatedly, while my mind was stolen away, did I realize that a gentle warmth had passed across my hand resting on the table.
“-!”
In that fleeting contact, a clear and crystalline energy surged through me like waves—from my fingertips to the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Every fine hair on my body stood on end at the sensation that descended upon me unbidden. In other words, Auredhian had just deliberately channeled her divinity into me. The way the sacred priests do it.
I stammered.
“That’s… that’s a f-foul play…”
“Foul play, you say.”
Auredhian replied with amusement in her tone.
“I’ve heard that transferring divinity is a simple matter without needing prolonged or extensive contact. It’s more efficient, too. So it would be better if you didn’t keep provoking me with such words, Princess.”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“You’re already so careless.”
What was she saying? Her final words lay in a realm I found difficult to comprehend.
But Auredhian seemed to have no intention of making me understand. With one last enigmatic smile, she straightened her body from its reclined position. I simply blinked blankly, watching the woman rise from her seat.
The sun, tilted ever so slightly toward the west, cast a slanted backlight across her face. As half her face was swallowed by that glow, her languid impression transformed in an instant. It was the same feeling I had glimpsed that first day I arrived in Belgot, in that room bathed in sunset…
My chest sank without reason. Then it began to pound. Thump, thump, thump. The area around my heart tingled strangely. I shot up from my seat. The tea table trembled once more.
My hand, extended by instinct, grasped the hem of her dark navy jacket. As the difference in our eye levels diminished, her expression became fully visible.
“Your Majesty, what did you just mean by-.”
A face not much different from usual—languid and weary. Confronted with the expression I knew so well, the words that had tumbled out urgently died on my lips. Had I misread it?
Auredhian, who had been gazing down at me intently, added a remark as if remembering something.
“And just to be safe, I’m telling you—tomorrow, don’t set foot outside Bellirook Palace.”
“Pardon?”
That statement jolted me back to awareness. The man, who had returned to his usual demeanor as if it were all a lie, wore an excessively composed expression. But what followed was far from ordinary to me.
“Tomorrow, Soleia Elad will likely be entering the palace.”
* * *
Tomorrow—Soleia Elad was coming to the Imperial Palace.
The enigmatic expression that had flickered across Auredhian Belgot’s face vanished entirely at those words. After all, it was probably just another display of the great king’s iron wall. I gnawed at my nails anxiously, pacing the room in circles.
My mind filled instantly with the image of a beautiful woman with reddish-brown hair and a sensual figure. Soleia. Soleia… Marienne, noticing that I couldn’t sit still for a moment, called out to me in a puzzled voice.
“Princess?”
“Mm…?”
“Is something troubling you?”
Marienne approached and gently took my hand. My nails, which I had unconsciously gnawed at, were ragged and torn. I made a pitiful face and threw my arms around Marienne.
“Ugh. Mari. What am I going to do about this?”
A woman who would exert profound influence not only on this generation but on the generations to come ten, twenty years hence was arriving. Soleia Elad. The legitimate daughter of the Elad Marquis Family and the second-in-command of the Belgot Imperial Magic Tower.
The pages of memory flipped rapidly, and I recalled my first day arriving in Belgot. The moment she saw me standing beside Auredhian, she had cast a curse of dark magic on me. And what did she say to me then? That I was possessed by a vengeful spirit.
The cold, damp, and eerie energy that had bound me then surged back to life. I clenched my pale fingers. Thinking about it again, it was truly unjust. I had done nothing, yet she had struck first.
It was only because Auredhian understood that I had an hypersensitive reaction to magical power that I was spared. Otherwise, I might have believed that woman’s words outright. In any case, she was a capable mage who enjoyed his trust.
A woman who possessed the most formidable and sinister magical power of this age, now concealing her identity while working in the imperial Magic Tower. What did she want? Did she truly love Auredhian Belgot? Was her attempt to thrust me into hell the moment she saw me merely jealousy?
She had been by his side for a long time. Why would a woman with such power concern herself with a small princess taken as a hostage from a minor kingdom?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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