Beguiling the Enemy’s Patriarch - Chapter 82

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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 82
Outside the Banquet Hall lay a Powder Room where Noble Ladies and young maidens adjusted their appearance. I followed Clarisse into the Powder Room, and she laughed sheepishly as she unwound the shawl draped across her shoulders.
“I’m truly fine, Your Highness. When attending grand events like this, I always bring at least two dresses as a matter of course. One never knows what might happen.”
“Still….”
I gazed at her ruined coral-colored dress with a heavy heart. It had suited Clarisse so well, and I felt inexplicably sorry, as though I myself had caused the accident. After all, a maidservant’s mistake was also her mistress’s mistake—so perhaps some of the fault lay with me. Clarisse smiled gently.
“How kind you are. Then I’ll go change into my other dress. Please wait just a moment.”
“Of course. Take your time.”
As Clarisse disappeared beyond the curtain into the Dressing Room with her maidservant, only Leria and I remained in the room. Diego could not accompany us into the women’s waiting area, so he waited outside the door for us.
How many people am I inconveniencing? I pressed my throbbing temples and opened my mouth.
“You should have been more careful, Leria. One thing if you make a mistake with me, but Aiven is a Belgot noblewoman. We’re fortunate she was gracious about it—this was terribly disrespectful. You could have been accused of insulting a noble.”
Leria did not answer. Surely she wasn’t crying? If I saw tears, my resolve would weaken again. After all, she was still just a young girl. Yet because she had made a mistake, I deliberately did not turn around.
“When the Countess comes out, I hope you’ll apologize properly.”
“….”
“I really had planned to stand quietly for just a few hours and leave. But you’ve drawn every eye in the room. You didn’t need to push yourself so hard, Leria.”
Everyone had been holding a glass of wine, so I had casually offered one to Clarisse as well—and that was the root of the problem. Leria, overhearing this beside me, had become so excited that she carried the wine glass on a tray, only to spill it completely.
Even now, recalling it made me dizzy. What if she had cut herself on the broken glass shards? The dizziness seemed to manifest physically throughout my body. It felt as though magic itself were piercing me. Prick, prick. Again and again. Yet there should be no magic flowing in this room. I touched my shoulders wearily and murmured to myself.
“From the moment you appeared so suddenly, I was so startled….”
A question suddenly crossed my mind. I blinked a few times, then slowly voiced the doubt that had just occurred to me.
“But Leria…. How did you get inside the Hall?”
Even Clarisse’s maidservant, the Countess’s attendant, had waited outside the Hall. Only servants personally selected by Auredhian’s aide were permitted to enter the Hall—that much had been made clear. Goosebumps erupted across my limbs in an instant. Only then did I feel with my entire body that the air in the Powder Room had grown as cold as the depths of winter.
“How….”
How could a maidservant in servant’s clothes have slipped past the gatekeeper guarding the entrance to that vast Hall, where all the distinguished guests gathered, where the only entrance besides the corridor beside the Imperial Throne where the Emperor passed was that enormous purple door? How could she have entered without raising anyone’s suspicion and approached me….
I twisted my face and spun around sharply. My youngest maidservant, Leria, with her chestnut hair and girlish innocence, was no longer whimpering. Instead, her mouth stretched into a smile so bright it seemed her lips would tear.
A grotesque smile.
“Leria. You….”
I stumbled backward. From beyond the curtain in the Dressing Room, I could still hear Clarisse and her maidservant rustling as they changed clothes. Even their gentle conversation drifted through.
I clenched my teeth. Behind me was Clarisse. Outside the door was Diego. I could deceive Clarisse perhaps, but to deceive even Diego’s eyes—to bewitch a priest of the Priesthood, one of the continent’s most revered holy figures, so thoroughly that he would suspect nothing—I knew only one person capable of such power. That name escaped like a prayer.
“Soleia….”
“Your Highness.”
Leria grinned, baring her teeth. Crack. From somewhere came a chilling sound of something hard colliding.
Click, click.
From far down the distant Corridor beyond the door, the sharp click of heeled shoes struck the marble floor with crystalline clarity. Then they passed directly before this door. Passed by, heading toward the Hall…. My body convulsed. Now I felt physical pain across my skin. The magic dissolving in the air began to move slowly, and I felt it grinding against my flesh.
My mind rolled forward with agonizing slowness. Behind me was Clarisse. Outside, Diego had already been somehow entranced by Soleia. From beyond the curtain came a gentle voice.
“Almost done, Your Highness. Just a moment longer, please.”
No. If she comes out! I bit my lip. I can’t scream. Then what should I…. I moved my trembling lips and barely whispered.
“Raulus.”
From the absolute being beyond Udeta came no answer.
“Raulus. Raulu-.”
I couldn’t even finish my words. In a single step, Leria appeared before my face, grinning with bared teeth. A stench washed over me. A nauseating, putrid reek that made me wonder why I hadn’t smelled it before. Only then did I dimly realize. She was dead. This child. In Leria’s unfocused brown eyes, my terror-stricken face was reflected.
“Come with me, Your Highness.”
“…!”
With that whisper as her final word, Leria’s small hands closed around my throat. Magic surged through me the instant her grip tightened. A silent scream tore from my lips.
* * *
Soleia Elad walked down the corridor at an unhurried pace, passing several waiting rooms and the powder room. Somewhere in one of those rooms she had passed, the Princess of Lebovni was dying. Soleia paused in thought, then issued a command to her new puppet—the dead maidservant. “Still, don’t damage her too much, Leria. Keep her limbs intact as much as possible. Not a single joint dislocated. Just keep her breathing.”
“Still, don’t damage her too much, Leria. Keep her limbs intact as much as possible. Not a single joint dislocated. Just keep her breathing.”
That princess’s body would surely be useful. Soleia Elad moistened her dry lips and approached the massive purple-red door leading to the Banquet Hall.
[Hurry.]
Along with the sound of shattering bone, her master’s voice echoed in her mind.
[That wretched presence—it’s drawing closer.]
“…Yes.”
So this is how it all unfolds. Soleia Elad sighed quietly to herself. Whether her master’s urgency had infected her, or whether she had been seduced by him—her heart was pounding with anxiety.
There was no more time to waste. If her master commanded it, she had to obey. Today, she had to extract an answer from Auredhian Belgot. Before whatever the Underground King feared most and desperately wished to avoid came descending.
[Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Faster. Quicker. Before he realizes.]
Soleia Elad could not fathom what Hades was terrified of. But regardless, she had to settle this today and satisfy her master. If she failed, it would be she who was consumed.
“Soleia Elad…”
The gatekeeper, who hadn’t even noticed the dead maidservant slip into the hall, stared at her with vacant eyes. Soleia Elad lightly grasped the tall man’s shoulder and shoved him aside. He stumbled helplessly to the side.
Soleia Elad stood before the massive door and composed herself. The anxiety and impatience that had marked her features vanished in an instant, replaced by an easy smile. With a face that betrayed not a hint of her inner urgency, she whispered softly.
“…Open.”
The great purple-red door to the Banquet Hall swung wide.
* * *
“Ha, ugh. Ah.”
Pain I hadn’t felt in three full months. My breath was strangled, every blood vessel in my body expanding to its limit. The agony of my swollen veins tearing through my skin.
Cold hands wrapped around my ankles. The hands of corpses. Skeletal fingers, with barely any flesh remaining, seized my ankles and calves beneath my dress. And pulled downward—into the Underground, into the realm of specters. My body lurched violently, and my vision spun dizzily.
“Ah−.”
But in the next instant, everything stopped with jarring abruptness. The terrible, excruciating pain that had bound my body snapped clean away. Not just the pain—all sensation in my body vanished with it.
[Ah….]
I knew this sensation. The feeling of body and soul separating. I looked down and saw my hands, now pale and translucent.
I was still standing where my body had been. Overlapping with it, yet unmistakably separated from it. My body—now an empty shell—swayed like a puppet with severed strings, but Leria’s grip around my throat kept it from collapsing.
[Ha, ah, what, is….]
Can a soul still shed tears? Or was my vision growing cloudy not from tears, but because my body was dying? The edges of my sight turned white, and I was on the verge of complete darkness when a rough, solid voice struck like a hammer inside my mind.
[Come to your senses.]
Someone stepped onto the floor behind me.

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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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