For the heart - Chapter 75
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 75
* * *
Lillien, who returned after the banquet ended, was different from usual.
Clearly her mood had turned ice-cold with anger, and normally she would have been dominated by that rage, smashing everything in the room and taking it out on her maids and attendants, but today she was strangely keeping her mouth tightly shut.
A few hours ago, Stella had quietly slipped into the banquet hall.
When Lillien glanced at her as she sat down beside her, completely dejected, she discovered that the wound on Stella’s cheek had disappeared without a trace.
“What happened?”
“Well, outside just now Prince Casian used his healing—”
“You’re saying Casian healed you?”
“Princess Nina asked him to do it for me…”
“Nina and Casian are together right now?!”
Lillien shot up and quickly looked around the banquet hall.
Just moments ago, the two had been at almost opposite ends of the banquet hall.
They hadn’t even glanced at each other, each seeming busy talking with people around them in their respective spots!
“Where did they go? Where did the two of them go?!”
“Well, I’m not really sure either, he said he needed to rest after using his healing power…”
Lillien didn’t even listen to the end of Stella’s words before rushing out of the banquet hall.
The startled pair followed behind her, but Lillien ran alone as if she knew something, all the way to a place enclosed by wooden fencing, and disappeared inside.
When Ivana and Stella had just entered inside, Lillien was already coming back out.
“Did you… find His Highness?”
Even at Stella’s question, Lillien gave no answer and headed outside.
Like someone who had seen something they shouldn’t have, Lillien’s face had turned pale. And her tightly clenched fists were trembling.
Ivana let out a small sigh.
If Casian had been there, she wouldn’t have come back out, and if she was coming back out despite him being there, it meant that even Lillien couldn’t intrude on whatever situation was happening.
Ivana leaned toward the latter of her guesses, seeing Lillien’s expression that seemed lost in enormous despair for the first time.
‘She saw Princess Nina and Prince Casian together in the garden.’
Thinking that Lillien’s silence was like the calm before a massive storm, cold sweat ran down Ivana’s spine.
She even got chills remembering how Lillien had looked on the day Michelle died, spewing all sorts of chilling words at her.
Nearly getting hit by a glass vase, Stella spoke cautiously, unlike usual.
“Your Highness… shall I help you undress…?”
“Yes.”
Ivana and Stella undid Lillien’s elaborate dress layer by layer.
After undoing even her hair that had been decorated with various ornaments, the two quietly stepped back.
“Girls.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Lillien, now in her nightgown, sat down on the sofa and leaned her head back against the headrest.
The two folded their hands in front of them and quietly waited for her words.
“I think all the men on the continent want me.”
“Of, of course, Your Highness.”
“Would there be any man who would refuse to become the consort of Arsed, which unified the entire continent?”
Ivana looked at Lillien with fearful eyes as she brought up this sudden topic.
Because she had often acted beyond common sense, she took this appearance of the princess as an ominous sign.
Unlike Ivana who couldn’t give a proper answer, Stella immediately gave an answer that suited Lillien’s taste.
“Of course not! Every man would wish and wish again to stand by Your Highness’s side.”
Hearing Stella’s answer, Lillien finally raised her head to look at her maids.
“Would Casian too?”
This time even Stella couldn’t answer immediately.
An eerily cold silence followed.
Lillien, who had been staring intently at the maids, got up from the sofa and approached them.
The closer the princess came, the more Stella’s face turned deathly pale.
“Gack!”
“Your Highness!”
“Why can’t you answer?! Are you thinking that Casian won’t want me this time either?”
Lillien’s eyes flashed as she grabbed Stella’s neck with both hands and shook her violently.
Startled, Ivana tried to pry the princess’s hands away, but Lillien, with madness in her eyes, put all her strength into her grip and wouldn’t let go of Stella’s neck.
“Guhk—!”
“Your Highness! Please calm down!”
“I’m different from Nina, that bitch. I’m different from someone like Nina Arsed who has nothing but a monster-like body that won’t die!”
“Your Highness!”
“Cough—!”
Only when Stella’s breath was choking and her eyes were about to roll back did Lillien finally let go of her neck.
Stella collapsed to the floor with a thud, curling up while clutching her neck.
Ivana approached Stella, who was too terrified to even cough properly, and stroked her back.
The princess’s face as she gritted her teeth and strangled Stella’s neck as if she would really kill her was so eerie and frightening.
For a moment, her long-dead friend Michelle came to mind and tears poured out.
Lillien’s eyes looking down at Ivana and Stella were only cold.
She had wanted to strangle her neck until her breath stopped, but she had suppressed her anger and let go.
Yet instead of comforting her, Ivana’s attitude of checking on Stella first, and meeting Stella’s gaze that looked up at her like she was a merciless perpetrator, made her anger surge even more with indignation.
She wasn’t the one who had done wrong. It was Nina who had seduced Casian from behind, and it was these incompetent maids who had failed to properly stop such a Nina.
Lillien slowly pressed and bit her lips.
“I have to make Casian come to me. Even if it means getting rid of Nina.”
* * *
Nina, lying on her bed, still had flushed cheeks.
The kiss she shared with Casian in front of the fountain was longer and deeper than any kiss they had shared before.
When she came to her senses, she was so surprised to find that the candles lit here and there had burned down by half.
‘I couldn’t think of anything but the kiss…’
Throughout the kiss, his earlobes and nape, the line of her spine that he kept touching. Even his two arms that tightly squeezed her waist so hard it made a sucking sound.
His fiery desire seemed to transfer to her, spreading hotly from head to toe…
Only after coming to her senses did she think she had asked something unnecessary, and that she had fallen for his playful provocation.
But as time passed, Nina came to realize why she had been curious about that.
‘I… like Casian.’
The identity of her emotions, which had been confusing because they were unfamiliar and incomprehensible, was suddenly revealed like that.
It wasn’t clear when it had started.
Whether it was the day he healed her brutally damaged body, the day he rushed at Kushis for her sake, the day they went to the lantern festival together, or… the day he found Anny and freed her from the murder charge.
Nina hugged the rabbit doll and quietly closed her eyes.
It wasn’t because of just one moment, but the big and small things she had shared with him had accumulated in her bit by bit to reach today.
That’s why she had been so curious about what Casian’s feelings were like.
However,
“I won’t tell you. This isn’t enough.”
He didn’t answer her question.
As if he was firmly holding back something, his voice was lower and more sunken than any other day.
Casian, who had deflated his heavily swollen chest, only slowly brushed her saliva-wet lips with his thumb.
Without saying anything, he just stroked her hair and looked at her, and that gaze was both intense and incomprehensibly tender, making her feel strange.
Even so, she didn’t want to avoid that gaze.
She had even thought she wanted it to stay on her longer, for a longer time.
‘Without knowing it was because I liked him, I kept following that gaze.’
Knowing that what had been shaken by his touch was emotion, not sensation, made her eyes feel hot.
Nina pulled up the blanket and curled up her body.
It was a vivid emotion she had never felt even on the battlefield, even during any time when she was a bloody weapon.
‘What should I do now.’
This emotion seemed like it would become a dangerous weakness.
Nina wrapped her chest area with both hands. The heat that touched her cold fingertips beat like life.
His touch, his gaze, his voice still lingered throughout her body.
In the room where moonlight scattered, she felt her heart beating like a living person for the first time.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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