Queen of Revenge - Chapter 48

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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 48
A heavy silence descended.
Iolet’s parted lips slowly closed. As her gaze slipped downward, Benedix leaned forward to match her eye level—a movement tinged with desperation.
Iolet let out a soft, bitter laugh.
It wasn’t that Benedix’s proposal was absurd. I was laughing at myself for actually weighing it.
Benedix Valer was an attractive man. But now his background seized my attention before the man himself did.
House Valer.
Elovis’s preeminent nobility in both name and reality.
Regardless of the Duke’s age, they held the chairmanship of the Royal Council, and since the kingdom’s founding, they had never once been displaced from the council of elders—a great house of unshakeable power.
Securing him would certainly tip the scales in my favor.
‘If I absorb all three neutral elders among the Royal Council’s eight seats, then add House Valer, that’s four seats. If I bring Perein completely under my control, that’s five—a majority. I could dominate the Royal Council, but….’
Setting aside whether I could persuade the neutral elders to my side, Catherine’s influence extended far beyond the Royal Council.
A woman who entered politics at merely fourteen and spent ten years cementing her position.
She had already secured not only royal administration and finances, but also the symbolic position of the King’s regent.
While I had offered counsel in certain areas, more than eighty percent of her success stemmed from Catherine’s own formidable political instinct.
Even with House Valer at my back now, I would fall short against Catherine. I could only hope to avoid a devastating backlash.
In the end, I could envision nothing but mutual ruin.
Reason and emotion aligned.
“No.”
I spoke with icy finality.
“I despise you, Benedix Valer.”
“…Despise me?”
“You asked me to run away with you before. Now I understand. That was your final test of me.”
“….”
“You wanted to confirm one last time before abandoning me—whether I truly had any hope left. But the choice you made that night wasn’t mine, Benedix. It was yours.”
I pushed Benedix away. It was the first time I had treated him with such contempt.
Benedix had no defense against the edge in my voice. His stunned expression laid bare his wounded heart.
Yet Benedix endured.
“Then, what if we went somewhere other than Elovis? Wherever you wish to go, I’m content. As long as I’m with you.”
“You? Surely not.”
“Why are you so certain?”
Why?
I recalled the Benedix I had faced beyond the prison bars the night before my execution.
“How shameless. Your duplicity makes my blood boil, Princess Iolet. Or should I say, the Countess of Castlane.”
The resentment that had accumulated in my chest erupted all at once.
“I know you as well as you know me!”
I lost my composure entirely.
“You could never live as an ordinary villager in the countryside. You need to stand at the center of power—just like your father, whom you despise so much!”
“What did you just say?”
Benedix stared at me in shock, clearly never expecting me to broach that subject.
Benedix does not anger easily. Beneath his sociable smile and expressionless mask lies everything else—opaque, hidden away.
It was a habit born from the seeds of compulsion planted by his father.
Everything about Benedix had been forcibly remade by the Previous Duke.
Iolet knew well that Benedix despised this fact with deep-rooted hatred, yet could never escape his father’s shadow.
Some terrors are never forgotten, never fade. Just as the Executioner’s axe haunted Iolet, so too did his father haunt Benedix.
“In the end, you’re no different from him. A hypocrite who bows to the logic of power.”
How easy it was to lacerate someone with words.
Iolet felt exhilaration and guilt simultaneously as she watched his expression twist horribly.
Benedix stood as though strangled, barely managing to murmur.
“I never thought you’d say such things. Not you, of all people.”
His voice had grown hoarse in that brief span.
“I have never once imagined myself not loving you.”
“….”
“Nor have I imagined you not loving me. You are me, after all…. If I cannot even escape to you, then what am I….”
Iolet barely managed to tear her gaze from Benedix.
Severing ties with someone who had shared most of life’s trajectory was difficult.
Benedix existed in nearly every element that composed her—temperament, speech, habits, values, beliefs, and character.
Apart from his betrayal, excising Benedix was as agonizing as tearing out an organ.
Because of Benedix, Iolet could now never trust anyone again.
She could never love any man with genuine heart, never exchange pure kisses and sincere affection with anyone.
Benedix had irrevocably damaged a part of Iolet’s heart.
He could never heal that shattered place.
Benedix murmured hollowly.
“Then we’re truly finished.”
“….”
“I haven’t even done half of what I wanted to do with you, and you end it like this.”
As though swallowing a blade no thicker than a finger, he closed his eyes in anguish.
From the ends of his lowered hair, melted droplets fell—tap, tap.
Benedix clenched his teeth and breathed heavily for a long while, until his eyes, cheeks, and jawline were smeared with water marks.
“—I understand.”
Benedix wiped his jaw with the back of his hand. Each time he wiped away tears, the twisted expression faded with them.
Soon, the light in his eyes had transformed completely from before.
“Then I have no need to look out for you anymore either.”
Iolet instinctively sensed that he too had released the thread connecting him to her.
In that moment of instinctive tension, Benedix seized her shoulders as though to shatter them.
“You’ve died before, haven’t you?”
Goosebumps erupted across her entire body.
“What… nonsense are you talking about?”
Iolet found herself stammering without realizing it.
One does not ask ordinary people if they’ve died before. It was a question that could not exist without the underlying premise that death could be survived.
“What killed you? When?”
The aggressive questions struck like arrows piercing through my mind.
Benedix didn’t even give me a chance to respond.
“Can you keep coming back to life even after death? Without limit? Forever?”
“I have nothing more to say. Now leave—”
“No, you’re not truly immortal. Or at least there must be some side effect. That’s why you went directly to the Unregistered Territory yourself—to confirm it, wasn’t it?”
With each word he spoke, Benedix closed in on the truth with terrifying precision.
The other half of my soul—the one who once wiped away my tears in childhood—had vanished. In his place stood an adversary as dangerous as Catherine.
I had to escape this moment. Before my secret was exposed!
“Does anyone who makes a contract with those creatures become immortal like you? Is that it?”
“Stop spouting nonsense and speak clearly. I can’t understand a word of what you’re saying!”
Benedix forcibly turned me back around as I tried to leave. Madness flickered in his pupils.
“So if someone knew that method, they could become like you too, right? Tell me. How exactly did your mother extend human lifespans, Iolet? Through human sacrifice? Or… were they even human to begin with?”
“…!”
“Does the King know this? The Levia Royal Family?”
For the first time, I felt genuine fear facing him.
When Mother gave me the necklace, Benedix wasn’t there.
During the time Mother and I were locked away together in the East Tower, even Benedix couldn’t visit me for a long while.
But what if, by some chance—
What if Benedix discovered the secret bound to Mother’s necklace?
What if he began investigating Mother?
That would become the sharpest blade aimed at my throat.
If that blade fell into Catherine’s hands, no one could predict what would happen.
But one thing was certain: a storm of blood would sweep across not just Elovis, but Levia—Mother’s homeland.
Benedix easily detected my turmoil. He knew all too well the expression and movements I made when afraid of something.
“Kiss me, Iolet.”
With victory in his grasp, Benedix commanded coldly.
“Then whatever I learn, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

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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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