The Contract Marriage for Attilenta's Revenge - Chapter 47

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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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A Contract Marriage for Atilenta’s Revenge — Episode 47
She would have finished speaking, if only he hadn’t sighed.
Henrik swept his hair back roughly. The smooth brow now exposed was creased without mercy.
“I thought you’d decide after talking with me a little more.”
“It is… an urgent matter, so I wanted to confirm it quickly and report to Your Highness.”
Certain that I’d offended his temper, I offered my explanation while keeping my spine straight. I believed that if I explained properly, he would understand.
“Urgent, you say. Yes, I see. Ah…….”
Henrik turned my words over in his mind, then exhaled deeply, his tone cutting sharp as a blade.
“Did you care for that man so much—the one who abandoned you?”
I genuinely didn’t understand, so I tilted my head naturally. For all the chill in his voice, his face was neither cold nor detached, so he didn’t seem frightening or fearful to me at all.
I was simply curious. What reason could he possibly have for such aggressive words?
I understood that he was angry because his tool wouldn’t obey him, but he had never once spoken in such raw, unguarded terms before.
Henrik was a man who would draw his sword himself if necessary—not one to needle his opponent with poisoned words.
In any case, he was my master, so it fell to me to soothe his anger.
“Your Highness, forgive me, but as I promised, I was only trying to extract the necessary information. I had no doubt that this was my duty.”
Henrik rose and walked toward me. In just two strides, he reached me where I stood by the door, his expression dark and heavy.
“You should be at my side, shouldn’t you? Why were you standing next to him?”
It felt as though he were leveling a reproach born of some twisted misunderstanding. Like a petulant boy.
It was an expression that didn’t suit him at all.
“Why do you always seem so eager to go to his side at every gathering? Hmm?”
Bewildered beyond measure, my voice wavered of its own accord.
“Pardon? Your Highness, I…….”
Searching for where to begin clearing up this misunderstanding, my thoughts tangled and my words trailed away.
“I was, as I always do, trying to fulfill what I promised Your Highness…….”
Henrik took another step closer, pressing near to me, and let out a long breath.
“Yes, I suppose you would.”
Unfamiliar, warm breath spilled into me. Along with a voice low and forlorn as an autumn wind.
“You don’t understand my heart at all. Not in the slightest.”
For a moment, dizziness washed over me, and my mind went blank.
“What… what are you saying…….”
My heart? Was Henrik actually expressing jealousy?
In an instant, the blood drained from my entire body. I was too pale to manage any expression at all.
“…… You make that face too.”
In his gaze looking down at me, there was no trace of cruelty. Clearly, only I was reflected in those violet eyes.
Yet in that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care how I appeared to him.
I was simply too confused.
Had I misjudged Henrik all this time? The man I knew was composed no matter what arose, faithful to the contract…….
“Ah……. This is quite a sight.”
Henrik sighed as though mocking himself, running his innocent hair back through his fingers more than once.
“Your Highness, please—please tell me I’ve made a terrible mistake in my understanding.”
I spoke whatever came to mind.
“Please don’t… don’t be this way. Your Highness. Please don’t be this way…….”
I waved my hands desperately in supplication. Here I was, begging like a prisoner facing execution.
Yet I couldn’t help but speak.
“In the first place, what I asked was that between us, the contract—”
“I remember that request clearly, Atilenta.”
Henrik—had I been useful to him, nothing more?
“You asked me to take you away.”
Henrik smoothed his creased brow. As if trying to ease the furrow from his expression.
“Surely you don’t mean to tell me you don’t understand what such a request means from a man.”
“I… I did make such a request, I did ask it, yes…….”
I couldn’t even judge clearly what I was saying.
“But Your Highness, I… I don’t suit your taste, do I…….”
He had already pointed out that remark was a misunderstanding, and in confessing it now, I revealed that I had never taken his words to heart.
“I need to correct that delusion of yours again, the same way I did before. I never affirmed any such thing.”
Henrik declared again that it was my misunderstanding, yet he didn’t seem to be dismissing me for being wrong.
“Furthermore… yes, you saw it clearly enough—at first, perhaps I was that way. I simply didn’t know you.”
Rather than accuse, he was admitting his own failure to recognize me—as though lowering himself in the process.
“Ah…….”
I couldn’t stop my body from trembling faintly. All I could do was cover my mouth and barely hold back the breath that quickened along with the dizziness flooding through me.
“But I knew from the start that you were not ordinary. At least that much was plain. Who else would come to me first and ask me to take them away in the middle of the night?”
That night came back to me suddenly—the way he had spoken so calmly, saying he couldn’t turn away a visitor in the dead of night.
What was this, exactly?
Henrik was in no position to want for women. He possessed an attractive, refined appearance and bearing, and on top of that, genuine power.
A man with all of that could have his pick of any woman he desired, whenever he wished.
“Your Highness has an excellent reputation, and you receive praise in so many respects—your appearance and otherwise. So surely, there’s no need to choose me when there are other women—”
“Atilenta.”
Henrik pressed his hand to his forehead as though to contain something.
Through the spaces between his long, thick fingers, his amethyst eyes remained fixed entirely on me.
Suddenly I felt bound tight by that snare of a gaze.
“I don’t see what other women have to do with anything. I’m hanging onto you right now.”
“What? Hanging… hanging onto me? Your Highness. How could…?”
Struck by one shock after another, I drew breath badly and coughed—harsh, stuttering coughs.
“Atilenta, you took time alone with your ex-husband while you have a current husband.”
With my hand pressed to my chest, which rose and fell roughly, I could only draw breath in shallow, strained gasps.
“That man didn’t even dare spout nonsense at you during the reception in Bwendofska before. What is he trying to get away with this time?”
Henrik’s tone was cold as winter frost. I only pressed my pale cheeks down, down again.
I had no room to act as though nothing were amiss, no space for any other gesture. At least I wanted my face to lose some of its color.
“You’re saying I shouldn’t do that from now on, yes?”
I knew it was a foolish question even as I asked it, but I couldn’t help myself.
“If you insist on going to that man again and speaking with him, what could I possibly do?”
Henrik stood close, maintaining still that rigid expression, yet he did not lay a single fingertip on me.
I trembled, yet I had no intention of stopping my words.
“Your Highness… you possess power beyond any comparison to mine, and so many people follow you. So when I came to you that day… I thought you were simply being generous and letting it pass.”
“Ha…”
Henrik let out a short breath.
“Do you think that if you deliberately compare me and you now and invoke my authority, it will somehow improve my mood?”
“That’s… Your Highness…”
I recognized my mistake immediately, but an apology did not come easily.
Had Henrik truly wielded his power against me as he pleased?
No. He never had.
My words caught and wouldn’t come loose. I only bit at my lips uselessly.
It was difficult even to meet him head-on when it was so plain that he was concentrating solely on me.
With our gazes averted like that, an unfamiliar silence stretched out.
“…If you really insist on saying such things, then go and do it.”
I barely lifted my eyes to look at him. The face that had been so firmly set seemed to have relaxed somewhat.
Yet I could not be certain it was truly all right. It felt like a decision made in error.
“And after you do, will you speak with me?”
I nodded urgently.
“Your Highness, of course.”
“Go with Krakup. I’ll wait.”

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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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