The Contract Marriage for Attilenta's Revenge - Chapter 67

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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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Atilenta’s Contractual Marriage for Revenge: Chapter 67
As I felt his hand gliding slowly down my back, I tapped his shoulder as if to stop him.
“Don’t worry about it.”
At some point, all the curtains around us had been drawn. When my eyes went wide, Henrik simply lifted me lightly and held me close within his embrace.
He behaved as though he were practiced in physical affection, but this was the first time any of this had happened.
There were other people just beyond these curtains. And yet he held me so tightly here that I had nowhere to escape.
“Ah…….”
A sigh spilled out at this strange sensation.
It felt almost like a secret tryst.
Without a word, he buried his lips against my nape. Deep breaths, matching the low timbre of his voice, spread slowly across my skin. As if savoring it.
Henrik always played the composed, collected, sound, and magnanimous husband.
But in moments like this, he became desperate—like a man who hadn’t drunk a single drop of water in days.
For me.
Something hot welled up inside me.
“Atilenta.”
How much longer would he wait for me?
Unlike that first night when I had been the one to ask, which had tormented me, now it was clear he wanted genuine connection between us. The fact that they didn’t even share a kiss—so common between other lovers—spoke volumes.
Yes, I was genuinely curious.
What deeper meaning he attached to physical affection with me.
Where such patience came from—the restraint to suppress this roiling desire.
“Still worried? Hmm?”
When he asked softly, I shook my head as though nothing were wrong.
“No, not at all…….”
Lying to him left a bitter taste in my mouth. Even as I surrendered my whole body to him in the embrace.
I let slip a hint of the curiosity I couldn’t suppress.
“……I always thought you must have obtained everything you desired. It was merely my own vague assumption.”
“It wasn’t always so. You understand that now, don’t you?”
Had he always shown such restraint whenever this moment came?
I pressed down hard on the broad shoulders I had instinctively pushed against moments before.
He held me so tightly I could barely breathe, and for a long while he didn’t let me go.
Yet even as I spent this time with Henrik, I couldn’t simply excise from my mind the suspicion of what true intentions Resitcha and his lover harbored.
The same was true of Henrik’s own inner heart. Though we now shared this intimate relationship, it had originally been nothing but a pretense.

* * *
The sunset bathed the room entirely. Resitcha remained seated by the window where the outside was clearly visible.
“You called for me, brother.”
Henrik surveyed his half-brother’s study with an expressionless gaze—a space he hadn’t visited in quite some time.
The room was neat, unblemished like the upright character of its master, save for the chessboard placed directly before Resitcha.
“Nothing urgent, Henrik. Just sit for a moment.”
Henrik settled in with ease, as he had on some distant day long ago—leisurely playing chess with his half-brother.
Just as in those childhood days, the chess pieces lay scattered across the board in disarray. Without any rules governing them.
“I wanted to ask if the gift I sent pleased you.”
Resitcha smiled first between the two of them. Henrik answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“You always send the finest things. The opera was delightful, and Rain enjoyed it as well.”
“I’m glad to hear it. As far as I know, she was your first love, wasn’t she? Henrik, you’re treating her with care?”
“As much as you do Kirchia.”
The brothers seemed to check warmly on each other’s lovers. On the surface, at least.
“I’m curious, since you still haven’t achieved consummation.”
Henrik let a faint smile show as he revealed the curiosity he could no longer contain, and Resitcha answered with his constant smile.
Truthfully, Henrik was exceedingly curious. How exactly Resitcha treated the woman he held in his arms.
“Since the woman in question keeps her registry at the Temple, one must be all the more cautious.”
Naturally, that reason had nothing to do with fraternal affection. It was merely an attempt to discern the other’s true intentions.
Resitcha, who had given much the same answer countless times before, proved no different this time. At his insistence on securing that important ‘position’ first, Henrik found his faint smile deepening.
“I never expected someone like that would come into your life.”
“I too must secure my position.”
“A most admirable sentiment.”
Beneath his platinum hair that flowed with grace, his eyes gleamed with kindness—as if reflecting Resitcha’s true nature.
“Building a household is important, after all.”
Yet Henrik knew well that Resitcha’s true nature—the very thing others perpetually praised as noble—was something he understood with perfect clarity.
The reason the brothers were meeting today, so rarely, to unburden their hearts in this auspicious season.
It was precisely when the Youngest Sibling—Resitcha’s own brother, born to a concubine of House Livium—had died.
During this very period when Henrik’s birthday was being celebrated with such grandeur.
“Henrik. Do you remember what that day was like?”
Resitcha, who had been staring out the window in silence, circled around the subject obliquely, but Henrik understood exactly what he wanted to say.
How dare you speak of building a family, when you can’t even properly remember your dead brother.
In that moment, Henrik recalled words he had heard on the Battlefield.
‘You’re not even human.’
He couldn’t remember the captive’s face clearly—where they’d dragged him from—but those words remained vivid.
‘You merely wear a thick mask, playing the grand prince.’
How the man had ranted that Henrik couldn’t live like ordinary people, that his nature made it impossible.
‘If anyone knew your true self, they would all say the same. Henrik.’
He had screamed that Henrik could never know peace—could never cherish loved ones or build a family.
In truth, from the moment he was taken captive, the man had done nothing but murmur prayers to a god from his ruined homeland.
Until his eyes suddenly rolled back and he poured curses down upon Henrik, and Henrik cut out his own tongue with his own hands.
Of course, Henrik had never intended to deny that curse. Pushed into political strife, sent to the Battlefield, the moment he first stained his hands with blood, he understood.
That he could never return to the life he had known before.
Yet it wasn’t as if he had been tender and affectionate before, like Barsha was now.
Rather, when the Youngest Sibling died, Barsha had grieved as if she’d lost her own limbs. She was the first to go before the King and beg him to find the culprit.
Not Resitcha.
It seemed Resitcha wanted to condemn Henrik anew in this very moment.
But Henrik knew the truth.
That Resitcha wouldn’t even remember the name of that overzealous knight who had dared wound Atilenta.
“Brother. I remember the Youngest Sibling as well. His name, the Swordsmanship instructor he used to follow, the hunts he went on with Barsha.”
Resitcha carelessly knocked over a chess piece with his hand.
“He liked chess. And hunting, as you say.”
He still wore a smile, and his voice was as measured as always. But for Henrik, this pretense was hardly surprising.
“But not as much as I do. Not as much as anyone in this castle.”
Without affirming or denying, Henrik recalled a scene from the past.
This much at least, he remembered with absolute certainty.
At the Youngest Sibling’s funeral. And at the funeral of the concubine of House Livium.
What expression Resitcha had worn.
Henrik was certain it was a memory he would never forget, no matter how much time passed.
Because when his mother, the principal wife, had been confined like an exile to the remote corners of this vast castle, he had felt something similar.

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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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