The Murderous Duke's Domestic Affairs - Chapter 79

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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 79
How many days had passed since the Charity Party?
I had lost all meaning in counting the days. I hoped today would pass without incident. I kept my head bowed with that thought. The necklace Abarid Bestes had placed around my neck was so unbearably heavy that I could not lift my head.
I could not move a single finger. Helplessness pressed down upon my entire body. When I first opened my eyes, I had desperately sought some means of escape, but now I could not even muster the will to think of what I should do.
Pathetically, I could not even remove the necklace from around my neck.
Abarid Bestes kept his word. Whether I liked him or despised him, he was the Crown Prince of this Empire. Surely he had state council meetings and banquets to attend, yet he would visit my room not once, but two or three times a day.
Still, his promise that he would not touch me until I had fully recovered seemed sincere. For me, who had lost all will, that alone was a mercy.
Of course, I had not refrained from resistance. On the day Abarid Bestes made his threats, I deliberately cast aside the necklace he had given me.
That evening, Marie—Abarid Bestes’s former nursemaid and my attendant—had her hair cut. In the Empire, women valued long hair, yet hers was shorn as short as a prisoner’s. I could only move my lips for a long while before finally managing an apology.
Refusing meals and medicine were among the few acts of resistance available to me. I had never wanted this, but Abarid Bestes harbored his own form of affection toward me. I had thought he would worry about me, but he was unlike ordinary people.
On the day I pulled the blanket over my head and pretended not to hear his voice, Abarid Bestes merely stared at my back for a long time before leaving. Later, claiming he had not cared for me properly, he inflicted violence upon Marie.
Marie’s lips were split grotesquely, and dark bruises marked her cheeks and eyes. Yet when she looked at me, she smiled as though nothing was wrong. I could not even apologize. All I could do was struggle not to shed tears.
After that, I could not even conceive of resistance. I wore the necklace Abarid Bestes placed around me again like a shackle, ate the meals brought to me, and met with the Doctor. After the Doctor left, Abarid Bestes would come to find me. He insisted on watching me take my medicine with his own eyes.
I could not escape his gaze. The medicine made me terribly drowsy. Abarid Bestes would gaze down at me with satisfaction as I succumbed to sleep. I despised that look with a creeping dread, and I resisted sleep, but I could not command even the encroaching drowsiness by my own will.
I gradually lost my words. I had nothing I wished to say, and no one to speak with. By Abarid Bestes’s “mercy,” I was permitted to gaze out the window several times a day, but beyond that, I had nothing to do. Naturally, my appetite diminished.
Abarid Bestes came in anger, thinking I was again disobeying him, but upon seeing that I could not eat properly, his face twisted and he left. After that, the quality of the meals brought to me improved slightly. But for me, it was nothing particularly significant.
Pitying me as I sat in a daze, Marie began to attend to me with greater care. She brought me coffee, which I had not been able to drink since being confined here, and would gently comb my hair while humming lullabies.
Each time I felt Marie’s kindness, I would offer her a faint smile. Yet my violet eyes would soon turn away toward the window.
Regardless of my mental state, my wounds healed at a rapid pace. I took no joy in it. Abarid Bestes was simply waiting for my body to recover. With each passing day, his golden eyes clung to me with an intensity that would not relent. I could not avoid them even if I wished to.
“The bruises have nearly faded now.”
Abarid Bestes raised his hand and lightly touched the corner of my mouth. The dark bruises from Delania Siaz’s blow had faded to the point where they were barely visible unless one looked closely. I could not even think to avoid his touch; I merely closed and opened my eyes tightly. I suppressed the nausea rising within me. I wanted nothing more than to strike his hand away.
Yet my gaze could not escape Marie, standing at a distance. Her hair, now short like a man’s, and the bruises that remained at the corners of her mouth, around her eyes, and on her cheeks. They had multiplied each time I refused his touch, until now Marie’s face was covered in a patchwork of marks.
“I have given you sufficient time. Surely you have prepared yourself by now.”
His fingertips traced from the corner of my mouth to my chin, then along my neck and pressed firmly against the snowflake-shaped pendant hanging upon my chest. I forced myself to draw a breath that would not come. My hands, clutching the white nightgown, trembled uncontrollably.
Prepared myself. I repeated his words silently. The moment I had hoped would never come had finally arrived.
“Marie.”
Abarid Bestes called his former nursemaid’s name. Behind him, Marie bowed her head. His golden eyes slowly swept from the top of my head to my feet. Within those eyes, a thick desire flickered like flame.
“Prepare everything.”
It was a brief command. Having spoken those words, Abarid Bestes smiled thinly at me. Marie bowed her head again in response to his words, but my face had gone deathly pale.
Aster. I murmured his name silently. Even in this moment, only his name came to mind. If only I had known. After Abarid Bestes left and the door closed, I did not even register the sound.
Abarid Bestes had not specified what the preparation was for, but everyone in that room understood the meaning of his words.
* * *
Abarid Bestes would take me tonight.
Though it was only afternoon, Marie quietly attended to me according to Abarid Bestes’s command. She washed me and applied salve to my wounds one last time with gentle hands, but I wanted to push her away. Yet I had no strength even in my fingertips.
What could I accomplish even if I did push her away? I could only sit numbly, tears streaming down my face. The fact that I lacked the strength to overcome this situation was utterly unbearable.
I had clung to a single childhood memory to find a place to escape, and I married Aster Veil Lilywood. Fortunately, it went as I had hoped. With luck, what Father had taught me proved useful to him.
I was glad for that. I took pride in forging my own path forward with my own strength. And yet, I was proud of myself for standing confidently before people I had once feared.
But now, I could do nothing. This situation was neither something I could have anticipated nor something I could refuse. That fact filled me with despair. I did not want to shed tears like this, yet I wept silently without sound.
More than ever, I desperately longed to see Aster Veil Lilywood. His crooked smile with twisted lips. His calm, deep green eyes fixed steadily upon me. The dry yet firm touch of his hand as he turned through documents. The gentle gaze he had given me as I left for the Charity Party, wishing me well. Even the image of the boy from my childhood, offering me a warm smile—all of it appeared and vanished in my mind.
I had felt only peace at his side. It would have been enough to simply remain there. Why had I attended the Charity Party? Why had I accepted the Empress’s invitation to the Winter Gathering?
I found myself dwelling on how things had spiraled to this point. I had only wanted to be of help to Aster. I had only wished to become a duchess worthy of the Lilywood name. Aster had never asked this of me, yet I had done it anyway. I had ruined everything.
Bearing the Lilywood name, I had become the Crown Prince Abarid Bestes’s mistress. It was something that should never exist, something that could never exist.
Though I had lived in the countryside, I understood well enough what it meant to be a powerful man’s mistress. For the Empire’s nobility, marriage was nothing more than a matter of strategy—for power, wealth, and heirs. Love or pleasure held little importance for them. This was true from the lords of small fiefdoms to the current Emperor, Porto Bestes, and the emperors before him.
A mistress differed from a wife who must lead a house together with her husband. A mistress was someone with whom one could share only pleasure and affection—a light relationship requiring no obligations. Yet a mistress could channel a powerful man’s influence to her own husband. Thus, even if a man’s wife became another’s mistress, he harbored no great resentment, for whether wealth or power, it benefited the mistress’s house greatly.
But I did not wish for this. Lilywood needed neither money nor power. And even if such things were necessary, I could not bear to place them in his hands in this manner.
I had become the wife of a man I had harbored affection for long ago. Though our union was born of necessity, I found joy in those rare moments when Aster showed me the same tender kindness he had displayed in childhood. That was precisely why the thought of becoming Abarid’s mistress was so repugnant. I was certain Aster felt the same way.
If I truly became Abarid’s mistress, I could no longer remain at Aster’s side. I must not remain there. Lilywood had no need for a powerful man’s mistress at Aster’s side—least of all the mistress of Abarid, who regarded him as a thorn in his eye. Abarid would use me to seize and manipulate Aster, all because of the rumors I myself had spread, claiming he loved me desperately.
In the end, nothing I had done had helped him. Though he bore the stigma of being a “murderer,” I had placed a collar around the neck of one who had lived freely—an inescapable collar bearing the name Lauren Lilywood.
I had tried to flee, but I could not escape. When night fell, “Lauren Lilywood,” the name I had once taken pride in, would cease to exist.
I bit my trembling lips hard. Until now, clinging to a thread of hope had made even the attempt impossible, but now the fire was truly at my feet. There was only one choice left to me. Before this night came.
If only I had told Aster I loved him, just once.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and tears spilled forth. In the end, what remained was only that lingering regret. The tears came again, flowing freely. My resolve must not crumble. Beyond my blurred vision, I could see a small silhouette in white, soft pajamas—the one who had dressed me.
My hand gripped the snowflake-shaped pendant hanging at my neck. The short hair that had caught my eye was the hair that had been cut when I had cast aside this pendant.

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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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