MBYS 13

Chapter 13

Red Dress (3)

The pale blue light of dawn seeping through the cracks of the window wandered like a ghost through the warmth-lacking room. Eveline’s shadow, dependent on a single thin chemise, stretched long across the floor.

I can endure this.

Though she repeated the words inwardly, the price of proxying another’s pain rose from the depths as a crushing agony that bruised her stomach.

Yet, more vivid than that horrific torment was the memory of his rock-solid body heat tightly binding every inch of her bare skin, and his unyielding, ferocious grip that refused to let her go.

The emptiness left behind after that warmth vanished weighed heavier upon her than the bone-deep pain.

“Hah…”

Eveline wiped a dry hand over her face and bit down on her trembling, lower lip.

Ignoring the humiliating heat spreading across her cheeks, she concluded that the strange wave clenching at the pit of her stomach was merely undigested residue of magic.

The emotion that had swelled at the sound of his even, painless breathing—such a thing was a luxury that must never be named.

After all, all this body could give him was the swallowing of his pain in his stead.

Gritting her teeth to push down the residual aches shooting through her entire body, Eveline dropped her gaze to the floor.

The shards of silk scattered across the ground were more than enough to serve as a sweet, deceptive bait to lure a foolish hunter.

The corners of her parched lips finally twitched upward.

She willingly licked away the heavy tang of blood and the stinging soreness seeping through her cracked lips.

She could vividly picture the maid’s face—arrogant and brimming with self-importance, entirely unaware that her own neck had been slipped into the crude trap Eveline had laid.

Eveline slowly made her way toward the bed.

“Just a little…”

Knock, knock.

“It is Albert. I am coming in.”

At the sound of the door rapping, Eveline forced her heavy eyelids open.

The moment she straightened her spine, a sharp pain lanced up along her vertebrae, but she bit down hard on her molars to school her expression.

Beneath the plunging neckline of her chemise, the bite marks left by Kailus were exposed, yet Eveline made no effort to hide them.

“Come in.”

Click. The door swung open, and Lily appeared amidst the dazzling flood of light pouring from the corridor.

Her footsteps, carrying a silver tray as she lightly crossed the threshold, were nailed to the floor after barely a single step.

The glass cup rattled shrilly in the maid’s rigidly frozen hands, letting out a faint shriek.

Lily’s gaze swept across the remnants of the dress on the floor, shot upward in sheer shock, and then latched stickily onto the violent marks left on Eveline’s nape.

It was the exact moment Lily’s shallow conviction—that only her voluptuous body could handle the Grand Duke’s night—shattered into dust.

“Ah…”

Unable to even let out a scream as the color drained from her face, the raw ambition twisted by embarrassment and jealousy was clearly caught in Eveline’s eyes through Lily’s trembling fingertips.

“Lily.”

Eveline’s lazily raised fingertips cut through the air. With the slow, arrogant gesture of a predator, she beckoned the maid closer.

Approaching hesitatingly, Eveline snatched the cold glass cup resting upon the silver tray. The bone-chilling water slid down her parched esophagus.

Washing away the taste of blood that paralyzed the root of her tongue, she set the cup down and exhaled a sharp breath through her cracked lips.

“You played quite an amusing prank yesterday.”

She dropped the dry, waterless words into the air. It was spoken without even sparing the maid a glance.

“Ah, th-that is…”

The panic in Lily’s eyes lost its footing, her cowardly shifting gaze slamming straight into Eveline’s field of vision.

The biting cold of the floor stung her bare feet sharply, but she grit her teeth against the trembling spasms of her tearing thighs, finally forcing herself to stand tall and straight.

Moving forward step by step without making even the slightest whisper of her toes brushing the floor, Eveline closed the distance. Unable to endure the suffocating pressure, Lily unconsciously staggered backward in a panic.

The instant she drew close enough for the maid’s shallow, pale breath to wash against her skin, Eveline slowly tilted her head, bringing her lips in close against that stiff, wretched ear to whisper in secret.

“The scent was very sweet.”

The venom-laced whisper burrowed like a snake into Lily’s eardrums. Eveline’s lips curled into a cool, chilling arc.

“Thanks to it, His Highness was aroused enough to rip my dress to shreds.”

Lily’s pupils trembled minutely. As if trying to verify a lie, her gaze darted back and forth between Eveline’s languid expression and the disastrously torn remnants of the dress, her lips twitching uncomfortably.

“That can’t be.”

Lily forced herself to speak as if feigning reassurance, though a distinct thread of doubt clung to the end of her voice.

“His Highness is not a man to lose his reason over such… cheap perfume. Perhaps Your Ladyship mistook His Highness’s anger for something else…”

It was an act of insolence, daring to crawl right up beneath her master’s chin. Eveline swallowed a cold scoff internally.

“Indeed. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have given it a second glance.”

Her fractured voice, laced with an intentional metallic rasp, scraped chillingly across Lily’s eardrums.

“However, when that vulgar scent permeated no one else’s skin but mine, he gladly turned himself into a beast.” “Surely you are mistaken.”

Eveline straightened her back completely. Then, using her fingertip, she slowly traced over the distinct beast-like bite marks left on her collarbone, right where Lily’s gaze had been overtly fixed a moment ago.

Before the undeniable evidence and arrogant assertion thrust right before her eyes, Lily’s inflated defense walls collapsed helplessly.

Lily’s shoulders, stiff with suspicion, slumped for a single instant. She panted, clumsily faking a sigh of relief.

Yet, lurking within the twitching corners of the maid’s mouth was an ugly, seething jealousy—the resentment that the lowly wench she had dared keep beneath her feet had managed to possess the very man she coveted for herself.

“Ah, i-is that so? Th-thankfully! I merely thought my taste might suit His Highness’s preferences—” “Once more.”

The merciless tone sliced through Lily’s shallow act in a single stroke, causing her shoulders to jerk upward in a grotesque hunch.

“If you ever lay your filthy hands on my belongings again.”

Eveline slowly lifted her numb, stiffened fingertips.

She lightly brushed across the front of her collar, which had been cut low on purpose to lure a man.

“What gets torn apart next won’t merely be a piece of a dress, but that wretched body of yours with which you harbor such vain dreams.”

When Eveline’s emotionless, dry gaze met hers, Lily shuddered at the sensation of her windpipe tightening.

“……Hic.”

Lily’s breath broke inward with a bizarre sound.

Unable to even breathe, Lily swallowed dryly, her throat violently convulsing with terror. Refusing to withdraw her gaze even slightly, Eveline let venomous words slip through her teeth.

“You must have witnessed it clearly with your own eyes what fate befell the overstepping servants in this estate.”

Lily’s lips twitched in a spasm.

“So when I extend mercy and cover for you, you had better keep your mouth shut and play dead.”

With the tip of her chin, she indicated the hideous red remnants strewn across the floor.

“Clean it up.”

Thud. Kneeling as if collapsing onto the floor, the maid’s wretched crown plunged below Eveline’s line of sight.

The knuckles of the fingers frantically clawing and gathering up the shredded pieces of the dress were bleached as white as a corpse.

With her head bowed low, her face remained hidden, but she could not conceal the spasms rippling through her stiffening shoulder muscles.

Within that cowering, servile body, beyond mere terror, a twisted rancor and the ugly, dark ambition to somehow win the Grand Duke’s eyes and elevate her own status coiled darkly like a viper.

Eveline looked down with an arrogant, unblinking gaze as the maid clumsily hoisted herself up, clutching the bundle of red fabric.

“T-Then….”

Until the door clicked shut and the hurried footsteps were completely swallowed by the corridor’s silence, Eveline did not look away.

And the exact moment those final footsteps completely dissolved into profound stillness, the taut tension holding her together snapped. Eveline’s body crumpled to the floor.

Fierce cold seeped through the thin chemise straight to her bones, but she lacked even the energy to ward off the encroaching chill, curling her body tightly like a wounded beast.

The chilling dominance that had held the maid’s life in a chokehold scattered like a mirage. It had been nothing more than a desperate, fragile illusion scraped together from the very depths of her soul purely for survival.

Supporting herself on the floor with trembling fingertips, Eveline forced down the bitter, ragged breath rising all the way to her throat.

Yet she could not afford to collapse within this horrific pain forever.

Just as she lifted her forehead from her knees and forced her leaden upper body to rise, a polite knock broke the heavy stillness.

“It is Albert. His Highness requests your presence.”