CH 64

Who is the Fake Bride? (6)

When one of Seroif’s officials tried to point out the woman’s attitude with an expression of disapproval, Kergel raised his hand to stop them. Then, the woman raised the tip of her lips gently and continued in a soft voice.

“How sad it must be to be sick all alone in a foreign country. So, if she sees the people of her country at times like this, I think that it will definitely help the Empress to recover soon…… I hope that Your Majesty will be generous.”

“Alone in another country?”

Kergel smirked and soon spoke in a cold voice. His mood turned cold as if he was just about to freeze everything around him at any moment now. The woman also stiffened her face while beginning to wonder just when she could afford to be relaxed and bold.

Tap, tap.

He hit the armrest with his fingertips. No sound could be heard except for the constant ‘tapping’. No, no one could actually make another sound at all.

Instead of the man who had responded languidly earlier, the Emperor in question was now emanating a daunting sense of pressure along with a cold expression declaring: ‘I’m here’.

“The Rakain delegation seems to be deluding itself.”

After that long spell of silence, Kergel spoke steadily. His golden eye gazed at the woman just as fierce as an animal. The woman involuntarily stepped back and lowered her eyes. Kergel, who was looking at the figure merely a little more, continued to talk slowly.

“Where in this country is your Royal Daughter?”

“……!”

“There’s only the Empress of Seroif. How long are you going to call her the Rakain’s Princess? Her country is no longer Rakain. Right here, Seroif is her country. It’s her own country where she ‘rules and embraces’.”

“Well, with that said, we can’t just abandon our birth country in such a few words anyhow.”

Count McGree interrupted when he heard of it. It was because Erita’s gaze, which kept pressing on him to say something, had pierced his head. However, Kergel just smirked in spite of the Count’s protest before looking straight at him once again and announced:

“But before all that, she completely belongs to me.”

Kergel’s words were firm. There was also a sense of possessiveness in his words. The Count couldn’t speak anything more as he could only smile instead.

And Erita, who was disguised as the brown-haired woman, chewed on her lips and clenched her hands tightly.

‘He was my man! That is my man! That deep possessiveness, this glorious seat of the Empress of the Empire, is all mine! That lowly girl dared to covet and steal what is actually mine!’

Her blue eyes were filled with jealousy and hatred. Apparently oblivious to the fact that she and Lenoff were the ones who literally ordered Roelin to become the ‘monster’s bride’. Erita boldly pretended to be the victim as if she had lost her rightful place to Roelin instead.

‘It will all come together. You even dare to have something like this for that kind of bitch?’

Erita turned around together in retreat after the meeting before she turned around again and took a look at the Emperor.

A slightly disheveled black hair and golden eyes that reminisced of a beast. It made him appear even more wild. He was not ‘barbaric’, but just a ‘wild’ figure, which she had often mocked while dealing with Seroif as a whole.

This was something that had never been seen within the aristocratic men of Rakain. To compare the Emperor with those men who were sumptuously groomed to flaunt their elegance, they almost looked like mere peacocks trying to show off their tail feathers.

Perhaps that was why she even fancied the interior of Seroif’s Palace, which had no common decoration unlike the luxurious Royal Palace of Rakain. Erita looked around the hall and began murmuring to herself.

‘You’ll see. I will definitely turn everything back and return as the rightful owner of this place.’

Erita, who was peering around the hall, looked forward once again and began to move. And she then disappeared amidst the delegation.

***

“Everything in Rakain is just not practical at all. This feather pen alone is going to break in less than a few times and why did they even put jewelry on this pen…”

Silloa was prattling on and when Lucy had taken notice, she hurriedly kept her mouth shut. Then, she bowed towards Roelin.

“I’m sorry, Empress. I didn’t mean to disparage Rakain at all. Excuse me…”

“That’s not wrong. This wasn’t made for practical purposes in the first place.”

“Then, why would you make it otherwise?”

Silloa had forgotten that she just got scolded by Lucy and asked with a quizzical look instead. Roelin looked at the gifts brought by the Rakain’s delegation with a grim look and answered while looking back at Silloa.

“I would say that there’s a big purpose in showing off.”

“To show off?”

“Yes, they want to show that they have something more precious and valuable than others. They don’t hesitate to do it, even if it is such a foolish waste—just to satisfy their pride.”

The money that the common people could buy for years of daily bread were instead used by the nobles of Rakain to spend without an ounce of hesitation onto a feather pen such as this.

Roelin smiled bitterly as she looked at the feather pen that Silloa was holding.

No, she didn’t really need to paraphrase anyone else. She could fully understand their extravagance even if she didn’t have to base it upon the common people.

The one-year budget of the annex where she had lived in Rakain would not even be enough for such a pen.

“But what about more of those gifts?”

The faint scornful smile on Roelin’s lips slowly disappeared. She then looked at the gift boxes before turning her head and opened her mouth to Lucy.

“Those gifts arrived for me, so can I use them as I please?”

“Of course, Empress.”

Lucy answered her question while she dropped a curtsy. Then, Roelin asked Lucy once again.

“So is it okay to dispose of all of them?”

“…What?”