May Every Wound Be Fatal - Chapter 13.1
Her head boiled with heat, and her throbbing body had no strength left in it. She was in such pain and exhaustion that Reyna, for a fleeting moment, wished for everything to end.
She felt no fear or terror. So she willingly closed her eyes and waited only for him to twist her neck and choke her.
However long she waited, the awaited act did not come. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the hand gripping the back of her neck seemed to tremble faintly.
Feeling puzzled, Reyna lifted her eyelids. In that moment, his hand slowly withdrew from her nape.
‘Why?’
The question appeared in her mind at once. Why was she still alive?
Drifting in and out of consciousness, flushed with fever, Reyna frowned slightly and asked in a sleepy voice.
“Did you not come here to kill me?”
Her voice barely came out, cracked and swollen.
“When will I die?”
Her question sounded almost like she was urging him. Elizer gave no reply.
Even under normal circumstances, his face was nearly impossible to read, and now a deep shadow covered it. Reyna truly had no way of knowing what he was thinking.
He stood up and turned his back to her.
Even while believing it was a dream, Reyna suddenly panicked. She remembered all at once that she still had something left to do. She could not let him leave like this.
Reyna moved her weak limbs and desperately grabbed the hem of his clothing.
“Your Highness.”
Elizer turned back, startled for once, and held her as she slid down while clutching him.
Reyna grasped his firm arm desperately and began muttering like someone possessed.
“The staff of the Queen’s Palace knew nothing. Please, please spare them. Truly, they knew nothing. I knew nothing. My people really…”
Even with her desperate pleading, he said nothing. So Reyna clung to his clothes and pressed herself flat on the carpet.
He tried to lift her by the wrist, but she resisted with all the strength she had. At her feeble struggle, his fingers twitched in evident confusion.
“It was all my fault.”
Then Reyna began begging like a madwoman.
“That day, I should have pretended not to know you. I am sorry. I was foolish and stupid, Your Highness.”
She knew it was useless to beg now, yet she trembled from head to toe and begged anyway.
“It was just because I liked you so much. I did not plot anything to trouble you…”
These were not meaningless words spoken only to survive.
“I only wanted to become your wife.”
It was the truth. She would not have minded even if she had not become queen. All she had wanted was to stand by his side.
How did it come to this?
Reyna wondered vaguely.
If she could turn back time, she would never tell her father that she wanted him. She would not hand him her handkerchief. No, she would never have stepped foot into the king’s garden that night.
“It was all my foolish, wicked choice.”
Reyna acknowledged that her foolish decisions had made both him and herself miserable. In the end, they both lost everything. Every choice and every moment filled her with regret.
“But you are not the same as me or my father, are you.”
The man who once blushed facing her beneath the sun was gone, yet Reyna recalled that distant moment that felt like a lifetime ago and whispered desperately.
“So please, show mercy.”
Reyna squeezed her eyes shut. For a while between them, only roughened breaths passed back and forth. She could not tell whether they were hers or his.
Then his arm slipped around her waist and lifted her.
Startled as her body rose, Reyna instinctively grabbed his clothes to resist, but she was lifted with laughable ease.
Holding her in his arms, Elizer sat silently on the edge of the bed for a long time. Her strengthless body had long collapsed into his embrace. Reyna buried her face against his chest and let out a faint sob.
“…Your Highness.”
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
