The Villain’s Aide Has Run Away - Chapter 2.2
The pain was doubled by the cold of winter, but there was one advantage: his feet had frozen so badly that he could no longer feel the sharp thorns or the biting snow beneath them.
Indulging in stray thoughts was a luxury he could not afford. It seemed at last he had reached the mountain’s peak. The number of rough, barren trees dwindled, and the ground grew more rocky.
That made it all the more slippery, but Leslun pressed on with unyielding steps. At last, he had reached the summit he had been striving for.
But what awaited him there was not a vast sky.
A man had arrived before him.
For an instant, moonlight brushed across the man’s figure and then slipped away. His blue eyes were like a deep, bottomless lake, calm and unfathomable. The emotionless gaze made all of Leslun’s desperate flight feel meaningless, so utterly unhurried did he seem.
The unseen pursuer’s shackles had at last caught Leslun’s ankle.
“Leslun, aide-de-camp.”
Leslun saw the man advancing, blocking every path of retreat. Behind him, his back struck against a bare, skeletal tree.
At some point, the distance between them had narrowed until the man was close enough to touch. Through the whirling snow, his face came into view.
His handsome features suited winter all too well. Bearing a coldness that pierced to the bone, the man finally came to stand directly before Leslun.
“As the aide of Count Robert Camilo, you will answer for the countless evils you have committed.”
From the lips of Kailos Delroi, Crown Prince—the hidden mastermind of the original tale, and its final villain—Leslun’s death sentence was pronounced.
***
The dank, reeking prison.
The square chamber contained nothing but the chair Leslun was bound to, and the implements of torture hanging on the wall. This was the place reserved for prisoners guilty of the gravest crimes.
In this place where every vestige of humanity had been stripped away, Leslun was shackled from head to toe.
His foot itched, but he could not scratch it, and the frustration tormented him. He had thought the torture would begin the moment the guards entered. Perhaps even this waiting was meant as part of the torment.
‘So this is the end.’
His desperate struggle to avoid capture by the Crown Prince had ended with him running straight into the place Kailos awaited. Like a moth to flame, he had come to be bound, body and soul. It was a fitting end for the aide of a villain.
The only future left to him was death.
Through a window no larger than two palms, he could see the moon. Split in two by the iron bars, it was a pitiful sight. But in his situation, there was nothing he could change.
Creak. The door opened, carrying with it the scent of iron. The man seemed to bring with him a mist of blood.
“So quiet.”
The low voice carried a chill that matched his winter-like face. This was the man who had silently orchestrated events from the shadows, setting the board in place. The final villain: the Crown Prince.
Leslun had fled after realizing the man he served was a villain, only to be captured by someone worse.
“If you feel wronged, you had best speak now. Once I begin, I will not grant you a chance to plead.”
Leslun could not know what he was hoping to elicit. If the Crown Prince was expecting him to cry injustice and spill secrets in protest, then his answer was already decided.
“I have committed a capital crime.”
Beyond that, I know nothing.
Even if he did, he could never say. This was not something that could end with just his own life.
In the Count’s lands were his family. His childhood friends with whom he had once played, the colleagues he had come to know in the Count’s household—all were hostages.
As the Crown Prince’s gaze lingered on Leslun, a guard brought in a heavy chair and placed it beside him. His movements were careful, as if wary of every detail in the Prince’s presence.
It was, of course, Leslun’s first time meeting the Crown Prince in person. But the novel had described both his appearance and his nature in detail.
The Crown Prince was said to be fickle, and cruel. He was rumored to enjoy toying with human lives on a whim.
Could it be… that he performs the torture himself?
The torchlight cast restless shadows over the Crown Prince’s face.
Each time that cold, impassive gaze touched his body, Leslun felt as though his very life was being shaved away.
Stabbed through the throat by a dagger, severed clean in half beneath a bright moon, ankles sliced away until the unbearable itch drove him mad—
Like the sentences he had once read in the book, every death seemed to rush before his eyes.
He takes pleasure in debasing men and women alike…
At the last remembered line, it felt as though his hair turned white in an instant.
The Crown Prince, who spared no one regardless of gender, secretly indulging his lecherous sex appetites in the dungeons below—
The thought rose unbidden, against his will, and Leslun’s breath caught in his throat.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
