Chapter 140
****
Blood rushed to the former Emperor's eyes. In an instant, the puzzle came together. His head felt like it was steaming.
"The second empress. Did that bitch betray me?"
"Father has been betrayed by everyone. By me, by my mother, by the heavens, and by fate."
There was nothing soft about each word. Even as she plunged the long, thin ice picks into her father’s brain countless times, Raha's expression was not the least bit angry. It was a strange, ashen cloud-like expression. The former emperor felt that this expression was somehow familiar.
It was an expression that Raha had often worn since the death of the Countess of Borbon, but the former emperor could never quite put his finger on it.
“Father must be very comfortable, using everything as a tool."
The former emperor glanced down at the sword he held like a stake. It was a moment.
"But in truth, father must have considered himself a good father. How can you not be arrogant when no one can attack you?"
"....."
Raha slowly walked closer to the former emperor.
He wasn't afraid of her. The wench couldn't attack him anyway. That was true of himself as well, but the younger Karzen had strangely slapped Raha every time. How on earth was this possible, he wondered, but Karzen was overly fond of his twin.
If he could just get rid of the killing intent, he could physically traumatize Raha.
"Do you know? Father must have gone crazy, ever since he was forced to give up to Karen, he's been unable to accept his own incompetence."
Raha asked sweetly, barely above a whisper.
"Am I right, Father?"
The Emperor's jaw tightened with the insult. No one had ever spoken to him like this before. Not a single person in his entire life.
"No matter how hard you try, Raha Delharsa, do you think you can take over the throne!"
Despite his outburst, Raha did not show the slightest sign of agitation. Not only that, she didn't seem to hear him at all. At least, that's how it seemed to him. Raha's blue eyes were glowing with a strange madness.
"You know, I want to cut off your fingers one by one."
"You seem to have forgotten that I am your biological father."
"What does it matter? You tried to throw me into Karzen's bedroom a few times."
"I never did."
"You looked the other way."
"What the hell is this nonsense about......."
The former Emperor gritted his teeth. He felt like he'd fooled so many eyes, and his own, with such an insane subject for so long. His daughter was a disaster, not just broken, but a disaster that destroyed everything around her.
"Father, do you happen to have a mirror?"
The former emperor raised his brow, unable to grasp Raha's meaning. Raha acted as if this was all a child's game. At least, that's how it seemed to the former emperor. The only thing that was clear was the blue eyes of the heir as Raha’s.
Pulling a small hand mirror from her pocket, Raha strode casually toward the former emperor and handed it to him.
"I've never seen my father's original eyes."
".....!"
The former emperor’s bulging eyes met the mirror. They now revealed the color of his eyes, a color he had forgotten.
"It’s still the same, I guess."
As he said this, the color of Raha's eyes flickered. Each time she closed and opened her eyes, there was a mad confusion of gray and blue.
"This is why you....... You're the reason for the insignia....."
The former emperor reflexively checked the ground beneath him, and soon his face turned as pale as a corpse. This was the place where the ancestors slept, dead and gone a thousand years ago. The insignia was a tombstone to honor and press him. The dead expanse beneath the earth was rising.
Slowly, the shafts of light began to fly away.
The eyes of the heir disappeared…..it was as if he was having a nightmare.
For the first time in over a decade, the former emperor was filled with intense fear. At the same time, he felt a burning pain in his chest.
Reflexively, he swung his sword, but it did not reach Raha, for she had two intact legs.
"......How can this be?"
The former emperor coughed up crimson blood.
“The Empress... that damned woman... clearly said that you would never choose death... not even because of the emperor. Never......."
Rahar's ashen eyes slowly clouded over. But there was not the slightest hint of agitation in her voice as she whispered to the fallen emperor on the floor. Just as it had been all his life.
"I chose revenge over love."
“You really are no different from your mother.”
"No different from father, I suppose."
"I should have crushed ......you in the cradle as soon as you were born."
"I'll cut father's body into pieces and hang them on my walls."
"You....... You......."
Kuluk. The words never made it to the end. The blood that the former emperor had vomited up covered his own vision. The corners of his eyes were stained red from the gore that splashed into his pupils. After a moment of silence and stillness, his breathing slowly died down.
It was a very long time.
It was also a very short time.
"Sometimes I beat you."
You lost in the end, father.
She didn't remember if the words came out of her mouth.
It felt like fire and freezing cold at the same time. Horribly exhilarating. A rush of extreme pleasure consumed Raha's brain at once. It was like a great snake coiling around her body.
Raha stood still for a while. Only her two bloodied hands trembled aimlessly.
Just like Raha Delharsa, so long ago, so small and so young.
***
His neck couldn't move very well. Karzen lifted his cold, calloused hand and pressed it gently to his throat. Thin and insidious. A needle-like poison coursing through his veins, gnawing away at him from deep within.
Apparently, the poison his brilliant twin had applied to her coveted skin didn’t just simply paralyze him temporarily. Either that, or Karzen himself had licked her all to excess.
Most of the Emperor's guards were killed.
The only survivors were Duke Blake and a mere seven knights of the Guard. They, too, had broken ribs and bloodied faces.
"Raha delharsa, Raha delharsa."
Did you know that your betrothed, the doll you loved so dearly, was in fact such a wild and fierce creature, and did you fall in love with him without knowing it?
That damn bastard (Shed) showed up and changed the course of the war from the beginning.
Not when he was a lowly, no, not when he came in as a lowly experimental slave, but when he rose through the ranks of the Commandos, trampling over new opponents in the blink of an eye.
The fact that he had once willingly crawled to his knees before him and obediently clasped his hands was mind-boggling.
He trampled on the imperial guards so easily.
Did he love Raha Delharsa so much that it didn't matter? If Karzen could, he’d rip his damned head off.
"Your Majesty."
He had barely managed to escape this far.
The secret gate leading outside was just around the corner.
To get this far, Karzen had lost seventy-three of his guards. With the blood of every knight below the rank of Deputy commander in chief on his hands, he was close to escape.
It was then.
A sharp arrowhead whizzed past Karzen with a sound that cut through the wind.
"Protect His Majesty!"
The loud shout did not reach Karzen's ears.
He lifted the back of his hand and wiped his cheek.
Red blood.
No horror could compel Karzen, not even detention.
Thanks to his dear twin, he was more protected by the eye of the heir than any other Delharsa royalty. Not as much as Raha, the heir to the Eye of the heir, of course, but by his own estimation, he suffered no more than 4% wounds from the same attack.
That was more than enough.
Karzen could reign as an impregnable emperor with impunity.
That was why the blood that now began to flow from his cheeks was so foreign to Karzen Delharsa.
Why was he bleeding?
Why?
Just then, a second arrow flew, piercing Karzen's left leg. It was the royal lord. It was the damned bastard again. It was still him. The royal lord, the slave, the experimental pig, Raha's doll, dropped the heavy crossbow to the ground and strode over, sword in hand.
The arrowhead narrowly missed the vital point and cut mercilessly into Karzen's flesh and muscles. He couldn't believe it. He could not tolerate or understand this fear of death, this unfamiliar feeling of being prey.
"Has the insignia ....... fallen?"
He couldn't believe the words even as he uttered them. The last of the guards lunged at Shed, and Karzen barely ducked out of the way on his bleeding leg.
The insignia had fallen?
Why?
The blood trickles down more and more. Karzen breathed heavily, and at one point he heard graceful footsteps approaching him.
Lost in the hunting grounds, no one fears the herbivorous beast. A woman approached, a woman who was just as beautiful as he was.
"Lady Jamela Winston."
His voice was icy, with the eerie calm of royalty.
"My twin poisoned me....... Even my fiancée stabs me with a poisoned sword."
With each pulsation of his heart, he felt an inorganic, unpleasant sensation coursing through his veins and extending to every part of his body.
He dared to look at the short, thin, sharp object piercing his chest. Karzen remembered seeing a sword exactly like this as a child.
***
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