What Your Majesty Desires - Chapter 2.6

“Look up.”

Why, why should I? We could talk just fine without me looking up. I could get dressed just fine too.

“I won’t do anything.”

“Pardon?” What, what do you mean? ‘Anything’ probably didn’t mean what she thought it meant, but she couldn’t understand how such awful words could come from the mouth of a prince.

She mumbled, pursing her lips, and looked into his eyes. Involuntarily, she had obeyed his command to look up, but she couldn’t look away from his eyes again. Lest she appear embarrassed. Because that was absolutely not the case.

After enduring the moment for a little longer, Hernis finished tying the last knot of the corset and looked at her.

“Thank you for your help. From now on, I’ll…”

Her relief at the thought that it was over was short-lived. Marilyn, who was about to bow her upper body to express her gratitude, couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence.

It didn’t feel like the corset she usually wore under her outer garments. It was even more certain when she touched the front of her chest with her hand.

“I think it’s a little loose.”

“Loose?”

Of course, he looked completely unconvinced.

“Could you tighten it just a little more?”

Marilyn bit her lip, feeling embarrassed to be making demands when she was the one receiving help. But the answer that came back was,

“Then I think you won’t be able to breathe.”

It was so kind. In the Dextin Empire, it was considered a virtue to wear a corset so tight that one couldn’t breathe. He questioned that obvious virtue. And even,

“Your waist will break.”

Because he was thinking of her.

“It won’t break.” If her waist broke, she might not have to go to the execution ground tomorrow, and that might be better.

Perhaps her insistence on not changing her request seemed stubborn, Hernis reluctantly moved his hand. Marilyn couldn’t take her eyes off his expressionless face as he untied the knot and slowly rearranged the corset laces.

Why was he being so careful with her?

“Is this okay now?”

His earnest gaze, believing that it was enough after pulling it only as much as an ant’s fingernail, heated her blue eyes.

“More?”

At her wordless response, he sighed briefly. And this time, he really tightened it. Should she have listened to him?

“Haa!”

As soon as he put strength into his fingertips, Marilyn groaned. She felt a pressure she had never felt before, not even when two maids had tightened her waist with all their might.

See, I told you it wouldn’t work, his eyes seemed to say. Marilyn couldn’t bring herself to ask him to loosen the laces again and barely managed to exhale a soft haa.

“This isn’t bad either.”

But her expression seemed to be quite an amusing sight for him. Hernis’s gaze swirled around Marilyn’s red lips, which were parted like an apple. He had been treating her plainly all along, so it was unlikely, but somehow his gaze seemed to slowly descend and linger near her collarbone.

Some of Marilyn’s chest flesh bulged above the underwear line because the corset was too tight, but it was unlikely that he saw her as a woman.

No way. There’s absolutely no way. Even though she knew, she couldn’t help but be bothered by it.

“I think it’s done,” Marilyn said, quickly lifting her skirt to hide her awkwardness.

“Wait.” But he gently grabbed Marilyn’s hand as she was about to go out of the curtain.

“I heard you say earlier that you’re only a princess in name.”

“Ah.” She thought she knew what he was asking.

“And you don’t look like Rodri at all.”

Marilyn looked up at him with a troubled expression, as if he wanted to hear more details. As Hernis said, not a single drop of Emperor Rodri’s blood flowed in Marilyn’s body. Even less so of Empress Deborah’s.

“I was adopted by His Majesty the Emperor when I was young.”

“I know that.” If she wasn’t his biological child, she must have been adopted. What he was asking was, “So, it’s not like he doesn’t have children, so why did Rodri adopt you?”

“That’s…”

She didn’t want to say. Marilyn deliberately pursed her lips tightly, afraid that she might answer without realizing it, and blinked up at Hernis.

When she was young, a gang of robbers broke into the mansion and killed her parents and all the servants at once. If Emperor Rodri, who had been out hunting nearby, hadn’t found her alone in the closet and taken her in, she might have starved to death there alone. So she had to live her whole life grateful to Emperor Rodri. There was no reason to tell a man she had just met, a prince from a neighboring empire who would put her on the execution stand tomorrow, her old story that Rodri himself would remind her of every now and then.

“I don’t know.” The reason she was adopted. Hernis stared intently at her face, which was reluctant to speak. Feeling his gaze hotly, Marilyn gently turned her head to the side.

“May I ask you something?” She didn’t know if it was okay to ask. “Is it true that Princess Thalia took her own life?”

Silence was affirmation. When Hernis, who had confirmed Thalia’s body himself earlier, nodded silently, Marilyn shook her head in disbelief.

“There must be something wrong with the news. There’s no reason for the princess to commit suicide…”

“She must not have wanted to marry me.”

“Ah, uh?”

Was that how it was interpreted? If such a thing happened on the day of the engagement, he might well think so. That she chose death rather than marry him. Marilyn carefully looked up at him, perhaps hurt rather than displeased. Not exactly to comfort him, but,

“The princess wanted to marry you.”

She was just telling the truth. But Hernis chuckled as if he had heard a blatant lie.

“How do you know that?”

“Well…”

“Because she had almost married him in Princess Thalia’s place.”

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