What Your Majesty Desires - Chapter 3.6

Marilyn, thoroughly frightened by their appearance, held her breath and followed the soldiers.

“Here it is.”

The soldiers stopped only when they reached the deepest part of the prison.

There was a door instead of bars, and the soldiers quickly unlocked the padlock on the handle. Soon, the door creaked open with an eerie sound. “Enter.” Marilyn couldn’t refuse the rather kind gesture of the soldiers.

“Y-Your Majesty?” Even if Empress Deborah was inside.

As soon as Marilyn saw the Empress sitting blankly on the solitary confinement bed, she hurriedly looked back at the door. It seemed like she had entered the wrong room.

“Then.”

Curtis took her reaction as a farewell.

Curtis nodded sharply and stepped back without hesitation, and the soldiers closed the door with a thud as if they had been waiting for it. And. “Huh!” She was left alone with Empress Deborah. Marilyn turned her head with difficulty to look at Deborah.

“It’s you again?” It was her again.

“The country must be ruined. To be locked in the same room as someone like you.”

“Your Majesty…”

“I don’t even know if Thalia is buried in the ground and met Hades, or if she was abandoned in the fields.

And you, who are worse than a bug, survived and are standing in front of me…, ha!”

One corner of Deborah’s mouth twisted coldly as she let out a hollow laugh.

“You’re still doing well, as always.”

Even though it was dark all around, it was too clear to see the anger rising in Deborah’s eyes.

“That’s why you’re a witch.” Deborah’s muttering sounded too loud.

“I should have put her on a pyre and burned her alive!”

It was a moment she had already expected the moment she was locked in a room with Deborah. Marilyn flinched and stepped back as Deborah suddenly stood up. But she couldn’t step back faster than Deborah’s angry stride.

Deborah, who was already right in front of her, raised her hand in an instant.

“You cunning thing!” Slap!

With the sound of a slap, Marilyn’s body fell helplessly onto the stone floor.

There was no time to feel the pain.

“It’s all your fault. Everything has been twisted since you came into this castle. You should have died. You should have died instead of Thalia!” Deborah’s sharp scream struck Marilyn’s body painfully as she lay on the floor.

“Thalia could have lived if you had just agreed to marry that prince without saying a word. How scared must that young girl have been to do it herself, sob sob… Aaaah! Aaaah!” Deborah’s anger at losing her child was close to a scream.

“Rodri begged me so much, saying she was an orphan with nowhere to go, so I took her in as a princess, but this bug doesn’t even know the grace of being raised.”

“…”

“Tell me. You came in as a princess and only turned my stomach, what else did you do? What did you do? Huh!”

“I’m sorry.” Marilyn sobbed and raised her head. Heat finally rose in her cheeks, which were red from being hit by Deborah.

She had never once defied the Empress’s words of her own will. Marilyn had been removed from the position of substitute for the princess’s marriage because the Empress herself had withdrawn the order, fearing that she would not be able to handle the aftermath if it was discovered later, not because Marilyn had refused first. But she couldn’t say a word to defend herself. She could only hope that the Empress’s anger would subside over time. Marilyn shrank her trembling body even smaller, trying to avoid Deborah’s hand, which might fly at her again at any moment. “I wish you would just die!” She wanted to.

“Bite your tongue and die right now!”

How nice would it be if she could just disappear like this.

“You have a long life like a cockroach, ever since you came into the imperial family…!”

“What’s all this commotion?” It was then.

The solitary confinement door creaked open again, and Curtis strode inside.

It was Marilyn, not Deborah, who was embarrassed by Curtis’s unexpected appearance. Marilyn, who had been lying pitifully on the floor, hesitated and propped herself up on her elbows.

She didn’t want Curtis, who was seeing for the first time today that she, who had been treated quite well as a princess until she came here, was actually living like this, being treated like this by the Empress.

Marilyn turned her head to hide the tears that were welling up.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Curtis immediately questioned Deborah.

“The trial is tomorrow. The interrogation is tomorrow too.”

He meant, why are you, who are not a judge, stepping in and inflicting pain on Marilyn? Despite Curtis’s efforts to face the facts very calmly, Deborah immediately scoffed. “How dare a lowly soldier give orders to someone?

Don’t you know who I am? Because of your greedy prince, I’m in this state for a while now, but you and I, from the blood flowing in our bodies…!”

“Blood is all red.”

“Aaaah!”

It was a moment. Curtis slapped Deborah’s cheek without hesitation, and Deborah’s body flew to the stone wall over there with a shrill scream. “D-Did you just hit me?” Me? The Empress?

Deborah, who couldn’t come to her senses for a while, belatedly raised her head and rubbed the cheek she had just been hit by Curtis with a dumbfounded expression.

The fishy taste on the tip of her tongue was because blood had burst from her lips.

“B-Blood, huh…!”

Deborah’s eyes widened in shock as she looked down at the red blood on the back of her hand.

“If you are such a noble human being, speak nobly. As you can see, the blood flowing in your body and mine is all red, so it’s not easy to distinguish by color.”

Curtis calmly said what he had to say to Deborah, who still couldn’t believe the reality. “Gler cuts off the tongues of those who speak harshly, and cuts off the wrists of those who have bad habits. You seem to be in danger of both right now.”

“What are you going to do to me? I’m the Empress of Dextin…”

“So what.” “So, what?”

“You seem to be very mistaken, but the higher-ups don’t really care whether you live or die.”

“Wh-What?”

“I don’t care if you’re an Empress or a maid. If you keep bothering me, I’ll just kill you and say you bit your tongue and committed suicide last night.”

“That, a mere soldier…”

How dare he put the Empress and a maid on the same level. Deborah gritted her teeth, but couldn’t say anything more. If she angered Curtis any more, everything he said might become reality. When Deborah became quiet, Curtis immediately changed his expression and looked at Marilyn.

“Are you alright?”

His expression was so kind that it was hard to believe that he was the same person who had mercilessly slapped the Empress’s cheek just now.

“Get up.”

Curtis bent one knee and held out the sword hilt to Marilyn, just like he had done on the stairs earlier.

Marilyn was dumbfounded that Curtis, who had seemed to regard the Empress’s life as less than that of a fly until just now, was personally bending down and offering the sword hilt as a support.

Was it because of Hernis’s separate order? Still, Hernis wasn’t watching now, so even if he treated Marilyn carelessly, no one would know. She couldn’t just accept Curtis’s extreme courtesy, which seemed to sincerely serve her, at face value. While Marilyn was hesitating like that.

“Huh!”

Deborah couldn’t help but scoff again.

“I wondered why she walked here so well on her own two feet. When they dragged me here, they didn’t even treat me like a human being.”

Well, that’s because you were making such a fuss about not going the whole time. Curtis, who had been kneeling politely in front of Marilyn, frowned at the annoying sound and turned around.

“You’ve already seduced a Gler soldier. You’re amazing, aren’t you?”

It seemed like Deborah should stop at this point, but Deborah didn’t care whether Curtis was glaring at her or not.

“I knew it from the moment you sat still with an innocent face and grilled Rodri this way and that. Why, where did you leave that Baron Aiden and play with the Gler soldier? Well, Aiden is no longer needed for you. That talent…”

“That tongue there.”

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