RAMHM Chapter 110

Devil to Devil

Nora Giusetta could not understand her mistress at all.

The Crown Prince had nearly been assassinated, and the Grand Duke Trovika, who'd been in the same boat publicly, had finally been thrown into the underground levels of Rubel Tower where only the most heinous criminals were imprisoned.

Crown Princess Doris should have been the most anxious and crazed person in this palace.

"It seems there's little difference between what your jewelry shop sells and what you offer me."

"Your Highness, what hurtful words...! You know I set aside the very first and finest pieces specifically for you."

"How would I know whether you give them to Bliea or to me?"

Nora fell silent. She knew from the start that her mistress was aware she made similar copies of what Bliea had popularized—yet couldn't bear it unless she crafted something more brilliant, more valuable to offer.

After hearing news of the Crown Prince, Nora had watched Doris exchange several letters with Duke Castagna, then pay several times more attention to her appearance than usual—far from being immersed in grief.

If pressed, Doris had always obsessed over appearances, but the adornment Nora meant now was how much she could resemble Bliea Acacia while wearing things more noble and glittering.

Nora repeatedly started to suggest that shouldn't she go care for His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince several times a day, then stopped.

If she'd had any such intention, she would have already rushed to his side.

What finally motivated Doris to head toward the Crown Prince's palace was something Irene had mentioned during a brief visit to inquire after her health.

"The Second Prince came to see His Imperial Majesty to report on the missing women cases."

That single sentence had Doris in such a frenzy.

The moment Irene left, Doris busily finished her toilette and gathered all the Crown Princess's palace servants to prepare her procession.

Nora followed one step behind, feeling unaccountably anxious.

Doris had re-dyed her hair to deep black recently, piling it high to bare her shoulders with a glittering ruby rose necklace clasped around her throat.

From behind, she could pass for Bliea Acacia without question.

No matter how much Nora tried to ignore it, her mistress's intention was obvious.

The reason Doris, who'd been performing the fainting-from-grief-over-her-husband's-tragedy act, had summoned this much energy to dress and emerge.

She'd left the palace thinking the Second Prince, the Crown Prince's closest confidant, would surely be keeping vigil at his side.

'What on earth is she thinking?'

Just because one was a woman didn't mean one couldn't take lovers, but the man in question was her husband's brother, wasn't he? A full brother, no less.

What reason could there be for desiring someone not even positioned to become a casual paramour?

Nora's head felt ready to burst trying to parse Doris's intentions when Doris, who'd been walking slightly ahead, reached the bedroom where the Crown Prince lay and stopped dead.

"...Your Highness?"

Nora's spine went cold, thinking she'd been caught wool-gathering, but Doris's gaze aimed forward, not to the side.

The two cheeks that had been infused with every sign of life had gone pale, as if she'd encountered a ghost.

"...Adrienne?"

It was a whisper inaudible to the servants following behind, but clearly audible to Nora at her side.

Adrienne.

As Doris muttered the dead Grand Duchess's name like a soliloquy, her cheeks trembling, Nora followed her gaze forward.

"Countess Acacia."

Bliea Acacia stood before the bedroom door, recognizing them and offering courtesy.

Bliea's hair was not black but blonde.

'The capital will see a blonde craze this time.'

Nora made a mental note to procure blonde hair dye before anyone else.

But unlike Nora's light consideration, Doris could hardly move.

"Your Highness, Countess Acacia offers courtesy."

Meaning: you should acknowledge her as well.

Instead, Doris went even more rigid, her face frozen as if she'd forgotten to breathe as she stared at Bliea.

Brief though it was, her expression seemed so utterly vacant that Nora wondered if she'd only now truly grasped her husband's misfortune.

Adrienne, who'd been waiting for Doris to respond, finally walked halfway down the corridor and lifted her dress skirts to bow her head.

"Your Highness."

The bowing motion unfolded slowly, yet Doris remained frozen.

Doris finally opened her mouth when the servants behind her, unable to bear the disturbing atmosphere, began murmuring quietly.

"Bliea."

"Yes, Your Highness. Have you come to see His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince?"

"Since I last saw you... your hair..."

Having uttered the name "Bliea" as if confirming it, Doris stammered like a child just learning speech.

"Ah, this?"

Adrienne smiled radiantly, as if she'd torn off a piece from the most brilliant part of her childhood.

A smile utterly different from Bliea's vacant, innocent expression—a smile brimming with sincerity.

Though Doris's face looked as if she'd encountered a ghost.

"His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince suggested blonde might suit me."

Doris's gaze traveled down the honey-flowing blonde to the golden pendant gleaming at Adrienne's chest.

One well-groomed eyebrow twitched.

Doris recognized that pendant instantly.

Something the Crown Prince had never removed from his neck.

Even that night when he'd been assaulted, even when she'd personally torn his clothes apart with her own hands, it had gleamed at his pale throat.

"That necklace I haven't seen before..."

"Ah."

Adrienne quickly tucked the exposed necklace into her bodice and smiled as if troubled.

And at that troubled expression, Doris's eyes instantly went cold.

"Have I committed some impropriety?"

"Ah!"

At Adrienne's startled expression, Doris's face grew even more wretched.

"Is it perhaps... a token?"

"...Yes, though I cannot accept the sentiment."

"..."

"You know who my love-hate is directed toward."

The face of a woman loved by someone—was this what it looked like? The target of her love-hate feelings would be the already-disgraced Grand Duke, but perhaps she'd received something from the Second Prince, or someone new had confessed.

Nora thought idly about Bliea Acacia's new scandal partner without suspicion, then flinched at the corridor air growing even colder.

Naturally, Nora's gaze drifted toward a familiar sound.

Doris's fingertips moved busily, forcibly pulling up the corners of her mouth while scraping relentlessly at her cuticles.

"His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince was looking for a physician... so I was about to withdraw. Is that acceptable?"

Doris's eyes, red-hot as if ready to scream at any moment, blinked once slowly.

It meant permission to withdraw.

Adrienne curtsied with a strange smile and passed her.

"Your Highness?"

"...I must examine my husband myself."

The deeply sunken voice held not only Nora but all the servants rooted mid-corridor.

Crown Princess Doris opened the door herself and entered Crown Prince Bardenaldo's bedroom alone.

Nora felt an eerie chill.

My face, having sent one demon to another, collapsed the moment I passed Doris.

Like when I'd faced every betrayal as Bliea, my heart felt as if it were crumbling entirely, as though I'd been left alone in the world.

Where had it all gone wrong, and how?

Distrust of humanity. Contempt. Loathing.

Everything I stood upon was falsehood, no different from illusions I'd seen according to my own desires.

Had Father not loved me after all?

We'd never been entirely close as father and daughter because of Mother, who'd died giving birth to me.

Though strict, he'd never wounded me—or so I'd thought.

Had I lived under the delusion that he loved me deep down, seeing Mother's eyes in mine?

It felt as though everything composing my body had turned to blood and tears.

Like a scrap of boat adrift on the open sea, I wandered aimlessly through the palace's remote corners until my feet finally carried me to "the little forest."

Night had already fallen.

In the green space where thorn-studded vines wrapped the entire tunnel, I found Rhodness standing in the darkest place, even refusing the white moonlight that occasionally filtered through.

I stopped dead.

Rhodness immediately sensed my presence and turned.

Would I look like that if there were a mirror?

A man like a precarious castle—crumbled and rebuilt, crumbled again and forcibly reconstructed—gazed at me through the dimness.

I thought I must look just like that.

And then—

Though no one commanded it, we each took one step, then another, toward each other.

The considerable distance shrank rapidly as our steps quickened the closer we drew.

"Rho—"

I couldn't finish calling his name.

Rhodness, who'd trapped me in his shadow, pulled my waist and the back of my head close and devoured my lips.

Rough, burning lips barely touched mine before opening them to plunder deep inside my mouth.

The passionate intensity left me gasping for breath.

Rhodness's breath, which had rushed deep into my mouth in an instant, tangled chaotically with mine, mixing and scattering repeatedly.

"Adrienne..."

Through the brief separation of lips, a low voice invaded my mouth.

Damp, scorching breath.

His prominent nose bumped and rubbed against my small one again and again.

The feeling that he'd completely stolen my mouth lasted only a moment.

I realized that from the instant our lips met, I'd been the one wrapping both arms around his neck and clinging as if standing on a cliff's edge.

Ah.

"Adrienne, Adrienne..."

Moaning like a wounded beast, the sound gouged hotly and thickly inside my mouth.

Where burning things met, the sound soaked every corner of my spine.

We clung to each other and craved each other as if we were the only things left in the world.

No conversation.

No obvious question about what had happened.

We asked nothing.

Moonlight shattered, starlight pierced between vines.

No surrounding sounds reached us—only the wet squelching of flesh seeking flesh filled our ears completely.

Breath rose and rose and rose again until we were gasping, until pleading voices emerged begging to stop.

Rhodness devoured me as if desperately trying to enter inside me somehow.

Our lower bodies pressed tight together—each time he pulled me deeper as if to lift me, his body was shockingly hard and hot.

BOOM—!

Thunder crashed through the sky that had been wet all along, and thick rain suddenly poured down.

Raindrops falling violently passed through gaps in the vines and struck us directly.

Shhhhhaaaaa—

Savage rain sounds beating at our ears.

I couldn't tell whether I was drinking rain or drinking Rhodness's breath.

When the rain sounds subsided, when the starlight grew brighter than before the rain and even that light grew disheveled, when we were finally disheveled beyond dishevelment and gasping for breath with wet foreheads and noses pressed together—

Rhodness whispered to me with eyes gone black as night.

"...I think I'll go mad wanting to enter inside you, Adrienne."

With each movement of lips gleaming with what was unmistakably mine, my breath caught in my throat.

A voice boiling over from deep below, like light sparking in his eyes.

"I think I'll go mad wanting to touch you closer. Deeper."

The rough voice scraping through his thick throat came as a plea that crawled into my ears.

I felt like going mad as well.

Touching closer, deeper—in this moment when everything I'd been standing on was crumbling, wanting to hold onto him—

"Rho..."

Again, I couldn't finish calling his name.

Because Rhodness, who'd been glaring at my lips, pressed his mouth to mine again.

Unlike the first time, it began gently, but racing toward the end, we embraced and kissed as if to swallow each other whole.

After the terrifying downpour of early evening, it was the hour when the dawn moon was rising.

Without time to fear whatever was crumbling inside me beneath my feet, I clung to Rhodness like he was the only rope heaven had lowered and tangled my burning breath with his.

Beneath my feet, whatever collapsed with the subsided thunder didn't matter now.

That night.

Crown Prince Bardenaldo's brief life came to an end.

It happened shortly after Crown Princess Doris went to visit his sickbed.