Chapter 8
An Audacious Dream
The door slammed shut in Hille's face, who had frozen like a pillar of salt at the sight of that overwhelming curse.
Hille didn't dare to knock, only etching the beast's roar into his ears before collapsing to the ground. When the roar abruptly ceased as if cut off by a knife, he scrambled backward on his rear, rose, and ran for his life in the opposite direction.
His pants grew damp, and sobs escaped his lips without tears. There was no room for shame.
He felt he would never forget those red eyes that glared at him as if to crush him to death, even in death.
The attending physician, Hille, fell ill and collapsed.
Butler Gustav, having seen Hille collapse from afar, promptly shoved him into the guest room.
A butler administering a sedative to the attending physician. Just as he was thinking that the physician's initiation was quite the spectacle, a message arrived from the gate guard.
Gustav, with a pale face, delivered it to his master.
"The carriage is still there?"
Klaud, who had regained some composure by midday, opened his eyes and asked Gustav, repeating the question.
Creak— Creak—.
His body, sprawled on the old rocking chair that never seemed to get oiled, showed no sign of getting up.
The butler gritted his teeth, wishing he could oil that irritating rocking chair if he could change anything in this bedroom. He replied,
"Yes. The coachman is gone, but there's a faint sign of life inside the carriage..."
"You must have misheard."
Klaud cut off Butler Gustav's words as if he didn't want to hear any more.
His indifferent gaze passed through the air and went to the window.
Through the slightly open gap in the curtains, the snow that had been falling every day was falling again this morning without fail. Noticing his faintly narrowing brow, the butler added,
"Perhaps you should have gone out when Marquis Lev asked you to come out for a moment yesterday?"
"If I went out every time someone asked, I would have experienced about eight farewells in front of the mansion by now."
Butler Gustav hesitated for a long time before speaking again.
"Actually, I was the one who went out to check in the early morning, Your Highness. The new Deposed Empress asked if His Imperial Highness would allow the Deposed Emperor to enter."
A look that said he had done something unnecessary was directed at Butler Gustav. But the annoyance passed Gustav and went straight to the new bride.
"My permission?"
Klaud scoffed.
"An audacious dream."
Gustav, watching Klaud's expression, gathered the bedsheets stained with blood.
These were stains caused by Klaud stabbing the back of his hand to endure the pain that exploded like a volcano every night.
Bloodstains were scattered on the plush carpet and wooden floor.
The spacious and dark bedroom was not like the room of a noble emperor but like the quarters of a warrior returning from a brutal slaughter. It was a wonder he was still alive after shedding so much blood.
It was an excessive amount of blood to be coming from a stabbed hand, but everything surrounding Klaud was so unusual that it was pointless to question it.
Butler Gustav swallowed his groan and hurried to tidy up the room.
The skilled old butler was filled with the determination to clean the room rather than upset his master by telling him about the Deposed Empress, whom he wouldn't care about anyway.
"Is there anything else you need?"
"I don't want to hear that I killed several wives again, so tell her to get lost."
Klaud ordered, nervously touching the back of his hand that the butler had given first aid to.
Butler Gustav moved closer to Klaud and bowed his upper body.
Klaud glared at him as if he were the ninth wife outside and muttered with a cold face.
"Tell her to die if she doesn't want to go back. But not in front of my house."
Gustav paused for a moment but soon bent his waist as if he was used to it, picked up the blood-stained sheets, and disappeared.
Only after the bedroom door clicked shut did the rocking chair, carrying the tired and sensitive master, begin to cry again.
Creak— Creak—.
The whole world was a white winter morning.
Klaud's night finally came to his bedroom.
Eyelids slowly covered the bead-like eyes that still sparkled despite having lost their light.
The strength gradually left Klaud's jaw, which had been clenching as if savoring the painful past night and estimating the pain to come. Soon, Klaud Euphris's dark bedroom was plunged into perfect silence.
Until then, Klaud did not know.
That his ninth wife would be in front of him for as many as three more days.
Butler Gustav really didn't want to say anything that would annoy this sensitive Deposed Emperor.
But there were facts that he had to tell this master, who hated the shadow of death covering his house, even though he looked like a corpse lying in a coffin.
"Gustav. Have you lost your mind?"
"I apologize, Your Highness. But how could I lay a hand on the Deposed Empress? I've only seen people leave on their own, but this is..."
The ninth bride of the Deposed Emperor had stubbornly endured for three days. That is, four days if you count the nights.
Klaud, who had been lying powerlessly in bed, got up.
Klaud, who usually treated the windows as decorations without ever looking out, approached the window and faced the scenery visible through the white frost. His nervous gaze quickly searched outside.
Beyond the snowfield, as white as it could hurt the eyes, and the iron fence, he saw a humble carriage still standing strong.
It was two days ago that he had scoffed at the suggestion of putting a cotton blanket and a small brazier inside.
It was just yesterday that the servants' jokes about having to make a coffin had leaked into the bedroom.
"In fact, I don't even know if she's still alive, Your Highness. The maids are afraid of seeing a corpse and don't even want to go near her, so the confirmation has been delayed..."
Klaud's eyebrow shot up at the words that it was no longer the concern of the lower servants.
Assuming the woman was alive, the solution was simple.
Either bring the foolish and stubborn woman into the mansion and provide her with a warm place, or put something warm in that ridiculous carriage.
If the former, she would die in this mansion, and if the latter, she would die protesting there.
He didn't like either, so there was only one choice.
Klaud knew how to make the uninvited guest run away at once.
It was a foolproof plan that had never failed.
After a long silence, Klaud's dry lips opened.
"All the servants to my room. Make sure not even a rat can get into the mansion or the entrance."
Gustav did not dare to look up at Klaud's annoyed face and quietly lowered his head.
Yuan knew that Louise would not live long.
Even after spending more than 10 years recuperating in the south as a child, and even after Yuan endured the work in the laboratory and fed her various medicines, Louise's illness was not cured.
Sudden nosebleeds. She often coughed up blood if she overexerted herself, and she would suddenly collapse even when running healthily.
It was different from the weakness caused by thin bones and lack of muscle. On the outside, she looked no different from ordinary people.
Her father said that the disease was a hereditary disease of the Pellieresse family.
A disease that was sure to develop in one or two people in each generation.
Fortunately, it did not develop in her father's generation, but Louise could not avoid it.
A terminally ill patient who would die young.
Yuan stayed at the Pellieresse mansion while enduring the pain given by her uncle not only because of her lifelong desire for a home and family.
It was because she hoped that she could find a way to cure Louise by helping with the many experiments her uncle conducted in the laboratory.
Yuan squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, which were already frozen and heavy.
Even if she knew that Louise would die earlier than others, she didn't know if Louise had died of her own accord.
The rumors about Deposed Emperor Claude Euphris were very bad, and he might have killed Louise or worsened her condition.
'I have to ask.'
A new home. A new family.
It was Louise who had lifted Yuan out of the hell that was Pellieresse and brought her here, but living as she was given and accepting it were different matters.
At the very least, Yuan needed to know how Louise died and what her last moments were like so that Yuan could bury Louise in her heart.
Only then would she be able to live in the world that Louise had brought her to, a world without Louise.
"Ugh-."
When she wiggled her frozen fingers, her whole body seemed to scream. She had lost sensation in her fingertips long ago.
Yuan, who had spent many nights thinking about what to say if she met Deposed Emperor Claude Euphris, now found it difficult to distinguish whether this was a dream, reality, or hallucination.
That was because her surroundings were now completely silent.
Even the voices of the guards whispering occasionally had stopped.
She couldn't even hear the sound of the beak of the arm-sized bird pecking at the roof of the carriage.
Even the sound of the bleak winter wind seemed to have stopped.
Was she dying?
No, was she dead?
Should she shout towards that mansion before she died?
What did Louise look like in her last moments? Were you a kind husband to Louise?
Just as useless imaginations were filling her head.
-Thud!
With a sudden noise, sharp air poured onto her face. The cold air that she had barely blocked hit her whole body.
Black eyes sparkled between her frowning eyes.
Unlike the cold air, the warm sunlight that poured in painfully caressed her eyes.
Yuan ignored the screams of her whole body and creaked as she got up.
Only when she had raised her body halfway did she finally fully open her crumpled eyelids.
There was a man in front of her, with his back to the light pouring in.
"Ah."
Deposed Emperor Claude Euphris.
No one had introduced him as such, nor had he introduced himself.
But this sensation, as if the hairs on her body were standing on end regardless of the cold, was clearly because she had seen his rumored appearance with her own eyes.
