“Nothing, Princess. You don’t have to do anything.”
Floyd grabbed Roxiana’s waist on both sides and lifted her up, pulling her out of the cold water.
He tied up her skirt around her thighs and looked down at the long white legs revealed below. Seeing her feet turned red from the cold water, he frowned.
Floyd personally crouched down to untie the skirt, picked up the shoes she had taken off, and lifted Roxiana up in his arms.
“Ah…”
Surprised by his unexpected action, Roxiana looked at him with wide eyes. His face, which had been far away, was now very close. Realizing he was close enough for their breaths to touch, Roxiana was startled and held her breath, pursing her lips.
Floyd walked while carrying Roxiana. Having barely calmed herself, Roxiana opened her mouth.
“I can walk on my own.”
“You can’t walk with those feet.”
“Your Highness, what will people think if you personally carry a slave?”
“What does it matter what they think? They won’t dare say anything in front of me anyway.”
Roxiana was at a loss for words at his astounding confidence and closed her mouth. Although he walked quickly, this time being carried in his arms felt eternally long to Roxiana.
The employees bowed their heads silently when they saw him, but Roxiana found it difficult to calm her mind, worried about their gazes and thoughts. The unfamiliar sensation of her heart constricting and pounding hard was so disconcerting that she even squeezed her eyes shut.
Petria, who had just returned after barely receiving money from the head maid, was looking for the missing Roxiana when she saw her being carried back in Floyd’s arms. Relieved, she quietly exited the reception room.
Floyd sat Roxiana down on the sofa, knelt on one knee in front of her, and placed her ankle on his thigh. Then he wrapped her bare foot with both hands and began to massage it.
This was truly an unbearably embarrassing situation, so Roxiana asked in a slightly higher voice than usual:
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Can’t you tell? I’m warming your feet.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Roxiana momentarily doubted if she was overreacting. But she soon regained her senses.
For a country’s monarch to personally warm a slave’s frozen feet.
Indeed, this situation was not normal.
“It’s not that cold. You don’t have to do this, Your Highness.”
“No matter how warm Torkan is, it gets cold in winter, Princess. Feet that have never done hard work will get frostbite if left in cold water for too long. If not thawed in time, they’ll have to be amputated.”
He raised only his eyes to stare intently at Roxiana.
“Do you want to see these pretty feet cut off? Is that why you did such a thing?”
Roxiana realized that this man still thought she wanted to die.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Then stay still, Princess.”
“That’s not what I…”
“Stay still. I’m in a very bad mood right now.”
His flames had no power in front of Roxiana, but his hands were warm nonetheless. He firmly held Roxiana’s ankle with his left hand and thoroughly massaged her foot with his right to warm it.
As it was the first time someone had touched her foot so persistently, Roxiana didn’t know how to behave. She hadn’t noticed while arguing with him, but now that she was still, the touch on her foot caused a subtle sensation.
It was both ticklish and tingling – a sensation Roxiana had never felt before, starting from her toes, traveling up her calf, and tickling near her tailbone.
Knowing that he wouldn’t stop no matter what she said, Roxiana gripped her skirt tightly and tried to breathe slowly.
As she looked at his face while trying to push away the strange sensation climbing up to her stomach, she saw deep wrinkles between his brows. He still looked displeased, but Roxiana couldn’t understand why at all.
‘Even if my feet get cold, even if they end up being cut off, it would just be the result of my own choice. Why is this man so angry? Even if my feet were amputated, it wouldn’t cause him any harm.’
Her frozen feet regained their warmth. As her reddened and swollen feet returned to their original color, he put her shoes back on and stood up.
Thinking that he seemed particularly enormous, Roxiana lowered her gaze. Her eyes fell on the black boots he was wearing. As if he had come straight to find Roxiana as soon as he returned to the grand ducal palace, his boots were a mess, covered in mud.
He didn’t speak for a long time, just looking down at Roxiana. Unable to bear his gaze and the silence any longer, Roxiana spoke first.
“Shall I clean the mud off your boots?”
“No one.”
He said, suppressing his anger.
“No one in this grand ducal palace calls you a slave, so why do you insist on calling yourself one? What are you dissatisfied with? Are you upset that I didn’t kill you, so you’re doing this to protest?”
Not expecting Floyd to think that way, Roxiana looked up in surprise.
“That’s not it. I don’t think that way at all, Your Highness.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
I want to be useful. I want to be someone who is needed. So I want to make it seem like a necessary task for me to enter the palace of Kanta, which has become a colony of Gania for my sake, to find my family’s remains and return them to God’s embrace.
Roxiana didn’t voice the thoughts swirling inside her.
She didn’t know what would happen in the future. She might even be driven out of this Torkan. This man wouldn’t be on her side forever.
So she needed to speak up after becoming more useful, after becoming a better person, after becoming someone more necessary.
She couldn’t just tell anyone about the dishonorable story of her family not being placed in Adelia coffins and being thrown into a well, and the dangerous plan to secretly enter Gania’s colony to retrieve the corpses discarded by the crown prince.
‘I still don’t know this man.’
Roxiana didn’t know at all whether Floyd was trustworthy, whether this kindness came from his whim, and if so, how far his whims would go.
In a situation where she knew nothing, there was nothing more foolish than revealing all of her circumstances. So for now, she had to hide it.
“I’ve only caused you worry and consumed food since you saved me. Now that I’ve regained my health thanks to your care, I just want to do something to help you.”
“You’ve eaten as much as an ant’s eye and what worry? This is worry, Princess. You’re causing me worry by forcibly doing things you don’t have to do. Do you understand?”
“Then what do you want from me? You told me to live for a year. During that time I’m alive, should I just lie in bed and breathe? Should I wander the Lily Palace like a ghost, eat meals when it’s time, and sleep when it’s time to sleep?”
“Yes, do that. Act like a noblewoman’s daughter, eat the well-prepared meals, wear pretty clothes and walk around, do what you want to do.”
“What if what I want to do is laundry?”
Floyd chuckled.
“How could that be? Who in the world wants to do laundry?”
“I do. I found it fun when I tried it. It keeps my mind off things.”
“You really are stubborn, Princess.”
“No, I’m just…”
“Well, alright. Fine.”
Floyd plopped down next to Roxiana, making the sofa bounce. He ran his hand through his hair as if annoyed and asked:
“So you want to do laundry. What else? What else do you want to do?”
“Cooking.”
“And?”
“Gardening, cleaning the stables, sweeping and mopping the grand ducal palace floors, carrying luggage for the noble ladies – I want to do everything a slave should do, and I can do it all.”
“Princess!”
“It’s Roxiana!”
Roxiana raised her voice.
“Your Highness. I’m not a princess now, but a slave. Please, please, stop calling me princess.”
Turning his head at her desperate voice, Floyd looked down at the slave brand engraved on her collarbone. The brand stood out vividly against her white skin.
He slightly furrowed his brow and brushed his thumb over her brand.
The bumpy scar from being burned with a hot iron.
“Did it hurt?”
Flustered by his sudden touch, Roxiana didn’t understand his question.
“Pardon?”
“When they branded this, did it hurt a lot?”
“I’m not sure. It probably hurt, but I don’t remember. My guard knight was killed in front of me, and my personal maid was dragged away somewhere. My family was all dead and my country had fallen. What pain could a mere burn have caused me in that situation?”
Roxiana gently grasped his thumb that was touching her collarbone. His hand tensed slightly.
“My father always said, though it shouldn’t happen, though he would make sure it wouldn’t happen, but if by chance the Franche royal family were to be exterminated, to start by accepting one’s circumstances. Nothing lasts forever, and if something rises, something else must fall, so even if we became commoners, not to be immersed in sorrow for long but to accept our situation and then look for what we could do.”
Floyd recalled the king of Kanta who had accepted him when he had to wander around rejected by everyone. He remembered the face of the kind king with his straight and benevolent gaze.
“Alright, I understand the Princess’s thoughts more or less. But there’s one thing I’ve been curious about for a while…”
Floyd confirmed that Roxiana’s eyes were no longer buried in despair as before and continued speaking.
When yandere male lead believes she loves him — but she never did
“How dare you!”
“How dare you make me love you, only to cast me aside as nothing more than a friend?!?
“I will never accept that.”
“I will never let you return to him.”
“Even if I have to burn myself to ashes.”
“Even if I must shatter my purity, my dignity, my very soul.”
“I will never let you escape me!”
This was the first novel that introduced me to the matriarchal genre. I’ve read it three times already!
At first, the male lead despised the female lead. Later, he misunderstood that she liked him, so he condescendingly and reluctantly reciprocated her feelings.
Then, he suddenly discovered that she was kind to everyone in the same way, and there was already someone she cherished in her heart, and that person was not him.
The male lead couldn’t believe it, he became angry and crazy. He was determined to capture her body and heart by any means necessary.
Synopsis:
Want to see how a green tea bitch male lead falls in love with the female lead?
Want to see how he flirtatiously pursues the female lead?
Want to see how he gets slapped in the face repeatedly?
The male lead is a green tea bitch, a poisonous lotus, jealous, ruthless, unscrupulous, with a venomous heart, and he’s also a delusional maniac.
The female lead is righteous, positive energy-filled, kind, a holy mother.
Let’s see how two people with extreme personalities come together~
_____
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