Lady Devil - Chapter 187

187.

Once, I heard a rumor about an irresponsible man and woman.

The man was said to be a priest of Duke Gustavus’ household, and the woman a lady-in-waiting from Ducomeng who attended the duchess. The two could not resist a moment of passion. Breaking even taboos, they made eye contact and became intimate, then one day quietly gave birth to a baby boy. The woman buried her child, who had not yet let out his first cry, in the bare earth of the backyard. The child died with soil filling his lungs. The man and woman both left the fortress.

Suddenly.

The weak are evil. Did they truly not know that closing one’s eyes to a spark could invite a conflagration? Life is chained together by choices and consequences. They must have naturally known from their life experiences that all words and actions lead to great and small tragedies and comedies.

Surely they knew, yet were negligent. They knew, yet turned a blind eye. Knowing full well the miserable ending, they burned their own flesh intoxicated by a moment’s passion. Later, whenever passing by the tree where the child was buried, they must have broken out in a cold sweat while still laughing. Haha! I’m alive, how fortunate.

In the weak woman’s mind, there was likely no place for the corpse she had birthed. After turning her back on the fortress, she probably erased it even from her memory and no doubt lived happily until her later years. So she was a woman weak and thus evil, evil and thus strong.

That’s what some ‘mothers’ are like.

“Remember.”

Slap! Johannes’ left cheek rang out.

“Remember.”

Slap! Johannes’ left cheek rang out again. As he was struck until his head spun, he stood straight in an outwardly pious posture. He was not conscious of the pain. With one clenched fist placed on his left chest, beneath it his heart rotted and crumbled. There was no flesh left to feel pain.

“Remember.”

The duke’s lips closed tightly as his strong palm cut through the darkness. With a final friction sound like tearing leather, Johannes’ head turned completely to the right. In the pitch black surroundings, he stared at his evil with bloodshot eyes beneath a calm expression. It was the shadow of a black reed rising above the opaque curtain hiding the bed. It was Isolde’s silhouette. He took it in with his eyes amid a silence that felt like tearing.

There were only four dim candles around the four-poster bed placed like an altar in the center of the banquet hall, which was as dark as the bottom of a well. A noblewoman from the royal family, whose name he could not even remember, parted the dim lighting and approached the bed. As she entered through the secret curtains of the young newlywed couple who had just consummated their marriage, the shadows of one young man and two women blended together in one place.

Read full content of this chapter on r e d c a t t y . c o m