Lady Devil - Chapter 196

196.

Almighty.

It was an almighty night.

Throughout the walk back to his quarters along the dark corridor, his chest ached to the point of dizziness. Johannes. Johannes…! The desperate cry faded with each step. From Isolde’s reaction, which changed from violent trembling while confined within the bed curtains to gradually becoming sobs on the verge of breathlessness, everything was painful for Johannes, yes.

That pain itself was an unbearable climax.

The blood vessels in his silvery whites of his eyes were red as if they had burst and cracked. Beneath his half-open eyelids, he finally let out a faint moan like someone who had suffered alone, thud. His shadow, filling the long corridor, wavered in the chilling moonlight.

As his ominous body staggered, Johannes gripped the stone wall as if digging in his nails. His tilting horns scraped against the wall, making a metallic sound. That back figure with folded wings. He looked like a sad devil statue that had lost its whole body’s balance due to having only one wing. Leaning against the wall like that, Johannes raised one hand to cover his ominous eyes, as was his old habit. He couldn’t bear it. Right now… he wanted to run to her.

Rather than joining bodies with the likes of me, I told you it would be better for you to rub against such a man.

That night. Of all things, in the first night Johannes witnessed, Isolde’s husband was quite proper despite being naive. No. Because he was a dullard, he treated his wife properly. Johannes believed without doubt that this would have been a somewhat boring attitude for Isolde, who inherited Valdemar’s blood. She would have wanted more, in fact. He shook his head. Why are you lying to me? He gritted his molars with a faint smile.

You prefer to be in more pain.

He still remembered his parents’ bedroom. Just like the scene of this night. It’s vivid in his mind. Walking steadily down the long corridor and encountering a door by chance. The humid air that wafted through the door he pushed open without any particular ulterior motive, as it was his parents’ bedroom. A woman’s wailing. The bedroom like a dragon’s cave with a distant ceiling. Beyond the curtains, his mother was lying face down on the bed like a dog.

And gripping the princess consort’s hair roughly with hands covered in thick calluses, while exhaling low, low, cruelly deep breaths slowly and lengthily, the dragon was the Iron Duke Valdemar. Yes, such a man was his father. Isolde. Your father.

You know too, don’t you? That’s the kind of love we learned. Without ever having touched or held it, we long for it fiercely as if it were a once-lost memory. Yearning is like bloodline. There’s no way to escape it.

Suddenly, he glanced back slightly. Isolde’s sobbing is still flowing from the far end of the corridor that looks like a black dot. Every time the torch flickers, hot heat boils inside Johannes’ ribcage and below in his stomach. The night’s chill that drifts like fog settles on his skin, turning into steam.

Nevertheless, he calmly lowered his unchanging face and stared at his own hand. His long, inward-curving nails and the palm within them were harder than the duke’s. He was confident he could tear the duke’s armor like parchment.

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