IBWCD 02

Chapter 02

Her mother was frail from the moment Evelyn was born.

She bore the brunt of Louise’s cruelty for bringing the family name into disrepute.

She sarted her day with a slap on the cheek, made her do the hard work, and made her eat rotten food as a joke.

The word “bullying” doesn’t begin to describe the cruelty she inflicted on people.

In the winter of three years ago, when her mother’s illness finally overwhelmed her, a group of people from the temple came and loaded her onto an old cart.

Evelyn was sad to part with her mother, but at this rate, she wouldn’t last more than a few days.

Evelyn stared at the cart as it drove away. If only she could get her mother’s favor, she thought, it would be good for her.

But it was all a lie.

And their subsequent conversation confirmed that it was no vision or dream.

“End this without a trace. With Marcella dead and that bitch gone, it’ll raise suspicions…”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a plan, too. She’ll be disposed of by slowly withering away to death, unable to withstand the bullying of the vile Viscount.”

It was a sad thing.

Even reliving the past was painful, so Evelyn clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her flesh and paused in her thoughts.

Then it happened.

Kwajik!

Evelyn swallowed hard at the sound of the old door slamming open and shifted her gaze.

A maid in a black robe leaned against the doorway, clicking her tongue in frustration.

“Have you forgotten that it’s time for the ceremony, Wen? Come with me without delay.”

Evelyn didn’t answer.

It was just that the first thing she did when she was given a chance at life was a horribly painful purification ritual.

It was only a little vain.

Evelyn followed the maid into the cellar beneath the eastern spire.

The long corridor, flanked on either side by prisons, gave off an air of danger and dreariness.

“You’re late.”

A woman with glossy brown hair and watery eyes greeted her from an ornate chair.

Louise Lawrence.

She was the head of the House of Gysil, the Count’s hostess, and the head of the House of William Lawrence.

The Count, head of the Knights Templar, was a busy man and had neglected his duties as head of the household.

“What are you doing?”

Her ice-cold eyes swept over Evelyn’s bland features, then frowned slightly.

“Take it off immediately.”

Without a stitch.

Evelyn was neither surprised nor embarrassed by the unexpected comment.

She didn’t even show any hostility towards it.

She simply continued to remove her tattered dress and underwear as if it were nothing new.

Soon, Evelyn had removed her clothes and entered the cell. Slowly, she knelt down and clasped her hands together on her thighs.

The bone-chilling cold of the floor coursed through her skin, sending shivers down her spine.

She shivered slightly.

‘The Blood Purification Ritual’

Evelyn had checked the calendar outside her bedroom earlier and found that she was now back to being twenty years old and it was early spring.

‘That’s when I broke free of the Countess.’

It had been three years since she’d started the ritual, so if this was real, he’d never had a chance to save her.

And in about a year, she would die from the curse that had built up in her body.

‘Please save me, no, please kill me quickly. Please… I’m in so much pain, I’m going crazy!’

A pain that cut through her heart.

A burning sensation that felt like her insides were on fire.

The only thing worse than the blood that melted her esophagus and regurgitated was the smirk on Louise’s face as she stood over her fallen body and strangled her.

“You know, Marcella had the same look on her face as you did when she died.”

“Well, ugh, what the…!”

“You look eerily similar, right down to your burned face and your obliviousness to the curse slowly poisoning you.”

Her face contorted in pain as she remembered the moment she was deaf and unconscious.

Sweat began to form on her fingertips as her head swam with the realization that everything was wrong.

‘Let’s not be nervous. We shouldn’t go against her wishes… yet.’

Evelyn bit her lower lip, swallowing back the rising anger.

“Are you ready?”

Her icy gaze settled on the young woman like a ripe fruit.

Slowly releasing the breath she’d been holding in, Evelyn raised her head and looked straight ahead.

What a grotesque sight.

The naked woman and the maids surrounding her.

The black cloth draped over their bodies added to the eeriness, and Evelyn curled her lower lip and bowed her head.

“Yes.”

Louise, who had been tipping her teacup with impeccable posture, spoke again.

“Well then, let us begin.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As if on cue, the maids approached and grabbed her arms from either side.

Their grip on her forearms was so tight that their nails dug into her delicate flesh and drew raw.

Then, with a click, she heard the sound of a glass jar being opened, and the blood-red liquid they called holy water began to pour over her head.

The thick, heavy scent of the holy water flowed from the crown of her head, down her body, and to the floor in an instant.

Evelyn’s eyes widened in sudden realization.

“This must be…!”

It was the same scent that Louise had poured into her gasping mouth as she strangled her in her last life.

“You’re poisonous to the end. If only you’d died as quickly as your mother, I wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble.”

Louise was not a merciful woman to pour holy water into her dying mouth.

If so, this medicine must be deeply connected to the curse.

“Uh…!”

Evelyn clamped her mouth shut in protest, and a frosty smile spread across Louise’s face as she stared at her in disbelief.

“This is all to cleanse you of your sins, so don’t resent it too much. When your body is filled with faithfulness, Marcella’s illness will be cured.”

Evelyn’s fair brow quirked.

“How dare you put my mother’s name on the tip of your ugly tongue.”

Louise, oblivious to her opponent’s fierce words, set down her teacup and continued.

“You were born in a borrowed body, wrapped in a noble umbilical cord, and inherited a green eye, the symbol of your family, so it’s only right that you offer your filthy blood to the gods. Pray that you are truly remorseful.”

In the past, Evelyn had grown up hearing these words every time she was confronted, and she had believed with all her heart that her mother’s illness would be cured if her own filthy body was cleansed.

But not anymore.

Swallowing the disgust that churned in her gut, Evelyn’s face did not show the slightest bit of agitation.

Instead, she looked at Louise with as much of a motherly expression as she could muster.

A hint of embarrassment flickered in Louise’s otherwise cold eyes.

She felt contemptuous of her, but at the same time, she felt a sense of helplessness.

‘Why didn’t I suspect murder so clearly… then.’

She felt like biting her tongue and blaming herself for her foolishness.

“Hmmm, what are you doing, why don’t you just start!”

At Louise’s exclamation, the maids, the ones at the head of the line, turned to her.

She held a sharpened blade in her hand that sent shivers down her spine.

Despite her resolve, Andamun’s jaw twitches uncontrollably.

“May this be the last time you suffer. May my apologies be accepted, and may my mother’s soul be saved…”

Her eyes squeezed shut, and she felt a terrible pain in her wrists.

“Ugh…!”

Then a trickle of hot blood cut through her flesh and dripped into the silver basin.

Consciousness faded away as she felt all the blood drain from her body.

At the same time, a red moon rose through her blurred vision.

It’s a premonition to death.

The scene ended, and her fragmented consciousness sank to the surface.

“Damn… you’re hot as hell, are you going to melt me like this?”

She glanced up at the man who held her wrists bound, staring down at her with searing eyes.

Jet-black hair, fierce golden eyes, and the mark of a black snake tattooed on his left breast.

His hands, tearing at her ethereal garments and running down her slender body, were delicate as glass, despite his feral exterior.

“Ah, ah…!”

Evelyn’s waist arced and bounced in the air with each thrust he made like a madman.

She moaned, breathlessly, in a rush of sharp pleasure, but it was not enough to describe the sensations she was feeling.

‘Hmph, I’m losing my mind. Stop, please stop…!’

Their gestures of needing each other became more and more intense.

The sensation, so vivid that she wondered what it was if it wasn’t real, engulfed her from head to toe.

‘Ugh, I can’t take it anymore…’

When she finally reached the edge of ecstasy, the tears she had been holding back slid down the corners of her eyes.

“Huh!”

Evelyn’s eyes fluttered open.

A promiscuous orgy with a man beginning as the red moon filled her vision.

She’d always had the same dream after the purification ritual.

Before, she didn’t know what it meant.

But now that she experienced death and came back, it has a different meaning.

It’s a precognitive dream. The man in the dream was the one who saved her from hell in her past life.