<CHAPTER 28>
You’ve Waited a Long Time
Evelyn was confused.
Everyone said that Rexfail was in love with Evelyn.
But that was a Rexfail that Evelyn did not know.
He was a heartless husband.
A person who had never once embraced her, who had never approached her without reason.
So why did everyone say he loved her?
Why did Rexfail leave such misunderstandings alone?
Evelyn thought and thought until her head felt like it would burst, but she could not find the answer.
So she decided to simply turn away.
‘I will find out soon.’
He would use her.
The reason would soon be revealed.
So if she harbored vain hopes, she would float up filled with happiness only to fall from a thousand-foot cliff.
The woman covered in wounds forbade all hope herself to protect her own heart.
‘Would they be together by now?’
A mind accustomed to imagining the worst conjured up Rexfail together with Ivy, or perhaps Camilla.
Rexfail’s hand entangled in their long, luscious hair.
His face buried in their soft skin, his arms wrapped around their yielding waists.
And……………….
“Lord Raven!”
She thought it was her imagination.
That the commotion was gradually approaching.
She thought there had been some minor issue among the servants that would soon subside, but the sound reached her door.
And the door burst open, and a flustered maid called out to her.
And pushing past the maid, Fenril appeared.
Bringing with him Rexfail, who was gasping for breath.
“Th, the visit, no, His Highness, he……………….”
The maid didn’t know what to do in her panic.
The mistress of the Winter Palace had declared she would not receive visitors, and if anyone came, they must be admitted only after her permission.
But the visitors were the Crown Prince and his escort knight.
It was plainly visible that her small head was about to burst worrying over whose command to prioritize.
Evelyn let out a sigh and rescued the pitiable girl.
“……You may enter.”
At Evelyn’s words, not only she but also the servants and guards who had come running all escaped at once.
They must all have been in difficult positions as well.
“……We shall guide you.”
Fenril led the man who couldn’t even properly compose himself to Evelyn’s bed.
A memory from some time ago surfaced in her mind.
It felt as if the past was coming to find her again, suffocating her.
“Go back.”
“Pardon?”
“There is nothing I can do for you.
So take him and go back.”
Fenril wore a very troubled expression.
He was not eloquent and didn’t know how to persuade her.
While the escort knight hesitated, Rexfail moved.
“This……………… to Ivy.”
What the blood-soaked hand extended was a branch of wood familiar to her.
Israji, the beautiful green tree bearing red fruit.
Why was he offering this to her now?
Fenril, noticing Evelyn’s distorted face, tactfully moved and seated Rexfail on the edge of the bed.
Then he tried to slip away and escape.
“Sir Storm.”
Evelyn called out to him as if warning him.
It meant to take Rexfail away.
Fenril tried to awkwardly smile and indicate that he had no authority to make such a decision.
“Shall I leave?”
As Evelyn strode to pass Fenril, the flustered escort knight blocked her with his body.
The sharply pointed gaze pouring from the woman much smaller than himself was overwhelming, and Fenril tried to defuse the situation.
“You know, don’t you.
That there is no one who can be entrusted with His Highness in that state.”
All the physicians of the Imperial Palace were under the sway of the Embrio family.
It was natural, as any famous and capable physician would have grown up under the patronage of the Embrio family or learned under them.
So if they took the Crown Prince in this state to a physician, it would be difficult to stop whatever scheme they might attempt.
“His Highness sought out the former Highness.”
“She is dead.”
“His Highness does not think so.”
Fenril glanced once at the Crown Prince sitting on the bed, gasping for breath, then turned his gaze to Evelyn.
“He needs you.”
“……I don’t think so.”
“No, he does.”
Fenril lowered his body.
His eye level became equal with Evelyn’s gaze.
He matched his blue eyes to Evelyn’s black pupils.
As if wanting to convey his heart directly, his eyes staring intently held not a speck of falsehood.
“You’ve waited a long time.”
Don’t say that with such a serious voice.
“For the former Highness.”
It makes me want to believe.
Fenril said that and closed the door right in front of Evelyn’s nose.
Evelyn did not open the closed door again.
She stood before it for a moment, then slowly turned her head.
Whether he couldn’t see properly or not, with unfocused eyes, yet worrying that the blood falling from his hand might stain the bed, he held it forward.
Seeing that sight, what could she say?
She was angry.
“Why are you acting so foolish?”
Evelyn approached and asked.
At the shadow cast before him, Rexfail raised his head.
“Ivy…………….”
A pitiful smile that seemed about to crumble hung at the corner of his mouth.
Like a warhorse that had heard the horn announcing the end of battle.
Like an old ox on a rocky field that had met the hour when it could work no more.
The desperate joy of one who had waited and given up, yet still expected that something to meet again.
Why did it reflect in his eyes?
Evelyn tried to swallow down the hot something welling up in her chest.
But it could not be fully digested, and flowed out as a low, painful groan.
As if to comfort her, Rexfail’s uninjured arm rose and awkwardly wrapped around her back.
“Don’t cry..…………….”
Disheveled hair touched below Evelyn’s chest, tickling her body.
Her hand touched Rexfail’s shoulder.
The Crown Prince, feeling the weight pressing upon him, raised his head.
And in that moment.
Rexfail’s body was pushed back.
His massive frame yielded powerlessly to a woman’s strength.
Like a lioness hunting her prey, Evelyn climbed atop him.
“………………Why do you need me, why.”
Tears flowed down her cheeks, but her eyes were not wet.
Her eyes, dry like a parched desert, looked so indifferent that it was unbelievable she had been crying.
“What use am I now!”
The shout released by her suppressed vocal cords was not loud but heavy.
Her sorrow was contained solely in her tears, falling downward.
Evelyn’s tears struck and shattered against Rexfail’s cheek.
Rough, nail-embedded fingers moved toward her eyes.
As if to catch them, a teardrop fell upon his finger.
Evelyn leaned forward without harboring any excuse.
Like a four-legged beast lowering its head to drink water, she twisted her face to find Rexfail’s lips.
The lips from which rapid breaths escaped flinched and closed the moment Evelyn’s touched them, then opened wide.
Like one trying to drink sweet rain, Rexfail tilted his head back to receive her.
As if blaming their joined lips for not moving, his flesh that spilled out devoured hers.
As if pleading, as if prostrating and begging, desperately.
Then, going against the breath that burst out with sobbing, his thing dug through the gap between their parted lips.
Evelyn was firmly caught by Rexfail and could not move.
Her struggling body soon fell to the side, then was laid down.
As if they could not be separated even a little, Rexfail’s body quickly rose above hers.
Like a young beast unwilling to be weaned from its mother’s milk, he did not stop exploring Evelyn’s lips.
Breath and saliva mixed, swallowing each other’s essence several times and flowing down.
After a long while, Rexfail gently touched Evelyn’s swollen lips with his finger.
Meanwhile, Evelyn felt his fiercely protruding center pressing against her lower belly.
Their breaths were rough, and their hearts raced as if competing.
Just a little, his lower body moved as if rubbing.
Evelyn’s body jumped and stiffened openly.
The moment she had waited for so long unexpectedly approached before her eyes, and Evelyn’s mind went blank.
Holding even her breath, she waited for Rexfail’s movement.
His large, long hand to burrow between her clothes, to make her return to her primordial state and be completely engulfed.
She didn’t have the mind to answer.
Evelyn couldn’t come to her senses due to tension.
As if trying to reassure her, Rexfail tapped her cheek a few times, then scraped his nose against Evelyn’s neck.
When his lips lingered between her neck and shoulder, Evelyn’s breath grew thin as if it would break.
As if trying to swallow all the rapidly escaping breath, Rexfail’s lips consumed her once more.
