Chapter ♦ 16

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height


~ •••••••••••••• ~

You can read the advanced chapters in Webnovel.

Thank you for your support!

~ ••••••• ~

Zylith.

I looked at Reuben with a stinky face. I was still pissed at him because of his obvious disregard of my talents, and now he has the audacity to laugh at my face. Sometimes I wondered if it was a mistake to collude with this psychopath.

He, on the other hand, looked at me with eyes filled with mirth and somehow, another enlightenment graced me just then. The more I get to know certain people, the more I came to realize why Noah let only animals board the ark.

"Dear Fake Lizzy, are you feeling lucky? Because you think people can't hear what you're thinking?" Reuben in turn looked at me in an impish manner, as if to say he could see right through me.

For a second there, I felt my back hairs rising under his intense stare. He can't really read minds, can he? OH whatever, don't study me, you won't graduate.

"You're doubting if I can really read minds, aren't you?" He smiled brightly at me.

'Mama Mia~ This guy is Edward Cullen part II!!!' I screamed inside my head.'Wait! Even his formal baptized name is Edward, isn't it? Okay, just stop thinking, stop thinking out loud Lithe.'

He let out a little snigger and said, "Now you're thinking you should stop thinking altogether, so that I don't find out about you calling me all kinds of names inside your head. Am I right?"

He seemed to be having quite fun poking at my weak spots while I was a disheveled mess here. I could only widen my eyes to the point where they were about to fall out of my sockets when I heard his words. What the heck!? Was this guy really a psychic? Then why did he not hear my inner voice when I was desperately calling out to him for help. Right, I forgot this guy is a jerk. Maybe he did hear but was deliberately ignoring my pleas since he likes to see me suffer. This son of a bitch is really a scourge of this land. He should be burned at stake and I promise I will hula dance wearing a grass skirt and coconut shells around his burning corpse. Just you watch, the day of your demise is not far you sadistic psychopath.

"Now you're scolding me some more, probably imagining my being stabbed or burning alive, right?" His smile was getting more and more infuriating by each passing second. This guy really was a prick. The world's biggest prick!

"Your Highness, how could I? I couldn’t devise that kind of courage to even think about such soul-shuddering ideas. Besides, who can even bring such ideas about the great king of Reveldron into their minds? Haha...hahaha..hahaa...." Okay, I'm going to ignore your offense just this one time you bastard mummy face, not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'm afraid of me. I know my temper well; it goes from zero to prison real fast.

"Hmm, really? But why do I feel that you are lying to my face My Queen?" His smile was that of a sinisterly roguish kind, the one I hated dealing with the most.

"Anyways Your Highness, I'm really curious about the plans you have for me. I hope it's not anything life threatening." I chose to divert the topic of him knowing my mind. Better safe than sorry.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that Your Highness lady Elizabeth. His Majesty never lets any member of his faction come to harm's way." Lord Gilbert chirped in quite avidly. 

"I hope so too." I muttered as I gave Reuben a meaningful look. I just hoped he deciphered the look to be Don't-Go-Back-On-Your-Word look.

"Dear wife, before I start my woeful narration, you must understand something about me. I am a king of a country, so I shall not shy away from getting blood on my hands. But I will not shy away from getting you to dye your hands with blood either. Do you understand me?" His eyes held such profound depth that I felt very uncomfortable to even stare back at them.

Of course I understood what he meant. He would not hesitate to force me to kill the enemy if need be. That's what it meant to be an accomplish of a monarch.

Honestly speaking, I never thought I might have to take anyone's life while I was with him. Maybe I would have to risk my life to be of use to him, but I didn't think I would even have to kill for him. In this short amount of time, I don't know how much he had me figured out, but I just felt that he figured me out plenty to at least know my mind.

He knew I was ready to gamble with fate to win back my life and freedom, but he also knew where my bottom-line rested. To take someone's life was something I had never imagined myself doing.

A shudder ran down my spine when I heard his words. It was too scary how this person could read me like an open book. And here I always thought I was unpredictable.

I didn't want to agree to taking someone's life, but I felt this too was a test Reuben very cleverly had woven up for me. I took in a deep breath and looked at him in a calm manner, "...Yes, I understand what you mean."

He looked back at me with the same tranquil expression and smiled, "Very well then, since you think you’re ready, I will start at where it all began. The 26th King of Reveldron married a lady of the fallen noble house of Edelburgh. Lady Rumina Von Edelburgh was the sole heir and the only survivor of the house of Edelburgh. The then crown prince, Prince Erwin Edward II the Regalious fell in love with my mother when he was young and hence, against immense political opposition he married my mother as the Sovereign Queen of Reveldron. But to marry my mother, he had to satisfy certain conditions of the noble alliances. That was to marry the then duchess Beatrice as his first Queen. Hence forth, Beatrice became the first Queen of Reveldron, while my mother became the Sovereign Queen. But as you can already see, Beatrice’s hunger for power knew no bounds. She wanted to control the flow of power in the palace, and to do that she needed the aid of the Sovereign Queen title and Erwin Regalious, who had then become the sole ruler of Reveldron. But for king Erwin, it was a marriage of convenience with queen Beatrice, so he never paid her any heed. Before long I, the first prince of Reveldron was born, and Beatrice, who was still childless was beyond livid at this predicament. She tried many ploys to lure King Erwin to her, but all of them ended in bitter failure. Beatrice finally lost her mind when my brother was born two years after. And that’s when she started plotting her evil plans.” His voice was a low dangerous hum, I felt as if cold malice was seeping out of his body as he stood there with fisted white knuckles.

Reuben didn’t seem like he was conscious of where he was right now. He stared into the empty space outside of the window and suddenly looked a little like a lost child in a country fair. It seemed like he was playing all his memories back like a movie in his head, repeating them time and again for what seemed like forever. “My mother, Rumina was a very mild person, but she was no fool. I guess, her only flaw was that she was unnecessarily kind at certain times.” He seemed to mumble more to himself rather than to me. “Beatrice colluded with the noble faction to pull my mother down, and after multiple attempts, she finally succeeded. She burnt down the peony palace where my mother resided and manipulated my brother, who was only ten years old back then to go inside to save mother. Fortunately, my brother could be saved because I arrived in time to rescue him from the flames. But, we lost our mother in that fire that wretched dark night.” His tone was unusually low and had a gloomy vibe to it. I couldn’t exactly see his expression underneath his bandages, but I felt that a very grim aura had him wrapped up into its tight clutches.

I was very curious about many things, but I didn’t have the pluckiness to ask my questions while looking at his dismal expression. Nevertheless, he still continued, “King Erwin, who had become aware of the tragedy made his way to confront Beatrice in a fit of rage, but Beatrice was the most conniving woman the king had ever come across. Not only could he not punish her even though he knew she was the culprit behind my mother’s murder, he also was forced to confer her the title of the Sovereign Queen of Reveldron.” Reuben’s lips curled up into a mild twisted smile as he kept speaking, as if to show how utterly disgusted he was with the entire charade. “And the day Beatrice was crowned the Sovereign Queen, I vowed my vengeance on the entire nine generations of her kinfolk.” A dark murderous gloom shrouded his frame, he looked like he was suddenly numb to all emotions other than rage and revenge. However, underneath all that wrath, I suddenly saw him swallowed and buried deep into the belly of the monster called pain.

He seemed to have been drowning entirely into his dark reminiscence, engulfing and overwhelming himself. I could see his mad obsession with revenge was strangling his veins and making him tied up in knots of grief. “I sent Alexteris away with his master and started preparations for my revenge, I started covering up my face and feigned injury due to the fire. I started accumulating confidents of noble houses and called Alexteris back in secret two years later to aid my cause. And finally, one fine day, I seized the throne after King Erwin’s death. Yet, I was not able to shake Beatrice’s position and have my revenge till now.”   

Then he looked at me with those same deep fathomless eyes of madness and said, “Fake Lizzy, what I want now is to purge the court with the blood of my mother’s murderers.” His voice was still soft to my ears, but it had a certain kind of callousness to it.

“And your role is vital to my schemes.” He then smiled lightly and asked, “So…. Are you willing to help me in my quest?”

I stared back at him wordlessly for a minute and then slowly nodded. I now knew what he was insinuating, he was telling me he was going to be a mass murderer and asking me if I was up for such a gruesome job. If I was ready for the worst.

Frankly, I was not. Even the thought of killing someone was not appealing to me, much less becoming a mass murderer. But I knew, this was a dog eat dog world, if you hesitated to raise your sword against your opponent, he will cut you down in a heartbeat. So, I knew I had to throw my previous notions of modern democracy to the back of my head and accept the ways of this world anew.   

The thought was not very tempting if you must know, but it was either me or them. So, I was out of options.

 He gazed into my dark eyes as if to gauge my determination and see how firm I was with my resolve. And I think he was finally satisfied with what he saw in my eyes, so he quietly bobbed his head in accord and said, “Are there any more questions?”

I was uncertain if I should really put my curiosity into play right now, that didn’t seem to really end up great for me most of the times. But his calm green eyes silently urged me to get rid of any questions I had about him. Since he seemed like he would answer any of my queries I took the courage to ask him of my qualms.

“Erm…. Recently I’ve been wondering, why did you decide to end Lord Burnot’s life on the day I was supposed to be married off to him? Couldn’t you have done it sooner? Or on a later date?” I furrowed my brows a bit as I questioned.

“AH! I see. About that, it was because I was going to pin the blame on you.” He had a beautiful sweet smile on his pink lips, as if he was the most innocent being on the face of this land. Looking at his impeccable guiltless smile made my scalp go numb. I couldn’t believe this guy was thick-skinned enough to say that to my face. Oh who was I kidding, he was the freaking king of this land, he could do anything he wanted to do, who was gutsy enough to stop him from getting what he wanted. Bloody royal bigwigs!

I almost couldn’t keep my straight face on when I heard his words, I somehow managed to keep myself from glaring daggers into the guy’s skull.

“Oh don’t get me wrong My queen, I thought you were the daughter of duke Ronales. So I had planned on getting rid of you in secret and say that you were the one who murder chancellor Brikenhead and ran away because you didn’t want to marry him. Everybody knows the daughters of Duke Ronales were arrogant and unruly. It would’ve been a huge blow to the duke if one of his daughters were to commit murder. He wouldn’t be able to wiggle out of such heavy felony so easily.” All the while that he talked, that sly irritating smile of his never left his lips, “If you hadn’t said what you did back then, you wouldn’t be standing here today Fake Lizzy. Thank your stars for that.” Okay its established, I hate this guy to hell and back.

I could no longer keep my straight face on anymore, my eyes twitched in utter infuriation as I grinded my teeth in rampant anger. I feared that if I stayed with this guy for too long, Iwould be the one rather than Elizabeth, to commit murder one day.

I felt as if Reuben knew what I was really thinking inside my head ‘cause he let out a sly teasing smile as if to provoke me even further, I really wanted to cut open this guy’s head to see what was really going on inside of it.

“Anymore questions?” He raised his pretty brows.

“Yeah, what is the secret behind your disguise?” I asked in a blend voice. I was no longer feeling generous enough to act like his clown. He raised his brows further when he heard me.

“I mean there are so many cunning and intelligent people around you, they should’ve noticed something fishy about your disguise till now. After all, you and prince Alexteris might have similar eyes and facial features but your body language and structure can never be identical. And there’s also your voice. Your voices are completely different. How the hell were you guys able to get away with it for so long?” This question had been lingering in my mind since that time I caused ruckus in my wedding. But I never got the opportunity to ask him about it, and I also didn’t think that I would get a straight answer to my question because I was nothing but a fraud. He was my boss and I had at least enough sense to know that I had no right to ask him about things he thought I didn’t need to know. And I was also scared to be dragged deeper into his schemes if he thought I knew too much.

But now things were different, he had literally told me to my face that I had to kill people if I was ordered to. So I was no longer bothered about knowing about his plans better. In fact, I had to know about his plans better if I wanted to execute the missions flawlessly. So I didn’t hold back.

The smile in his lips got wider as his eyes shone a deeper shade of green. As if suddenly his gaze somehow became more intense. 

“My dear Fake Lizzy, can I ask you a question in turn?” The way the name ‘Fake Lizzy’ rolled out of his mouth made me shiver all over again. I looked at him in a very weird way as I heard him speak, “How could you tell that it’s me and not my brother when no one else can?”

I knitted my brows together when I heard him, “What do you mean? I can just tell. It’s not something that is hard to differentiate if you pay enough attention, you know.”

His smile got deeper and deeper as I spoke. Why? I had no freaking idea. His only words before he adjourned the discussion was, “You’ll know soon.”  

Why did I suddenly feel like the worst was yet to come?




To be Continued………

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net