Red Labyrinth

Chapter 8

Icaryl froze when she heard that the Empress had sent her an invitation. Why would this noble, beautiful lady call her? What did she want with someone like her?

However, the nobles, who were present there, were all calm. They said it was polite for all the people of noble blood, who first set foot in the palace, to wash the feet of the most important woman in the Empire. Icaryl thought it to be a bizarre tradition.

In the Empire, touching the feet of aristocrats was a rare sight, but in Argonia, washing one’s feet was a no-exception. She has had many unpleasant experiences, but what could she do? She had no other choice but to follow it as it was the right thing.

With a stuffy corset around her waist and a white veil over her face, she entered the residence of the Empress. The blunt lady-in-waiting of the Empress delivered a scorching glance at Icaryl’s body before guiding her towards the huge mahogany door. It was dusk, and the sun was shining with red light. Icaryl thought the color was darker than what it should be, just like her own eyes.

The palace was strangely quiet as if she was in the middle of a desolate forest. Beautifully processed pillars, highly-rated paintings, and centuries-old antique handicrafts, silver and glass works in the glass closet were embellished with the same silence, resembling the silence inside a coffin. Icaryl’s tender eyes kept gawking around the glitzy, artificial interior, nervously closing her lips. In the empty hallway, only echoed the faint sound of the footsteps of the guards and the maids, accompanied by their shadows. Still, she never ran into a single soul.

Soon after arriving in an empty room of purple-colored walls through a long passage, the woman who brought Icaryl pointed to the empty sofa without saying a word.

Icaryl, who was left alone, kept standing up and sitting down on her seat over and over again, counting on the minutes she had to wait. A statue of a man, resembling a flying beast, solemnly carved and decorated with gold with a thick rug wrapped around at his foot, came into her view. Her fingers grazed over the table over and over again. She crouched on the sofa again.

Time went on. Icaryl was annoyed.

‘How long is the Empress going to keep me waiting?’

She could have had a nap. She couldn’t sleep well last night because of those nightmares, and she was tired. Unconsciously swallowing her anger and keeping her eyes on the fluttering white curtains, Icaryl slowly looked behind her.

She had a glimpse of a doorknob through thick dark green curtains.

Icaryl jumped to her feet and walked until she stopped right in front of the door. Fear, curiosity, agitation, and annoyance. Icaryl stood nervously and eventually returned to her place. Time passed again.

Now, hunger grasped her. She gritted as a sharp headache conquered her head. She nervously stomped and started biting on her nails. Unable to control herself, she delivered a hostile glare towards a certain portrait of the Empress.

‘Does she have no common sense?! I’m hungry! I’m tired! I want to sleep!’

Her eyes widened as she, with her knees on the sofa, shifted her gaze to the table.

Her red eyes fell on the gold, delicately carved legs standing on the sheer carpet. Her round eyes twinkled at the golden material.

Dangerous temptations had begun again.

But she quickly shifted her gaze. Her patience had run out. She sprang up to her feet and walked to the door hidden behind the curtains. The key was already attached to the lock.

‘Who left this here?’

She thought it might be a trap. She was as inquisitive as she was afraid. In fact, she was as insensitive as a blind child to everything except for the imminent threat.

Being swept away by a strange impulse, she opened the door carefully.

Click-

Her eyes, which were searching for the mystery behind that door, froze at once as if they had been caught.

‘Haaa–’
A faint sound of breathing out was heard.

A strange hot essence hit her through the slightly opened door. At first, she was confused. But it was hard not to recognize that scruffy, lewd laughter. Icaryl, being a secret flower of her country and a decadent crystal born to a royal family, was a slight pretense of sexiness. She hardened, standing idly at the strange, quaint, and colorful sight that was being performed beyond the door. The half-opened door creaked as if it was being pushed by a devil’s hand. She instinctively reached out, tightly grasping the doorknob and therefore, stopping the movement of the door, that was about to open further.

Thump.
Thump.

‘…….What should I do?’

Icaryl wondered if she was the noble woman, who had lost her reason. With her head drooping on the bed, she shrieked out of pleasure, hugging her opponent’s neck. Her slim legs were wrapped around a muscular, sleek waist that kept groaning. That lustful face of hers was no different from that of the person painted in the portrait.

That woman, who was acting with a man who was not the Emperor, was surely Empress Adelana.

As a hand stroked along her fair sleeveless body, she screamed, arching her back. It made Icaryl’s cheeks turn red. The white bedclothes were all tangled in a mess. Groans of pleasure arousing from the violently mingled naked bodies of the man and the woman seemed to echo through the room.

Icaryl held her mouth in her hand as a strange nausea hit her. A bad joke, a trick, a trap. Horrible and disgusting. Such feelings made a terrible mess in her head.

‘Yeah, let’s get out of here.’

However, her lower body got paralyzed as she faced the horribly familiar scene again.

The deep blue gaze of a man caught her pale face. It felt as if she was out of oxygen, just like a freshly caught fish. It even caused her fingers to tremble and her heart to pound horribly. The eyes looked back at her roughly twisting red eyes, while his lips picked up a strange twisting smile.

As far as she knew, it was nothing different from the crazy man’s gaze.

“Haa?”

Her partner’s gaze might have been distracted, for Adelana whispered, grabbing the suddenly slowed man’s shoulder. Lucien just smiled before roughly pushing on the woman before him. He kept hugging the woman violently, regardless of her short screams. The woman’s vain legs were swaying like the weak branches of a tree.

His gaze intensely burning Icaryl’s very soul.

A slim, slender, snowy face, thin shoulders, and a slender waist slowly appeared in his mind as he kept gazing at Icaryl. His blue eyes scanned every piece of her flesh. Icaryl stepped back, trying to leap away from his gaze. It felt like she was being eaten by him even though she wasn’t being touched. Her limbs trembled with fear. She was like a deer stitched on a spear, and that man was the hunter, who came to stab her in the net with a sword.

Gasp–

Her throat was as dry as a desert.

His eyes roamed along the slender neck of Icaryl as he bit on the woman’s neck.

He stared at the slender chest of Icaryl as his hand grazed along the woman’s breastbone.

Holding the woman’s legs and hovering over her shoulders, he roughly moved his waist to deepen into her, his blue eyes still on Icaryl’s red ones.

Icaryl felt like she was about to go mad when the man grinned at her as he moistened his lips with his tongue.

She desperately moved her shivering legs. The invitation of the Empress, her position in the Empire, nothing mattered now. If she stayed in that crazy place for another moment, her soul would be eaten by that crazy Marquis.

‘Crazy! He’s crazy!’

Behind her came an evil laughter of that devil. She covered her ears and began to run for her dear life, her eyes filling up with tears.

Still, the dreary voice of that man hit her ears as he muttered.

“I’m waiting.”

*

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After running out of the ugly, crazy palace, Icaryl stumbled and threw up all the food she had in the afternoon. The tingling feeling went up to her chin, and her nausea calmed down a little. But still, she was within the realm of the madman. She had the utmost feeling that he was going to run out of the room and drag her by the neck.

“I have to run.”

A shadow appeared in the corner as she whispered. Icaryl scratched her lips with her sickly, trembling hands and slowly stepped forward. She did not know if it was because of him, but she shuddered over and over again. She still had one more hour left. Shadows of the imperial building stretched out like big old trees around her, as if strangling her in a prison. Soon after, she was out of breath.

‘I have to run.’

“Gasp!”