I Became a Slave to the Man I Abandoned Novel (Completed) - Chapter 141

His suspecting gaze. His wary look. Finally, an attitude as if dealing with an equal on the same playing field.

Nox Rainerio laughed freely at him. Seeing his smile, the Emperor’s face hardened.

He wouldn’t know. He’d be intensely agonizing and recalculating what my smile means.

Nox didn’t need to be kind to him. So he quietly approached him and looked into the coffin.

“It seems this body wasn’t quite intact either.”

“…It was dreadful.”

Nox simply nodded, maintaining a strange smile. The central power of the aristocratic faction standing at the funeral of a noble from the Emperor’s faction was a bizarre sight.

Everyone was watching Nox Rainerio. He was no longer seen as a lamb they thought they could tear the throat out of at any moment, but as a beast capable of snatching their lives away at any second.

Nox placed a single chrysanthemum in the coffin. He slowly bent down and whispered something to the deceased inside the coffin. Only the Emperor, standing close by, could hear his words.

‘Soon, someone else will…’

A whisper of unknown meaning. Feltion frowned deeply, glaring at Nox. But he straightened up as if he hadn’t said a word and descended the steps leading to the coffin.

The gazes fixed on him felt like blades.

The man who had been unjustly labeled a traitor and reduced to a slave. He had regained the status of Duke, but it was merely a title.

The man once thought incapable of ever being evaluated as a great noble again was now the object of everyone’s caution.

Nox Rainerio left the funeral satisfied, their gazes at his back.

Silence, it was silence.

Nox Rainerio liked the atmosphere, as if even breathing had been stifled. But at such times, there was always someone who would turn his stomach.

“Duke Rainerio.”

Nox stopped.

“I await the day you keep your promise.”

The Emperor revealed his claws right before him, raking at his exposed flesh. He’s doing this openly, in a gathering of nobles like this?

“Please—” Nox replied with a chilly expression. “I hope nothing happens before then.”

Since the Emperor had openly provoked him, it was only right for Nox to return the favor. If so, his suspicion would grow.

‘He’ll be obsessed with watching me.’

Silence sharply pierced the air of the funeral hall. A chill seemed to settle. Until his carriage departed. As if the dead had lingered and then left.

***

The rainy season began, and the capital’s sky was perpetually covered with gray clouds. Rain fell more frequently than before, a terrible downpour as if the heavens had opened. And each time, a noble who stood with the Emperor died.

“Kyahh-!”

Another count had died.

A body, mercilessly butchered with a sword, was discovered on the count’s bed.

The first to find him was the count’s maid. The maid testified that she had seen footprints starting from the terrace.

It was the exact same situation as with the Marquess.

It was clearly an assassin. And a skilled one, capable of subduing a person before they could even scream. The Emperor’s confidants came to him, all saying the same thing.

“It’s clearly Duke Rainerio.”

“It couldn’t be anyone else.”

“Your Majesty, this is dangerous as it is.”

Feltion had to listen to his confidants. He silently observed them gathered before him. With the three most prominent among them dead, the council room felt strangely empty.

“Is it just circumstantial evidence?”

“No,” the Emperor replied. The faces of the Emperor’s faction nobles brightened.

The Emperor fell silent for a moment, lost in thought. He had placed people to watch Nox a long time ago.

That’s how he knew.

Every night someone from the Emperor’s faction was murdered, Nox would have a carriage parked near the deceased’s mansion for a long time, accompanied only by his coachman.

‘The only lingering doubt is…’

Nox’s nerves were too sensitive for close surveillance, but the reports clearly stated he didn’t move inside the carriage. Feltion frowned.

‘Is someone else acting in his stead?’

Or perhaps, it was simply due to watching from too far away, failing to spot anyone getting in or out of the carriage.

Nox Rainerio hadn’t fully recovered his abilities yet. Despite this, he remained a skilled individual capable of hiding himself and silently killing someone without being detected.

“It doesn’t matter. With any evidence, if we can arrest Nox Rainerio, these killings will stop,” one of the Emperor’s faction nobles in the council room declared.

Feltion silently surveyed his council room. His eyes met Khalid’s, who sat on a sofa, saying nothing.

The Emperor looked down at him with an arrogant gaze and asked, “What do you think, Khalid Via?”

“…Without solid physical evidence, it seems it would be difficult to apprehend him.”

Hearing that, the Emperor asked again.

“Where does your heart lie now?” the Emperor asked.

Khalid replied, his cool blue eyes somewhat sharp, “It lies where Your Majesty resides.”

Feltion’s face twisted as if caught off guard. Where I reside, he says.

Yet, Feltion himself couldn’t pinpoint where his own heart truly lay. Of course, he had the consciousness of maintaining his position.

But desire, that filthy, ugly desire, simply couldn’t be contained.

Feltion recalled the basement room he had been steadily preparing. It was a kind of warning to Nox. A warning to him to maintain the current distance, to live moderately, and not to think of further changes or revenge, as he was ready to drag him down again at any time.

Feltion’s insides churned. While directly warning him, there was also a part of him that wished Nox would cross the line.

That you would fall again. This time, into my arms. The teeming desire to confine him in that vast basement room and make him wait only for him.

Feltion gritted his teeth, caught between reason and desire. But he was the Emperor. It was time to make a decision. He couldn’t continue to waver.

Weighing guilt against desire for Nox Rainerio, Feltion finally gave the order.

“Chief Chamberlain.”

“Yes.”

“Bring me Nox Rainerio’s movements from the time of the incident.”

“Understood.”

The Chief Chamberlain returned with Nox Rainerio’s movements, documented by the person directly monitoring him, and eyewitness reports of the Rainerio family carriage being found in the vicinity. The stack was quite thick.

The Emperor’s faction nobles nodded with bright faces as they reviewed the documents the Emperor provided.

“This is certainly enough for detention, Your Majesty.”

“It would be.”

“But he’ll slip away,” Khalid Via stated. At his chilling gaze, Feltion fell silent.

At Khalid’s words, everyone recalled one thing: Nox Rainerio’s immunity.

He still had two of those immunities left. Their faces instantly darkened. But they continued, as if to say, Let’s proceed anyway.

“Even if he uses his immunity to release himself from detention, it will suppress him temporarily. If we find new evidence and put him back in while he’s suppressed…”

Feltion quietly observed Khalid. Khalid met his gaze, then quietly rose from his seat.

No one could miss the sight of his large frame slowly rising from the sofa. The Emperor’s faction nobles turned their heads.

“Give the order right now, Your Majesty. If you only command me to detain Duke Rainerio, I will personally act.”

“…Yes.”

He’d act. Of course, whose affair is it anyway? The relationship between the two men, who looked at each other with subtle expressions, was difficult to explain.

They thought they knew everything about each other. They hadn’t shared blood, but they believed they were sworn brothers, more deeply bound than true siblings.

Yet now, even looking into each other’s eyes, they couldn’t see an inch ahead. All they could see in each other was desire for him. That was all.

Just as fire reflects only fire in the eyes of one who gazes upon it, their eyes were filled only with desire, obscuring each other’s vision.

“Khalid Via.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Effective immediately, I order the detention of Nox Rainerio for the murder of a noble.”

“Understood.”

“The location will be…” the Emperor drew out his words, “the imperial palace.”

Usually, high-ranking nobles are detained in their own mansions until their guilt is firmly established, but the Emperor was taking a strong stance.

Khalid Via looked at Feltion with an unreadable expression, then left to carry out his order.

As he quietly departed, the Emperor’s faction nobles began to move silently.

It was obvious that Nox Rainerio would counter this arrest warrant with his immunity, so they needed to prepare their next move.

The Emperor watched the backs of the nobles who moved for him, then turned his gaze to Duke Via’s carriage, visible outside the window.

The carriage sped away, and the Emperor wondered what his next move would be.

What will you do, Khalid Via?

The Emperor knew well that Khalid, like himself, could not abandon his desire for Nox. That’s why he wondered. Would Khalid also try to bring him down again, forcefully clipping his wings, or would he choose to protect him?

“You are like me,” Feltion whispered. A whisper no one heard. The Emperor no longer truly knew Khalid. But he knew his past, and he knew that terrible desire that had continued from long ago.

You, too, will wish for his downfall. Like me.

The Emperor drew the window curtains closed.