Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Reinhart.

She knew his name. But Valeta had never called him by it as a precaution, worried that she would become attached if she did, worried that affection would creep up on her, as light as a feather, before taking root, worried that she’d become like the Valeta in the novel, willing to give up an arm and a leg for Reinhart, only to end up as an ornament on the dining room table.

“Every time I saw you groveling at your father’s feet because you couldn’t bear the hunger and the pain, you don’t know how miserable I felt because my powers hadn’t awakened yet,” Reinhart said.

She said nothing as she dropped her head. She couldn’t believe that Reinhart remembered each and every one of those embarrassing, humiliating things. I wish I could hit him in the back of the head just so he forgets everything, she thought earnestly.

Honestly, she’d never given a second thought to those things she’d done. Count Delight relished seeing her on her knees, wanting complete control over his daughter. Valeta—convinced that she would one day be free from his grasp, whether by marriage or by his death—had no need to hold onto her pride, and thus, the easiest thing for her to do was grovel. Getting down on her knees and apologizing usually ended things quietly.

“Master.” Reinhart rose from his seat, circled the table, and approached Valeta. “I’ll allow you to be my one and only master, so please stay by my side,” he whispered, leaning into her. He gently cupped her cheek. “Hm? How about that?”

Valeta’s eyes widened. “You refused every time I told you to run away.”

This time, it was Reinhart’s eyes that widened before he smiled at her almost bitterly. “If I had run away, I would have been a lot worse off.”

“What?”

His smile deflated a bit at her question. He slowly opened his mouth. “Magicians are born with a different energy than ordinary humans. Ordinary humans find that energy uncomfortable and disgusting.”

Valeta remained silent.

“That’s the reason why young magicians are often hated for no reason,” Reinhart continued. “Humans inherently have a hard time accepting those who are different, and young magicians are particularly vulnerable.”

He gently stroked Valeta’s cheek with his thumb while she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She hadn’t known any of this.

“However, you weren’t like that,” he murmured.

“I...” Valeta wanted to shout, I didn’t want to be around you! I was afraid of you too! But she couldn’t because his thumb was now resting on her lower lip.

“You always looked me in the eye when you spoke to me, you always listened to me, and you never shied away from my touch.”

“That’s...”

“It’s not just my name you didn’t call. You never called anyone by their names. You never opened your heart to them. That means I was no different than them in your eyes, right? You saw me as a human being, just like them.”

Valeta couldn’t say anything as Reinhart whispered into her ear.

Nobody ever looked him in the eye or talked to him. They only wanted him for his looks, his sweet voice, or to feel superior to him. She was the only person who looked at him for who he was, never wanting anything more from him. Although she wore a cold expression, one that often bordered on disgust, she’d never pushed him away when he clung to her.

“So, why didn’t I run away, you ask? Staying in that place and groveling on my knees was my best option,” Reinhart said as he brought his face close to hers. Valeta narrowed her eyes and gently pushed him on the shoulder, and he backed away, yielding to her gentle touch. “If I had left that place, I wouldn’t have been able to get my hands on you.”

He licked his lower lip as he spoke.

Does he want to kiss me?

The horrifying thing was that she would have let him. She couldn’t tell if it was because of his innocent and pure appearance or because she still had some part of the original Valeta within her.

“It’s obvious, but...” Reinhart trailed off. “I wanted to have you, master.”

He gave a tender smile, and Valeta stared at it, finding the madman’s smile beautiful. She wondered if he knew what she was thinking. She let out a deep sigh.

“I’m sure you didn’t want to become a spectacle,” he continued.

“Spectacle? What do you mean?”

“Do you have any idea how many people would kill to have just your alchemy skills, to say nothing of your elementalist abilities?”

He received no response. “You have no idea what your foolish father was trying to do with you.” Reinhart slowly brushed against the inside of Valeta’s wrist with his hand. He trailed a finger down her wrist, tracing one of the translucent blue veins beneath her skin. “How he tried to draw your blood and sell it...”

Valeta’s eyes widened.

“How he wanted to lock you away in a far-off villa under the guise of recovery and then force you to carry some man’s child.”

A trail of goosebumps followed the path of Reinhart’s finger. However, Valeta wasn’t sure if the goosebumps stemmed from his touch or this new horrifying revelation about Count Delight.

“He was planning on auctioning you off.” The finger tracing her veins rested on the nape of her neck, his thumb rubbing gently at a spot on her neck. “Then, once you got married to the crown prince, he was going to force you to make potions, splitting the profit between himself and that greedy pig of an emperor.”

Reinhart’s thumb started pressing against her neck. It didn’t hurt, but Valeta was frightened. However, she didn’t move. She continued to stare absently at his lips.

“I bet you didn’t know anything.”

Valeta cursed. She knew that her father was obsessed with money, but she was appalled to learn what her own flesh and blood had planned for her.

“You have no idea how much I wanted to snap their necks.”

Her expression contorted, wiping the indifference from her face. Reinhart’s eyes, which were usually apathetic and full of lies, were burning with rage. Valeta was shocked by the murderous look on his face, for she had never seen him like this before. He always wore a kind expression with that fake smile of his, the one that never reached his eyes, of course.

“I was engaged to the crown prince. What do you mean by a child?”

“He was offered a significant amount, enough for him to consider delaying your marriage by a year and sending you elsewhere under the guise of needing medical treatment.”

“Did Father really plan that?”

“Yes. Since you are a noble and a high-level alchemist, to him, you must’ve looked like a goose that could lay him golden eggs.”

“That’s terrible,” Valeta said, frowning. There was nothing she could do now that the count was already dead, but she felt even less sorry for the way he had died. She let out another sigh. “Is that why you want me to stay here? Because it’s dangerous outside?”

“Simply put, yes.”

“No,” Valeta replied, cutting off a smiling Reinhart. “How do I know that you’re not going to hurt me?”

To the girl, the man standing in front of her was equally as dangerous as anything outside the tower. Reinhart shrugged at her biting words and sighed before sitting back down in the chair opposite Valeta’s. With his chin propped on his hand, he said, “I won’t hurt you, master. If I wanted to, I would’ve killed you already.”

Her lips turned down at the way he said those cruel words so easily.

“If you promise that you won’t run away, I’ll let you out of this room.”

“I understand.”

“You won’t run away?”

“No.”

“Such a blatant lie,” Reinhart said with a chuckle. Anyone could tell that was a lie, especially coming from her. Her first and only instinct was to escape from this place, and it was obvious that her goal was to get out of the Magicians’ Tower as soon as the opportunity arose. She wasn’t even trying to hide her true intentions.

At Valeta’s confident expression, he smiled bitterly. Even as a child, she never acted in the way that he’d expected her to, and that still hadn’t changed. Reinhart extended his hand. A thin, round bracelet materialized in the center of his palm. It was silver, as thin as a ring, and had no jewels on it.

“Take this. If you put this on, you can leave the room whenever you want.”

“This isn’t another repatriation bracelet, is it?” Valeta looked at Reinhart with extreme loathing in her eyes.

He shrugged and shook his head. “Certainly not. Don’t compare me to that bastard.”

“Okay,” she agreed, though with a disgruntled look on her face. She was rendered speechless by Reinhart’s confidence and also surprised at how foul he could sometimes be. She wondered how he was able to play the role of a kind and innocent slave for so long.

“People can leave the room whenever they want, but they have to ask me or the keeper of the watchtower to be let back in.”

“Oh.”

Did that mean she could enter and exit this room at will? For now, Valeta wanted to escape from this stuffy room. She took the bracelet and slid it onto her wrist.

“If you call my name with this on, I’ll come to wherever you are.”

“What? I can’t come back by myself whenever I want?”

Reinhart’s eyes curved into crescent moons at Valeta’s perplexed expression. She returned his stare.

“What a silly thing to say, my dear master.”

Valeta’s frown deepened.

I really want to punch him.