Chapter 113: Begging the Devil

Her tears fell in jagged, silent hitches as she felt the skin where Roland’s malice had planted a living, breathing proof of her ruin.

“You weep?” her father sneered, his fingers digging into her shoulder with crushing strength. “Do you dare play the part of the innocent now? All these years I have groomed you, polished you to be the crown of our lineage, only for you to bring this filth upon our name? Tell me this instant… who is the father?”

“I… I do not know,” Alisha whispered, her voice fractured. It was the haunting truth; she had been with Lucius in the glow of love, and only days later, she was forced into the shadows by Roland. The timeline was a blurred smear of joy and terror.

Another slap, more vicious than the first, rocked her very soul. “You will tell me his name!” her father roared. “The physician says the child cannot be removed because of some drug you ingested. Do not play the fool with me—who is the father?”

In the midst of her tremors, she finally gasped out the name that felt like a curse on her tongue. “It is… Ro… Rol… Roland.”

“What? I cannot hear you!”

She looked into his eyes, her gaze drowning in a sea of misery. “Roland Tharron.”

Her father collapsed into a nearby chair, the sheer weight of the name stealing the air from his lungs. “Roland Tharron? That madman? That monster?”

Alisha could only nod, her spirit withering under his gaze. Her father struck his own forehead in a gesture of pure despair. “My God… have you lost your mind to involve yourself with him? We are finished. Our house is ruined.”

“Father… I…”

“Do not dare call me father!” he spat, pointing a trembling finger at her. “If you wish to rectify this disgrace, you will go to him. You will make him marry you, just as you allowed him to share your bed. Do you understand?”

He stormed out, the door slamming with a finality that left her alone with nothing but the sound of her own breaking heart.

The following day, Alisha had no choice but to walk into the lion’s den. She stepped out of her carriage before the looming, oppressive gates of the Tharron Estate. Every step she took through the corridors was haunted by the suspicious, mocking whispers of the servants. She marched directly to Roland’s study.

He was there, wreathed in a veil of grey smoke, leaning back in his chair with a terrifying composure. “What brings you here, Miss Alicia?” he asked, a predatory glint in his yellow eyes. “Or did you simply find yourself craving more of my company?”

Her entire being trembled, but she forced her spine to straighten, staring at him with a fragile, desperate resolve. “Roland… I am pregnant.”

He stilled for a heartbeat, the smoke curling around his still features. Then, a fierce, wicked grin spread across his face. “And… what is required of me?”

Alisha swallowed hard, the metallic taste of fear rising in her throat. “What is required? It is your child. You must take responsibility. You must marry me.”

Roland leaned forward, the shadows of the room dancing in his eyes. “And if I refuse?”

Her eyes widened, a cold, crystalline terror seizing her chest. Roland rose from his mahogany desk, his movements fluid and predatory, as he began to pace around her. He was a wolf circling a wounded fawn, savoring the scent of her fear.

“So,” he began, his voice a low, melodic taunt. “You wish for me to marry you simply because you carry the seed of our… encounter? If that is the case, Alisha, then beg. Just as you had the audacity to reject my hand once before, you shall now plead for the privilege of my name.

Or,” he paused, leaning in until his shadow swallowed her whole, “you may leave. Go and bear your bastard in the gutter. Let the world witness the fall of the kingdom’s purest daughter as she becomes nothing more than a common whore.”

His words were iron shackles, leaving her no path for retreat. The choice was a slow death in the shadows or a life of gilded misery by his side. With a soul fractured beyond repair, Alicia sank to her knees. She pressed her forehead against the cold floor, the ultimate gesture of submission and self-loathing.

The marble floor was punishingly cold against her skin, a stark contrast to the scalding heat of the tears that finally broke free, tracing paths of salt and sorrow down her cheeks

“I beg of you… Duke Roland Tharron,” she rasped, the words tasting like ash. “Marry me. Please.”

Roland reached down, his fingers gripping her chin with a bruising strength as he forced her face upward. He met her tear-filled gaze with a smile of pure, unadulterated malice. “With the greatest of pleasure, my dear. And I shall ensure our wedding day is… unforgettable.”

As he had calculated with devilish precision, the wedding was set for exactly one month later. It was a day intended to be “special”—the very day Lucius was to return from the front lines as the Empire’s conquering hero.

Alisha sat in the vanity chair, a hollow, porcelain doll in the hands of the palace maids. They brushed rouge onto her deathly pale cheeks and tightened the stays of her ivory gown. The lace felt like thorns against her skin. She fought with every ounce of her remaining will to stifle the tears, knowing that if she broke now, she would never stop.

With every cinch of the corset, she felt the ghost of Lucius’s promises strangling her. This white silk was supposed to be a symbol of their future; now, it was merely a shroud for her buried soul.

Outside, the distant blare of silver trumpets echoed through the city, announcing the return of the Imperial army. The irony was a physical weight, crushing the air from her lungs. Instead of being led to the altar by her beloved Lucius, she was being sacrificed to the man she loathed more than death itself.

As she stared at her reflection, she didn’t see a bride. She saw a casualty of war—a woman being wed to her monster while her savior marched home to find her already lost.

As the war-weary stallions ground to a halt, their hooves kicking up the dust of a long journey, Lucius dismounted with a vigor that defied the scars of battle. A radiant, unbridled joy lit his face as he spotted his little sister. He rushed forward, sweeping Serene into a fierce, protective embrace, his laughter ringing out like a clarion call.

“Your big brother has returned, little one!” he declared, his voice thick with the pride of a conqueror.

But Serene did not share in his jubilation. She offered only a wan, haunted smile—a fragile porcelain mask that looked as though it might shatter at a touch. Lucius felt the sudden chill in her demeanor and began to scan the gathered crowd, his heart searching for the platinum-haired woman who had been his only sanctuary in the dark.

He leaned in close, whispering with a playful, conspiratorial spark, “And where is my beloved? Don’t tell me she has overslept and forgotten the hour of my return. She truly is a lazy little cat, isn’t she?”

Serene’s eyes flickered to the blood-stained hilt of his sword—the weapon that had won a war, yet remained powerless to save the one woman he had fought it for

A suffocating silence fell between them, heavier than any armor Lucius had ever worn. Serene stared at him, her eyes drowning in a grief she did not know how to name. She reached out, taking his calloused, warrior’s hands in her own, trembling as she prepared to deliver a blow more lethal than any enemy blade.

“In truth, Lucius…” she stammered, her voice catching in a dry throat. “Today is her wedding day.”

The light vanished from his eyes as if extinguished by a sudden gale. A terrifying, frozen stillness settled over his features. “Wedding? Whose wedding? I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

Serene threw her arms around him, clinging to him with a desperate strength, as if trying to hold together the fragments of his world.

“It is the wedding of Alicia… and Roland.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep