Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP Chapter 402: Feathers and Heels

Athanor answered with a flat face, the smallest grin barely surfacing on it. "And what if I was considering it?"

Lysia shot upright. ""

"Why wouldn’t I?" he said. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That deal would have turned my treasury vault into a never-ending ocean, the very same vault a certain someone has been busy draining dry."

He went on, entirely unbothered. "Every problem and every future threat lurking around my duchy would have dissolved with a single kiss on her lips in front of a hall full of guests. My conflict along the southern borders. The trade routes. I could have forced any number of commissions in my favor. And best of all, the rest of the dukes and duchesses currently plotting behind my back would have had no choice but to bow."

"You—" Lysia hissed.

But Athanor kept right on going. "And beyond the sheer profit of it, Hestia is breathtakingly beautiful as well. Or so the entire kingdom insists. So I see no loss anywhere in the arrangement."

He tilted his head thoughtfully. "It would have been the finest deal of my life, right up until someone came along and ruined it with a glass of wine."

A pillow struck him square in the face with enough force to burst on impact, sending a blizzard of feathers exploding across the room.

"Get the hell out of my room, you monster!" Lysia snarled.

"Lysia—"

"Out. " She jabbed a finger at the door. "Go. Hic. Go marry your profitable princess. And I hope your firstborn sells you for gold."

She paused, reconsidering. "No. For a handful of coppers. And then haggles the price down on top of it."

The sight of her sitting there clutching her bedsheet like a furious little kitten pulled an actual laugh out of Athanor. He turned to leave, still chuckling.

"I’ll take my leave, then. It appears I need to plan some proper parenting, so that my child develops a rather better sense for business." He waved a hand over his shoulder. "Goodnight, Lysia."

She was halfway through cursing him for smiling when something snagged in her mind. "...Wait."

Athanor stopped without turning around.

"Answer me sincerely, Athanor." Her voice had lost its edge. "Why did you support me back there? Why did you take my side when I, a mere slave, committed the crime of insulting a member of the royal family, on her own special day, in front of half the capital?"

She sat up straighter. "And why did you tear into her stained blood even more cruelly than I did? None of it makes sense. You don’t protect someone from a slap if you genuinely wanted that merger. So explain it to me. Why go to that length? Why put the entire royal family on your bad side over me?"

"Are you forgetting the terms of our contract?" Athanor said, still facing the door. "I told you I would protect you. I was simply doing my job."

"" Lysia barked. "What, do you think I’m drunk to swallow anything that falls out of your mouth? The contract binds you to keep me from dying. That’s it. So by your own logic you could have just told that bitch to torture me all she liked, as long as she stopped short of killing me, and you’d still have been perfectly in line with it."

"There were many reasons behind my actions," Athanor said. "So don’t waste your thoughts on it. I don’t feel a single ounce of regret over any of it. And should a day like today come around again, I would choose you again. The tournament is four and a half years out. I want you in the very best condition possible, so you can carry me to that winner’s recognition."

Lysia leaned over the edge of the bed, groped around for one of her heels, and hurled it at the back of his head.

"There you go again, treating me like a slave, you absolute fucker!" Her voice cracked with something that wasn’t quite anger. "At this point you’re making that bitch’s words feel like reality. The lamb. Fed well before the slaughter. You throwing me away the second I’ve served my use. Every last word of it."

Athanor, struck far harder by her words than by any shoe, turned back around. He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her.

"You’re wrong," he said. "Completely wrong. You were never a tool to me. If that were the case, you would not exist in my life at all. In fact, I would never have made myself your patron to begin with."

He looked at his own hands. "If that were the case, I would have killed you the moment you first dared raise a hand against me."

"If that were the case, I would have had you tortured for insulting me. And yet here you sit, calling me directly by my name."

"And if that were the case," he said, quieter, "I would not have been so furious with the princess that I could barely stop myself from ending her life in the middle of her own banquet."

Lysia just stared at his face. It wasn’t the cold, composed mask he wore everywhere else. There was something else showing through it now, something that looked an awful lot like pain.

"I don’t get a single thing you’re talking about," she said, confused.

"Then forget it," Athanor said. "And answer me this time instead. Tell me why you interrupted us during that proposal."

He held her eyes. "What I can’t understand isn’t what you said to Hestia. It’s why you were willing to throw your own life away simply to stop that proposal. You knew exactly what happens to someone who crosses a member of the royal family. And still you didn’t hesitate. Not for a single moment."

His voice dropped. "So tell me, Lysia. Was it jealousy that drove you to all of that? Or is there something living in your mind that I still haven’t managed to see?"

Lysia’s whole face went into a panic, and her voice came out in broken pieces. "What, what do you mean, jealous, you dummy? I, that’s, that’s not, I was protecting my If that bitch became duchess, she’d have audited my allowance on day one! My five years would have turned into a labor camp overnight! So obviously I was just out there defending my living standards!"

[A/N: Please read the notes below.]