The Villainess is a Marionette

She could keenly feel his anxiety. She held onto him tightly and opened her mouth with caution.

“Were you surprised? Nothing happened with the contractors.”

Raphael sighed, hearing her voice, and buried his face in her neck. The anger and regret that tried to drive him mad gradually subsided.

Cayena couldn’t hide her embarrassment caused by his actions. But she couldn’t get out of Raphael’s hold; he must have been greatly shocked.

“Duke?”

Cayena couldn’t be held like this forever. She had to wipe out the inn and take care of everything with Raphael.

Raphael sighed again when Cayena stirred in his arms. His skin could feel the fact that she was safe. Blood circulated through his cold body.

Cayena had become his everything.

He experienced a terrible desire to possess her. He even entertained the crazy thought that he wanted to confine Cayena in his villa or run away with her in his arms to some foreign land.

He couldn’t be still anymore. He couldn’t be satisfied with just helping her at her side.

Raphael wanted to be hers. And he wanted Cayena to be his.

He needed them to be perfectly united.

He lowered his head and whispered softly into Cayena’s ear.

“Your Highness makes me become a bad person.”

“What…”

She opened her lips in confusion, but seeing Raphael’s eyes, patiently waiting, she closed her mouth again.

The atmosphere was unusual.

Her breathing felt weird, and her flesh seemed to tingle.

Cayena was neither young nor naïve. She couldn’t misread this tension.

He was quietly asking her for permission.

When Cayena lightly brushed the hair on his nape, Raphael understood the signal and stole her lips.

Cayena’s body stiffened. His breath was flowing into her mouth. It was rugged, yet kind. She could feel his deep longing in the hand that embraced.

She swallowed a sigh.

Cayena had avoided confronting his emotions, but she was facing them now. Even in this moment, she should have pushed him away. She should have pretended to have no knowledge of what she had just done. She had to strike him across the cheek and yell at him for his impudence.

And yet, Cayena closed her eyes.

Instead of pushing him away, she hugged his neck more tightly.

Their bodies were exchanging heat. In this quiet space, there was only the sound of panting.

Raphael, who had greedily snatched away Cayena’s breath, eventually started to treat her more carefully and affectionately.

The woman he was holding in his arms was so lovely that he kissed her lips, again and again, eager and wild. He didn’t fear that someone might come across this scene. Rather, he wanted to be seen like this and become known as the princess’s man.

However, both of them were aware that this moment was only a dream. The moment they confirmed their feelings and shared their hearts with each other would soon end.

That was why Raphael couldn’t let go of Cayena. He only loosened his hold on her for brief moments to breathe before persistently pursuing those lips again. Again and again, he took her in.

He continued this silent conversation like it was their last.

Cayena kissed Raphael even deeper. He had let her go down at some point, and Cayena, finally stepping on the ground, pulled in Raphael’s cheeks with her hands and opened her lips.

She gasped for breath.

“I can’t breathe.”

Cayena forced herself to frown harshly and find fault with him.

Raphael silently stared into Cayena’s eyes. It was a gaze that weakened her heart.

When he noticed Cayena was wavering, he immediately merged their lips.

Enough time had passed that it would be suspicious if they did not return. Cayena pushed him away, but Raphael ignored her hand and tried to kiss her again.

“Stop.”

Cayena kissed Raphael first to appease him.

Then, she spoke in a cold voice that contradicted that sweet act.

“I’m going to become the empress.”

Raphael quietly listened to her words.

“So I can’t become your wife,” she said.

He slowly nodded.

Cayena slowly left his embrace. It was time to return to reality.

“Is it because the throne has some meaning to you?”

Cayena’s steps paused.

In that hesitation, Raphael deciphered her heart: It was revenge against Rezef.

“I am not as good a person as you think I am.”

“Raphael.”

“Do as you wish.”

When she turned around, Raphael trapped her in his arms, as if he had been waiting. He kissed her lightly and murmured, “I will also do what I want.”

With that declaration of war, he stole her breath once again.

Yester, who had been waiting for Cayena at the Grand Theater after the audience left, crumpled his face until he looked like a demon.

“Why did Duke Kedrey raid that place?!”

The contract house and gunpowder factory near the shantytown had been attacked.

“What about the evidence? He hasn’t realized that it was connected to me, has he?”

“So long as the members’ mouths are shut, there will be nothing for him to find.”

“Are they dead?”

“I sent over an assassin.”

Yester couldn’t contain his anger when he thought about the money he poured into the operation.

“How the hell did this happen?!”

He wrecked apart the Grand Theater’s suite for a while. Finally, he took a deep breath.

“You said that one member ran away, right?”

The aide bowed his head and replied, “Yes. His name is Jedaiah.”

“Let him in.”

Yester went to a chair that had not been destroyed by his tantrum and sat down. The door opened, and a man in his 30s with a long scar across his left cheek entered. Straight away, he prostrated himself on the floor in a bow.

“You say you have news about the princess?” Yester demanded.

Jedaiah briefly peered at the messy room and opened his mouth.

“I heard her speaking with someone. They were talking about a granary that the Evans family did not report to the imperial family.”

Yester exhaled a long, languid sigh.

His furious expression at the disappearance of the gunpowder operation became clearer.

“A missing granary…”

Yester really liked how sweet the words tasted in his mouth.

“Yes. They cultivate cannabis there. The drugs were delivered to the secret club of Henverton Gillian, who kidnapped the princess the other day.”

“Cannabis!”

Yester immediately stood up and helped Jedaiah up from the floor. If Jedaiah had been a woman, Yester would have kissed his lips right away.

“Your name is Jedaiah, right?

You’ll be the manager of the new branch of the contract house.”

Yester loved capable people.

He remembered hearing a few times that Jedaiah took care of jobs very neatly.

“Thank you.”

Yester instantly called his aide and asked him to find a mansion to bestow to Jedaiah.

“Just wait a little while. It shouldn’t take long to find you a mansion.”

Yester didn’t delay once he had made a decision. He made his decisions quickly and carried them out even faster.

Suddenly, people poured into the room and cleaned up the mess in an instant.

“Take a break while the new branch is being established.”

With that dismissal, Jedaiah was able to leave the suite.

Jedaiah was even more frightened when everything happened as it was written in the letter he received. She may be a princess, but how could she predict the situation so accurately?

‘How did she know that I would gain a mansion in the capital?’

He couldn’t comprehend it.

Jedaiah paced around the Grand Theater for a while when he felt a strange gaze. A short distance away, a man was staring at him. The man shifted his gaze when their eyes met.

‘It looks like the person I saw in the suite earlier…’

He tilted his head. He slowly began to walk again.

‘There’s no mistake.’

The man was surveilling him. Jedaiah was about to walk over and catch the man when he heard a call.

“There you are!”

Yester’s aide, who had been ordered to make arrangements for the mansion, came to him.

“There’s a mansion that you can occupy right away. I’ll take you there, so please follow me.”

Jedaiah quickly glanced back. The person watching him was gone.

“Is something wrong?”

“…It’s nothing.”

He climbed into the carriage with the aide, and they promptly left the Grand Theater.

The aide was a cheerful person. He didn’t seem to realize what type of person Jedaiah was and spoke to him like everything was normal. However, when the carriage came to a stop, he held out his hand to Jedaiah.

“I look forward to your support.”

“…Ah, yes.”

When they shook hands, the aide made a peculiar smile that was unlike his previous one.

“Never betray the master.”

“Pardon me?”

The aide put on a nice smile again and greeted him.

“Then, if you need anything else, I will prepare it and send it over as soon as the day turns bright.”

Mystified, Jedaiah came down from the carriage. At that moment, he saw the mansion and gulped. They were near the imperial castle. In other words, the mansion was at the center of the capital.

Jedaiah began to understand the gaze that had followed him earlier and the aide’s words.

‘They suspect that I became the princess’s spy.’

Yester didn’t trust him. Jedaiah smirked.

“Are all nobles monsters?”

It seemed that he had set foot in a dark and shady place that was incomparable to the world he left behind him.