BXBX NOVEL Chapter 41: Conquest
She was trapped, and there was no Elara to help her now. She also had no freedom of her own—no chance to escape whatever fate awaited her.
"Stop stressing yourself, young one. I am really not here to hurt you," the middle-aged man said as he tossed something onto her lap. "Here, something to eat."
Liara ceased her struggles and stared at the silhouette, confused and wary. \'He is giving me food to eat? Why?\' she asked herself, but soon her gaze tightened once again as mistrust took hold of her thoughts. \'He wants me to have enough energy for the evil he is going to do to me!\'
The middle-aged man observed Liara in the dark and saw that she wasn\'t going to touch the food he had given her.
"My name is Ren," he introduced himself softly, trying to bridge the gap between them. "Young lady, do not consider me the same as my people. I can\'t even abhor such evil thoughts against someone younger than my own daughter—it\'s disgusting."
"I\'m not here to interrogate you for Lord Fagin or harm you in any way. I only want to help," he continued, making sure to convey his true intentions.
Liara listened to him, and from his tone, she could tell he was sincere, but she still couldn\'t trust him—she couldn\'t trust any man from Glenwood. It was a defensive mechanism that her mind had developed after all she had seen, and she would rather die than let any of them defile her.
"You all say the same thing! You claim to be better and different from each other, but you show your true side the moment you get the chance you\'ve been craving," she responded in a low and weak voice, almost sounding like a whisper.
"I understand you, but think about your condition and your sisters. Do you think they would want to come back to find their sister dead? Do you know how much pain it would bring them? You better eat now that you have the chance."
Liara quickly rethought his words and couldn\'t help but imagine the pain one would feel from losing loved ones. But at the same time, she became even more confused.
"Aren\'t you that fat bastard\'s adviser? Why are you helping me, and why do you believe my sisters would return?" Liara asked, her voice tinged with skepticism and suspicion.
She heard Ren sigh before replying, "Glenwood is on the brink of collapse, and I want no part in its downfall. I\'m helping you because, in times like these, siding with the righteous is the only way to survive because they are prone to succeed more."
"About your sisters, I know it might be hard to believe, but I actually saw them leaving the village that day and you playing the role of distracting the soldiers at the gate by luring them away. I know you killed those three young soldiers."
The last part of his statement uncovered a memory Liara had been fighting to forget.
"You knew!" she reacted, her voice filled with guilt, sadness, frustration, and many other traumatizing emotions.
She couldn\'t believe her dark secret wasn\'t actually a secret.
\'What if this man decides to report me?\' she thought as her heartbeat intensified. \'Then I would surely be tortured and killed.\'
"Those young men were clouded with lust and would have done a lot of evil things to you if you hadn\'t killed them, I believe you were only saving yourself and nothing else. You shouldn\'t feel guilty about that," Ren responded with a sigh and continued to convince her to eat.
Liara refused. She didn\'t believe him at all.
She suspected him for a lot of things, showing kindness to have his way? Adding aphrodisiac to her food to make it easier for him? She accused him of a lot of things, each one more desperate than the last.
The more he heard her malnourished and pained voice accusing him of those intentions, the sadder he became.
Ren had daughters older than Liara, and he wouldn\'t even dare to imagine them going through half the torment Liara had had to endure.
After more than half an hour of convincing her, she finally agreed to eat what he had given her, but only on the condition that he leave the cell.
Having no choice, Ren bade her farewell and proceeded to leave. He knocked on the door and the guards quickly arrived to open it.
Liara watched him leave before turning to look at the bread on her lap. She stared at the bread for a few seconds before picking it up with her chained hands to eat, satisfying her raging belly while her bleeding heart kept wishing for her village to be okay.
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In Winterseed, a few hours had passed since Rowan and D\'andre began their meeting. A lot had been discussed during this period, but most of it was just heated back-and-forth exchanges between Rowan and D\'andre.
Rowan\'s ability to use D\'andre\'s vocal strategies against him made D\'andre even more appalled.
\'Elara was very wrong. This guy doesn\'t look or show any feature of a dumb and naive Lord as she described him to be. With this much knowledge and skill, he could even handle Blackstone Empire more effectively than its current emperor—that guy is nothing but a cuckolded prick,\' thought D\'andre.
He turned to look at the seven captains, whose eyes were focused on him.
\'Sadly, even as wise as he is, he can\'t tell that one of his captains is feeding juicy information to his enemies,\' he shook his head and turned to look at Rowan with a smile.
"Lord Rowan, why don\'t you send your captains out of the room for a few minutes? I have something really important and secret to show you, and only you can see it," D\'andre let out.
Almost immediately, Bryce, Roland, and Oliver stood up and glared at him. "We can\'t leave our Lord with you!" they said in unison, their hands on their swords, ready to engage at any time.
"Guys, I can handle this," Rowan waved his hands, and only then did they retract their weapons.
"But Lord Rowan, why do you want to stay alone with him? He is not trustworthy enough. I can\'t leave you alone with him," Bryce let out with a stern look on his face.
The other captains agreed and joined him in a futile attempt to talk Rowan out of it.
"I am strong enough to defend myself if anything should happen," Rowan claimed, even though he knew this statement was a straight lie.
"You guys shouldn\'t worry about me. I am sure he wouldn\'t waste time, right?" He directed his last question at D\'andre.
"Absolutely, just a few minutes," D\'andre replied immediately.
The captains hesitated, exchanging wary glances before reluctantly leaving the room. As the heavy door closed, the room fell into an uneasy silence, leaving Rowan and D\'andre alone.
The glowing crystal ball floated peacefully, and the breeze blew calmly in the room as the two figures faced each other.
"So, you\'re a transmigrator too, aren\'t you?"
.....
AUTHOR NOTE: Thanks for reading everyone!! Please leave comments about any suggestions or complaint!!
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