A Crown of Ruin and Blood

He spread his thumb and forefinger and began to pry her folds apart.

His movements were as merciless as the sharp arch of his brow.

Fingers roughened from gripping bayonets more often than pens scraped stinging paths across her vulva.

A slick warmth seeped from within her.

It was only her body’s instinctive attempt to reduce the friction.

He rubbed along the flushed flesh, then withdrew his hand.

Studying the sheen coating his fingers, he lifted them to his nose and inhaled.

Was he mocking her.

While his mouth spat vile words, below he seemed almost amused by the female scent rising from her.

At last he extended his tongue and licked the fluid from his hand.

With an appraising gaze, as though sampling seasoning from a dish, he lightly tapped the tip of his tongue against his finger.

“Hah. Filthy.”

“Do I look like an idiot who cannot distinguish what I may eat from what is mere refuse.”

“That isn’t what I meant…”

She gained nothing but a scathing rebuke.

Chloe could only bite down on her lips to swallow the words she truly wished to say.

After tasting her, his expression turned unreadable.

He lowered his hand once more between her thighs.

Rubbing along the outer lips, he parted the thick folds.

Then he straightened his finger and pushed into the narrow cleft.

Something shaped like a lesser imitation of his own s*x thrust inward.

Just as he had crudely put it, the so-called hole that devoured men opened to the width of his finger.

“Ah— there, mm…”

Chloe could not comprehend what was being done to her.

Even as the intrusion moved in and out, stretching her open, she struggled to accept that this was truly happening.

The Emperor of all people inserting his fingers into a woman’s s*x.

It was an act far removed from common sense.

To watch her viscous fluids stain those noble hands felt wretched beyond words.

She longed desperately to push him away.

To grasp his sturdy forearm and make him stop.

But her pitiful hands clung only to the jagged rock above her.

If she wished to live, she could not move.

Why was this unfolding differently from her previous life.

No— why had she even returned to the past.

Her circumstances felt like a dense fog through which she could not see a single step ahead.

She did not even know why time had been granted to her twice.

It could not simply be called divine will.

Chloe had offered the most fervent prayers to Philip, the leader of the Eternal Order.

Other than the false god she had killed with her own hands, which deity would possibly look upon her.

She could not begin to guess.

Noticing how slick she had become, Hector spread his fingers like scissors, forcing her open further.

The onslaught of sensation scattered her reason.

She bit down hard on her lip to swallow a shameful moan.

Her eyes squeezed shut.

Tactless tears slid freely down her cheeks.

Even in this state, pleasure swelled steadily.

Humiliation and degradation towered high, yet between her legs a tingling heat answered his touch.

She did not want to feel it, yet her body betrayed her will.

“Your Majesty, ah— no…”

Her hips jolted.

Crushed beneath his heavy frame, she could barely manage a faint wriggle, yet inside a sharp, uncanny sensation surged upward.

Already, from his fingers alone, she teetered on the brink of release.

Her inner walls tightened, a dizzying tension racing up her spine.

The more she clenched, the more aggressively his fingers stretched and kneaded her open.

Her thoughts darkened.

It felt like punishment.

“Please stop… Your Majesty, I beg you.”

The louder her sobs grew, the crueler his smile became.

His sharpened gaze drank in her flushed face and ragged breathing.

“You should receive it as an honor.”

Chloe shook her head.

The ribbon tying her hair slipped loose, silver strands scattering wildly.

The more she pleaded for him to stop, the more her head thrashed like white foam crashing against a cliff.

She did not realize how her pathetic struggle whetted his appetite.

Nor how the trembling of her slender throat as she fought the rising pleasure inflamed him further.

Suddenly, her hair at the nape was seized.

The grip was powerful, like grasping the reins of an untamed horse.

“You were the one who threw yourself at me for this.”

Under his rough handling, her head was forced to nod.

It was not consent.

Her body merely moved as he willed it to.

In an instant, she became the woman who had tempted him with her flesh.

A cheap seductress who sold her body for a night with the Emperor.

Her efforts to act differently from her past life dissolved like filthy water draining into a gutter.

The ending was the same.

He pressed his lower body against her.

A s*x the size of a clenched fist drove forward.

Obscenely hot.

“Ah— ha—!”

Her entrance stretched wide in an instant.

The slight preparation from his fingers helped little.

The difference in size was too great.

His swollen thickness forced its way into her with brutal pressure.

A searing, tearing burn flared through her.

The sensation of being split open was unbearable.

Even drenched as she was, he could not easily pass through.

Hector spread her open with one hand and rammed forward stubbornly.

Only after several harsh thrusts did he finally breach her.

If she had torn, he paid it no heed.

Passing her burning entrance, he advanced into the dark cavern within without restraint.

He moved as though charging forward.

Like delivering punishment, he drove deep, again and again.

The fullness inside her felt suffocating.

Her inner walls swelled tight around him, quivering helplessly.

The thick presence lodged within pulsed with unnatural heat.

It felt as though another living creature throbbed inside her veins.

The discordant rhythm made her skin prickle.

She could not tell whether the shudder racing along her shoulders was pleasure or revulsion.

This was not a union meant for her satisfaction.

She was merely struggling to endure the enormity of him.

“Ha… I, I…”

His thrusts grew violent.

Her body bounced, her hips lifting and falling against the bed of fallen leaves.

When her breasts shook, Hector grasped one harshly, displeased.

“Did you not come fawning first.”

His sharp nose brushed her temple.

Then her earlobe was bitten.

“And I am being generous in indulging you.”

The space between their bodies widened for a heartbeat before crashing down like a hammer.

A tearing pain erupted inside her.

A cry burst from her lips.

She could not even remember how she had endured him in the past.

The blunt head plunged so deep it felt as though her womb would split, battering the innermost gate.

She had not known pain could bloom even at the very bottom of her s*x.

Memories of their past nights faded into distant haze.

In their place remained only the shock reverberating up her spine.

“Pull it out, ah… too deep…”

She could not endure it.

At last, Chloe tore her hands free from the rock.

She reached for his waist and tried to push him away.

He did not budge.

Instead, it worsened things.

Hector’s eyes widened abruptly.

The clear sea-blue irises flashed white around the edges.

The gleam was not sane.

Among the nobles of the court, some bold fools whispered behind his back.

That the Emperor merely pretended composure, but in truth was mad.

His excesses were notorious.

He treated living beings like inanimate objects.

He would order executions over trifles.

And when his shallow patience wore thin, the gleam in his eyes was unmistakably that of a lunatic.

Chloe had witnessed that madness before.

And now she saw it again.

His expression was savage as he drove into her, teeth bared.

It seemed he might spit another unbearable obscenity.

“Pull it out. Ha. Do you really want to die.”

Regrettably, her own mind was half gone as well.

She could barely survive the relentless pounding within her.

From the very core where he invaded her, a dizzying tremor rose.

It was a sensation she did not want.

Chloe fluttered helplessly, sobbing faintly.

Her gaze drifted to the blackened cave ceiling.

“No. N-no…”

In the end, she uttered the words she should never have said.