He Pretended To Love Me For Her

Chapter 3

Gisela's POV:

I froze dead in my tracks in the hallway, Leopold's cold, indifferent voice drifting slowly into my ears.

"This works out perfectly. I'd rather have no heirs for the rest of my life than ever let her bear a child with my bloodline."

Yet the midday sun outside blazed bright and scorching, but I felt like I'd plunged headfirst into a frozen cave that hadn't thawed in ten thousand years. I was ice-cold from head to toe, and I kept sinking deeper and deeper into the dark cold.

The conversation inside the study carried on, their voices continued drifting through the door.

A searing, tearing cramp twisted through my lower abdomen. Scalding tears burst from my eyes all at once, blurring everything in front of me into a watery mess.

I bit down hard on my lower lip, fighting with every fiber of my being to hold back my raging emotions. I lightened my steps as much as possible and slipped silently back to my bedroom.

The second the door clicked shut behind me, my strength gave out entirely. I clung to the carved round table and doubled over, heaving violently.

Agnes rushed over in a panic and grabbed my arm to steady me. "Madam, what's wrong?"

I forced down the roiling nausea in my throat and glanced sideways at her. She was the maid who'd come with me from the family's hereditary estate all those years ago, and she was loyal to me to a fault. If she found out the daily tonic she'd been serving me on schedule wasn't a nourishing health brew at all, but a poison to make me infertile, she'd probably run straight up to the attic and hang herself out of guilt right then and there.

Looking at her face tight with worry and urgency, I slowly closed my eyes. "I'm fine. Don't say a word about this to the Marquis. I don't want to distract him or make him worry over nothing."

She blinked in surprise for a split second, then nodded gently to agree.

Weak all over, I gave her a soft, tired order. "You can head out first. I'm exhausted, I want to lie down and rest for a while."

I climbed into bed early, but instead of drifting off to rest, I fell into an impossibly long, vivid nightmare. In the dream, I'd fully become that vicious, jealousy-fueled supporting villainess from the book.

I was head over heels for Philip, the head of the Knights. Blinded by my envy of Anastasia, I'd bullied and set her up time after time.

The thick, roiling malice surging from the bottom of my heart made my blood run cold. It felt like I was born to be this sort of cruel, rotten-hearted monster.

Just like every tragic female villain in those gut-wrenching stories, all my scheming came crashing down around me. The male and female leads dug up every last scrap of evidence against me and laid all my dirty plots bare for the whole world to see.

The female lead was soft-hearted. She only gave me a verbal warning before ordering her men to banish me from the royal city. But Leopold, who was head over heels for Anastasia and could never have her, would never let me off that easily. He ordered his men to hunt me down and lock me up, subjecting me to every cruel torture he could dream up.

By the end, my face was completely destroyed, my skin was festering all over my body, and he ran me through the heart with his sword. I died in the ice-cold side chamber of the tower.

I jolted awake from the nightmare with a sharp gasp, my chest tight with a suffocating, searing pain.

When I lifted my eyes, I was staring straight at Leopold's face.

In the dim light of the bedroom, his eyes blurred and merged with those of the cold, ruthless man from my dream. I felt like a venomous snake had me locked in its sights, and a scream almost tore its way out of my throat.

I was half a second from screaming when he spoke, his voice soft and gentle. "Did you have a nightmare? Don't be scared. I'm right here with you."

I slowly calmed my racing, frayed nerves, my voice rough and hoarse when I spoke, "What brings you here, Marquis?"

"The maids told me you weren't feeling well. I was worried, so I came to check on you."

As he said that, he pulled a linen handkerchief from the inner pocket of his velvet coat and gently wiped the cold sweat off my forehead.

My face was clear in his eyes, and his gaze was full of soft worry and tender affection, like I was the only person in the whole world that mattered to him.

Just as I was about to get lost in that fake tenderness, he asked, like it was just a random afterthought. "My crest pendant went missing. Have you seen it anywhere, Gisela?"

My whole body went rigid. I fisted the bedsheets under me so tight my knuckles burned, and forced my head to move in a small, even shake. "No, I haven't."

His brow furrowed right away, his entire face heavy with clear worry and disappointment.

I spoke up, trying to sound helpful. "Is this pendant really that important to you? If you draw what the crest on it looks like, I can have every guard on the estate help search for it."

His pupils constricted abruptly, his tone light and dismissive as he brushed me off. "No need, it's not even worth much. Just get some rest, I have work to take care of."

*****

When I blinked awake, the spot beside me on the pillow was ice cold. Leopold had clearly never stepped foot in the bedroom the entire night.

Anastasia sent a messenger over first thing, asking me to join her at the town cathedral to pray for her unborn baby.

These days, this whole marquis's castle felt like nothing but a suffocating, locked-up cage to me, so the second I got the invitation, I said yes immediately.

Inside the cathedral, she stood before the main altar, deep in devout prayer. I sat by myself under the thousand-year-old oak tree in the courtyard, twisting the crest pendant Leopold had lost between my fingers as my mind wandered.

The stone it was carved from was nice enough, but the handiwork was super rough, almost cheaply made, even. The leather cord strung through it, though, was worn down almost to frayed threads. It was obvious someone had rubbed it between their fingers nonstop for years—that was probably why it had slipped off and gotten lost to begin with.

I was still turning over in my head why he would treat this dinky little trinket like it was his most prized possession when a sharp yelp sliced straight through my thoughts.

"Hey, that's my pendant! How did you get a hold of it?"