Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife
Chapter 68: Mannerless

Chapter 68: Mannerless

Just as Lucian had predicted, the moment the physician left the doomed palace after treating Ave and ensuring that he’d stopped her injured hand from getting worse, he went straight to meet the Empress and reported what had happened.

"You mean to say Selene was badly injured, and the wound looks to be an old one getting infected because it seems she’d hidden it from the prince?" Elara repeated with a frown, and when the middle-aged man nodded, she relaxed in her chair.

Earlier this morning, she’d seen the princesses return early from their practice saying Selene was unwell. It seemed her stupid spy must have gotten it all wrong the other day. The spy had said Lucian exited Selene’s chamber in a hurry with bloodstains on his shirt, while Selene had run out after him and stood in the corridor with blood on her palms. She could have pieced it together—that stupid Selene had gotten herself injured, not Lucian.

The second prince was almost immune to blades with how fast he healed. If only he wasn’t, she’d have ordered Selene to kill him a long time ago in his sleep instead of the slow poison she’d been feeding him, which wasn’t working fast enough like it should.

Elara sighed before she dismissed the physician and fell into deep thought. She’d thought something had changed about Lucian and had almost tested the theory through Selene, but it turned out she was wrong yet again. Time was running out, and she couldn’t keep waiting without doing anything until Lucian beat her to the throne.

"There is always a weak point to every creation on earth, even a lion has its weak point. All I have to do is find his weak point and use it against him," she muttered to herself as she tapped her fingers on the side of the tea table on her balcony.

Back in the doomed palace, Ave slept the whole day after her treatment and didn’t wake up until the sun was setting behind the horizon and the sky had turned orangish-purple. When she opened her heavy eyelids, she frowned at the unfamiliar ceiling before her eyes adjusted to the dim room, and she recognized it as Lucian’s.

The pain in her hand was almost nonexistent, and she raised the hand to her eyes to take a look. It had been bandaged, with the sides looking a bit swollen. She’d had a strange nightmare of going back home and finding Selene already living her life while tarnishing her reputation. If that nightmare didn’t frighten her, then she would be lying to herself.

For how long did she have to remain here before she’d be able to go back home? The fact that she now possessed useless powers that could get her killed if anyone were to know didn’t make anything better for her. She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but she could clearly recall what had happened before she’d fallen asleep the previous night.

All she did was try to help Lucian, only to end up getting his injury and suffering through an intense pain that almost made her wish she could cut off the hand and rid herself of such pain.

Ave couldn’t even tell what time it was now, with the curtains drawn together at the window, and her stomach felt so empty like she hadn’t eaten anything in ages. Not to mention her dry throat and lips.

She turned to the side, and her eyes fell on the jug of water on the nightstand. She pushed herself into a sitting position and reached unsuccessfully out to it, but her injured hand was to the side and hurt so badly as she stretched it. She moaned in pain but didn’t give up and kept trying to reach it from where she sat instead of moving closer or even standing up—she felt too lazy and drained to move any of her muscles.

Biting down on her lips, she didn’t give up and kept trying until a deep, low voice suddenly spoke from the side, startling her so much that she retrieved her hand so fast she hit it against the side of the bed.

"Stupid girl," came Lucian’s chiding voice from the side where he was sitting in front of a desk with a lamp burning and illuminating a parchment he was reading in hand, but his head was turned towards her with an unamused look on his face. He’d felt the change in the sound of her breathing and heartbeat while he was busy and had turned in time to see her trying to reach for the water with her injured hand, so determined she was she didn’t notice she wasn’t alone in the room and that she could move closer to the nightstand and take the water.

"Why not just use your legs to reach for the water rather than your injured hand?" he said, his voice laced with sarcasm, but Ave pursed her lips and glared at him for startling her like that.

"I didn’t think of using my leg, and what are you doing there watching me strain my injured hand so much? It hurts so bad I feel like I will faint. I wouldn’t have gotten this injury if I wasn’t so concerned about you," she said dramatically as she relaxed her back against the pillow and raised her hand up to blow on it with her mouth.

Though she’d only said that to hide her embarrassment of being startled, she didn’t expect him to be out of his seat in a flash, and he was now walking towards her with long strides. He sat at the edge of the bed and reached out to pull her small hand into his large one. Ave impulsively tried to pull away, but he held on firm. "Hold still, I want to see if you’ve opened the stitches with your foolishness."

He began to open the bandage slowly to reveal the wound that had been stitched and treated properly, and though it hadn’t been painful a while ago, Ave flinched in pain once he finished removing the bandage.

Seeing how her recklessness had made the sides of the wound seem like they were about to open up, he looked up at her with a scolding look in his amber eyes. "It seems like you don’t value your right hand that much. If you don’t allow it to heal properly and keep straining it, you’ll end up losing the hand."

Ave pursed her lips and was about to shrug casually and tell him that the hand wasn’t hers after all, but as if he could read her thoughts, he spoke again with a frown.

"You are in her body, and everything of hers is yours. You will be the one in pain and the one to suffer with one hand. Be careful," he said gently as he reached out for the ointment on the table and uncapped it.

Ave couldn’t agree more with his words. She was stuck here for who knows how long and had to take care of this woman’s body as if it were indeed hers. She couldn’t imagine having to live with one hand, and glancing down at the wound and seeing how it looked made her shudder slightly.

"Why does it look so red?" she asked softly as she watched him uncap a cup of transparent cream and use his long index finger to gently rub the cream on the sides of the wound. He was being so gentle she could barely feel the pain but the ticklish sensation of his fingers.

"It’s better it’s red than darkish purple like last night," he replied nonchalantly.

Ave’s eyes fell on his attentive face as he continued to rub the cream on her wound. His eyes were lowered to her hand, with his long eyelashes creating a shadow over his cheeks, and his nose rested so perfectly on his face. This time, he didn’t wear his hair down but had packed it into a bun at the back, giving him a formal look.

It seemed he had come back from somewhere because he wasn’t in his loose shirt but in formal attire, and his shirt’s top buttons were left open, allowing her to see a glimpse of his taut chest that suddenly made her throat go dry more than it already was.

Lucian noticed the slight hitch in her breath and looked up, his amber eyes locking with hers. There was something in his gaze that made her heart skip a beat and sent a slight shiver down her spine. She quickly averted her eyes, hoping he hadn’t noticed how flustered she was becoming.

"Is the pain too much?" he asked in a low voice as he continued tending to her hand.

"N-No, it’s fine," Ave said as she hid her embarrassment with a cough, trying to sound composed. But the truth was, the pain was the last thing on her mind right now.

Not to mention he was sitting so close to her she could perceive his scent, which always seemed to affect her in a way no other man’s scent had before. She didn’t like that she was being affected by his presence.

"What kind of cologne do you use that has such an intoxicating and addictive scent?" Ave asked curiously before she could stop herself, making Lucian pause and glance up at her with a small frown.

"Cologne?" he asked with an arched brow.

"I mean fragrance. You always have it on you, and I can recognize you by it whenever I perceive it," she said. If she could get the name of such perfume and see its ingredients, she was surely going to open a perfume brand when she went back home and sell it to men. Such a masculine and delicious perfume deserved to be known to modern men.

"I don’t use any fragrance," Lucian replied indifferently and resumed attending to her injured hand, but Ave’s laughter made him look up at her again with a frown.

Ave laughed. "You are joking, right?" she asked in disbelief, but seeing his blank expression as he stared at her as if wondering why he would joke with her made Ave’s mouth fall open in surprised disbelief.

"You mean to tell me this is your natural scent?!" she exclaimed.

Lucian had no idea what scent she was even speaking of when he never used any fragrance and decided to ignore her. The woman was indeed touched in the head, and he was only being attentive to her because she’d gotten injured for his sake. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be anywhere close to her and trying to help her.

He bandaged the wound and then wiped his hand with a clean rag before he reached out to pick up the jug to pour her a cup of water. However, Ave startled him by moving closer to sniff his body like a dog, causing him to pause mid-action of reaching for the cup on the nightstand.

"What do you think you are doing?" He demanded calmly as she was now invading his personal space with her head lowered to his torso, sniffing from the upper to the lower part of his torso. Looking down at her head made an involuntary image of her doing something else to him in that position flash in his mind, and he quickly cleared his throat and reached out to grab both her shoulders and pushed her back up.

"Lucian, you are such a liar. You are obviously wearing a perfume and trying to hide it from me and pretend it’s your natural scent. How can this be your natural scent?" She asked with an accusing frown, as it was hard to believe he didn’t use perfume and could still smell this good. How could that be possible?

Lucian didn’t know whether to sigh or knock some sense into her empty brain. She had been so oblivious to her actions of sniffing a man in such a position, unfitting for a lady, with her head bent down to his lower torso to check if he was wearing perfume or not when he’d told her he wasn’t. Wasn’t she taught to be careful around men who she wasn’t married to by her parents or wherever she came from?

Knowing it would be useless to try teaching her manners when she had none, he ignored her and reached for the water. Pouring it for her, he handed it to her carefully. "Here, drink some."

Ave was going to insist he tell her more about the perfume matter and how he was able to maintain such a scent, but her throat felt too dry. She took the water without hesitation when he handed it to her. She tipped her head back and began to gulp down the water in such a way that a few drops were rolling down the side of her mouth from how fast she was drinking.

Lucian, who was watching her closely so he could take the cup from her once she was done, couldn’t help but notice the droplet of water sliding down the side of her mouth and how her lips were closed around the tip of the cup. His eyes followed the water droplet as it slid down her chin and then neck before it began to travel slowly down towards her chest until it disappeared through the fabric of her dress, where the swell of her bosom was slightly showing at the top.

Though he hadn’t taken a woman to bed in what seemed like forever, he had never been tempted to as he had blocked his mind and head with the plans of his revenge rather than women. And after what Selene had done to him, whenever he looked at her, the only emotions he felt were hate and disgust, but right now as he looked at the mannerless woman before him, who acted and carried herself in a completely different way that made her different from Selene, he could feel the rise of heat settling in his body as he found himself staring at the spot where that water droplet had disappeared. Her bosom.

Lucian realized what he was doing and looked away from the swell of her breast and back to her face, where she had finished drinking the water and used her sleeve to wipe her mouth before she smiled like a fool in his eyes, completely oblivious to her actions.

"Water is life!" She sighed as she licked her lips in a way Lucian’s eyes didn’t miss. He clenched his jaw in annoyance for the way her innocent actions were affecting him and grabbed the cup away from her hand.

"Weren’t you taught how to be a proper lady in front of a man wherever it is you came from?"

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