Julietta glanced at the smiling Maribel. "Baby, there's no guarantee you won't have anything like this happen again. Do you want to go through the same thing again?"

A man disappeared at her command. Julietta couldn't resist the disgust she felt when she remembered what she had done. It was so terrible and unfortunate, but if she ran into the same situation, she would do the same thing again. No matter how guilty she felt, she never thought she'd let herself be attacked quietly.

Maribel's face sank as she watched Julietta start to retch. "Don't forget what happened today. Don't let anyone pose a threat to you again."

Julietta managed to calm down her unsettle guts, wiped her mouth off, and bit her lip. When she thought of the man she had removed, she was filled with anger and guilt. "I've crossed a river I can't go back over as of today."

"Did you kill him?" Maribel asked softly. She guessed the trigger from Julietta's sudden change of emotion. "You did it to protect yourself. Don't have any guilt. What he tried to do to you was like murder. You did what you were supposed to do. But it troubles my mind that someone in the back would come. I think we need to dispose of the body. Do you remember where it is? It shouldn't be rumored that Princess Kiellini killed a man."

When Maribel jumped up and asked where she was to send someone right away, Julietta shook her head. "I didn't kill him. There's no such thing as a body."

"Baby, you don't have to lie to me. Are you sure you don't need to clean it up?"

"Yes. There's really no such thing. I'll just have to check who put me in such danger. I'll tell you the location of the mansion, so please send someone there to see who's coming. He may have come and gone already, but if you keep an eye on it, you'll find out something." Julietta drew a simple map and handed it to Maribel.

"Yes. I'll send someone right away."

Maribel stood up, confirming the directions she had been handed, and suddenly the corridor became noisy.

"It looks like someone came from the mansion. I've got to go back, too."

The door opened at the same time Maribel said that, and a completely unexpected person appeared.

"Your Highness." Unlike the surprised Julietta, Maribel quickly bowed with courtesy.

Killian did not look at Maribel, but approached Julietta straight away and raised her face. "What in G.o.d's name is this?!"

Maribel quickly told Killian, whose anger was ready to boil over at the sight of her torn lips and her bruised face, "Your Majesty, you can relax. Fortunately, G.o.d took care of her and she returned unharmed."

Maribel was impatient to know if the Prince's mind would turn around thinking that Julietta had been raped. But Killian only looked at Julietta's bruised face this way and that, as if it didn't matter what Maribel had said.

"Your Highness, how did you get here?" Julietta asked primly.

Seeing she had not lost her spirit, Killian grinned. "I was worried and I felt very uncomfortable, but you are lively. What happened? Troupe leader, get out now."

"Yes, Your Highness. I'm leaving now. But until a while ago, the Princess was very disgusted. As you can see, she is not in very good shape, so please watch yourself." Maribel resented Killian saying that she was 'lively', and left the room with those words.

"What kind of man was he?" Killian touched her swollen cheeks carefully.

"I don't know. He said he had been abetted by somebody."

Julietta began to tell Killian exactly when she had been kidnapped, except how she had eliminated the man.

"You escaped from the scene after you kicked the man's vital point?"

Julietta nodded, consoling her stinging conscience, when he asked again, as if he was embarra.s.sed.

Killian was not a fool. Julietta didn't seem to have gone through anything she couldn't handle as a woman, but there had been definitely something terrible going on and she was trying to cover it up. She didn't want to tell him what had happened in detail, so she might be talking lightly on purpose.

But it didn't matter. Stabilizing her, making her feel safe beside him, was the first priority. He forced himself to compose his voice so that Julietta would think that nothing had happened today. "You've been really lucky. It was a real relief that your opponent sent a stupid guy. But there's no guarantee that you'll be this lucky next time."

While he said it as lightly as he could, Julietta's expression was slightly off. Seeing the change, Killian decided to find out who he was as soon as he went back and torture him to death. Unaware of Killian, who was struggling and gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth in anger, Julietta opened her mouth to talk about what she had previously thought. She was going to see the Prince tomorrow morning, but she was glad to see him today. "Your Highness, is the offer you asked me to be a concubine still valid?"

Killian rolled his eyes back until the white showed, amazed by the sudden words as he thought about how to kill the man behind this. "What?"

"The offer you gave me to be a concubine."

Killian pretended to be nonchalant, but looked down at Julietta wriggling her hands nervously. "Why are you talking about something that's already done? I've heard why you ran away, because you didn't want to be my concubine."