Villain, Let Me Touch You! - Chapter 5
“She’s still out there,” Vincenzo, Helios’s secretary, said after Rienna had been staging a non-protest in the palace corridor for 36 hours.
“Who?” Helios, who had been casually staring out the window, tilted his head slightly.
“The new physician. Rienna Harris.”
“And?”
“She’s so determined to heal you. Wouldn’t it be wise to at least receive a consultation? She might be the right doctor this time.”
“She’s sent by the Empress. She can’t possibly be the right doctor.” Helios rolled his eyes. Vincenzo closed his mouth like a clam, not knowing what to say.
Sickness wasn’t the only thing Helios was fighting. The Empress seemed to eagerly await his downfall, gradually usurping his authority. It was the Empress who entrusted his care to quack doctors.
As far as Vincenzo was concerned, both the Empress and the Emperor were despicable, but the Empress was especially vile. The food she sent under the guise of medicine was poisoned, and the doctor she appointed as Helios’s physician was an alcoholic who shook with trembling hands or prescribed strange medicines that made his illness worse. What the Empress did was nothing short of murder.
The worst part was the Emperor himself. He knew what his consorts were doing and looked the other way. Vincenzo’s stomach churned at the thought.
Only our prince deserves any pity.
“Keep an eye on it.”
Vincenzo snapped to attention at the chilly tone.
“I apologize.” He had done the thing Helios detested the most – looking at him with pitying eyes.
Immediately, Vincenzo tactfully inserted his opinion on Rienna’s disposal. He couldn’t afford to do that detested thing twice. “It’s a pity, but you should ask her to leave.”
He had heard Rienna was a genius doctor personally discovered by Chief Physician Ebony. It was somewhat regrettable. However, considering she was sent by the Empress, it was hard to argue with Helios about entrusting him to her care.
Who knows what she might do.
Vincenzo remembered the doctor who had been dismissed just before Rienna arrived. He had served as Helios’s personal physician for quite some time, dedicating himself diligently to the treatment for a couple of months and worked hard to earn their trust. That’s why he had access to Helios’s chambers.
On the day he gained that privilege, the doctor aimed a knife at Helios’s throat.
What would have happened if Helios hadn’t woken up that night, white as a ghost? It was a terrifying thought.
I should quickly send her away and sneak in another doctor from outside.
“Is she still outside?”
The question broke Vincenzo’s train of thought.
“What? Who?”
“The one with the pink hair, the doctor.”
“Yes. She’s still outside, but as soon as I leave, I’ll have her sent to the Empress’s palace. I’ll take care of it without disturbing Your Highness.”
“Leave her.”
“What? Leave her? Who?”
Helios frowned. He really disliked having to repeat what he said. It drained his energy. He gestured towards the door.
“You’re telling me to leave Rienna alone? Why?”
Yes, why indeed. Asked a question he had never considered, Helios cast his gaze out the window. It was an unusually cold night for spring. The barren trees looked so lonely. He wondered if he would ever see it blossom.
In the year before he succumbed to an unexplained and incurable illness, Helios despaired, realizing that what he had achieved was little more than a sandcastle. The position of the Head Knight of the Imperial Guard, the nobility that had once flattered and clung to him, the authority wrested from the Empress – all slipped away like sand through his fingers.
He thought recovery would be easy, but even after a year of illness, the diagnosis remained elusive. The competent doctors had left, and those claiming to be able to treat him were nothing but assassins acting on the Empress’s orders.
It was natural for Helios to lose hope.
But why, when he gazed at the flower buds hanging at the tree’s end, did he suddenly feel a desire to live?
Whether it’s this way or that way, I’m going to die, so I want to try everything I can think of…
The phrase “I’m going to die” was etched in his mind.
Yes, he was going to die anyway. The thought struck Helios that dying this way or that way seemed no different.
Helios, who had been perched on the window sill, slid down to the floor. “Summon her.”
“Who, Your Highness?”
“Rienna Harris. That quack doctor.”
