Chapter 23 My shattered heart knelt before me like a horse...

The two soaking wet men scrambled onto the small boat in a disheveled state. Lilith, still grumbling, quickly rowed the boat home. Heinrich, being sensible, went to prepare hot water for his mistress's bath. While the water was heating up, he used cold water to clean himself, then changed his clothes and went to Lilith's bathroom to serve her.

Soaked and wrapped in a blanket, Lilith looked as disheveled as a cat that had fallen into the water. She stared resentfully at Heinrich, as if she herself were not the culprit behind this terrible situation.

"Don't be angry, it's not worth getting upset." Heinrich poured hot water into the bathtub and prepared clean towels and a change of dress for Lilith. "I will practice rowing more diligently from now on, and I will never let you fall into the water again."

"You'll be in big trouble when Cecilia gets back. I'm going to make her assign you all the hardest and most tiring housework!" Lilith glared at him fiercely and slammed the bathroom door shut.

After Lilith finished showering, she returned to the living room in her pajamas, where Heinrich dried her hair with a towel. He carefully untangled the knots in Lilith's hair in the sunlight.

"As compensation for causing you to fall into the water, how about I teach you to ride a horse sometime in the future?"

"You can ride a horse?" Lilith turned her head excitedly, accidentally pulling her hair and crying out in pain.

"Yes. And I can guarantee you won't fall off the horse while you're learning."

“Really?” Lilith twirled her hair, half-believing, half-doubting. “Actually, I’ve never left Venice. I’ve only seen people riding horses in portraits. You, Cecilia, Ivanka, even Tata have been to so many places more than I have. I love hearing their stories about before they came here. Tell me, what’s it like to ride a horse?”

"Horses are animals too, so riding a horse is more like a collaboration," Heinrich recalled of the feeling while riding a horse.

“Isn’t that similar to rowing? Rowing is about cooperating with the sea.” Lilith blinked.

“It’s still quite different. Trained horses are usually very well-behaved and much easier to communicate with than water.”

"Did you know that in standard Italian, the word for sea (mare) is masculine, but in the Venetian dialect it is feminine (mar)? A month later, on Ascension Day, those old nobles will hold their annual wedding ceremony with the sea on the docks."

"A wedding with the sea?"

"Yes, a bunch of unkempt old men indulging in debauchery imagine themselves as husbands of the sea, but in reality it's just their lewd wishful thinking, without any reverence for nature. And these inexplicable gender comparisons are truly disgusting. Do people riding horses use such analogies?"

"Comparing a mount to a woman or wife is common in chivalric literature. Moreover, ladies usually had to use a special side saddle, with both legs on the same side, and be led by a servant to control the horse; otherwise, it would be considered improper."

"I don't want to learn side-riding. It's like playing house. I don't even have any control over the horse. How can that be considered riding a horse? It seems I have to learn to ride astride. I want to ride like a man. Teach me now."

"Now? But there aren't any horses here...?"

"You play the horse," Lilith commanded with an air of entitlement. "Hurry up, kneel down."

“This has nothing to do with actually riding a horse, just like you can’t teach someone how to paddle a gondola on land, even if you find someone to lie on the ground and pretend to be a gondola.” Heinrich patiently dealt with Lilith’s unreasonable behavior.

“My dear Heinrich, obey me~” Lilith flashed her usual insincere smile, but the tone of the last part of her sentence was colder than the winter sea, “Kneel before me like a horse, that’s an order.”

If Lilith's position in Heinrich's heart was always shifting on a horizontal axis marked with "lovable" and "hateful" at the two ends, then at this moment Lilith had almost slipped to the extreme edge of "hateful".

"What tools do you need to ride a horse? Reins, saddle, and whip, right?" The red-haired girl laughed mischievously. "Give me your belt."

Heinrich was extremely displeased. Although Lilith often made unreasonable demands of him, her current order was utterly humiliating. He deeply regretted the solution he had devised to appease Lilith at Sophia's house. He hadn't needed to go to such lengths for her. Besides, the two situations were completely different; one was Heinrich's own choice, while this was entirely Lilith's unilateral coercion.

"I have no right to refuse, do I?"

"Yes, you don't. Because you are my slave. Even if you have been redeemed in name, you are still my slave in fact. You cannot disobey me, nor can you leave me."

Whether Lilith was oblivious to Heinrich's subtle change or deliberately chose to ignore it, she forcefully untied Heinrich's belt and used it as a whip, folded the towel she had used to dry her hair and placed it around his waist as a saddle, grabbed the back of his shirt collar as reins, and then spread her legs to sit on him.

"What are you doing!"

Cecilia's sudden return home abruptly interrupted this absurd farce. For the first time, Heinrich felt a sense of relief and redemption upon seeing Cecilia's stern face. Lilith, on the other hand, was startled, quickly dropping her belt and blinking, a series of cunning ideas immediately springing to mind.

"You're back, dear Cecilia—" She smiled, lifted her skirt, and walked up to Cecilia, opening her arms to warmly embrace the maid who was half a head taller than her. "Happy Easter!"

Heinrich was taken aback. He belatedly realized that Lilith's seemingly distant physical contact with him was never limited to just one person. Hugs and holding hands were merely means for her to win over others and achieve her goals.

Mauro's curse from prison echoed in his ears once more. Weaving a sweet trap, using a hypocritical face to gain sympathy—it was all for her own benefit.

“Madam…Madam!” Cecilia gently pulled Lilith off her, who was clinging to her like an octopus. “There’s a guest visiting you outside. It’s…Maria. She says she’s here to say goodbye and wants to see you one last time to say a few words from her heart.”

Lilith's face instantly fell. Maria's visit had left her with no good impression whatsoever. Even though the forty-member council, the Venetian law enforcement agency, had ordered Mauro's trial, and Lilith had nominally pardoned Maria as both an accomplice and a victim, it didn't mean she had truly forgiven her, especially since Maria was carrying infectious syphilis.

"Let her wait outside," Lilith said coldly. "Cecilia, come with me to change my clothes. Heinrich, clean up the floor."

Heinrich knelt on one knee on the velvet carpet in the living room, picking up a belt and a bath towel that had fallen onto the carpet like he was collecting trash. Even though there were only these two items on the floor, he felt as if something else had been smashed to pieces and couldn't be put back together no matter what he did.

Maria was left waiting at the door for quite a while before Lilith, having finished dressing up, finally let her in. As the weather was getting warmer, Lilith changed into a cooler black chiffon dress, revealing her slender arms and neck. The emerald necklace her fiancé had given her shone even brighter in the afternoon sunlight.

This time, Maria also wore a black dress, whether as a tribute to her husband whom she would never see again or as a curse wishing him an early descent into hell. The high collar and long sleeves concealed the red spots on her skin, while her face was covered with a thick layer of white powder and unnaturally frightening rouge. Apart from her sparse, flaxen hair and weary eyes, it seemed that there was nothing truly and openly exposed about her.

“Mrs. Schmidl, Happy Easter.” Maria glanced at the half-dismantled mourning decorations in the living room. “How have you been lately?”

“Thanks to your husband, everything is very good,” Lilith replied with a smile. “And you?”

“Not bad.” Facing Lilith’s merciless sarcasm, Maria replied calmly, “I found a real witch who concocted the herbs for me and helped me abort the child.”

Lilith stared wide-eyed in silence. Intentional abortion was considered a grave sin by the Church, with sentencing standards no different from adultery and murder. She had never imagined that Maria, who had strived to be a devoted wife and mother, would be so heartless as to kill her own child.

"The doctor who treated my French disease told me that mercury therapy was necessary to slow the spread of the disease. The child was not going to survive anyway, so it was better to remove it as soon as possible to avoid a stillbirth and the risk of a bigger problem."

"But this is a serious crime punishable by burning at the stake..."

“I’ve accumulated quite a few sins in my life, so I’m not afraid of adding one more,” Maria said softly, her tone unusually calm. “From the moment I poisoned the dessert I made for you, I knew I was going to hell. I’m truly sorry for what I did, and I don’t even ask for your forgiveness.”

"Then why did you come to see me?" Lilith asked impatiently.

"I've come to say goodbye. Tomorrow I will be heading to a sanatorium in the countryside of Verona, funded by my family in Verona. I will not be returning to Venice unless absolutely necessary."

"That's fine."

"Before I leave, I want to say something from my heart. At your husband's funeral… you helped me, the only time I've ever received help from the Canaro family, or even in Venice. So I'm truly grateful to you, and very sorry for repaying your kindness with ingratitude. But actually, I also envy you very, very much."

"Envious of me?" Lilith raised an eyebrow. "Envious of an illegitimate daughter whom you've repeatedly and relentlessly framed?"

"I envy that you don't have to endure the loneliness and oppression of a marriage that feels like being in a tomb every day, and that you can run your own business as a married woman. I envy that you are all alone and don't have to worry about your family and children. I envy that you have loyal servants who can wholeheartedly assist you."

“But now you have the right to make your own choices, don’t you?” Lilith took a small sip of the red wine in her hand. “Embrace your new life in Verona. Happy Easter.”

"Perhaps, if I can pull myself out of this illness." Maria gave her usual bitter smile and stood up from the sofa in front of Lilith. "Thank you for your blessing, and thank you for being willing to see me today. I'm leaving now, and I wish you all the best in the future."

"You too. Cecilia, please see them out."

Heinrich silently watched Maria's departing figure. Suddenly, he felt she was quite similar to Lilith in some ways. Both were driven to desperation by the men in their families, yet forced to resort to persecuting others to fight for themselves or what they cared about. After Mauro's exile, would she, like Lilith, live the life she wanted?

His gaze returned to Lilith. He seemed to understand her less and less. He didn't know whether her blessing to Maria was genuine or just an act. But he finally understood how Lilith viewed him: no matter how much he gave and sacrificed, no matter how hard he tried to help her or treat her well, she only saw him as an obedient, useful slave to be used and used for her amusement.

But his love for Lilith was far more than just the yearning and fantasy of a subordinate for the power of a superior. He genuinely admired Lilith's fearlessness and unyielding spirit, her resilience and defiance against worldly doctrines, and her composure and cunning counterattacks even in perilous situations. However, Lilith was like a flame, burning fiercely; getting too close would burn you.

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Author's note: I'm currently on Red Map, so I'll only be posting four chapters this week. The next update will be on Sunday!

This volume is almost finished with just two chapters left! Heinrich is finally about to have a change of heart—the countdown to their love-hate relationship has begun!