Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts' Contracts

Chapter 423: Chapter-423

The heavy doors of the council room shut behind them, and the stressful meeting was finally over. Elara immediately turned left down the hallway to head back to her office, walking fast.

Julian had to jog a little to catch up. He swallowed his pride and spoke up, his voice a bit rushed. "Let’s have lunch together. I mean, breakfast together."

Elara stopped in her tracks. She turned around and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "You haven’t eaten yet?"

Julian’s face went a little red. He looked away, feeling self-conscious. "No. I was just... you know, busy. Look, just shut up and let’s go get something to eat."

Elara stared at him for a second, analyzing his hungry state. "Fine. Why not?" she said simply.

They started walking toward the private dining room. As they walked, Julian kept his eyes on her. He couldn’t help but feel completely surprised by her presence. The way she carried herself was unbelievable—she walked literally like a supreme ruler. Her back was perfectly straight, her steps were even, and she practically radiated power. *Then why the heck did she even give up the throne?* he thought, his mind boggling. It made absolutely no sense to him.

He watched a group of servants pass by. The moment they saw Elara, they bowed so low their heads almost touched their knees. Julian noticed the look in their eyes. It wasn’t just the polite, standard greeting they gave to a regular regent or a royal family member. It was exactly how a servant greets an absolute ruler—with deep, genuine awe and fear.

Elara noticed him staring. She paused her steps, turning her head to look back at him. "Is there some problem?"

Julian blinked, pulled out of his thoughts. "Excuse me?"

Elara looked down at her clothes, then back at him. "Like, do I smell, or do I bite or something? Is there something on me? Like, do you have an allergy to something I am wearing that you cannot be near me?"

Julian looked her up and down, his eyes widening. He quickly shook his head. "No, no, that’s not it at all."

"Well, you are walking so far behind me, so I asked," Elara said flatly.

Julian suddenly realized that, damn, he had been staring at her back for so long that he had accidentally fallen several paces behind her like a servant. Feeling a bit embarrassed, he quickly walked forward to match her pace. "Well, I was just looking around at the palace."

Elara looked at his face, her expression completely blank. "Oh. Is that so?"

Soon, they finally reached the dining room. But the moment they sat down, Julian felt his eyebrow twitch violently.

*What the fuck is wrong with this woman?* he screamed in his head.

The dining room had a massive, long banquet table. Elara went straight to the head of the table and sat in the main chair. That was fine, no problem. But Julian had sat down first at the absolute opposite end of the long table—in the other main chair. It was the farthest possible distance between two human beings in the room.

He stared across the vast expanse of white tablecloth at her. *Man, I should have been sitting right beside her,* he thought, gripping his napkin tightly under the table. *What the hell is wrong with her?*

It wasn’t even his fault that he couldn’t just get up and move. He had already sat down here first, and stupidly, the servants hadn’t placed any chairs along the sides of the table—only the two main chairs at the very ends. Because he was a foreign prince, he couldn’t just start ordering her palace servants to drag a heavy chair across the room without a good reason, or he would sound like a spoiled, arrogant brat.

But he couldn’t understand her logic at all. If your fiancé is sitting down to eat with you, any normal person would move to a chair near him so you guys could talk and enjoy each other’s company. Why the hell were they sitting so far away that they practically had to shout across the room just to pass the salt?

Elara, completely oblivious to his internal frustration, simply picked up her fork and began to eat her breakfast in perfect, peaceful silence.

Julian literally wanted to stab his knife straight into the omelette on his plate. He was so frustrated by the sheer distance between them, but his royal training was too deep; his body automatically followed perfect table manners, even though his glare was fixed entirely on Elara instead of his food.

Elara watched him out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t understand emotional nonsense, but she could see that this guy was really something. For the first time in a long while, she felt a flicker of genuine interest. It wasn’t every day you came across someone so entertaining. Yes, that was the word for it—she found him highly entertaining.

Suddenly, Julian broke the silence. "So... why did you stop being emperor? Why did you leave the position?"

An absolute, stunned silence fell over the dining room. On the side of the room, the servants visibly trembled. Realizing they shouldn’t be anywhere near this conversation, they slowly bowed and practically bolted out the door, leaving the two of them entirely alone.

The moment the words left his mouth, Julian internally panicked. *Damn it,* he thought, *I asked the wrong question.* He really wanted to slap his own mouth right then and there. What kind of person asks a question like that over breakfast? Inside, he was burning with embarrassment, shouting and screaming at himself, but on the outside, he forced his face to look perfectly calm. He had a royal identity to uphold, after all.

Elara set her knife down for a second. She looked across the long table at him and said calmly, "Well, the weather was stretching. It was boring."

Julian paused, blinking in disbelief. He looked up at her, and this time his expression became completely serious. "Boring? But Your Highness, if I am not wrong... you cannot feel emotions."

This time, Elara actually paused. She raised her eyebrows, looking at him. "And so?"

"I have seen some patients like you in the past who could not feel emotions," Julian said, leaning forward slightly. "And I don’t think they feel bored."

Elara looked back at him, her tone matter-of-fact. "Then you are wrong. We do feel bored. If the work is already done, why the heck would you just sit at the table and do more work?"

Julian stared at her, feeling the heavy brick wall of her logic. He sighed, adjusting his napkin. "If you do not want to tell me the true reason, you shouldn’t."

"Think, Julian," Elara said, her voice dropping into a direct, unyielding line. "First of all, you are not my husband yet. We are not married. I don’t think there is any reason for you to question me about my past work or my choices. Secondly, yes, maybe when we do get married and you officially become my husband, you might have the right to ask—but only if I choose to give it to you. That’s it."