The Devil's Cursed Witch novel Chapter 34

While Ember was enjoying the sights of Ronan, Erlos dreaded his return to the palace.

Draven sat in his chair, resuming his unfinished work on the map as if he never left in the first place, while Erlos stood in front of his king with his head lowered. Though his clothes were still wrinkled, he had long dusted off the leaves covering his body.

As he waited inside the quiet study, the young elf could not help but fidget, only to stay still as a statue seeing the King finally put away the quill in his hand. That meant it was now his turn to be grilled.

Just as he was wondering whether his master would start by throwing sarcastic remarks or by punishing him by giving more work first, he heard something unexpected.

“A day.”

“Y-Yes, Sire?”

“You returned in just a day,” Draven said in a languid voice. “You must have used your powers in the right way.”

“Yes? Oh. Yes, Sire,” Erlos replied, wondering if that meant his punishment would be lighter. “I tried my best to come back as soon as I can.”

Draven leaned back in his chair and rested his elbow on the hand rest of the chair with his black-gloved hand folded under his chin. He stared at his servant who looked like was waiting to be punished, but now looked slightly relieved after hearing what he said. Draven’s icy cold gaze softened.

“You did well.”

“Yes, I did—Huh?” Erlos was stumped.

Many decades had passed since he started staying by Draven’s side as his personal servant. He had learned the King’s habits and preferences, and he had served him the best way he could, completing each task to perfection, but there was not a single moment where Draven praised him.

In fact, he never said any good words to him, preferring to ignore him on most days.

The only instances he could remember when Draven said a few nice words towards him was back when Erlos was a little kid living with Leeora in Ronan.

Draven pretended to not see his silly-looking face and asked, “What did you find out about that creature?”

‘Creature?’

Erlos sighed inwardly as he got out of the temporary soft corner he developed for his king who just praised him.

“Sire, you just made me recall a really bad memory. Eugh. Do you know how hard it is to investigate her? None of those human beings are sane! All of them are crazy! When I tried to inquire about that human girl from the nearby villages, they simply repeated what we experienced from that first human village—they were just busy boasting about how they killed her, about how they contributed to ridding the curse of that kingdom, about how she’s a witch who caused the bad things that happened to them blah blah. They know nothing about what she looks like or even her name, much less know about her life story. ”

Draven scoffed lightly as if he heard nothing different.