Do you feel pain?

The evil man started poking the cuts on my feet.

"Aaa!" I screamed. My eyes welled up. "That hurts! Don't do that, you crazy man!"

"I didn't hear you," He said calmly as he stared at my bloody feet. "Your feet are small."

"Why don't you go to a mental hospital and fuck yourself?" I hollered at him when he poked a wound on the sole of my foot. I uttered every single obscenity that I knew. "You arsehole! Son of a bitch! Bastard! I want to shove my foot in your arse."

"Hmm." He remained unaffected. "I didn't think that a woman could ever speak like that to me."

I clenched my jaw when he pressed his finger against the sole of my foot. The pain made me dizzy. I refused to cry. It wasn't worse than being killed by him.

"You are quiet now." He scanned my foot. "Does it not hurt?"

"Fuck you!" I cursed him. "I wish I could stomp on your manhood."

He took my foot to his mouth and licked it. I remained unmoving, too flabbergasted to say anything.

My feet were dirty and he didn't stop licking. Whenever his tongue touched my skin, I felt a painful but tantalizing tingle in my nerves. A strange frustration grew in my body as heat rushed to the tips of my ears. I was in a strange trance, unable to look away.

His eyes remained quiet. There was an ambiguous silence between us. I was highly conscious of the fact that he was a man. My throat turned dry. The air was too hot. I wanted to kick his face but my foot wouldn't move. It was being licked and it liked it.

Creasing his forehead, he muttered in an annoyed tone, "Does it need to be amputated?"

I felt like I was thrown into an icy river.

"The thorn wouldn't come out." He poked the sole of my foot again. "The poison will kill you in two hours."

"Po-Poison?" I gasped. How did I get poisoned? I didn't drink or eat anything.

"Thorn of Abrisa plants." He explained, "They don't grow in these areas. You must have gotten pricked when you passed through the Shade Forest. The thorn is as fine as a hair. One of the methods is to lick it out, but the thorn in your foot has already grown. It will eat your body inside. When you die, an abrisa will grow out of your flesh."

I opened my mouth wide. What kind of freaky plant was that? I didn't cross any forest. Did Aloisia do this to me? She must have put that thorn in my foot. Killing me would benefit her for sure.

"If the poison reaches your heart, you will drop dead. It won't be painful, " He added with the same monotonous voice.

"I can't die " I lifted my skirt to my knees. He was right. The poison had spread. There was a fine black line starting from the centre of the sole of my foot to my knee. It didn't stop there. I pulled my skirt more. The black fine line trailed to my thigh. "This…"

"Amputation is needed." Dante touched the end of the black line on my thigh. "Do you feel pain?"

I tensed my shoulders. Shit! He was still a male. I covered my thigh in a hurry. "Don't touch me there."

"You wouldn't feel any pain." Dante sighed. "Kaige can't blame me if you die from this."

What the fuck was he talking about? I didn't want to die. There were no more lives left. If I died now, I would be gone forever. I grasped his hand and begged, "I will do everything that you want. Please save me."

"Amputation," He muttered coldly. "I will send Graham to chop your leg off."

"No!!!" I cried. "There must be another way. I can't lose my leg. Do something, please. You are a freaking emperor."

He raised his brow sharply. "Do you not even know who the emperor of the Sephyr Empire is?"

"You will be next emperor, " I yelled in panic. "You can't let me die or cut my foot. There must be an antidote to this poison."

"How do you know that I will be the next emperor?"

"Because I read the book!"

Fuck.