Chapter 153

Jan 06, 2024

Like a ship sailing smoothly off the power of a calm breeze, the scorching passion coursing through Cassis and to Roxana slowly subsided. Her touch caused him to slowly pull his lips away as if it was the key to opening the lock he had formed between their mouths. His golden gaze had returned to a calm state as he stared down into her scarlet eyes once more.

This time she took it upon herself to place her lips over his. She planted one soft kiss after another on and around them like a soft, spring rain simply dampening an open field. Once their lips finally parted, he took the opportunity to whisper her name.

“Roxana.”

“Hm?”

He then let out a deep sigh upon hearing her respond so instantaneously. Their entangled embrace and intense stares had caused his heart to race, but feeling the warmth of her body at his fingertips as their voices lingered in his ears somehow managed to help it return to a more steady rhythm.

Once he had properly calmed down, she knew he would begin to bombard her with questions regarding the events of that afternoon. And more specifically about what she and her brother had discussed after he agreed to leave the siblings to talk.

“I...” What came out of his mouth next actually surprised her. “...despise the way Deon Agrece treats you.” He clasped her trembling hands in his before continuing. “Especially how he hurts you.”

He had felt this way since his days as a hostage in Agrece.

“But what infuriates me more than anything is how he tries to break your heart.”

Cassis was always wary of the way Roxana paid little heed to her pain. She may not have realized it yet herself, but she had a detrimental tendency of overlooking her own suffering a bit too often. Thus, whenever he witnessed this, he struggled to restrain his desire to destroy everyone who caused her that suffering.

He may have killed Lante Agrece, but her older half-brother continued to lurk around and torture her at every opportunity. He wanted nothing more than to make sure the older man would never appear before his beloved ever again. But there remained one significant reason why he repressed his bloodlust until then, which was that Deon Agrece still belonged to Roxana. No matter how much he wished to deny it, that fact held true.

“I refuse to allow anyone to harm you.”

He whispered into her clasped hands before planting a kiss on them. If he could change anything, it would simply be that she would regard herself more highly and not allow such treatment to befall her. His greatest hope was that one day she would surround herself with only those who made her genuinely smile and do away with those whose very presence scarred her like Deon’s. Unable to find the right words, Roxana continued to gaze into his golden eyes. Whenever she was with him, she would often experience that sort of indescribable feeling. After some time, she finally parted her lips to speak.

“If I could choose the only person in this world who could hurt me... It would be you.”

Still unsure of what to say, she defaulted to simply expressing the feelings that were sweeping over her heart. The pain he might inflict would still be a gift to her. Meanwhile, he couldn’t help feeling bewildered by her completely unexpected response. Now it was his turn to struggle in finding the right words to say but soon found his composure to mutter under his breath.

“No... Don’t even allow me to do something like that.”

As he spoke he simultaneously pulled her toward him for yet another deep kiss. There was a faint scent of honey emitting from between their locked lips. Despite their tight proximity, they both felt dissatisfied. After all, it had been quite some time since they had been able to delight in such intimacy. Alas, they decided to postpone their talk until they could get all the kissing out of their systems.

* * *

The air in Vertium was menacingly heavy and silent.

“No... This isn’t it either.”

The voice of someone unstable saturated the already humid air. Noel Vertium was licking away at his dry lips while toiling away at the center of one of the rooms where he created puppets.

“Why...? Why isn’t it working?!”

He continued to mumble inaudibly as he leered down at the lifeless figure in front of him. In 10 days, Noel’s health had deteriorated significantly. The dark circles under his eyes represented a number of sleepless nights, while his sunken cheeks and lackluster complexion suggested that it had been ages since his last meal. But above all, an eerie glimmer had taken root in his eyes and replaced all traces of innocence that were once there in abundance.

Those changes had come about the moment Dante—the only person in all of Vertium the Gold Master kept at his side—was killed. He had been crying himself to sleep for so many nights after Roxana and Nix’s departures, but at some point, he would look up and call out for his head steward only to receive no answer.

When he had first sent the other puppets to search for the white-haired man, they found his lifeless corpse in the hallway. At first, he refused to believe what he was seeing, but there was no denying that his right-hand man had passed away. In a fit of rage, the young Vertium leader immediately destroyed all the worthless puppets that hadn’t come to wake him while his guardian was losing his life.

Then soon after, he began to think. Dante had been busy sealing the manor’s main gate after the rebellion, then was found dead after doing so. That could only mean that someone from the rear garden had taken the opportunity to kill him in order to spite Noel.

He could think of no other acceptable explanations for his steward’s sudden demise. Thus, Gold Master immediately set forth to dragging a few of his kinsmen from the rear garden at random to torture. It didn’t take long before they all chose to single out one person as the culprit.

Although Deon Agrece had been the actual murderer, he had long since left the Gold lands. As the persecuted had correctly surmised that the true culprit would have likely fled, they lied in a desperate attempt to escape further torture. Of course, their clan leader could never know that. He instead went in search of the one they had named to inflict even more unspeakable torture on the hapless man before killing him.

It was only after all that bloodshed that the flame-haired man finally accepted Dante’s death. He returned to his bedchamber to weep for two more days and nights while holding the dead man’s corpse in his arms.

Dante had been the only person who had been at his side since birth. Once the initial grief had passed, the Gold Master became determined to resurrect his steward through puppetism. Unfortunately, no matter how much he struggled, the sorcery simply had no effect on the man’s flesh. His single success story had been so many years ago, and even then it had been through pure chance.

“What... What should I do? What more must I do?!”

Just as he continued to mutter to himself, unexpected visitors arrived. They were messengers sent from Yggdrasil for the purpose of firmly reminding him that the Gold clan must also join the others at the gathering. It was only then that he recalled the one face he had miraculously forgotten since Dante’s death.

Nix... As the name flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning, the cogs in his head began to turn. Yes... That could work.

Every attempt at reviving his steward had been futile until then, but there was a chance that if he transplanted a heart into Dante which had already successfully accepted the puppetism spell, he just might be able to bring the man back from the afterlife.

“Nix... Yggdrasil...”

A flicker seemed to return to Noel’s murky, green eyes.

“Yes... I must go immediately!”

And thus, the Gold Master left right away for the neutral territory in order to retrieve his puppet’s heart in hopes of reviving Dante.