Chapter 112

Chapter 112

When Nix first arrived in the Black territory he beheld the ruins of the Agrece compound and a number of its inhabitants deserting the area in search of better living conditions elsewhere.

He had taken up waiting just outside the main gates until he spotted an unsuspecting target. Before they were any the wiser, he immediately abducted the passerby. His intention was to simply ask the individual a few questions about Roxana Agrece, but upon seeing the puppet’s face, the fellow’s heart seemed to falter and he nearly fainted.

As it turned out, his captive was one of Lante Agrece’s children who appeared to be about the same age as Roxana from what he had heard, or possibly slightly younger. The young man had mentioned his name, but Nix forgot it almost immediately.

After seeing how stunned his captive was, Nix decided to change his line of questioning in order to delve a bit deeper into why that was. Of course, that meant resorting to the most efficient manner of interrogation possible. In other words, torture. But the result hadn’t been as satisfying as he had hoped it would be.

Based on what little information he was able to extract it was abundantly clear that the Agrece family members hardly seemed to pay much mind to one another. Since Achille Agrece had been dead for so many years already, the fellow had very little information that the puppet could consider useful. All his questioning did allow Nix to glean that Achille had been a kind and friendly soul, which essentially meant to the puppet that his body’s owner had been pathetic and weak.

To his dismay, his victim also failed to possess any knowledge of Roxana’s whereabouts. Thus, he had no choice but to continue his hunt for his master’s lost Luna. Before departing, he made sure to put the ignorant young man out of his misery permanently. Never would he have imagined that even that insignificant bit of information he had gathered at that time would allow him to present what he considered a passing caricature of Achille to Roxana,

He had been openly surprised at the results. The sweet cake and tea had also been deliberately planned to win her over. He was playing on every aspect he could think of to unlock the sister who still longed for her kind and loving brother. He was more than certain that she must have enjoyed sweets as a child, thus the puppet had deduced that she would have likely received a sweet treat at some point or another from her brother had the two been as close as rumored.

Sure enough, her eyes had become misty upon him offering the cake. Try as she might to deny it, Nix was certain she had come to the Gold manor because she was still after some baseless hope, or even minor self-comfort, regarding her dead brother. He presumed she must have changed her mind about staying due to some silly reason like listening to her heart. It was a decision he found to be very foolish indeed. As he recalled the image of Roxana as she sat across from him, the blue-eyed puppet grunted to himself.

“Perhaps I should have done a bit more digging into her while I had that poor sap in my clutches.”

It was true that at the time, he had not allocated much interest to learning about her beyond her whereabouts. It was becoming rather apparent that he should have been equally inquisitive about the Agrece beauty as he had been about her brother.

The fact that she wasn’t some average woman, but a demon tamer was also rather concerning. But to their relief, Dante had looked into her and learned that the only demons she seemed to have control over were the poison butterflies. Thus, Nix made a mental note to watch out for the particular beasts.

“I think... we’ll need to use more of that drug tomorrow.” As he next imagined how her beautiful, elegant face had become distraught, he laughed outright. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to proceed with caution, but the dose of poison she consumed today was simply too low. You said one drop would get the job done, but then she walked out of here without a problem on her own two feet.”

Being the more cautious type, Dante chose to remind the doll of what was at stake. “And if something unforeseen were to go wrong, what then?”

The steward’s concerns were two-fold. For one thing, there was the chance she might notice that her food had been drugged. Or worse, she might experience a terrible side-effect from the increased dosage.

“Oh come on. It’s not like we have years to get this done. If we’re to fulfill Noel’s wishes, we simply have no choice.”

Even the puppet was surprised to see just how smitten his master was in regard to the Agrece. Nevertheless, he was resolute on delivering her to the Gold Master as promised. Then his more private thoughts took over, leading him to imagine the sight of Noel Vertium at the height of joy before witnessing the object of his happiness’s destruction right before his eyes.

The unendurable despair and rage this would bring the Gold clan leader, and the revelation that it was his own doll who did it in order to laugh at and ridicule him caused an impish grin to spread across Nix’s flawless face.

It was the very expression the puppet would make that Dante detested above all others. Not that the gray-haired man knew what meaning hid behind the smile, but it brought chills to his spine all the same. He stared at the doll a bit longer before voicing his opinion.

“If there is anything dwelling inside you, I imagine it’s the devil himself.”

“My, my! Such flattery this early in the day? Thank you.” The puppet guffawed heartily before rising from his seat. “But you know, Dante, you really should watch what you say. Don’t forget that while the ever-exquisite Roxana Agrece is a guest here, I am her beloved dead brother.”

The venomous glare he shot at the steward seemed to encircle the older man like a snake. Contrary to the look, he seemed to almost float toward Dante to pat him on the shoulder in a genial manner.

Before he could react to the unwelcome contact, the cherub-faced doll was out of the room. All the steward could do was frown as he watched the little imp flit down the corridor.

* * *

“Oh, Luna, I am so sorry.”

By the time Noel finally awoke, it was already evening. The first thing he thought to do upon waking was to send for Roxana.

“I meant to come visit you first thing this morning, but I completely overslept. I suppose due to my staying up for several nights in preparation for your arrival! Even so, Dante should’ve woken me up!”

Had Dante been in the room, he would have undoubtedly looked utterly bewildered and frustrated at being blamed for his master’s carelessness. While the Gold Master continued to grovel for forgiveness, Roxana studied him as if he were an entirely foreign specimen.

It had been obvious both through his letters and at the welcoming ball that he was painfully wary of her temperament. His every word and mannerism made it all the more apparent that he was controlling his every action in order not to upset her in any way.

In truth, she did not appreciate how overly familiar he was in using her given name and even going as far as to give her a pet name. Still, the private setting did offer her an idea of what sort of person he was, which would prove not to be a total loss. After a moment of deeper thought, she made up her mind on the sort of tact she would take with the young, lovestruck leader.

“I can’t imagine why you’re apologizing when the promised day has yet to end.”

Unlike the night before, her voice was as warm and soft as velvet. Noel stared at his Luna in stunned silence since it was the first time she had ever smiled at him. Contrary to his fears, she didn’t seem angry or upset by his blunder. To the Vertium, her smile held such warmth that he imagined it was actually melting his heart. The feeling became so great that all memories of the icy, harsh tone she had taken with him the previous evening had evidently melted away as well.

It also appeared to escape his notice that she had dropped all formalities with him as well. The two were finally speaking as equals. “Late or not, I’m simply glad we were able to meet. As it were, I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about your doll.”

“Um... M-My doll? S-Sorry, what do you...? Ah! Do you mean Nix?” The young leader was comically tongue-tied and had just barely managed to conjure up his prized puppet’s name.

“Yes, I have a question concerning him,” Roxana said softly as she reached toward her admirer to draw him in closer.

“Um... Sure! Ask away! Anything Luna wants to know, I’ll tell!” As his face blushed a shade of pink that only made him look younger, he practically leapt toward her. He came down to his knees while holding on gently but tightly to her hand.

A passerby might have imagined him an obedient dog awaiting its master to shower it with praise and treats, rather than a clan leader meeting with his unwilling guest.

For a fleeting moment, she imagined her younger brother Jeremy’s face superimposed over the Vertium’s. In many ways, the two resembled one another, but there was no warmth in Roxana’s heart toward Noel, which was precisely as it should be.

While concealing her aversion to him, she mustered a benign smile. She then caressed his cheek delicately, which practically made the young man drunk with joy. “It’s just... I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me just how you created Nix.”

Her quiet whisper was like honey dribbling into his ears.

“Ah, that... Well, at the time I was researching how to make dolls out of real people.” As if possessed, Noel began to divulge his clan’s most guarded secrets. “Before Nix and the other lot, we Vertiums simply studied human body parts in-depth while doing all we could to create near replicas of the real things.”

The Agrece nodded in silence to indicate that he had her full attention. Spurred on by her quiet encouragement, he rambled on without pausing.

“But you see, as good as they were, they still weren’t the real thing. In my opinion, that still made my dolls a little less than perfect, which was a fact that always irritated me.”

“I see.”

“It was around that time that Lante Agrece approached me. It was obvious he was quite interested in our clan’s puppetism work.”

Roxana’s eyes suddenly flashed at the mention of her father.

“He kept begging to meet with me, so I finally agreed to just once. I don’t quite remember everything the Black Master and I discussed, but I do recall him proposing something and I declined. Hmm... I suppose that isn’t all that important, huh? I wasn’t exactly paying close attention at the time, so... Oh! Want me to ask Dante if he remembers?”

“No, I don’t think I’ll need any further explanation regarding that.”

“Are you sure? I’m so glad to hear that. Well, anyway... I told him about what I was working on, then he suddenly offered to help. I remember this part quite clearly because that’s how I received my first specimens for my research.”

The more Noel spoke, the colder Roxana’s heart became.

“Applying puppetry to a living person is actually very difficult, so I decided to try using a corpse to carry out my experiment first. However, getting my hands on a fresh corpse proved easier said than done, which is where Lante Agrece stepped in.”

Roxana continued to listen with the utmost attention as the Gold Master seemed to be nearing the point she had been waiting to hear.

“I believe he mentioned something about how people were often ‘disposed of’ in the Black clan, so he offered me a number of those disposed bodies.”

In her letter, Grizelda had written Achille’s name to imply that there was likely a doll resembling him in the Gold territory, thus Roxana had braced herself for as much. However, Noel Vertium had just confirmed with his own lips that Nix was not merely a copy of her late brother but his actual corpse reanimated with a new mind.

After all, had he been nothing but a lazy copy, there would have been no reason whatsoever to include the scar on his right hand, or the one left behind from the deep gouge to his left eye—both remnants from his final monthly evaluation. It was overwhelmingly clear that Lante Agrece had been tossing his “disposed” offspring to the Vertiums for use in the Gold clan’s experiments.