Chapter 123

Chapter 123

As the saying goes, blood is indeed thicker than water. Thus, there was no refuting just how similar Sierra and her daughter were. Their resemblance was especially striking when it came to the hateful, icy gaze the mother was now directing at her stepson. However, what she said following her first admonition had effectively shocked Deon despite him bracing for the worst.

“Even so, I also equally pity you.”

Deon’s stony expression suddenly appeared to be cast in shadow, which was telling as he hadn’t wavered once until then. Nevertheless, Sierra felt compelled to go on. “I suppose I’m the only person in this world who feels sorry for you.”

She was right. No one had ever uttered such sentiments to him in his twenty-plus years of life.

“And truthfully, I believe I have every right to both detest and pity you.”

He pondered for a moment if he had ever heard even an adversary driven mad by the fear of their impending death dare speak of pitying him to his face. But, alas, such an encounter escaped his memory.

“How amusing.”

The shock had finally subsided enough for him to respond. Deon had never imagined anyone would ever concern themselves over him in that way, and that it was Sierra of all people made it that much more unbelievable.

“I’ve had my doubts about you in the past, but now I really must ask if you are in fact sane?” His classic sarcastic tone had returned as well. “Perhaps I’m mistaken, but it almost sounded like you were suggesting you spared my life over some ridiculous sense of pity.”

Sierra remained unbothered by Deon’s cynical retort.

“My intention wasn’t to imply any sort of forgiveness. That wouldn’t be possible even if I were to die and come back to life again.” She had taken the same dispassionate tone as him. “But I...”

But she suddenly couldn’t seem to continue, and instead, Deon found himself bracing for something else.

“That’s right. You killed my son, yet would die for my daughter.”

“Have you lost your mind? Stop spewing such nonsense!”

“But it isn’t nonsense. To Xana, you are a most loyal dog. You bark when you are told and play dead when you are told. Is it simply that you never realized that yourself?” For whatever reason, Sierra seemed to have abandoned all sense of fear since leaving the Agrece compound. “In a sense, the real reason I let you live is that I believe you may still prove useful to her. After all, you know how it is in our clan. Those who can still serve a purpose, get to stay alive.”

He couldn’t imagine she would have gone to the trouble of prattling on like that while sitting so close to him if she didn’t believe that. But to him, if that was the only reason she had gone to the trouble of saving him, he couldn’t deny it was a foolish thing to do.

“Why don’t you stop while you’re ahead? I may not be able to restrain myself for much longer.” There was an audible chill in his voice as he issued the warning.

“Did you think I would consider you bringing me here and tending to my wounds some sort of favor because you didn’t leave me to die back at the compound? I don’t know how else to say this, but I’ve always been of the opinion that anyone who speaks to me in such a condescending manner doesn’t expect to live for very long.”

The threatening words he directed at Sierra finally caused Emily to step forward in anticipation of needing to protect her charge.

Don’t tell me she actually thinks she can take me. A frosty grin played at Deon’s lips as he pondered their collective naïveté. “My, my... So now even a discarded servant thinks she can overpower me? Just how low have I fallen?”

Clang.

Before either woman could act, he snapped the shackles they had placed around his wrists and ankles.

“Let’s put an end to this dull game here and now, shall we?”

Despite his better judgment, he had tried to match Sierra’s pattern until then, but he had taken all that he could of her indecision. He had been patiently waiting for her to gather the courage to stab him. He even supposed he had been silently hoping for the permanent release, but she only disappointed him by wasting the numerous chances he had offered her.

Feeling that he had done his fair share, he presumed that could not possibly regret what was happening since she herself acknowledged that she had never intended to kill him.

“Go then. Go to my daughter.” Sierra’s tone suggested that she had known all along the shackles were powerless against her stepson. She hadn’t expressed even a hint of shock upon seeing him break free. To his growing frustration, even the steward appeared just as unfazed despite being on guard. “Go to my daughter and...”

He leapt up from the bed and glared down at his slight stepmother.

“...die for her when the time comes. That is why I spared your life.”

His glare could have cut a more weak-willed person down like a blade, but Sierra seemed oblivious to the threat in his crimson gaze. His cold eyes brimmed with such murderous intent that they seemed to suggest he could kill her at any moment. But instead, he brushed past her without laying so much as a finger on her.

Their strange cohabitation arrangement had come to an end as abruptly as it had begun. Having stayed with her longer than he would have ever expected to, Deon suddenly felt an urgent need to make every second count. In that fashion, he moved out of the neutral territory and toward the Agrece compound at record speed.

* * *

It had been ages since he had last set foot in the compound, but as luck would have it, quite a bit of the mansion was still intact. Since winter had yet to fully give way to spring, the scenery was still fairly bleak. Deon took in the quiet air of the mansion for a moment since his only memories of the place had been of constant noise and rushed chaos.

Before long, he had made his way inside. He walked past several rooms—some of which his battle with Lante had taken place—then returned to the point where he had first entered through. He hadn’t encountered a single soul during his quick tour, but he had also been stealthy in his movements. Besides his own efforts to avoid being seen, he also noticed that there were far fewer inhabitants in the Black mansion.

“You there! Don’t move!”

Just as he was about to make his exit from the building, someone spotted him. He turned toward the voice to see who the unlucky sap was.

“D... Deon?”

If the shock in his voice wasn’t enough, the look on his half-brother’s face was almost comical. Deon had never interacted much with most of his half-siblings though, so he ignored the delay and turned to go.

“Huh? Did someone just say Deon?”

“What, seriously?”

As the young man had shouted quite loudly, a number of his other siblings had come running in his direction. It became clear during his brief search that Roxana was nowhere to be found at the mansion. He had suspected as much, but he had also felt the need to make sure of it for himself. Since he had accomplished the first task he had set out to do, he felt there was no reason to linger around who he considered Lante’s fodder.

“Hey, wait!”

Deon ignored all the desperate voices calling after him and disappeared just as silently as he had arrived.

* * *

“What did you say? Who was here?”

Jeremy’s blue eyes had narrowed to slits upon hearing his siblings' frenzied greeting upon his return from Yggdrasil. They hadn’t so much as asked him a single question about the meeting before yapping on about the unexpected visitor.

“It really was Deon.”

“But where do you think he suddenly came from?”

“And why’d he leave so quickly? Do you think he was just stopping by?”

“I wonder what he was here for?”

“Don’t look at me. How would I know?”

They squawked away trying to formulate an explanation for their half-brother’s sudden and brief appearance. Some interpreted it positively, while others saw his visit as foreboding, but the one opinion they all seemed to share was shock and bewilderment.

Once again, Jeremy’s gaze appeared grim. He hadn’t heard anything about Deon or his whereabouts since the coup, but his sudden emergence had to mean that he was after Roxana. The fact that his half-brother had disappeared almost immediately after being seen was even further proof of that.

Jeremy was the only one of the numerous Agrece children who knew how little interest Deon had in anyone else at the compound. During the time Roxana had unintentionally forced them to work together, the young man had studied his older brother closely, which was why he could be so certain of his objective.

“Where the hell has he been all this time to think he can just pop up out of the blue now? He would’ve been better off staying buried. No one minds that one bit.” As he muttered to himself, Jeremy took comfort in knowing that like him, Deon also had no idea where their sister was. Even so, having to think about the bastard so suddenly made the young clan leader’s stomach churn. Once his siblings’ excited ramblings had quieted down, he reluctantly began to relay the developments from the Yggdrasil meeting.

“There’s another gathering scheduled in Yggdrasil, everyone,” he said.

“Huh? ‘A gathering’?”

“That’s right. And all five clan leaders must attend with our members.”

The siblings all stared at Jeremy as if he had lost his mind on the journey back to the compound.

“We have to go, too?”

“Did I stutter?”

Even the older siblings had to admit they had never heard anything so preposterous before. Jeremy also knew it was ridiculous, but it was a decision he had been forced to accept since the other clan leaders believed the Agreces’ misdeeds and the Pedelians’ retaliation demanded an even greater showing of “goodwill” between the clans.

His half-siblings raised their voices in unison to make clear just how dissatisfied they were with this compulsory event. Here and there they demanded an explanation as to why they were being roped into such an infamously boring affair over trouble the majority of them had never played a hand in.

While the young Black Master understood their grievances, he knew their collective hands were tied, so thought it best to simply let them shout out their frustration. A full-clan gathering to promote harmony? As if! Those old crones have been clan leaders for how long and that was the best idea they could come up with together?

He would have chuckled to himself if it weren’t already proving to be such an inconvenience.

“All right, just shut up, you guys! If you’re really that unhappy about it, you’re more than welcome to abandon the Agrece name and get the hell out of our compound.”

As disagreeable as it was for Jeremy, he needed those who wished to rebuild their family’s status with him to recognize that it was a done deal. After his announcement, he turned to go up the main stairs and leave his siblings to complain amongst themselves.

“If Deon were our leader...”

Upon hearing that loathsome name mentioned, his foot halted before reaching the first step, and his blue eyes darted back toward the crowd he had just left.

“What the hell did you just say?”

The malice in his voice echoed off the walls surrounding them.