Chapter 126

Chapter 126

Jeremy frowned at his younger sister’s retreating back. In truth, he found it far more suspicious how readily she had backed down. He suddenly stood up determined that he would deal with Charlotte after all. She sensed his swift pursuit at her back and swiveled as she ducked down to avoid his strike.

Her red hair swirled through the air just as Jeremy’s fist cut through the empty space where her head had been and landed on the brick wall behind her.

“Have you lost your mind?! Why are you attacking me?!” She automatically reached for her barbed whip while shouting at her older half-brother.

“I don’t like the idea that you might be going around blabbing that nonsense to everyone.”

“What?! Why the hell would I do that?!” Her lovely young face creased due to her outrage. “Sheesh! You’ve always been so infuriating! You strut around as if you’re so smart, meanwhile, you’re always right on Roxana’s heels like some silly mutt. I could puke, it’s that sickening!”

There was only one reason for Jeremy’s hostility and it always traced back to their older half-sister. The truth in her own words only served to infuriate the redhead even further.

“I have my reasons.” He snorted at his younger sister as he resumed his attack.

Charlotte shuffled backward, then raised her whip to catch Jeremy by the wrist. Once doing so, she gained enough confidence to speak more sarcastically. “Didn’t you imply a moment ago that I was wrong about her involvement in our clan’s downfall? Now you’re only making me more suspicious.”

“This has nothing to do with that. Seeing your ugly mug just pissed me off is all.”

His retort was already harsh enough, but then he yanked Charlotte toward him by the same wrist she had ensnared with little to no effort. The tiny blades embedded in the dark leather sliced into his palm, but he dragged the whip toward him at such a steady pace that she even wondered if he felt any pain at all.

She stared at her older brother with both disgust and fear in her eyes. At the pace he was pulling her, she was almost upon him. In a panic, she tried to turn his action against him by flicking the whip, but he was too quick for her.

“Let go! I won’t say anything to anyone!” She cried out in desperation just as he was preparing to strike her again. “I swear! I really was just curious about her! Sure, we butted heads once or twice in the past, but I learned my lesson after that. Really!”

Jeremy’s fist began to decelerate.

“Haven’t you noticed how well-behaved I’ve been ever since the last time that woman beat me up?! I was still just a kid back then!”

The genuineness of her plea for mercy truly made it sound as though she felt she was being wronged.

He hesitated for a moment since he knew that as hot-headed as she still was, she was also telling the truth about having been far better behaved around Roxana in the past few years.

Compared to how the mere sight of their older sister always seemed to lead to a fight, which would piss him off to no end, Charlotte had certainly matured considerably. Thus, he accepted that she was most likely telling the truth about their older sister putting her in her place for good one day when he hadn’t been around to bear witness.

Well, serves you right for being such a nuisance. If you’d been smart enough to keep your head down, you never would have suffered. It’s that simple.

By then, Jeremy had relearned that too much kindness was like an open invitation for people to walk all over you. His half-siblings had both reminded him and suffered for it only moments ago. There was no doubt in his mind that he had done the right thing to deal with them when he had. Suddenly, something wholly unrelated stuck out in his mind.

“Hang on... Did I just hear you call Xana ‘that woman’?”

“Agh!”

Charlotte shrieked in agony as his strike connected with her stomach. Compared to the blows he had rained down on their other siblings, the punch was closer to a pat.

“I’m... I’m gonna tell Roxana on you when she comes back!” she cried while glaring at him viciously. Since she was a child, she seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to a poisonous toad when angry.

“I’ll tell her about how you’ve been acting like such a brute and being a freaking dictator to all of us!”

Charlotte had never once been close enough to their older sister to run to her for anything like compassion before, yet there she was clutching her stomach and insisting she would seek justice through the one person she knew Jeremy feared. For a reason she would never know, he took a step back.

What the redhead had said genuinely surprised him. She spoke as if she had no doubt that his one beloved sister would return. She had no way of knowing the full story of what had caused his reaction, but her threat had been effective nevertheless.

“Fine... Go ahead. Go ahead and rat me out when big sis Xana gets back.”

All the tension he had been carrying seemed to evaporate out of his body. He lowered his arm to signal that he didn’t intend to hit his little sister anymore, but that in truth caused her to look up at him in utter confusion. If anything, she had expected an even worse pounding for lodging such an empty threat.

Instead, Jeremy’s face appeared more at peace than it had moments prior. Although he had backed away already, she remained cowering on the ground out of fear that he might abruptly try to punch her lights out again. However, he simply turned to walk away.

“What’s with you? Now you’re just gonna leave? Seriously?!”

As hard as it was to believe, he was indeed abandoning the one-sided fight. She continued to stare after his departing form in both suspicion and confusion. As he grew increasingly distant, it became more and more clear that he really was sauntering away from her and toward the end of the hall. As he went, his hands dripped blood on the floor in no particular rhythm. Fearful that her half-brother might change his mind and come sprinting back after her, she ambled up from the floor and dashed in the opposite direction.

* * *

There was a dreary atmosphere hanging over the White clan’s compound. The reason, of course, being the impulsive White Heir, Orka. He had returned to them fairly soon after his cousin Pandora but appeared to be in perpetually poor spirits since crossing their border.

“It’s all over. My life is ruined.”

Yet again, he was at his window looking out into the distance and wallowing in his sorrow. His shoulders drooped as if they were weighed down by all the agony and grief in the world. He even had a bottle of wine tucked under his arm to complete the hapless image.

“Ugh! Enough already.” Pandora had come to scold her pitiable younger cousin. “How long are you going to go on like this, huh?”

He turned on her angrily. “How can you be so cruel?”

She was at a loss for words at his retort. It sounded almost as if Orka was accusing her for both failing to understand him and as if she had betrayed him.

“As a fellow demon tamer, shouldn’t you of all people know how I must feel? Don’t you empathize with me at all?!”

She couldn’t refute the truth in what he was saying. To avoid his accusatory glare, she looked away. Of course, she could imagine the sort of loss he must be feeling to be behaving like such a lost soul, but how he came to be in his current predicament had nothing to do with her. She had come to his chambers on a mission entrusted to her by the White Master himself and she intended to see it through.

“Of course, I know what you’re going through... But what good will it do you to languish here in your room? You know better than anyone that the demon monsters you lost aren’t going to return to you on their own.”

Indeed, losing his entire menagerie of demons had cast an ever-growing thundercloud over his head. All anyone in his clan knew was that he had left the Blue fortress soon after Pandora, yet for some reason, he had fallen out of touch for a considerable amount of time after. The clan master and clansmen were rightly worried that their rambunctious heir may have been behind yet another mishap.

However, as they were unable to wait for their black sheep of an heir’s return, their leader had set out for Yggdrasil without him. It was only after that first meeting in Yggdrasil that Orka returned. They had watched in dazed confusion as a Pedelian carriage delivered him to their grounds.

According to the messenger who had accompanied them, Orka had been found unconscious by the Pedelian traveling party that had luckily passed through the same forest. Thus, they decided it was their duty to deliver him home safely. The White clan members who had come out to receive him had watched on in bewilderment. However, Orka was not his usual witty self and lacked the energy to even explain how he had come to be discovered unconscious in the middle of nowhere.

Instead, he just muttered some empty explanation about having lost all his jewels and amulets which linked him to his former demons. Pandora was especially shocked upon first hearing the news. It was the only reasonable explanation she could fathom for why her cousin was so despondent.

“While I do understand, you can’t stay like this forever.” Pandora was doing her best to pull her cousin out of his funk. “Since we’ll be leaving for Yggdrasil soon, maybe you could spend the time until we depart trying to catch and tame another demon or two.”