Chapter 170

Chapter 170

“Oh, how I long to bear witness on that day.” Deon intended to wait for the day Roxana would have no choice but to kill Cassis Pedelian with her own hands. Is that when she’ll finally shed those soft tears of hers like she did when she had to kill Achille’s illusion? Such thoughts were always followed by inexplicable waves of uneasy emptiness.

All the while, the Blue Heir continued to glare down at him. The crimson light from the setting sun was peeking out from the sides of his cheeks and contrasted menacingly with the gold in his eyes.

“So that’s how you intend to play this,” the Pedelian said slowly as though he had only just found his voice. “In the end, all you’re interested in doing is dragging her into the depths of that bottomless pit you call your homeland.”

The Agrece did not bother to refute those words.

“Well, unfortunately for you, that will never happen.” While his blistering gaze that was cold enough to frost over the newly arrived spring weather bore into the dark-haired man, Cassis continued to press down on his neck. “You are absolutely outrageous. Do you honestly think you can place yourself under the same umbrella as her? The two of you are nothing alike!” He then tightened his grip on the Agrece’s collar. “Only a freak like you would try to justify your actions by saying it was for her sake.”

His anger had only reinforced the older man’s stoic expression, but then his next question finally seemed to make a crack in his frozen mask of indifference.

“Let me ask you this. Has Roxana ever—even once—sincerely smiled at you?”

It was just the sort of thing that could penetrate deep into the trenches of Deon’s heart.

“Haa... Deon Agrece, how do you live with yourself as you are now?” It was taking all of Cassis’ willpower to suppress his burning desire to eradicate the man beneath him from all existence. “If all you can actually do for her is to destroy everything and eliminate everyone, then you really don’t have anything to be proud of. In fact, you should be ashamed of that. Then again, I suppose that’s just the sort of thing someone like you would take pride in, huh?”

The two were caught in a predicament of wanting to kill one another, yet lacking the ability to do so. If it were up to them, they would have taken turns tearing the other away from her sight the moment her head turned in his direction, but even that was off the table. It was a tangled web neither could escape and therefore had to accept.

“I’ll say this for the last time. Roxana doesn’t want you.” Compared to his tone just moments ago, Cassis was suddenly speaking in a rather calm yet firm manner while still maintaining eye contact. “But... Let’s just say that even if she does decide to follow your wild, nonsensical fantasy and return to the darkness of Agrece with you...”

It was a supposition that he was confident could never manifest in reality, so even entertaining such a notion was meaningless. However, even if such an unfortunate future were to present itself to him, he knew without a shred of doubt what he would do.

“...don’t think for a second that you’re the only one who would take her hand and walk into that abyss at her side.”

With that, he finally loosened his grip but still cast a cold, heartless glare at Deon for a while longer. Then as if it were a waste of time to waste even another moment looking at his vile presence, he left without so much as another glance. The dull red light from the fading sunset shone on both the back of the man who walked away and the man he left behind.

The Agrece’s knuckles sounded as he unclenched his fists that had formed subconsciously while he was being manhandled. One of the now formless petals from the flower he had crushed earlier fell from between his fingers to plummet to the grass below him. Even in its pathetic shape, it managed to stain the lush greenery with its pitiful, lifeless color.

“Deon, I no longer need you.”

“I’ll say this for the last time. Roxana doesn’t want you.”

To make matters worse, the Blue Heir’s words seemed to locate and intertwine themselves with Roxana’s voice in his mind to continue their slashing at his sanity. But there was no way he could or would ever accept such words. Whether she wished to acknowledge him or not, she needed Deon. He was the only one who could deliver whatever it was that she truly desired.

That was all the motivation he needed to carry on. Thus, if she continued to deny him, he would do everything in his power to prove his worth to her until she had no choice but to take back every cruel thing she had said.

Deon’s crimson eyes were colder than ever as they looked toward the horizon. With an ominous shadow trailing behind him, the dark-haired Agrece slipped away from the empty garden and back into obscurity.

* * *

Gasp!

Nix woke up while struggling to catch his breath. He immediately searched around to ensure that he was still alone in his cramped cell. Thanks to the recurring dream he suffered every night, he never felt certain of whether he was awake or still asleep.

The puppet blinked his unfocused eye a few times before rolling onto his side. He had been having a number of various recurring dreams for quite a while, but to his relief the one that night wasn’t the one in which his heart would get pierced. That was the only reason he hadn’t immediately begun to frantically cling to his chest upon waking.

Even so, the blond youth began to convulse for another reason. He felt as if his entire body had gone numb in his sleep. The aches from his last encounter with the Blue Heir were still evident, but the real reason for his poor condition was due to having yet to fully recover from the heavy damage he had sustained in Vertium. His body hadn’t been the same since.

A metallic sound prompted him to look down at the cold steel wrapped around his wrists. He then reflected on the peculiar dream that had suddenly taken root in his mind recently. Are dreams usually like this? There were times when events that had never happened to him played out as scenes in his mind as if they were part of his memories.

In one of his most recent dreams he could see himself placing cuffs on his own wrists, then instructing someone on how to undo the lock. Each time it was a little, blond girl who looked almost exactly like someone the puppet was certain he did in fact know.

“Damn it... Am I actually starting to lose it?”

Such uncertainty was a most unpleasant feeling. There was no way for him to clearly define the scattered feeling that had recently begun to overwhelm him.

A wave of pain swept through his body again, and his head was aching that day as well. His only means to slightly relieve the pain was to think back to the time just before he had entered Yggdrasil castle. Back when Sylvia Pedelian had reached out to touch him with her calming hand.

Nix closed his eye in an attempt to do everything he could to focus on that memory. By then he was aware Noel had arrived at the castle, but that thought was far from comforting and actually made him somewhat nervous.

It hadn’t taken long for the puppet to notice that, unlike the heartless Blue Pedelian knights, the guards assigned to watch his cell from the other clans seemed to take some pity on him. Perhaps they felt some tinge of compassion since he resembled a human on the outside, despite still essentially being a doll at his core. But even so, he couldn’t afford to waste any more time rotting in that little cell. What he sought to accomplish remained a mystery even to himself, but he at least intended to try to get away.

Nix subconsciously rubbed at his wrists. The vividness of his dream left him with a sense that he could in fact undo the cuffs, but just being able to move his hands more freely afterward meant little to him.

As soon as he could feel that he was indeed free of the shackles, his senses seemed to rush back all at once. The sound of the heavy chains crashing to the floor made him speak out.

“Wh... What’s going on?!” He stammered due to the shock of the sudden development. The heavy, metal constraints lying beside his feet were the visible proof that his wrists were no longer chained. The puppet then stood up and stared at them speechlessly for a moment before proceeding to bite his lip and perform the same hand movements on the chains still holding his feet.

Just as before, the chains around his ankles fell to the side. Only a few moments had passed, but Nix suddenly found himself completely free. But rather than feeling relieved or happy, his face turned pale from despair. He had long since abandoned his normal demeanor and began moving about somewhat frantically until the full weight of his new situation seemed to hit him with enough invisible force to make him look up.

Although the chains were finally off, he was entirely alone in that small cell. He looked toward the door and accepted that he would most certainly need to grapple with whoever was on guard that day.

Well, if that’s the case… His blue eye searched around the space again, then fixed on the solitary window that was covered with iron bars. He had removed such bars without making a single sound in his dreams, so perhaps...

* * *

Gisele Agrece had just turned 18 that same spring she and her half-siblings had found themselves forced to attend the gathering at Yggdrasil castle for the first time. The fun of scaring the Fipellions away with her card throwing the night her siblings had coaxed toward the gambling table in the lounge had been short-lived, so on this day, she had chosen to keep herself busy by searching through the bushes.

Strange. I’m sure they said there was a poisonous plant along this path on this side of the building. Did I come down the wrong one? One of her half-siblings had stumbled upon the plant by coincidence while out for a walk, so the possibility that she was searching in the wrong place was highly likely.

How unfortunate. I could have used it to mess with those rotten Fipellions a bit more. Guess I should try searching the other side. But just as she was about to move to another location, a commotion erupted.

Something crashed to the ground mere inches from where she had just been standing. Plagued with curiosity, she glanced down to see a teen boy had landed agilely beside her. His blond hair shimmered under the sunlight, but the moment she shifted her gaze, he looked up to meet it.

“Huh?”

Gisele was unable to silence her bewilderment as the two locked eyes. Whoever he was, he reminded her of someone. But the abrupt nature of the encounter only delayed her ability to place where she had seen his face before.

There was no question that he looked familiar, but it wasn’t until he ran off that she realized the identity of the face lingering in her mind. In so many ways he resembled her older half-sister Roxana. Then all at once, another face surfaced in his mind as she delved deeper into her memory.

The one who disappeared all those years ago. Any of the siblings who had been born around the same time as their most beautiful sister would easily remember him. There was once a sibling who had always been an oddball. He would smile at anyone he crossed paths with in the Black mansion, then give them a piece of untainted candy. He was the one brother whose smile was truly pure and spotless. The sort of smile anyone could see had no place in Agrece.

Whenever he would stand next to his younger sister, his beauty was truly akin to that of an angel. In those moments, even Gisele would imagine Agrece could be mistaken for heaven. But he was eventually a child who her father Lante had sentenced to be disposed of by her other half-brother Deon.

“A... Achille?”

The name lingered in the air, then echoed across the empty space the teen left in his wake.