Chapter 200

Chapter 200

* * *

Shortly after Maria had returned from checking on her son, her stepdaughter came to visit.

“Xanaaaa!”

Sierra was the first to rush forward to greet her daughter as she hadn’t seen her in five days. Maria had been squeamishly sitting next to Sierra but rose from her seat just as Emily and Beth both stopped their work to greet their young master.

“I apologize for showing up like this without advanced notice.” Roxana’s expression was serious as she spoke.

Her stepmother was quick to realize where the young woman’s scarlet gaze was trailing off toward after making her apology. “Deon still hasn’t woken.”

Despite his mother’s report on his condition, Roxana still turned to go to her half-brother’s room. She stared down at him with a cold gaze as she closed the door behind her. Although she hadn’t come back to see him in five days, she had occasionally checked in on him via one of her poison butterflies. Her scarlet eyes lingered particularly long on the space where his left hand should have been. Even so, she did not stay for very long and eventually stepped back through the door.

“I’ll come back tomorrow.”

The manner in which she left made it clear that she had more pressing matters to attend to.

“Xana...” Her mother called out to her in hopes of prolonging the visit even by a minute. “What exactly happened? Just why is Deon in such a state?”

Although she was merely asking the questions his own mother had been yearning to, Sierra’s voice was heavy with concern. She seemed to fear that something may have happened to Roxana as well since her stepson had sustained such a severe injury.

The young woman looked into her mother’s blue eyes for a moment in silence, then quickly lowered her own red gaze. She offered all the women in the room a brief explanation of what had occurred at Yggdrasil castle but left out the most crucial detail regarding the motivation behind the invasion. As she concluded, the four listening were left speechless.

“Good heavens... And you, Xana? You weren’t hurt at all?”

“No, I...”

There was a hint of hesitation in her answer. The others realized from the young woman’s voice that she was the reason Deon had been injured to that extent. Sierra’s face hardened while Beth couldn’t hide the shock and panic on her own. All the while, Maria kept her lips sealed. Emily was the only one who didn’t react in any way, but she continued to inspect her young master’s face.

“Do you think Deon is someone who would die so easily?”

Maria recalled her last conversation with Jeremy as she left Agrece after Roxana’s coup had been successful in destabilizing their territory.

“He’s mature enough to decide when and how he dies.”

She had spoken those words lightly back then, but they held new meaning to her at this moment. After she bid farewell to her daughter, Sierra stood behind the door for some time before turning to return to her room. Emily and Beth also left after they exchanged looks with the two former mistresses. A little while later, Maria stared at the shut door with an inexplicable feeling. Deon was her only child, but she did not know much about him. Even so, she seemed to know the reason he still hadn’t woken up.

“Foolish boy...”

She spoke quietly to an empty audience. An unfamiliar emotion had started to float inside of herself, but she was clueless as to what exactly it was.

* * *

After Roxana left her mother’s house, she walked through the interior of the neutral territory. After about an hour of walking, she stopped at a small cottage located just outside of its border.

Grizelda woke up when she felt Roxana enter the house. She had been sitting backward on a chair so that she could rest her head and arms on top of its backrest.

“Oh, you’re back?” She spoke with a sparkle in her eyes and a casual tone in her voice, but it was not enough to fool Roxana.

“Why don’t you go sleep inside the room?”

Her older sister arched her back before responding. “I can’t sleep unless I’m alone.”

Roxana had arrived the previous day and also had not slept at all the previous night. However, Grizelda seemed to be more fatigued than her younger sister. Not that such details were evident in her soft features, but the red-eyed Agrece could tell. She had already assumed that the older woman would not have slept much prior to her arrival either, so by the looks of things, she was correct.

I doubt she’s slept properly in the five days since I brought him here.

The person residing behind the door with the magic circle engraved on it was largely at fault. Even so, Roxana figured such overwhelming distrust and unease simply ran in their family, thus she did not make her kind offer twice.

“How’s his condition?”

“No improvement,” Grizelda replied curtly to Roxana’s inquiry as she rose from her seat. “Want some of this?”

“What?”

“Amphetamines.”

“No thanks.”

“Fair enough. You seem fine enough. I, however, need them.”

Regular drugs had little effect on the Agreces, and Grizelda was far from an exception. Thus, she had to chew on twelve 100% concentrated pills of pure amphetamines daily. She had found the tablets in her hideout after leaving Agrece that past winter.

While her sister chewed on the pills, Roxana opened the door with the magic circle on it. The older woman watched, then clicked her tongue. “I’m coming to find that it doesn’t matter how long you know someone because you can never truly figure them out. I for one never would’ve thought my little sister was a fan of self-torture.”

But the younger Agrece ignored her sister’s mutterings.

“Is that you?” She closed the door behind her as she heard the tiny voice chime in her ears. The person inside the room opened their mouth the moment their eyes met hers. “Get out. Get the hell out of here!”

The sharp words held little vigor as they came from beneath a blanket—only the chin of the speaker, Nix, could be seen.

“It seems you’re able to hold a conversation today...”

She then stared at him in silence for a moment. The puppet proceeded to bite down on his lip before speaking in a rough, hoarse voice. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Unlike what everyone had been told back at the castle, the golden-haired puppet was very much still alive. Five days prior to this encounter, Roxana had discovered Deon and Nix on the brink of attacking one another, but her quick use of her butterflies managed to stop them. Then by the time she had reached them, they had both collapsed onto the ground. In his battered state, her half-brother could not withstand the full power of the winged demons’ hallucinogenic effects. Of course, she hadn’t expected him to remain unconscious for several days afterward.

Just as she had been preparing to leave the field with the two, Grizelda arrived. Her older sister informed her that she had come all that way to offer her assistance per Jeremy’s orders. Thus, the corpse the pursuit team had found and mistaken for Nix was a decoy created from puppet pieces the crafty Agrece woman had collected along the way.

Due to the nature of the situation, Roxana had been left with no other choice but to leave Deon’s comatose body at the safest and closest location possible. As fate would have it, her mother’s residence fit both criteria. In hindsight, it may not have been the best decision, but it was the only solution she could think of at the time. After all, she couldn’t guarantee that it would be safe to keep both men in the same place.

She also wasn’t sure if she should allow her mother to see the puppet in his current state. More importantly, she had little to no time to ponder over what would be the best course of action. Thus, she resigned to leaving Deon with her mother and taking Nix with her to Grizelda’s safe house.

Out of concern over how Sierra might react, Roxana did not tell her anything about her brother’s impostor. There was no way to tell if learning of his existence would invoke horror or relief in her mother. On top of that, it wasn’t as though she had fully accepted him as Achille herself. And by then, even Nix appeared to be confused. Just the day before, his attitude seemed to change every time he chanced a glance in her direction. At times he spoke to her as Achille, while at others he would lash out at her as the puppet. He would rotate between being pleased to see her, then crying while pleading for her forgiveness, then pushing her away in disgust.

“Very well.” Which was why she felt the need to verify something once and for all. “Let me just ask you one question then.” She took a chance at asking him a question she knew could likely prove meaningless. “Are you... Achille?”

Nix took a short breath as he pondered the question. All the while, Roxana awaited his answer patiently. However, he remained silent while keeping the blanket wrapped over him tightly. The blue eye peeking out from beneath it gazed into her own crimson ones. Her expression was so calm that it was difficult for him to even guess at what she might be thinking. Yet for some reason, he felt certain she would believe his answer without question whatever it may be.

“Ugh... What a pest,” he muttered to himself after some time had passed. As the blanket slipped off of him, his piercing blue eye seemed to stare straight through her. “Just what the hell do you see that would even make you ask me that?”

The white of his eye had turned red from all the tears he had shed, and the face he finally allowed her to see was no longer that of a fifteen-year-old.