Chapter 204

Chapter 204

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Deon was still struggling deep inside the abyss. He was stuck in an everlasting cycle of having his body torn to shreds by scarlet butterflies, then reviving just to experience the same pain all over again.

Roxana was always there in the beginning and at the end. He couldn’t help reaching out whenever he saw the fifteen-year-old girl cry her seemingly endless stream of tears right in front of him. Not once was he able to actually reach her, but for some reason... He finally managed to reach her tears and felt warmth flow into his cold, lifeless fingertips. At that moment, the crying child turned into a young woman. Deon, having found himself transformed into an adult as well, stared silently at her. Within a second, he found himself lying in a strange, yet familiar room.

Flutter.

The curtain on the window shook as he lowered and raised his eyebrows repeatedly. A faint stream of light seeped through his hazy vision. He couldn’t move a finger, but it wasn’t like he wanted to in the first place. It felt all too real, but he figured this was merely an extension of his dream. There was no other explanation for Roxana standing in front of him.

“How shameless you are.” Per usual, she glared down at him with her all too familiar cold eyes as she spoke in a low, chilling voice. “How dare you try to die so recklessly.”

Nevertheless, this was definitely a new type of dream. A scene from the future rather than the past. Judging from the words that flowed into his ears, this must be at a point in time after he was consumed by her butterflies, on that field where dusk had settled.

Is this heaven? No... that simply cannot be.

There was no way he would be allowed entry into such a place. It would make more sense for him to be stuck inside a bottomless swamp hell hallucination.

“Who the hell do you think you are? I never gave you permission to die.”

In fact, this sort of delusion was far too realistic. The voice filling his ears, the face before his eyes, and everything else about her was too much. Deon couldn’t help but let out a faint laugh. Roxana stared at him silently from her seat at his bedside. Her golden hair shimmered under the sunlight. Those calm, crimson eyes like his. The faint scent wafting into his nose. The lukewarm breeze from the open window. The scene was all too serene and warm as if to emphasize that he was still inside a dream. Yet it was anything but. She stared down at him as he continued to lie still.

She imagined that even a child could kill him in a single swing in his current state. He managed to escape from death’s grasp, but he was still far from making a full recovery. Hence, all he could still do was blink as he lay there. Seeing a faint smile spread over his lips reminded her of the day he was surrounded by her butterflies. He had smiled then too.

“Deon Agrece...” The distant voice echoed in his ears once again. At last, the whisper sank in more deeply to even reach his heart. “I will not shed a single tear for you when you die.”

That was when a remnant from the past that was buried deep inside him resurfaced.

“Deon, do you think I don’t know what you’re really after?”

The night Roxana had set Cassis Pedelian free overwhelmed his thoughts.

“Deon, would you like me to guess what you’ve been thinking all this time?” The calm voice melted as it mixed with the sunlight. “Deep down, you always envied Achille.” But that silky, soft voice raged rampantly inside Deon. Even a mocking tone would have felt better. Those were words that were more preposterous than the ones Sierra had hurled at him in the past. “It’s because he has something that you do not.”

But for some inexplicable reason... he could not refute them. Roxana smiled, as though letting out a deep sigh.

“Looks like I hit the nail on the head.” A sensation as though someone had suddenly squeezed his heart shook him. “I know why you were dying to be at my side.” A desolate voice landed on top of him. Like before, she had just told him that she knew what even he didn’t know about himself. “It’s probably the same reason why I kept you around.” Deon winced at the unacceptable words. “Like I said before. Perhaps... you and I are alike in some ways.”

What is she trying to say?

The reason she had kept him around was so that he could exact her vengeance. Deon was fully aware of that, and yet he handed his leash to her. But he hadn’t decided to do so to torture her. If he had been asked why he did so... he could offer no clear answer. But he figured that beyond the veil, the two could not possibly be alike.

The moment he met her gaze, somewhere deep inside his frozen heart a thin ripple erupted. It was much like their last night together in Agrece. Back then, rather than tossing spiteful words at him, Roxana had simply gazed at him calmly.

But deep inside her eyes, he discovered a bitterness and coldness toward herself. She had never spoken such words to anyone else. For even she did not want to admit her underlying thoughts. Like a habit, contempt, disgust, and hatred were all that she initially felt whenever she thought of Deon Agrece. But afterward, like the sand left behind after a wave met the shore, an ironic emotion landed carelessly on her heart.

“There’s definitely something curious about you two’s relationship.”

Cassis wasn’t wrong when he had said that to her. Deon was most certainly not a simple character to Roxana.

Since she was little, there had been countless times when she had imagined herself killing him with her own hate-drenched hands. At least, that’s how it all started, but that wasn’t the whole truth. She realized she could no longer deny her own weakness and confessed for the first time.

“In the end, neither you nor I wanted to be left alone.”

It was a pathetic almost humorous reason. There was not a moment while she was still in Agrece where she didn’t feel scared or afraid. She was always alone without anyone to lean or rely on, and she had no one to share her thoughts or heart with. The only way for her to survive was to get stronger. That was why she smiled in front of everyone while hiding the tears she let fall as she lay in her bed alone every night. With nowhere to truly rest inside the Black mansion, she felt cold even during the hottest of nights.

At some point, Deon stood behind her like her shadow. It was made clear a long time ago that they could neither be friends nor family. Yet whenever she saw him, she felt an assurance that she could not feel from anyone else. Such a person would remain by her side until her death. There were times when his constant presence would wear her out, but inside that hellish Agrece compound and whenever she was on the verge of suffocating from loneliness, even that presence was a source of mild comfort.

She knew it was grotesquely ironic.

At that time, she had no one to call eternally her own, but she definitely had someone whom she could call her eternal foe. Even so, that did not mean she had accepted the man who was responsible for Achille’s murder. She neither considered him nor depended on him to be on her side. But... She at least thought that in that cold, desolate place he could prevent her from being completely alone until her death.

“The fact that we chose each other to ease our loneliness is a testament to our idiocy.”

She also knew that Deon harbored similar feelings.

Though this foolish man still seems oblivious.

“Deon, I despise you.” Her feelings toward him hadn’t changed. And yet... something else had taken root inside her. “I can’t forgive you for killing my brother though, even while facing my own death.”

Just as she had predicted, her half-brother was in a state of panic as he could not fully understand her words. However, he also acknowledged that she wasn’t saying anything new. He never expected her forgiveness in the first place. If anything, remaining as the source of her undying rage would have made him happy in itself. But for a fleeting moment, he felt a pang in his chest as he continued to listen to her. Her scattered voice pierced him like broken pieces of glass.

“That’s why you can’t die yet.”

It was then that he finally began to accept that it was neither a dream nor another delusion. Such excruciating pain could not manifest within a dream. Thus, he reached the clear conclusion that he had not died by Roxana’s hands. And once more, she was set on putting his leash back on him and discarding him in yet another remote corner to die alone out of her sight. The thought alone was enough to force what had filled up inside his heart to drain out like sand clenched within his fist. And in that space, the void that had only just filled began to empty again. However, he hadn’t expected what she said next.

“To think I would let you die by my hands when you haven’t paid for your sins... Just how shameless can you be?”

He held his breath subconsciously before focusing on her every word.

“You still owe me.” Her eyes were still cold. “That’s why... you have no right to die... yet.” Her voice was still cold.

“Didn’t...” But Deon understood her words to mean that she would still allow him to remain at her side. “Didn’t you say you didn’t need me anymore?”

Her gaze changed ever so slightly. They held an emotion that Deon could not decipher easily. He only recalled having seen it somewhere else before. Then he realized it was the exact same look Sierra had given him.

“I have no use for the old Deon Agrece.” Alas, Roxana spoke in a manner that was most familiar to them both. In the Agrece way. “But for the new you... Perhaps.”

Her voice grew distant yet again.

“So live on.”

The figure in front of him became hazy.

“When you become a man worth killing... I will end you with my own hands on that day.”

Roxana soon began to fade away from his view. Everything turned white as light filled his eyes. All he could see was a blinding brightness. As he slowly sank into it, he shut his eyes.

A new, white abyss enveloped him.

The dream he had dreamt until then did not return, so Deon was able to sleep quietly for a long, long time.