Chapter 22

Chapter 22

* * *

“Hey, sis!”

I had only walked a few steps from Cassis’ room when Jeremy broadsided me. He had emerged from the other end of the hallway and wagged his invisible tail as he approached me. Honestly, I hadn’t counted on running into him so close to Cassis’ room, so without thinking I winced at the sight of him. Jeremy seemed to hesitate upon seeing my reaction. The exchange only lasted for a moment, however, then we continued walking toward each other as if nothing had gone amiss.

“What is that? Why is there blood on your blouse?”

Damn it. Once again the blood had caught someone’s attention. Turning away, I quickly wiped my sleeve across my cheek.

“The toy was acting out, so I had to let him have it.”

“So it’s that son of a bitch’s blood, huh?”

The smeared blood must have done the trick because Jeremy’s suspicion seemed to evaporate rather quickly. He looked particularly pleased about the imaginary punishment. Although every Agrece ingested poison from childhood, everyone remained coy when it came to sharing the specifics about exactly which poisons they took or the side effects they suffered.

After all, no one wanted to disclose their weaknesses. In fact, there were some among my own siblings who would try to use such knowledge to their advantage during our monthly evaluations. Of course, I highly doubted Jeremy would ever resort to such a thing with me. Even so, self-preservation was a habit drilled into every member of the Agrece clan, so I saw no reason to explain to Jeremy what was really the matter. Even less so since he hadn’t witnessed anything firsthand.

“Sis, stop trying to wipe it off. You’re just spreading it around more.”

“Am I? But the thought of his dirty blood on me is just—you know... Ugh!”

I lowered my arm as I spoke. I noticed there were a few red splatters on the front of my blouse, which luckily made the whole look seem even more natural. Even to my eyes, it looked like someone else’s blood.

“I better go wash all this off.”

I turned back to see Jeremy’s overly happy grin. He was like a kid who had just received chocolate. My calling Cassis’ blood dirty must have done the trick.

“By the way, what are you doing here, Jeremy? Did you come to see me?”

“Yeah, I figured you went to see your toy since you weren’t in your room.”

So I had guessed right. It was fortunate that I had left Cassis’ room a little earlier than usual.

“I see. Let’s go then.”

We had begun to walk shoulder to shoulder, but before I could take another step, Jeremy began to sniff the air.

“Sis, did you stop by the butterfly incubation chamber?”

That stopped me dead in my tracks.

“You smell a bit like one of the poisonous plants. Only just, but still.”

He must have recognized the smell once I stood next to him. Nose of a bloodhound that boy! And yet there he was calling Cassis a “son of a bitch.” Since Jeremy already knew, I felt no need to conceal my visit from him.

“Mhm. I just stopped by for a little bit.”

Although he may have only caught a whiff, Jeremy’s ability to detect the scent meant there was still some poison on me. Which in turn meant that Cassis could have also been affected. In that moment, I promised myself I would never visit the incubation chamber before going to Cassis’ room again.

“Do you think your egg will hatch this time?”

Jeremy sounded grumpy as he walked by my side.

“Why don’t you just trash it, sis? Or give it to someone else?”

He was continuing his same argument from the last time. He had never been in favor of me breeding the poison butterflies.

In fact, he was so against it that on the day Emily brought the eggs back he had tried to “accidentally” break them.

“Jeremy.”

There was no doubt that he had learned his lesson, but I saw no harm in warning him once more.

“If you try to stop me again like you did last time, I’ll be very cross with you.”

“I won’t!”

He blurted it out so loudly one might think I had accused him of murder. The death stare I gave him last time for almost breaking the eggs must have shaken him rather badly.

“I only did what I did because those demons are like parasites. They require your blood.”

He was muttering on and on in self-defense. But I knew what he was getting at. Besides the risk that came with trying to handle the little demons in general, the master of the poison butterflies had to imbue their spirit in them by becoming their host. The worst-case scenario was that they could attack their own master. There was even an instance where a master stopped providing the hatched butterflies his blood, so they ate him to death. Therefore, it was perfectly understandable for Jeremy to worry.

I began to lift my hand toward him but stopped short.

“I’d like to stroke your hair, but my hand’s all bloody.”

“That’s okay. I can just wash it off after.”

He replied without a second’s delay as if he had been waiting all day for me to pet him. With a small giggle, I began to caress his hair with my blood-covered hand as he had wished. After just a few strokes, his hair was a mess, but his smile only grew wider.

“At least those first two failed before they could ha—uh... I mean... I know it wasn’t what you wanted, sis, but...”

I could tell he regretted the words as soon as he said them.

“It’s hard to raise more than one batch at a time anyway, so you just have to succeed this time. Right, sis?”

“That’s right. And I really do appreciate you worrying about me. You’re the only one who does.”

It was the only way I could set that poor little mutt free from his torturous begging for attention. Smiling down at him, I stroked his hair once more and watched as immense relief came over him. By then, his hair looked no better than a bird’s nest.

As we resumed our walk, I thought about how Jeremy had actually been mistaken. The fact of the matter was that I had already succeeded in hatching a poison butterfly egg.

* * *

As he watched the room door close, Cassis’ face was even more somber than usual. To him, it felt as if Roxana’s silhouette was still lingering there in her wake. Even the soft echo of her footsteps soon faded into the distance. In the stillness of the room, Cassis lowered his gaze. He noticed a few droplets of blood where she had been standing.

His forehead creased as he scowled. He had hardly noticed the delicious-smelling meal in front of him. The appetite he barely had to begin with, now seemed to have entirely gone because of what had happened only moments ago.

“It’s nothing to worry about. Really.”

“Mhm. This sort of thing happens all the time.”

How often did she cough up blood for her to be so nonchalant about it? She even admitted that it hadn’t occurred to her how the blood might affect someone else. As he recalled how casually she wiped her face, he could almost see the blood seeping into her white sleeve and the front of her blouse again.

There was also another curious feature he noticed about Roxana each time she visited his room. Whenever she drew near enough, he was able to detect the slightest scent of poison. The first few times, he assumed he had been mistaken. But as the visits continued, he became more certain of the smell. The toxic odor was so very faint that even Cassis, who had been trained to be hypersensitive to such aromas, had only just barely recognized it. There were usually two reasons for such a lingering scent. Either a person was ingesting poison, or their body was producing it on its own. The former meant that the poisoning was intentional, while the latter meant that she was gravely ill.

Cassis couldn’t decide which was the case for Roxana, but the fact that she always gave off faint hints of poison suggested that she had likely been living in the state she was in for some time already. When she had visited him with his lunch that day, the scent of poison coming from her had been stronger than ever. What’s more, he had also smelled blood as she entered the room. That was why he had peered at her so closely upon her entry.

What he hadn’t expected was for her to cough up blood right in front of him. The sight immediately reminded him of the time Roxana had smelled of blood while visiting him in the dungeon. It was the day she had told him there would be a hiatus in her visits. She had offered no reasons or explanations, but what he remembered from that day was his curiosity about the blood he had smelled.

Had she coughed up blood back then as well?

A deep horizontal crease formed across his broad forehead as he next recalled what he had overheard Roxana muttering to herself.