Chapter 51

Chapter 51

Roxana wished she could go back out and reveal to all the Agreces by shouting at them about how she’d done it. How she had succeeded in deceiving them all.

Clack

Without warning, her door opened and allowed a sliver of light to pierce through the darkness. She hadn’t heard anything from outside of the room, but a foot was already crossing over the threshold. Just beyond the open door she noticed someone on the floor, but only their arm was visible. Roxana’s instinct told her the arm might belong to Emily, but before she could make sure, the door shut again.

What a pest. Roxana slowly closed her eyes as the intruding figure drew closer.

“You must have put on quite the show. Everyone’s so excited about how you fed Cassis Pedelian to those poison butterflies.” The intruder smelled strongly of the outdoors. He must have only just returned from the forest a short while ago.

Roxana surmised that the carantul expedition must have ended just in time for him to return after the commotion.

“And what of it?” She made sure to keep her tone casual while wiping the blood away from her lips. “What does that have to do with you barging in here like this?”

Deon’s unannounced yet menacing return was, however, strangling Roxana’s internal calm.

“That blue bastard isn’t dead, is he?”

It wasn’t a real question.

“Just where did you hide him?”

Deon took another step toward Roxana until he was within inches of her. He stopped just where the toe of his boot touched the puddle of her blood on the floor. He eyed her up and down as he took in the red speckles splattered all over her. Despite how dark it was in her room, he stared at her as if he could see her more clearly than if she had been bathed in light.

“Shall I take a guess?” Deon whispered as he lowered his head so that his crimson eyes reflected the moonlight as they bore straight through hers. “I just realized that there’s only one place I’ve never ventured to...”

He offered a knowing grin as he spoke.

“The Dark Forest on the northern border.”

Suddenly, even the wind seemed to stop from the shock of his revelation. A still, cold hush quickly fell over the room.

Roxana, however, was determined to keep her expression as emotionless as possible. It was the same icy glare she had been holding from the moment Deon entered her room evidently still intact. She left nothing on the surface for him to notice, but that wasn’t enough to deter him from trying to take another crack at her.

“I don’t know how you arranged it, but even I’ll admit it was a pretty neat trick. I see... These are hallucinatory butterflies, aren’t they?”

Having sensed her weakened state, the butterflies reappeared without Roxana summoning them and were circling above her head. Deon eyed them again before speaking.

“So the ones you put on display weren’t killers? Or perhaps you hatched more than one batch...”

Deon’s guess was scarily close to the truth, so Roxana decided it required some sort of answer.

“Such a fertile imagination.”

“Cut the bullsh*t. You and I both know I’m not imagining anything,” he said.

After allowing her gaze to fall on Deon again, Roxana responded quietly.

“So what? You plan to go out there and rat me out to Father?”

“I’m not sure what I’ll do.” Then with a mischievous grin, Deon continued in a nasty whisper. “Perhaps I’ll start by sending a group out to the northern border. Who knows? I might be able to bring you back your poor, lost Pedelian cut up into neat, little pieces.”

Deon was leering at her like a hunter who had finally cornered his prey. In a flash, he snatched one of the butterflies out of the air, then stared at the creature in his fist.

“I really don’t understand why you’re so set on keeping him alive.”

As he spoke, Deon seemed to be tightening his grip. Upon looking back at Roxana, he opened his large hand to reveal the tiny creature still intact. Unharmed, her butterfly fluttered away into the darkness. Deon stood up straight as if preparing to act on his words.

“Don’t go.”

He would have headed for the door had it not been for her accursed voice.

“Please, Deon. Don’t go.”

For a moment, he was entirely undone. Her voice spoke so soft and sweetly that it seemed impossible her words were meant for him. That Roxana had used her butterflies to force a hallucination on him even seemed more plausible, but the hand he felt touching his face was undoubtedly real.

As she caressed his face, his normal grim, blizzard-like temperament seemed to melt away as he gazed stupefied at Roxana. It was almost as if everything around him had stopped completely.

But the spell broke too soon as he noticed she was actually smirking at him.

“How gullible you are.” The sudden coldness in her smile revealed beyond certainty that her behavior only moments ago had merely been a charade. “And pathetic as well.”

Roxana stared at Deon’s face, still cupped in her hand, with a mixture of sympathy and derision.

“Deon, do you think I don’t know what you’re really after?” She noticed his crimson eyes quiver at her words. It was very slight, but as it was Deon, the action carried a mountain of emotions. “Do you recall how at Maria’s tea party there were... messengers you were supposedly responsible for sending?”

The words flowed slowly from Roxana’s ruby lips. It had become so dark in the room that even their shadows were hidden.

“You know, the ones who said you had ordered guards to fetch Cassis? You were the one who killed them, weren’t you?”

She was referring to the messengers who had supposedly been killed by the demon monsters on the day of his mother’s chaotic tea party. The truth hadn’t been what everyone at the compound had been led to believe. Deon only answered her with more silence, but Roxana knew she had guessed correctly.

“So that was it... You could have dragged them in front of Father and made them fess up, but instead you got rid of them for me.”

Deon was silent.

“And as if you had anticipated what I would need next, you left for the carantul habitat without a word of protest.”

There was no sense anymore in asking him why since the eyes that met hers revealed all the secrets in his heart. Had the person in front of her been Jeremy, she would have likely thanked and praised him for sacrificing himself in order to take care of her loose ends. However, seeing as it was Deon, she did nothing but sigh from boredom and a need to ridicule him.

“But you overstepped.” The moonlight glinted off of her eyes with a sharpness akin to broken glass. “There isn’t anything—not a single thing—you can offer me that I need from you.”

Roxana was so furious and disgusted by the mere sight of him that she never so much as wanted to feel his gaze upon her when they were in the same space. Yet the pathetic soul before her just wouldn’t let go no matter how hard she pushed him away. Instead, he was forever tailing her like a shadow.

“Deon, I say this with utmost sincerity—you disgust me.”

Deon took in every word she said without moving a muscle. He simply bore her verbal abuse in silence as if he were immune to it entirely, but he imagined there had to be a flicker of passion behind them. Quiet perhaps, but still there, nevertheless.

“But... very well.” She smiled coolly at him again. “If you insist on handing me the leash to your dog collar, I shall take it.”

The cold moonlight beamed through the window. There was warmth where their flesh met, yet strangely what transferred into his body was exceptionally cold as well.

“After all, the only place you and I can go is down to hell anyway.”

So that night, Roxana made a binding pact with this black dog who had come to her swearing his fealty.

The abyss was all that awaited them.