Chapter 53

Chapter 53

Fontaine grimaced in an attempt to reclaim his dignity after clearly blurting out the question in surprise. Even in his own ears he had sounded like a fool.

Roxana watched him with her head tilted slightly to the side as if puzzled by his behavior.

Damn it all to hell! It suddenly dawned on Fontaine why it had been so quiet. His simple mind had attributed the near total silence to the blanketing snowfall surrounding him. Angry at himself, he decided to lash out at Roxana instead. “You must have a ton of time to kill if you’re coming all the way out here to feed your precious pets. Surely you could have done that easily enough without leaving the mansion.”

“My poisonous butterflies are rather finicky and seemed tired of their regular fare, so I thought I would bring them here for a treat.” Roxana’s response made it seem as though she had taken no offense at Fontaine’s snark. She even smiled. “But why are you so grumpy?”

She stepped towards him without seeming to make a sound. But as they were surrounded by freshly fallen snow, it was either that she had levitated towards him, or that her indescribable beauty had simply made Fontaine think she was a heavenly being. Whichever it was, the fact remained that she was no mere mortal.

He in turn took a hesitant step back. He had been to a number of different territories thanks to the clan’s various business dealings, but nowhere had he ever seen anyone nearly as beautiful as Roxana. In a way, it wasn’t fair to even compare others to her. The budding beauty of her youth had finally come into its full, awesome bloom. Many expected that her features were something one could grow accustomed to over the years, but facing her incomparable beauty in person was an entirely different experience each and every time.

A sudden throbbing began to pulse in the back of Fontaine’s skull. It was something that only ever seemed to happen whenever he lay eyes on his half-sister. Hers was a beauty that threatened the beholder with an almost destructive power. It even left the beholder questioning whether it was appropriate to use such a word as “beauty” in the face of their own damnation. Even Fontaine couldn’t help thinking that she was a woman whose very existence seemed to foretell disaster.

During his ruminations he hadn’t realized that she was merely a step away from him and still with a smile on her face.

“You know, you seemed troubled even before you got here. What’s gotten you so riled up?”

Her clear, sweet voice seemed to envelope his entire being. On top of that, Fontaine was finding it increasingly harder to breathe with Roxana looking up at him from so close up. But he wasn’t the only one who would struggle. Hardly anyone could resist her particular charm.

Then as if she had finally put two and two together, she muttered a soft “Ah” to herself before continuing. “So Father gave you another lecture, did he?”

Fontaine’s face immediately went stony as he growled at her.

“Shut your mouth!” Had the two met at another time, he may not have been so touchy, but he really was in a foul mood at the moment.

Still, none of that seemed to faze Roxana as she continued to speak casually.

“That was rather unfair... I really don’t think there’s anyone who works as hard as you do at upholding the clan’s good name, Fontaine.” She seemed genuinely annoyed for him. As her scarlet eyes began to mist over, Roxana had achieved heartbreaking poignancy that drew on the observer’s protective instincts. “Even I heard about what happened. Honestly, how could Deon take all the credit for your mission? That louse!”

His hostility towards her had all but vanished. In the old days, Fontaine and Roxana hadn’t even been on speaking terms, but one day she began to make polite small talk with him out of the blue. At first, she had only succeeded in making him feel more wary of her, but it eventually led to their current less-guarded relationship.

“I think it’s his age. Father just isn’t as sharp as he used to be. Why, just recently when I complained to him that he wasn’t giving you the same opportunities he gives to Deon, he got upset with me.”

In spite of his initial misgivings, Roxana had turned out to be the person most sympathetic to Fontaine’s plight. As he listened to her vent about their father’s foolishness and Deon’s cowardice like this, it felt to him as if she were helping to quench the thirst brought on by his raw anger. Her soft and sweet encouragement was even helping to make him feel less inferior to Deon.

“Everyone at the compound knows that Father dotes on Deon, but I don’t think he has what it takes to be the Agrece heir.”

Above all else, Fontaine and Roxana shared something he considered truly precious, and that was their mutual hatred of their half-brother, Deon Agrece.

The prior year, Roxana and Deon had been paired to go on a mission together, which had gone down in Agrece history for the level of animosity exhibited between the two above anything else. Their failed mission had actually convinced Lante that the two should never overlap again when it came to handling clan business. But in Fontaine’s eyes, Roxana was still just a teenager with very little control over her emotions. She was hardly someone to feel threatened by.

“Honestly, I don’t think there’s a single one amongst our brothers or sisters who wants Deon to become the next Agrece leader. I mean, who would want to be a dog that has to lick some dictator’s boots only to get kicked to death somewhere down the line?”

Roxana’s hatred toward Deon was so overt and raw that it was almost palpable. This of course was just fine to Fontaine.

“I hope Father’s heir will be someone who can accept and accommodate all of us. If it were someone like you, I’m certain you would do right by us.”

With Roxana’s encouraging words, Fontaine began to feel that maybe he really could be a great leader. Possibly even someone deserving of her lofty expectations.

“You’re so right. If it weren’t for that pond scum Deon... No! If Father had given me the same range of opportunities instead of playing favorites with that pond scum, I wouldn’t be stuck where I am now!”

He seethed as he cursed their father and his favorite son. Even Roxana had taken notice of how Lante refused to recognize the leadership skills Fontaine possessed and how he had essentially ignored his eldest son’s true potential.

“It isn’t just me, Roxana. You never seem to get a fair chance to shine either. You came of age a year ago, yet Father still hasn’t assigned you to go on any decent missions.”

Although he had spoken the truth, the fact remained that her botched joint mission with Deon had been almost entirely to blame for her stagnation. Since then, Lante had deliberately sidelined her from missions he had determined were likely to yield more promising results. That was another reason why to Fontaine, Roxana was a silly, pathetic girl who still did not recognize the power her deadliest weapon granted her. Was she not the keeper of the murderous poison butterflies? Yet all she ever seemed to get used for was as the occasional decorative piece whenever their father thought to utilize her.

Fontaine had also noticed that while she had received the shaft, Deon had escaped with his reputation scot-free and intact after their failed mission. He assumed it was only natural though seeing as he was the master Agrece’s favorite. However, this time he, Fontaine, had been made the victim of this injustice. He had come out looking like a proper stooge by receiving zero credit for his efforts, while Deon received all the accolades.

“Well, what can I do about that? Father enjoys parading me around as a decorative piece.”

Fontaine scoffed as Roxana managed to smile as she spoke of her sorry situation.

I knew it. Just a stupid bimbo with a beautiful face. He wondered how such a pushover managed to score so highly on the monthly evaluations. Could she be using her sexual prowess on the judges? Then again, it is a major part of her arsenal so no one could fault her for that.

By the time Roxana had been old enough and good enough to qualify for a seat at the grand feast, Fontaine had already reached adulthood. He had kept busy by going out on clan business often, which made it difficult for him to keep track of the goings-on of his half-siblings back at the mansion. On top of that, it had also been around the same time that he had stopped receiving invitations to the feasts.

He accepted that the reason behind that had mainly been due to his lackluster performance, but to Fontaine the only reason for that had been due to his refusal to compete seriously against what he considered a bunch of his sniveling younger siblings. Thus, having never seen or heard of Roxana’s performance during the evaluations, it was only natural that he failed to wrap his mind around why the rest of his clan held her in such high regard.

Even when there wasn’t clan business for Fontaine to busy himself with, he had made it a habit since becoming an adult to roam the world outside of the mansion. In truth, that had chiefly been in order for him to avoid his father’s detestable face as he was constantly comparing his eldest son to Deon.

However, Deon still proved to be far worse as he would often add fuel to Fontaine’s already raging fury with his condescending looks. It was mainly due to these and a few other lingering reasons that Fontaine had not been present to personally witness Roxana dispose of the Pedelian heir three years prior with the assistance of her poisonous butterflies. He had instead learned of everything secondhand, and thus assumed most of the events had been exaggerated as they were retold. Still, her exceptional beauty coupled with her current tearful expression had moved him to pity her.

“Do you plan to accompany Father again at the gathering of the five clans?” he asked in an attempt to change their unhappy conversation.

“I believe I will.” Roxana began to reflect on the gathering from the previous year. She doubted she could ever forget the spectacle of seeing such serious and self-important men turn into blithering idiots at the mere sight of her.

Even she had found the scene to be rather entertaining. Then it occurred to her that Fontaine had not been invited to the upcoming gathering as his spot had gone to his detestable archnemesis Deon instead.

“I had so hoped we could attend it together... What an utter shame.” Roxana continued to smile as she spoke, but this time somewhat her expression bore a tinge of regret as she looked in Fontaine’s direction.

The mysterious echo in her voice made him leer at her as his dormant lust began to stir. Even when she was much younger, he had thought that Roxana’s beauty should never be wasted by having her married off to some decrepit geezer.

We may share half of the same genes, but back in the old days it was fairly common for relatives to marry each other.

With that thought in mind, Fontaine began to imagine that if he succeeded in becoming the clan’s next master, he would...

“Trust me, Roxana. I’ll make sure Deon doesn’t become the next master of the house like Father seems to have in mind.”

Fontaine spoke with all the bravado he could muster as he continued to peruse his half-sister with his sticky gaze.

She, however, beamed up at him with an even wider smile.

“Thanks for that reassurance. You, big brother, truly are the only person I can count on.”