Roxana
Chapter 63
Chapter 63
The Way to Protect the Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 63
At last, Deon, who had been standing by the door like a shadow, moved.
His steps headed toward the front of the Room of Judgment, just as both Lant and Roxana desired.
But instead of raising his arm to strike off Roxana’s neck, he took the hand she had extended to him.
It was, in truth, a betrayal by the son and daughter he had trusted most. Lant watched the scene with wide, disbelieving eyes.
Clatter!
“Noona!”
At that very moment, the firmly shut door swung open. The one who burst through was Jeremy.
“Did you miss me? I’m—”
But the moment he entered and took in the scene before him, his face hardened.
“What the hell is this wretched mess?”
Lant harbored a flicker of hope at Jeremy’s reaction. But Jeremy’s next words shattered his expectations once again.
“Deon, you bastard. Let go of noona’s hand right now. Sana-noona’s right hand and left hand are both mine, got it?”
Jeremy ran toward Roxana, grinding his teeth at Deon.
His gaze brushed over Lant collapsed on the floor for a brief second, but Jeremy did not seem to have the slightest shred of concern for him.
“Unfortunately, Father, there is no one on your side in Agriche.”
A chilling smile bloomed across Roxana’s face.
“Still, please do not worry too much.”
The gentle words that followed were nothing less than a death sentence to Lant.
“It would be terribly dull to end it this simply, so I won’t kill you just yet.”
* * *
Whooooosh.
A fierce wind tore through the depths of the dense coniferous forest.
It was a sharp, biting northern wind that cut like a blade against the skin.
As the ominous crimson sun sank below the horizon, night descended upon the forest a step earlier than the surrounding lands.
Under the cover of that darkness, there were those holding their breath, waiting for the opportune moment.
They had already surrounded the perimeter of the estate before Lant Agriche even returned.
Their eyes, gleaming cold like fragments of a shattered moon, brimmed with finely honed sharpness.
“You have arrived.”
At last, the master they had been awaiting arrived.
The man, who had emerged soundlessly from the dark, gave a slight nod. As he moved his arm, the scout he had disposed of on his way dropped heavily to the ground.
On the cold ground overgrown with dry grass lay the previously dispatched lackeys of Agriche.
“The situation?”
“It has been somewhat noisy inside for a while now.”
Cool golden eyes fixed upon the distant lights.
“Shall we move?”
“Stand by for a moment.”
Isidore, who had been in command until Cassis arrived, obeyed his master’s order without a single question and stepped back.
Cassis stared straight ahead with coldly sunken eyes.
Whooooosh.
The howling wind rushed past their ears, sounding just like the roar of a wild beast.
It was a night so harsh that even the winter beasts of the forest curled into themselves.
The bare branches quivered violently against the biting gale.
Yet the man standing tall in the dark did not so much as hunch his shoulders.
With cold surging in to freeze one to the marrow, his cheeks and limbs ought to have stung with pain, yet he appeared not to feel the slightest chill at all.
Standing motionless like solid rock, his frame radiated the razor-sharp aura of a beast poised just before the hunt. The same was true for his eyes staring unwaveringly forward.
Those around him quietly awaited his command.
Just as tiny white flecks like dust seemed to drift down into the gloom, snow began to flutter from the sky.
Like an illusion, an unseasonal butterfly fluttered through the snow-scattered night sky before vanishing without a trace.
Cold golden eyes gleamed with a chilling light.
At long last, the awaited order fell. Those who had bided their time in the darkness sprang into swift motion.
Now was the time to sever this long-festering ill fate.
* * *
News that the rebellion had succeeded and Lant had fallen from power swiftly spread throughout all of Agriche.
It had not even been an hour since the party that attended the Harmony Conference had returned.
Naturally, the mansion was thrown into massive turmoil.
What was more, the one who seized control of Agriche was not Fontaine, the eldest son who had thrown the mansion into disarray until just moments ago.
“Look at them all scrambling frantically. Just like a swarm of ants.”
Griselda, the eldest daughter of Agriche, laughed as she looked down from the terrace at the scurrying people.
She was one of the few who knew that all of this was Roxana’s design.
It was Griselda who had constructed the trap in the Room of Judgment to ensnare Lant while he was away.
Though she had not distinguished herself in other areas, she possessed quite a talent for designing incantation arrays.
“Roxana, she really is something else.”
Griselda found the current situation utterly thrilling.
It even crossed her mind that had she known Roxana was such an entertaining girl, she would have stuck by her side much sooner.
The ones who had effectively seized Agriche now were Roxana, Deon, and Jeremy.
Although Deon was known to others as the spearhead of the rebellion, Griselda knew that the one pulling his strings was Roxana.
The real power in the mansion had already passed into her hands. Even the private soldiers Fontaine had tried to mobilize were not truly moving under his command.
Griselda had also played her part alongside her in ousting Lant. Not for any grand reason, but simply because it seemed like fun.
In a sense, it was an act of betraying her father, but she felt no guilt whatsoever.
It wasn’t as if she owed him any loyalty anyway.
Lant was a man capable of slaughtering his own children whenever deemed necessary.
Indeed, there were several children he had discarded and killed.
If so, wasn’t the reverse just as plausible?
Having been born and raised under such a Lant, the children of Agriche—including Griselda—knew nothing of familial affection.
It was only natural, as they had been thrown from birth into a cutthroat jungle where survival depended strictly on individual capability.
For that reason, not a single one of the siblings resolved to save Lant upon hearing the news of his downfall.
At first, they were greatly shocked and flustered by the news that Lant, whom they had believed to be the absolute ruler of Agriche, had been overthrown.
But soon enough, most of the siblings became immensely intrigued by this new board of power they had never even imagined before.
The mistresses of the estate, however, seemed somewhat bewildered by the unfolding situation.
Griselda was quite sharp-witted. Thus, she soon realized that all of this would shortly amount to nothing.
“The grandest festival in the history of Agriche will be held tonight.”
Griselda laughed merrily as she stepped away from the terrace.
* * *
Creak.
The guard overseeing the Room of Punishment bowed respectfully to the person who had just arrived before opening the door.
From within wafted a foul stench of blood accumulated over ages, mingled with the scents of various concoctions and medicines.
Lant was bound right in the center.
Bound hand and foot in chains just like the humans he had hunted down until now, his entire body was a battered wreck.
Tap.
Roxana stopped in her tracks and gazed down impassively at Lant.
“Roxana… You wretched wench, how dare you…”
Lant looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, spitting out words in a voice choked with bloody phlegm.
A faint, delicate smile slowly bloomed across Roxana’s eerily expressionless face.
That face was so terribly exquisite as usual that it felt completely detached from the horrific reality around them.
“You finally have an appearance befitting you, Father.”
Clank!
“Urgh!”
“In truth, I’ve wanted to see you like this for a very long time.”
Stepping forward lightly, Roxana brought her foot down hard on the chain fastened around Lant’s neck.
The impact forced Lant’s body even closer to the ground. Lant thrashed violently against the humiliating posture he was compelled into, but Roxana did not budge an inch.
“Do you know what I thought every time I looked at that disgusting face of yours?”
The voice echoing quietly inside the sealed room was soft and melodic, like music flowing through a banquet hall.
“‘How should I kill you to inflict the greatest humiliation and despair?’”
Yet woven into her words was a blood-soaked curse that Lant had never once imagined.
“‘And what method could make you suffer worse than death?’”
Lant looked as if he wanted to unleash a torrent of curses at Roxana right then and there, but with his neck choked by the pulled chain, he could only gasp out wheezing breaths.
“Watching you die in agony as you’re eaten alive by poison butterflies before my eyes seemed fine, but…”
Flutter.
Answering Roxana’s words, a butterfly appeared in midair with a gentle flutter, beating its wings gracefully as it flew toward Lant.
It soon alighted upon his body, crunching into his flesh with an appetizing tear.
“The thing you could never tolerate above all else in this world, the thing you would shudder at because it’s far worse than dying, probably isn’t that.”
Even when a few more butterflies appeared and tore into his flesh, Lant gritted his teeth savagely without letting out a single groan.
But as the rustle of beating wings grew louder and the shadows of the butterflies staining the walls multiplied to almost blot out the light, even his face could not help but turn pale.
“Only for this moment do I feel glad that you are an Agriche. No matter how much agony I subject you to, you won’t die easily.”
Roxana looked at him with a sweet smile.
“So please, endure for as long as possible, Father.”
Yet within her crimson eyes, where dark flames pooled, a cruel murderous intent surged as if about to spill over.
“So that today, I may repay in full the ‘kindness’ I received from you throughout my life.”
And the horrific scream that finally burst forth echoed faintly through the Room of Punishment like the prelude to a beautiful melody.
* * *
“Hey, did you guys hear? They say Father is in the Room of Punishment right now.”
The ones most intensely invested in Lant’s situation were undeniably his children.
The unbelievable news that Lant had not only lost his authority but was also locked away in the Room of Punishment struck the ears of the half-siblings swiftly.
“What? Really? Are you sure you didn’t mishear?”
Although one of the half-siblings had brought up something similar earlier as a joke, none of them had thought such a thing could ever actually happen.
Hence, hearing the news, everyone was dumbfounded.
“Of course it’s real. Would I lie about this?”
“Jeremy!”
Just then, Jeremy appeared where the siblings were gathered, drenched in blood.
“Where have you been all this—”
But those who were about to shower him with questions were forced to clamp their mouths shut immediately.
For Jeremy, stepping inside, tossed whatever he was holding in his hand before the others like a toy ball.
Identifying the object rolling across the floor and leaving a red trail behind it, the half-siblings gasped in shock as one.
“Wh-what is this! That’s the instructor! Don’t tell me you killed him?”
The severed head belonged to someone they all knew.
In truth, in terms of insubordination, forcibly dragging Lant down from his seat and locking him in the Room of Punishment was by far the gravest, but that wasn’t something they had witnessed with their own eyes.
Perhaps because of that, what Jeremy had just done felt far more shocking.
The surrounding air froze in an instant.
“Yeah. I’ve been dying to slaughter him like crazy for ages.”
Jeremy said he had killed his personal instructor first—the one among the instructors who had intensively trained and evaluated him under Lant’s orders.
Astonished by the story that made them doubt their own ears, none of them could gather their wits.
“You crazy bastard, have you lost your mind? Are you determined to get discarded—”
“Discarded? Ha. How’s a guy who’s groveling trapped in the Room of Punishment going to do that?”
But the moment they heard Jeremy’s following words, the confusion dominating the space froze solid.
Watching his speechless half-siblings, Jeremy broke into a radiant smile that ill-matched his bloodstained face.
“Oh, right. I just overheard that the door is open, so we’re allowed in and out of the Room of Punishment too. So I’m thinking of going to see what kind of pathetic state Father is in. But before that…”
His low voice tickled their hearts as sweetly as a demon’s whisper.
“Who wants to come along and take care of the rest of the instructors and executioners?”
It was something every child born and raised in Agriche had likely imagined at least once in their youth.
Breaking free from the adults who held their lifelines and dictated their entire lives at whim until now.
But as they grew older, such desires had gradually withered.
For they had been tamed by hearing countless times throughout their lives that obeying Lant and the instructors was only natural.
But… was it truly all right to kill them?
Then again, why shouldn’t it be?
In Agriche, strength was law, and Lant, who had ruled over them, was now a defeated loser locked away in the Room of Punishment.
The master of Agriche had changed. So wasn’t it only natural that the dogs who obeyed Lant be slaughtered alongside him?
A sudden rush of reality swept in like a storm, pricking sharply at their skin.
A vivid blue gleam, like the glare of wild beasts, erupted from the eyes of the black vipers.
A sticky ecstasy, reeking of blood, wound around their spines shivering with thrills.
The trigger was pulled without a sound.
Like arrows loosed from a bowstring, they rushed outside after Jeremy without a single thought of who went first.
As if they had waited their whole lives for this very day, there was not the slightest shred of hesitation in their retreating figures.
* * *
“What? Is that true?”
Sierra tried hard to calm her startled heart, but the racing thump in her chest wouldn’t easily subside.
That was how shocking the words she had heard from her maid just moments ago were.
It was only natural.
For what she had heard was the news that Lant, the absolute authority of Agriche, had been imprisoned by Deon.
Yet in Sierra’s mind, her daughter was surely connected to this affair.
She rose from her seat and paced anxiously around the room for a while before finally making up her mind.
“I must go see Sana right this moment.”
Sierra’s maid, Bess, tried to dissuade her with a troubled look.
“Madam, the mansion is in utter turmoil right now. It might be better to wait until things calm down a bit…”
Knock, knock.
It was precisely at that moment that a knock came from beyond the door.
Sierra, who happened to be standing near the door, brushed Bess aside and opened it herself. She paused at the sight of the woman who met her gaze.
“You are…”
The woman standing outside bowed respectfully to Sierra in greeting.
“It has been a long time since I last greeted you, Madam.”
She was Emily, virtually Roxana’s shadow. Raising her head, Emily spoke once more to Sierra:
“I have come by Lady Roxana’s order.”