Roxana
Chapter 69
Chapter 69
The Way to Protect the Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 69
* * *
“A massacre among kin at the very end… an end truly befitting an Agriche.”
A wet splash echoed.
Stepping through the pool of blood spread out like a crimson carpet, Cassis came to a halt before his quarry.
It was neither too late nor too early. For the one Cassis sought was, just as expected, still breathing as he looked up at him.
“Has it been three years since we last stood face-to-face like this?”
A low voice echoed through the desolate space.
Drenched in blood and leaning against the wall, Lant Agriche stared up at Cassis, the corners of his eyes twitching faintly.
“You… cough… How are you here…?”
The moment he opened his mouth, blood pooled in his belly came surging out.
Looking down at Lant, Cassis’s face was utterly, pitilessly cold.
“Is that what you are most curious about? How I have appeared before your eyes?”
Lant’s gaze dropped to the sharp blade forming a fresh pool of blood at Cassis’s feet.
Thick blood dripped steadily from the downward-pointing tip. There was no telling how many lives had been extinguished upon that blade.
Then the commotion echoing through the mansion earlier was also…
Lant lifted his head once more to meet the golden eyes glinting with a chilling gleam.
“You… You truly are real. Not some fake. Then don’t tell me Roxana, that bitch…?”
If so, it was clear that Cassis had not died at Agriche three years ago.
Roxana had deceived him once again.
He did not know how such a thing had been possible, but the fact that Roxana had played a trick was certain.
Yet the realization came far too late.
Events had already spiraled out of control, raging wildly like the fire devouring Agriche.
“Lant Agriche. You may not have known, but I have been watching you all this time.”
A bleak voice fell over Lant’s head.
“Throughout it all, you cast away countless chances placed before you and committed innumerable atrocities.”
Over a time that could be called either long or short, Pedelian had watched Lant through the eyes of a judge.
And at last, a judgment had been made.
“Had I caught even a glimpse of possibility in you over that time, I, too, might have hesitated.”
Amid the quiet murmurs, Lant quietly sought an opening.
He had nearly exhausted all his strength dealing with Deon—who had dared not only to strike him from behind but to come seeking to sever his breath entirely—yet he could still move.
Damn it. If only that bitch Sierra had listened, he could have escaped this place long ago.
To think she had abandoned him alone in the jaws of the enemy and fled—tearing her limb from limb would not have satisfied his rage.
Regardless, he could not simply sit here and fall helplessly to a bastard of Pedelian.
“Truthfully, I am glad that your nature is wicked. Thanks to that, I do not need to harbor even a shred of hesitation right now.”
The instant Cassis drew closer, Lant moved like lightning and drove a broken blade toward his heart.
Clang!
Yet Cassis rendered even Lant’s final, desperate struggle completely meaningless.
Without a care for his hands being cut, Lant snatched up a handful of shattered glass from an ornament on the floor and hurled it.
He immediately pushed himself up, trying to flee.
Cassis simply raised his arm, sweeping away all the glass shards with his cloak, before driving his sword straight into Lant’s leg as the man turned his back.
“Aaargh!”
“What a useless struggle.”
Despite Lant’s thrashing, the blade embedded deep into the floor did not budge in the slightest.
“Lant Agriche. Aren’t you curious about what I am going to do to you now?”
Across the striking face cast in deep shadow, a sharp smile spread like a fragment of a shattered moon.
Cassis lifted his foot and mercilessly crushed down on the body of the man still struggling to crawl away before him.
“Seeing the countless evil deeds you committed throughout your life without feeling a single ounce of guilt, I came to think that killing you only once would be far too lenient a sentence.”
Even in this state, Lant glared at Cassis with eyes dripping with murderous intent.
Suddenly, the words Roxana had spat at him in the Room of Punishment surfaced in his mind.
“Do you know what I thought every time I looked at that disgusting face of yours?”
“What kind of death would bring you the greatest humiliation and despair?”
“And what way could make you suffer more than dying itself?”
A venomous sneer broke from Lant’s blood-stained lips of its own accord. He had bitten the inside of his mouth so fiercely that the flesh was mangled.
So this was the method that bitch Roxana had ultimately devised?
“Watching you die in agony as you are eaten alive by the Poison Butterflies before my eyes sounded quite nice, but…”
“What you truly cannot tolerate above all else in this world, what you would shudder at and despise more than death itself, probably isn’t something like that.”
To make him watch this Agriche get utterly trampled by none other than Pedelian, and to make him lose his life at the hands of this Pedelian dog.
If so, then perhaps he had to grant her this much.
Because just as Roxana had thought, suffering the indignity of having his throat slit like a defeated soldier by the likes of Richel’s son, Cassis Pedelian…
That, above all, was something he could never accept, even in death!
Lant spat toward Cassis, his bloodshot eyes flashing wildly.
“Kuh… You cursed bastard. I’d rather take my own life than die by the filthy hands of Pedelian!”
Those words were Lant’s last will. With his own hands, he truly tore open the wound in his chest to end his own life.
Yet moments later, Lant opened his eyes again for reasons unknown, finding himself looking up at Cassis.
The moment his gaze met those coldly unwavering golden eyes, Lant felt every hair on his body stand on end.
“What in the…?”
“Did I not tell you it was useless?”
Looking down, he saw that the wound near his heart had sealed shut once more.
Yet the sensation of gouging into his own wound with his bare hands just moments before remained unmistakably vivid.
Cassis looked down at Lant and sneered coldly.
“It certainly wasn’t pride that drove you to take your own life. You were just that terrified, weren’t you?”
Cold sweat ran down the back of Lant’s neck.
Because those words were true. A man with eyes like that would never grant him a clean death.
Having killed countless people himself, Lant could not help but recognize that Cassis Pedelian was deadly serious.
That he would not walk out of this place alive was already a foregone conclusion.
In that case, taking his own life cleanly would have been the only way to escape further humiliation and agony.
Or so he had thought.
“Lant Agriche. I can restore your life as many times as I wish.”
The words that followed from Cassis were so chilling and terrifying that no language could adequately describe them.
“Which means, from now on, I can kill you as many times as I please.”
Had he ever heard words more horrifying in all his life?
No. There was no way.
He could say with certainty that no crueler words existed in this world.
Before the young man, who appeared utterly noble and pure as the light of dawn, Lant trembled uncontrollably.
Throughout his life, he had always been the predator, the hunter.
Yet now, for the first time in his life, he felt like nothing more than a cornered rat.
Cassis reached out his hand toward Lant without a second of hesitation.
What he had to do had been decided from the very beginning.
From the moment he pursued Lant Agriche here, and from the moment he turned his back and left this place three years ago with debts and grudges left unresolved.
The flames surged.
At a gust of wind leaking in from somewhere, the flames of the candelabras lining the wall swayed in unison.
“This is the end, Lant Agriche.”
Half-submerged in the dark shadow, Cassis looked like an emissary risen from hell.
And what Cassis was about to do would be no different.
“Your filthy life—I shall put an end to it today.”
A breath swallowed in a scream crumbled beneath Cassis’s hand.
* * *
After some time had passed, Cassis emerged outside the Agriche estate.
“We withdraw.”
“Understood.”
Isidore bowed his head at Cassis’s command.
With their objective fulfilled, there was no longer any business in Agriche. The building they had just stepped out of was burning, and the outside remained in turmoil.
A moment later, a crimson butterfly caught Cassis’s eye.
Cassis watched the red speck scattering into the sky before turning his steps to follow in its wake.
“Isidore. Go ahead first.”
“Pardon? Wait—…”
Isidore uncharacteristically tried to call after him, but Cassis was already far in the distance.
Cassis’s gaze remained fixed on the trail of the crimson butterfly.
There was someone he had to find before this night came to an end.