Chapter 153: Chapter 153: Ungrateful
Chapter 153 – Ungrateful
"How fabulous." Anesthesia whispered, her voice carrying something that felt like it had crawled out of a very dark, demonic place.
The person on the other end shivered at the sound of it, smiling wryly with beads of sweat at his brows, wondering just what Love de Bayard had done to anger his master this thoroughly.
It was well known that Anesthesia was quick to anger.
Perhaps it was something innate to her. Or perhaps she had simply grown so accustomed to everything going her way that when one thing didn’t...she lost the fragile hold she maintained on her own emotions.
That was why he and his companions — willing subordinates, to avoid calling them what they truly were — knew never to act against what she wanted.
He already felt a creeping pity for Love. After all, his master was like a dog that had gone feral...once she bit down, she would not release until she had torn completely through.
"I want everything about them." Anesthesia ordered, her eyes dead. "And when I say everything...I mean every last detail. What they like, what they hate, how they earn their money, who their friends are and who their enemies are. I want to know who they are fucking with."
She paused, her voice dropping lower. "Was I clear enough, or do I need to repeat myself?"
"Perfectly clear, master." He answered quickly.
"I want all of you on this. I want results in one week."
The man yelped. "One week?" His voice tightened with distress. "But master, with everything you are asking, one week is not enough. People like Meursault know how to conceal themselves. It is not simple to—!"
"I do not care." Anesthesia said flatly. "One week. Will you do it or not? Answer quickly, so I know whether I need to inform your pregnant wife that you have been moving through the streets fucking everything that moves. And that every SN she spends so comfortably was earned through killing."
Dead silence.
That silence stretched for several breaths before the man exhaled slowly.
"Everyone I ever killed, I killed for you." He said. "Because they spoke poorly of you. Because they spread rumours about you. Only for you, master. The money was never the reason."
"Then continue doing everything only for me, and I will allow you to keep your peaceful home."
"Master... do you care about us at all?"
"What do you think?" Anesthesia replied.
The man grinned coldly on his end. "You are truly a heartless woman. I curse the day I saw your face and was foolish enough to be moved by it. I curse the day I knelt in front of you and swore absolute loyalty. If only your parents knew what kind of daughter they are so proud of."
Anesthesia smiled faintly. "They would only be prouder. Now stop talking and do what you were given."
"Of course, master." He answered. "You command, I obey. In one week, you will have everything. Whatever the cost. Are you satisfied, master?"
"I will be satisfied when I have the information." She said. "And do not call this number again."
"Aye, master. Anything else?"
"Your child...I will name them."
"What?" The man nearly shouted in shock.
"You should be grateful, not panicking like an idiot. I am giving your child a name. So do not give me a reason to destroy your family by failing me. Now go."
Without giving him time to process, Anesthesia ended the call.
She exhaled softly, running her right hand backward through her black hair.
’Ah... so exhausting.’ She murmured, then went still.
Her phone vibrated. She looked back down at the screen and saw a notification from Love’s account, which she had been silently following.
Love had posted a new picture.
Anesthesia tapped it, and her heart stopped completely.
Sitting in a lavish restaurant were Love de Bayard and Emrys Stormblessed, both smiling easily as Love held her phone up for a selfie with a peace sign.
The two of them were beautiful and unmistakably famous. Within seconds of posting, hundreds had already liked, commented, saved and shared.
Beneath the post, the caption read: Saturday date! Followed by a cascade of pink hearts.
Anesthesia was speechless.
"You are ignoring my messages while taking her on a date." She whispered, veins of anger rising visibly across her forehead, her teeth pressing hard against each other. "Two ungrateful, shameless people. This is truly the finest act of disrespect you could have shown me, Emrys. I have set aside my pride for you more times than I can count. Every single time...all to please you. Going to the women you wanted because you lacked the balls to do it yourself. I helped you satisfy your every craving without minding my own. And this is how you repay me? This is how you treat me when I need you most?"
Anesthesia’s eyes blurred. Without meaning to, tears began to fall.
"Do you think I enjoyed this? Getting close to Raven? Playing him? Manipulating him? Do you think I wanted to do that to a fucking Prince, risking my family’s position in the process? I did it because I had no choice! No matter my beauty, no matter my talent, I am only a Tier Three Heiress! I needed him to climb, do you understand that? You could not help me, not only because you were powerless to, but because of your rigid, arrogant family! And yet you never stopped boasting about them! Emrys! I loved you! I truly, genuinely loved you!"
Her mind thick with pain and fury, Anesthesia hurled her phone at the wall with everything she had. It shattered on impact.
She folded her arms around herself, sobbing — over and over — letting herself revisit every memory she had with Emrys.
She had been there when he needed her in the matter of his mother. There when his father put him through gruelling training and the stress nearly broke him. There in all the small moments, as a silent pillar in his life.
And how easily he had discarded all of it, remembering only the one time she had fallen short.
One time!
Human beings...such ungrateful, wretched creatures. Masters at remembering the single wrong while erasing every right.
"I hate them!" She wailed, holding herself tighter. "I hate all of them. I will make them all pay. I will." freёwebnovel.com
Her cries deepened, as though she was finally allowing everything that had been sealed inside her to pour out at once. She let herself feel it all. She revisited the good days and relived the memories.
They had been good memories.
And yet, paradoxically, the more she revisited them, the more her previous love for Emrys transformed — not into grief, but into a fierce and burning anger.
Because the more clearly she remembered, the more clearly she saw how much of herself she had bent and sacrificed for his comfort. As though he were the centre around which her entire existence orbited.
Which, in a way, he had been.
Emrys had been the pillar that kept her stable.
Or so she had told herself.
Only now did she understand that he had not been a pillar at all. He had been a weight suppressing who she truly was. Who she was always meant to become.
She had given him everything.
And he had thrown it away for a woman and suspicion about actions she had taken only out of necessity.
So be it.
"Go and be exactly the man-whore you are." She said, her voice low and cold. "From this moment, I have no more hope for us, Emrys."
Love de Bayard had won.
But she would come to understand that there was no prize waiting at the end of that victory.
Only unending pain.
Anesthesia lifted her head — her face streaked with tears, sweat and all the grief she had finally stopped containing. Her expression held pain, fury, and a deep and sorrowful killing intent all at once.
"From today onwards..."
She smiled, broken and certain at the same time.
"...I align myself with the Bloodline of Death. And I am coming for all of you, ungrateful bastards."
It was time to rank up.
...
Hours passed.
Isolde, Sarah and Cassius arrived back at the Royal Palace, with Sarah departing immediately, eager to find her Prince and provoke a reaction from him.
She privately hoped he would kiss her by force again. Strangely, the thought of it always made something restless stir inside her body.
Knowing precisely what that meant but choosing wisely to leave it unaddressed, Sarah of Secrecy practically ran toward his room with a smile on her face.
Isolde, meanwhile, settled Cassius comfortably into his bed and watched him sleep for a quiet moment before stepping into the bathroom to wash off the subtle exhaustion gathering in her joints and refresh herself.
Once done — dressed in clean clothes, her hair styled into a neat chignon — she stepped back out of the bathroom and found someone already inside the room, standing at Cassius’s bedside.
’How did she get in? Where is Persephone?’
"What are you doing here? Who let you in?" Isolde asked coldly, moving immediately to position herself between the woman and her sleeping husband.
The woman — the Sister Hel Hood had brought with her, the grieving mother of Nick Jurish — looked at Isolde with impassive eyes.
"My master wishes to speak with you."
"I am busy—!"
"My master," She cut in, something harrowing buried underneath her voice. "Wishes to speak with you, Lady Isolde. She has been waiting since morning."
Isolde narrowed her eyes. "I made myself clear. I am busy. I will see her once my husband wakes up. You may leave now."
"My master dislikes waiting. And no one will harm the Last Born inside this palace."
"And why are you pressing this?" Isolde hissed with open irritation, stepping closer. "What do you want with Cass?"
The woman didn’t answer immediately. She let her gaze drift from Isolde to Cassius, and then she smiled. A strange, quiet smile.
"I only wish to speak to him." She said, her eyes returning to Isolde. "And to ease your mind, I will swear an Oath that I will not harm him. Not that I could, Lady Isolde. He may not be an Heir of Death himself, but his mother is an Heiress of Death."
She smiled coldly.
"I am unable to act against him even if I wished to. Not as a Sister under the Lord of Death."
"What do you want to speak to him about?" Isolde pressed, with no intention of leaving Cassius alone with a woman like this.
"What do I want..." the woman whispered, and then, in a voice filled with lament, her eyes settling on Cassius’s sleeping face...
"Nothing but the truth behind my son’s death."
—End of Chapter 153—