Chapter 114 – Drag me with you [3]

Music drifted across the shattered Hall of Welcomes.

Soft and melodious, it whispered to the hearts of every heir still present, a kind of whisper that made them want to simply move, to let themselves be carried by it, to fall into perfect resonance with the sound.

Yet at that moment, all of them felt unable to do so. Something inside each of them said — without ceremony — that they were meant to be witnesses. Not participants.

Witnesses to the scene unfolding in the middle of the Hall. Beautiful and oddly innocent after everything that had occurred in the last few hours.

Cassius and Isolde, dancing.

One wounded, one pristine, and yet there was a sense of completeness to the picture that sent tremors through the hearts of those watching.

But witnesses could have their own feelings about what they observed. And the feelings of the Heirs were vastly different from one another.

Anesthesia knew neither what to think nor what to say. She was genuinely speechless, watching her sister — who had somehow become even more beautiful — smiling and dancing at an event she had not been invited to attend.

The Chosen Heiress didn’t fully understand what she was feeling. Or perhaps she did, but was afraid to look at it directly, because doing so would mean accepting the darkest part of herself. A part she had desperately kept buried.

Because if that side of her ever surfaced — truly surfaced — anyone who had ever called her a hypocrite or a wretched person would find themselves at a loss for words.

They would simply be wrong about the scale of it.

Anesthesia knew, at the very core of her existence, that she was capable of things far worse than anything they could imagine.

Yet she had kept herself in check. She had not let herself be ruled by her own wicked impulses, largely because of Emrys, whose aura and presence seemed to suppress that side of her simply by existing.

She was glad for it. Because she was deeply afraid of what she could do without that suppression.

That gratitude had drawn her to Emrys. That feeling had become love. And that love had made her willing to accept the dark sides of Emrys in exchange for the quiet he gave her.

But now, everything was crumbling like a house of glass hit on all sides at once, in ways she had never anticipated.

Emrys was slipping further away from her. Not only because of the man now dancing calmly with her sister, but also because of a girl she herself had introduced to him, driven by his own greed for women.

’So this is it.’ Anesthesia whispered inwardly, watching the dance with still eyes. ’Is this really how you all want things to be?’

She asked no one in particular, though her gaze drifted to Love, holding Emrys’s hand, watching the same scene with the same longing of someone who wished to dance exactly like that.

Beautiful. Stunning. Fated.

’So be it.’ Anesthesia decided.

She was about to close her eyes when she felt a presence settle beside her.

She opened them again, turned her head to the left...and found Raven. His red eyes were cold, but unmistakably filled with love. A love different from Emrys’s.

Emrys’s love was saintly, sweet and understanding. It was peaceful.

Raven’s was darker, knotted with something close to obsession. It was dangerous.

Their eyes met — red on purple, pain on pain, anger on anger. And for the first time, Anesthesia actually looked at the Prince’s face.

The fine line of his brows. The way his eyes blinked far less than normal, as though he sometimes forgot that blinking was something he was supposed to do.

Raven Hood was genuinely handsome. And Anesthesia was only realising that now.

They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. Then Raven simply stood beside her, wordless.

Anesthesia smiled faintly, almost without meaning to, sensing that the Prince already knew she was in no mood to talk.

She said nothing either. She let herself lean against him for once, and watched her sister who was happy, and smiling in a way Anesthesia had never seen her smile before.

’...I know, sister.’ Anesthesia mused, her smile turning strange. ’Being loved... is pleasurable, isn’t it?’

Now she had to admit it.

Cassius Desdemona truly loved Isolde Amaris.

That truth settled over every person in the Hall at that same moment...felt most sharply by Natalia, who stood between Keisha and Meadow.

Her glass-like eyes had darkened with feelings that had no answer, watching a sight that shattered her heart with every passing second.

There, in front of her, was the man she had loved since she was five or six years old.

The man she had shouted to the entire world she would marry. The man she had declared would be the father of her most beautiful and talented children.

Natalia had been supremely confident in the future she had drawn for herself. But she was no Seer. She was no Prophet. And the future she had imagined never came.

Then, on one random day — as every tragedy tends to arrive — her family had shared with her their most detested custom. Marriage within the family. Between cousins.

She had hated it, loathed it, refused it with burning conviction.

But whether she liked it or not, it had worked on her and had made her instinctively pull back from pursuing Cassius, shifting her into a passive, waiting approach.

And now the regret was gnawing at her. So hard, so deep, so relentless that Natalia turned her eyes away from the scene, buried her face in Keisha’s chest and held her like a man clinging to a life jacket in the middle of a hurricane.

It did no good. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Natalia was drowning in pain and regret. And Keisha could only hold her — sad and helpless — crying with her, hoping that sharing it might ease a pain she couldn’t begin to fully understand.

Meadow, for her part, watched the scene with pressed lips and a slow shake of her head, her locks swaying.

Life dealt each person a different card.

Some cards came with pain. Others with relief. Others with hardship. And others still with overwhelming joy.

It wasn’t fair. But life had never been meant to be fair.

Yet if one looked closely enough, they would realise that life actually gave everyone the same card: the Card of Test.

Hardship was a test. So was happiness.

Meadow gripped her pen tighter and wrote down the question that had risen in her mind at that instant...simple yet unanswerable:

’What is happiness?’

She had no answer. But as she lifted her eyes and watched Cassius dancing with Isolde, Meadow felt a glimpse of it — just a glimpse — pass before her.

And it made her smile.

’Show me.’ She thought, then let herself be carried by the music, and turned her mind off for once.

Then there was Klaus himself, the DJ and the friend. Happy to see Cassius enjoying this moment with his wife. Happy to play a part in it, even if that part was standing at a sound setup and pressing buttons.

He didn’t mind. He would never truly mind helping a friend, even if he cursed and refused theatrically before doing it every single time.

He enjoyed this.

Yet as his black eyes swept the Hall, they settled on Love — supposed to be his future wife — openly, shamelessly holding Emrys’s hand.

His heart tightened as if a fist had closed around it. Something cold and heavy dropped into his stomach.

Then, as if feeling the intensity of his gaze, Love lifted her head. Her mesmerising pink eyes found his black ones.

No words.

But Klaus felt as though his heart was being pulled from his chest when Love tightened her grip on Emrys’s hand.

Klaus Silicin Handoff closed his eyes, swallowed the feeling, and kept the music playing. Kept the Hall alive.

For his friend.

They were not the only ones with their own quiet worlds.

Jonathan stood with a mind full of dark and poisonous thoughts about Anesthesia, Emrys and Raven.

Jeanne Safara watched the dancing couple with cold disgust, as if the very sight of tenderness revolted her.

William was different entirely. He looked at the scene with the indifference of a blade toward whatever it happened to cut.

And Nourou — visibly and steadily growing fatter as he worked his way through every piece of food salvageable from the destruction around him — watched it all as though the whole evening had been arranged purely for his entertainment.

And so on, and so on.

All across the Hall, the Heirs stayed in their silence, each carrying their own weight, each acting — willingly or not — as witnesses.

"How long can you keep going?" Isolde whispered, just low enough for only Cassius to hear, their bodies close as they moved.

"As long as you want, darling."

"Can your body hold?"

"Don’t underestimate my body’s will to stay close to yours." He said, his face slightly pale. "And if it gives out,my mind won’t. So you will just have to drag me along."

Isolde laughed softly, then drew closer, pressing her forehead against his without any concern for the eyes watching.

"You’ve done it." She whispered to him. "You helped your sister achieve her goal. You saved your aunt from humiliation by causing chaos grand enough to bury it. And you framed the Crimson Daggers so cleanly that no one would dare think otherwise."

Cassius only smiled.

"You went against Emrys himself. Looking at his state, I am fairly certain you have knocked some sense into him."

"You can bet on it." He said, openly pleased with himself.

She chuckled. "Indeed, husband." She continued. "And now you have protected your family and shown everyone that you are not what they imagined."

"Are you proud, darling?"

"More than proud."

"And all of it is thanks to your support." He replied. "So thank you for putting yourself in danger for me."

"Didn’t I tell you?" Isolde said, smiling wide. "You didn’t only gain a wife, Cassius. You gained a partner."

Cassius didn’t answer. He was too exhausted, too depleted to say anything more. So he mirrored her smile, rested his hand on her shoulder, and whispered something he had never said aloud before.

Something he had proven through his actions so many times that words had never seemed necessary.

But on that night, in that moment, for some reason he couldn’t quite name...Cassius felt the urge to say it.

So he did. In a whisper so quiet that Isolde almost missed the end of it.

"...love you, darling."

Isolde froze.

Her heart slammed against her chest like something trying to break free. Her face flushed red immediately, warmth flooding her all at once.

Cassius was barely conscious at that point, his body too broken, too spent. Even so, she opened her mouth. She used a voice so small it barely existed, as if she were speaking only to herself.

But she spoke the words. Words she would not have believed herself capable of uttering barely a month ago.

"I love you too."

Her face turned redder still.

DING!

[You have completed your Fated Quest.]

And in the Gate of Fate and Secrecy, Ananke watched the scene with a quiet, fond smile, her eyes glowing with oceans of threaded fate.

[The First Ending.] She mused softly, her voice full of something rare and warm.

And indeed...

—End of Chapter 114—

—End of Volume I—

First Ending: I Love You, Darling