Chapter 51 - You'll be MINE and MINE ALONE

  Cillian's gaze, sharp enough to draw blood, locked onto Liara's, the air between them crag with unspoken malevolence.

  WHAT THE GODDAMN HELL DO YOU EVEN PREHEND, LIARA. Every wretched time I dragged your worthless soul from the pits of your self-made hell, every BLOODY time I bled for your pathetic excuses - do you have ANY IDEA what kind of nightmare I endured because of YOU. Remember when I id bare my rotting soul about the abuse I suffered, thinking you'd be my salvation. But no - you pyed the damned victim, always slithering out like the venomous snake you are, because you never learned what it means to feel ANYTHING real. That mask you wear - that shit-stained mask molded from daddy's expectations and those worthless novels you worship - it's eaten away whatever humanity you had until there's nothi but a hollow fug shell.

  I put EVERYTHING on the line for our past - my sanity, my future, my very existence. And when you casually tossed me aside like yesterday's garbage, I STILL protected your worthless hide. But you - YOU THREW YOURSELF at that gutless husband of yours, and that's when I saw the truth of my catastrophic mistake. Did your stone-cold heart ever sider what I wanted. Someoo actually ECT with. To breathe the same poisoned air. To walk the same cursed earth. Like you do with your precious daddy and that pathetic secret lover you thought I didn't know about. Oh, I KNEW - and I watched you destroy him just like you destroyed every godforsaken thing you touched.

  That bastard I got you married to - what kind of brain-dead MORON accepts damaged goods and still pours out his heart. You hit the motherfug jackpot and STILL mao poison it until divorce was his only escape from your toxic existence. And Luxana - LUXANA is everything you'll never be. She won't py your twisted mind games, won't slice me open with those calcuted reas that make me want to TEAR THIS WORLD TO BLOODY SHREDS.

  You're nothing but a parasite, feeding off the misery of rowing fat on the pain you cause. Every smile, every goddamure is calcuted to manipute, to trol, to DESTROY. You think I don't see the way you relish in the chaos you create. The way your eyes light up when you sense weakness, like a shark smelling blood ier.

  How the HELL did someone like you slither into politid business. But what truly makes my blood BOIL is how you crafted that picture-perfect mask - sweet, serene, intelligent, well-mannered - HORSESHIT. Seventeen years old and already a master of deception - it's absolutely TERRIFYING how good you are at this game. Each word from your mouth is poison, each a a calcuted step in your twisted dance of destru.

  You're like a disease that ied everything pure in my life, turning gold into ash, hope into despair. Every memory of us is tainted by your betrayal, every moment we shared now feels like a knife in my back. You didn't just break my trust - you shattered it, ground it into dust, and scattered it to the winds while wearing that same pristine smile.

  That's exactly why I chose Luxana to stand in your pce - to be my salvation, my escape from your toxic existence. But even in that decision, I was a damn fool. I should've known you'd slither your way into this too, plotting her destru like the venomous creature you are. Every move you make is calcuted to destroy her, to turn her life into the same hell you created for me. But here's the difference, Liara - I don't give a single shit about you anymore. Your pathetic attempts to maintain trol, to keep your cws in my life - they mean nothing. Luxana will be the one, and no amount of your poisonous schemes will ge that. She'll be everything you preteo be, everything you failed to bee. I'll make sure of it.

  Cillian smmed his thoughts shut, violently wreng his gaze from her face as he stormed into the Greenhouse

  Just you wait, Luxana - I'm ing for you. You'll be MINE and MINE ALOhat sacred fme of yours - NO ONE else will ever touch it, see it, even DREAM of it. You'll be my Queen, my perfect on, and I'll march you straight down that glorious path everyone's chosen for you - straight into the loving arms of DEATH itself. I'll orchestrate your downfall with the precision of a master ductor, eaote a step closer to your ultimate demise.

  This isn't just a game anymore - it's bey obsession, my reason for existence. Every breath I take is focused on this singur purpose. I'll py this game like a man possessed by demons themselves - a man who's seen the end and SPITS in its face. Let the world bur everything crumble to ash - as long as I watch you fall, as long as I be the architect of your destru.

  And when you finally realize the depth of my pns, when you see the intricate web I've woven around you, it'll be too te. You'll uand then, in those final moments, that everything - EVERYTHING - has led to this. Your precious trol, your carefully structed world, will colpse around you, and I'll be there to watch every exquisite sed of your undoing.

  In the deceptive tranquility of the moonlit garden, a silent war raged beh the veneer of civility. Liara, her eyes narrowed to calg slits, regarded Cillian with a mixture of pt and curiosity. Her mind, a byrinth of schemes and ter-schemes, whirred with possibilities. What game was this man pying? His invitation to reinstate their e reeked of ulterior motives, yet here she stood, arm-in-arm with the architect of her past miseries.

  A smile, as false as a mirage in the desert, graced Liara's lips. Her eyes closed, not in te, but in cealment of the storm that raged behind them. Her fingers, still resting on Cillian's arm, felt like serpents coiled around their prey.

  "Well, heless," she purred, her voice a symphony of feigned gratitude and hidden malice, "How magnanimous of you to resurrect what was once dead. I assure you, I shall transform into su exquisite embodiment of a fiahat you'll find yourself questioning every moment of our previous separation." The words dripped from her lips like honey ced with poison, each sylble a carefully crafted lie.

  Cillian's response was visceral, a smile that spoke volumes of disgust and disdain. His eyes, unlike Liara's, remained open – windows to a soul as cold and calg as a winter's night. In the depths of those eyes, a truth burned with fiertensity: A PAAWN ON MY CHESS BOARD. That's all you are and ever will be.

  The air between them crackled with unspoken hostilities, each party acutely aware of the deadly dahey were engaged in. Liara, believing herself to be the puppet master, was blind to the strings that Cillian held. And Cillian, in his arrogance, uimated the ing of the womahought he trolled.

  In this garden of deceit, where venders bloomed with the st of distrust, two master maniputors circled each other. Each smile was a bde, each touch a potential betrayal. The game had only just begun, and in the shadowy world of poolitics, there could be only one victor.

  The tranquil garden shattered as a servant burst onto the se, his voice a desperate cresASTER! MASTER! MASTER!" he cried, stumbling towards Cillian with frantic urgency.

  Gasping for breath, the man's words came in staccato bursts. "LETTER!" he excimed, then, "Duchess, Valentine," as he thrust a missive forward, his other hand clutg his knee in exhaustion.

  A chill, sharp as winter's first frost, raced down Cillian's spine. Mother? The thought whispered through his mind as he grasped the proffered letter, his fingers betraying the slightest tremor.

  Liara, ever the opportunist, leaned in with feigned nonce. "What could it be?" she inquired, her voice a study in false innoce.

  Cillian's gaze, cold and indifferent, swept over her. A weary sigh escaped his lips as he broke the seal, g the will to rebuff her intrusion.

  The letter read:

  Little Duke Cillian,

  I trust this missive finds you in a state of exquisite anticipation.

  Her Highness Princess Luxana resides under my prote, a delicate flower temporarily transpnted from her familiar garden. Should you harbor any desire to recim what you believe is yours, I extend a most... provocative invitation.

  e.

  And we shall see precisely what transpires wheempts to retrieve something that does not wish to be retrieved.

  I await your respoh the most refined of curiosities.

  Yours with utmost pt,The Duchess of Valentine

  A smirk pyed across Liara's features as she gnced from the letter to Cillian's face. But her triumph was short-lived. In an instant, the color drained from her visage, leaving her a pale, trembling statue.

  For Cillian had turo her, his eyes no longer indifferent, but bzing with a crimson fury that seemed to pierce the very essence of her being. Those eyes spoke volumes, acg her of plicity in some unspeakable transgression.

  "Kick this dung out," Cillian ordered, his voice as cold and sharp as a bde of ice. Without annce, he strode away, his fa imperable mask of impassivity.

  -Cillian's Room in Moonlit Edifice, Elmir, After the Chaos in Domino-

  "WHAT?" The butler's excmation echoed through the opulent chamber, his posure shattered by Cillian's suddeion.

  Cillian's voice, a study in trolled urgency, cut through the air like a bde. "I said, inform His Majesty that I'll be visiting Romania to see my mother. Prepare the carriage and luggage immediately. I depart this instant." His words, though calm, carried an undercurrent of steel as he strode towards the bathroom to ge, leaving no room fument.

  -Moonlit Edifibsp;Porte-Cochère-

  The graranoonlit Edifice buzzed with frantic activity as servants scurried to prepare for their master's abrupt departure. Cillian emerged, his presenanding instant attention.

  "Very well then. I'll return in about a week," Cillian announced, his tone brooking no discussion. With a casual wave that belied the gravity of the moment, he turned aered the waiting carriage, leaving his stunned servants in his wake.

  *NEEIGH*

  The horse's cry pierced the afternoon, a call heralding the beginning of a journey fraught with unseen dangers. As the carriage lurched forward, its wheels cttering against the cobblestones, it carried Cillian towards Romania - and towards a frontation that promised to shake the very foundations of his world.

  The Kingdom of Romania - a realm of divine facade ling in Elmir's southern shadows. It's where my mother, Lady Rudbeckia Assiyah Von Monis, found her sanctuary after the catastrophic fall of Kior. Ah, Kior - oitan among empires, now nothing but whispers in fottes. Funny how history swallows even the mightiest whole.

  Mother, barely seventeen when Kior crumbled, fled with her family to Romania - a kingdom where holiness dripped from every stone and prayer echoed through every corridor. The Holy Empire weled them with open arms, though those arms came with golden shackles. Four years of political maneuvering ter, at twenty-one, she became the bride of my father, Lu De Valentine Eriko Elmir - a marriage that bound two powers in holy matrimony.

  But holy doesn't always mean happy. Mother's retionship with her family and the sanctimonious elite soon soured like week-old wine. Now she haunts her own kingdom like a beautiful ghost, while Father - the great Imperial Battle ander - prowls the borders with my uncles, leaving trails of glory and bloodshed in their wake. My grandfather, the puppet master of our family's fate, rules our sprawling mansion in Elmir's capital with an iron fist ed in silk.

  Seventeen of us spawned from this divine union - nature's twisted sense of humiving us quadruplets, triplets, and twins, save for the you's solitary entrao our y older brothers scattered like seeds in the wind, chasing fn educations and fn dreams. The middle ones march through Elmir's prestigious academies, and our you - well, they g to Mother's skirts like desperate shadows.

  And then there's me - the only one who chose to remain in Elmir's embrace, save for my sister who's bound here by marriage s of her oween siblings, yet I stand alone in these halls of poretense, watg the divine edy unfold act by bloody act.

  Cillian who had beeed on the edge of the carriage he window with his arm resting on the windowsill and palm closed, he rested his head on it. I'll cross 20% of the distah this carriage and teleport the rest just so as not to seem inhuman. Cillian thought, his eyes being slightly watery.

  -Hunting Ground, Domino, After the Chaos-

  The once-darkened sky of Domino had regais luminosity, yet the nd below y barren and lifeless. Hastily erected tents dotted the ndscape, where Hospital Staff of the Imperial Family and Priests of the Holy Empire worked tirelessly to salvage the souls of men, women, and children alike.

  A man approached, his demeanrave as he delivered his report. "Your Majesty, I bring news of the royal family. While all members have survived, they have not escaped unscathed. However, we have no informatiarding Lady Vespera Thornfield and her son, Prince Rowan. Furthermore, Princess Luxana's whereabouts remain unknown."

  Two more men hurried to the se, their urgency palpable. The first spoke, "Your Majesty, a number of servants have ehis camity. We have piled a list of those who perished, and appropriate remuions have been allocated."

  The sean tinued, "Sire, the nobility has suffered greatly. A quarter of their number, including their offspring, have perished. Half are gravely wounded and currently uhe care of the Holy People and physis. The remainder sustained minor injuries. repared a list with corresponding remuions."

  The King, his voice steady and authoritative, issued his ands. "Very well. Inform the families of the survivors as well as the perished and offer sotion from the Imperial Family. Dispatch the remuions to the bereaved, drawing from the royal coffers. For those who have fallen, summon the moal masons to prepare suitable graves and memorials. Enlist the servieteists, historians, and both publid private iigators. tact the magic tower and request the presence of their most skilled practitioners. Finally, petition the stabury to maintain vigince over the affected areas."

  To be tinued...