Chapter 141 – Saturday

Five days had passed since that fateful morning.

During those five days, Cassius had spent most of his time training, motivated to reach a certain level of mastery over his skills before the Academy Entrance Test.

He was not arrogant enough to let his guard down and believe that his three Skills would be enough to secure the Palatine spot.

Far from it.

If there was one person who understood how dangerous Emrys was among their generation, it was undeniably him. And Cassius also knew that Emrys Stormblessed’s level of threat could leap to an entirely new degree when he felt genuinely challenged.

In a way, Cassius had realised during one of his meditation sessions that he was making Emrys stronger than he would have been without the pressure of the Fated Quests to contend with.

He doubted it was a wise choice, but there was no other path available. And if he was honest, he was grateful for it. He needed the pressure Emrys radiated to push himself harder, to seek every day a new level of mastery and understanding.

The Hood had taken notice of that aspect of Cassius. And Raven and Esmeray, without asking why, had begun spending entire days inside the training ground — barely eating, barely resting.

They had accepted that Cassius was stronger than them. But they could not accept being lacklustre while a stronger being trained with that kind of relentless intensity.

That change had pleased Dantes and Morenna Hood so much that they extended an invitation for Cassius to remain at the palace and live with them until the Academy, and beyond.

His presence had brought a certain warmth to an otherwise deathly atmosphere within those walls.

His daily disputes with Esmeray amused Morenna greatly, she enjoyed watching Cassius genuinely try to understand his aunt and absorb her foul mouth with nothing but a wry smile.

His occasional duels with Raven were a pleasure for Dantes as well, who would smile coldly at his son with eyes that screamed openly — ’I told you to train and stop wasting yourself. And now loo, your nephew is beating you into the floor.’

That stare from his father alone caused Raven to challenge Cassius thirty-three times in a single day.

He lost every single one. Yet his spirit wasn’t broken in the slightest. He grew more proficient with each exchange, and soon enough he would be ready to step into the Imbued rank.

Added to that, somewhere along the way, Raven Hood had begun to smile more often than not when around Cassius.

But the Royal Palace was not made up only of them.

Persephone hadn’t changed at all, except for the fact that it was now infuriatingly obvious she had developed a particular fondness for Cassius far beyond what was strictly necessary. She had never said it directly, but her subtle actions spoke loudly enough.

Isolde, for her part, was the strangest case. It was both notable and pleasant that she had grown close to the King and Queen. But somehow, she was even closer to Hel Hood.

Yes. Hel Hood.

The Great-Great-Grandmother of the Hood family had decided to return to the palace for a few days, bringing with her a sister of the Church.

A sister that Cassius discovered — through Anesthesia’s unmistakable reaction — was the grieving mother of Nick Jurish, the Tier Three boy the Fangs had killed because of his actions.

Seeing her had given Cassius a strange feeling. Not guilt, but something else entirely. Something he couldn’t name.

Yet it was there, plain in the way the woman behaved around him, and in the way her perpetually wet eyes settled on him — and settled often.

He was puzzled and decided to look into it later. Because at that time he was far more curious about why Hel Hood had taken such a strong liking to Isolde...and why Isolde liked her in return.

When he asked, he received no satisfying answer.

Isolde had simply said she couldn’t explain it. She just liked Hel’s vulgar, cold and deathly energy. She felt there was much she could learn from a Necromancer of that level.

She was right. But Cassius wasn’t entirely sure he liked what she was learning...especially given that Hel Hood had made her feelings about him abundantly clear.

"You smell like Seraphim. I hate that one most out of every other wretched offspring of that woman. So I hate you. And I hate you even more because that whore Morenna likes you more than I could have imagined. Now get out of my sight."

Those had been the first and last words Hel ever directed at Cassius.

The Last Born felt wronged. He had almost cursed her right then and there. He could even see Morenna egging him on, nodding with visible enthusiasm, clearly hoping to watch him curse his great-great-grandmother.

Cassius had not managed to let that disrespect leave his mouth.

Morenna was painfully disappointed.

Then there were Sarah and Anesthesia. During those five days, it was impossible to speak of one without speaking of the other.

Because as Anesthesia had begun to feel a simmering, boiling frustration at Raven’s growing silence toward her — Sarah was experiencing a surge of overwhelming joy at the Prince’s sudden attention.

More attention than she had ever expected to receive. It was heavy, and sometimes dangerous. It felt as if Raven was pouring onto her all the frustration he had been suppressing by staying away from Anesthesia.

Sarah was delighted despite the danger of it. But she no longer showed it.

She refused every advance the Prince made, and sometimes, in moments of reckless courage and a desire to provoke a reaction, she even mentioned her man openly.

One day she had gone as far as asking Raven for advice about what to do in bed, claiming her man was insatiable and difficult to satisfy.

Sarah of Secrecy had never seen Raven look at her with such a mixture of fury and possessiveness. She had nearly lost herself in the moment, wetting herself.

And in fact, she did, because in that moment of weakness, she had let her guard down and allowed the Prince to kiss her in his attempt to prove something to them both.

She had stopped it immediately afterward, cursing herself.

Raven had looked at her with a smirk. She had ignored it completely.

She spent the remaining days — right up until now — in near total silence, answering Raven in nothing but yes or no.

Raven was deeply unsettled by her behaviour. He had tried searching for this man she loved to speak of so openly, intending to kill him...but found nothing.

However, the Prince had barely noticed when he stopped caring about that. Unexpectedly, he found himself enjoying the challenge of making Sarah fall for him willingly, while she was still supposedly with someone else.

But the mere thought of her sleeping with another man drove him to a blind rage. The contradiction was tearing him apart.

Meanwhile, Anesthesia was unravelling in her own way.

Raven no longer answered her messages or her calls. And when she went to find him in person, he barely listened, telling her he was busy and needed to train.

Yet sometimes, when he refused to see her, she would catch him talking with Sarah for hours on end.

One day, Sarah had noticed her watching from a distance, and the useless, whorish maid, as Anesthesia loved to call her, had dared to smirk at her before closing the distance to Raven’s side.

Anesthesia had never wanted to kill someone as much as she did in that moment.

And it only got worse from there.

Five days had passed, and Raven had changed. And in Anesthesia Amaris’s mind, all of it had begun with his meeting with Cassius.

She had gone to confront him about it. She received only a smile and a performance of complete innocence.

She had also seen Isolde, and in her sister’s infuriating face she could read the expression that said silently, smugly... ’You are going to lose him too. I told you, didn’t I? You will lose all of them.’

And that alone made Anesthesia ready to do absolutely anything to reclaim the full weight of Raven’s obsession.

Because she could not bear — under any circumstances, in any version of events — her sister being right about something in her life.

Never.

And so a cold war had begun between Sarah and Anesthesia — pleasantries and smiles on the surface, brutality underneath. A war fought for the attention and love of the Prince of Hood, who was suffering more than anyone around him could see.

Three days without sleep, missing Anesthesia profoundly. And yet, at the same time, building something strange and consuming around Sarah that he could not name.

The Prince was lost, his heart and mind torn between painful contradictions and two women.

And yet, somehow...

Raven Hood had never felt so alive in his entire life.

All of this had unfolded, openly or quietly, over the past five days.

Now it was Saturday.

And it was Origin Store Day.

—End of Chapter 141—