SSS Ranked Dragon King: My Innate Ability is Unbelievable.-Chapter 214: What is it you want.

Chapter 214: What is it you want.

The air within the garden was noticeably cooler, heavy with the intoxicating scent of night-blooming jasmine, damp earth, and the curated perfumes of a thousand exotic blossoms. The knot of tension between her shoulder blades finally began to loosen. She was on home soil now, controlled, familiar ground.

"Have a pleasant outing, dear sister?" just as she took her first step, she heard an unexpected voice.

The voice was sweet, melodic, and laced with a venom so familiar it made Victoria’s pulse stutter for a heartbeat before it was consumed by a flare of white-hot irritation.

’ Well if this isn’t a suprise, of all the people I had to meet first, it just had to be you.’

She stood in place, her spine turning to iron, refusing to look back at the figure who had just stepped from the shadows of a towering flower bush.

"And why, exactly, does my private business concern you?" Rather than appearing unsettled, Victoria met the challenge with a frigid composure that dripped with pure disdain.

She pivoted with deliberate slowness to confront the interloper which was non other than her own younger sister, Esmeralda.

Esmeralda stood illuminated by the glorious sunlight which highlighted her golden features. She was a portrait of fragile, porcelain elegance, draped in a gown of pale blue silk that seemed to emit its own soft luminescence.

However, the ethereal image was fractured by her expression, one of profound, unadulterated resentment.

Her meticulously groomed brows were knit together in a petulant grimace, marring the smooth expanse of her forehead, while her arms were locked defensively across her chest.

"Even after my warnings, you persisted in seeking him out... After what we discussed! Don’t you think you’re being a tad unreasonable sister. " Esmeralda didn’t fail to let her feelings known.

’So it was you after all...’ Victoria’s lips tightened into a thin, bloodless line as the final piece of the puzzle slotted into place with an infuriating click.

During her time in the southern district, while navigating the labyrinthine path to her master’s residence, she had been haunted by a persistent, ethereal sensation of surveillance.

But she hadn’t been able to pinpoint it’s origins throughout.

Well it wasn’t that she wasn’t able to but the bird Esmeralda used to watch over her was basically flying about making harder to decipher who was tailing her, after all, she expected it to be a human not an ave.

She had initially dismissed it as paranoia fueled by the grit of an unfamiliar neighborhood. Now, the truth was laid bare.

’Esmeralda. To think you’ve become so audacious, so consumed by spite, that you would have me shadowed. To monitor my every footstep like some commoner.’ The sheer violation of her privacy kindled a slow-burning fury.

"If memory serves," Victoria said, her voice dropping into a low, furious torrent, "I am your elder, not the reverse. By what authority do you presume to dictate my movements, my destinations, or my company?" The cordial, dutiful facade she maintained for family functions was discarded, replaced by a gaze of mirroring hostility.

Regardless of their blood tie, Esmeralda’s attempt to sabotage her connection with her master was an unforgivable transgression.

It was an overstep Victoria would not tolerate from anyone, least of all her sibling.

"But I encountered him first!" Esmeralda erupted, her cultivated poise finally shattering.

She had no idea why her sister was so he’ll bent on getting closer to a man she’d only met once, though her situation wasn’t completely different, she still felt that as the one who had been with him the longest, it should be her acting this way, not in the reverse.

She struck her right foot against the stone tiled path; the sharp clack of her heel was instantly muffled by the garden’s stillness.

"He came to my aid! He was meant to be mine! not your’s. Why won’t you just stop this and leave him to me!"

"The world is not yours alone, Esmeralda!" Victoria countered, her volume rising as her icy restraint began to fray under the heat of her sister’s puerile logic.

"Life does not bend to your whims. People are not baubles in a shop window that you can possess merely by pointing a finger!"

" Everyone is entitled to the same things whether you like it or not!"

"Is this your eternal motive, sister? To always obstruct me?" Esmeralda’s voice wavered, now propelled by a current of something far more older and corrosive than mere jealousy.

Her eyes, vast and stunning underneath the sunlight , began to shimmer with welling tears that sparkled like damp sapphires.

Yet, beneath that watery veil, Victoria recognized the familiar, flinty edge of resentment that had simmered for years. "Is it because you refuse to share anything? Not our mother’s focus, nor our father’s accolades, nor the premier tutors... and now, not even the solitary man who offered me a moment of genuine kindness?" She blurted out in a single breath her chest heaving.

Although it still stood to question whether the man in question actually saw her as anything besides a walking dumpster fire.

"Continue cataloging your imagined grievances if you must," Victoria replied, her tone reverting to a surgical sharpness intended to wound.

"But we both recognize these for what they are, the delusions of a child who cannot endure the slightest hint of rivalry. One who resorts to the past the moment a victory isn’t handed to her on a silver platter."

"It isn’t my fault that you are inherently inferior to me! The obvious issue is why you haven’t accepted it all this while."

The declaration escaped Victoria’s lips before she could suppress it, the raw, toxic residue of a lifetime spent in silent comparison.

It was now obvious that this wasn’t merely about a man; it encompassed everything from their magical proficiency to appearances, social circles, and a lot of other comparisons.

The bitterness she had swallowed for years while watching Esmeralda play the delicate doll, whil

e she herself trained until her knuckles bled, finally found a rupture and surged forth.