Chapter 9: To be completely open and honest.

Just as Sylvia thought she would be strangled to death right then and there,

“Stop.” A weak voice rang out.

Rose turned her head toward Ilena, who was nailed to the inverted cross. Golden light swirled in her eyes.

Just like the last time she dealt with the third party, her fiancée had once again chosen to intervene. Even though intervening was useless and would only put her in an even more dangerous situation, her fiancée had still spoken up.

Ilena… what exactly was she thinking?

Rose released the hand gripping Sylvia’s neck, letting her slide to the floor like a broken puppet. Sylvia coughed and gasped violently.

Rose gracefully turned toward Ilena, the sweet yet unsettling smile once again appearing on her face.

“Oh?” Rose drawled, her voice carrying a playful curiosity.

“You’re telling me to stop now? How surprising, my dear Ilena.”

She slowly walked back to the cross and looked up at her fiancée nailed upon it.

“Let me guess… Are you feeling a trace of reluctance because your toy is about to be destroyed? Or are you displeased as its owner that your pet is about to be tortured to death? Or perhaps…”

Rose’s voice suddenly dropped, turning vicious.

“It couldn’t be… uncontrollable anger at seeing your lover about to be killed, could it!”

Rose tilted her head slightly. Strands of black-and-red hair fell across her pale cheek.

“Tell me, what exactly is your attitude toward this lowly, weak human? I’m truly… very, very curious.”

The air froze once more.

Sylvia lay on the ground, clutching her throbbing throat. Every frantic beat of her heart brought fresh pain from her broken bones.

She looked toward Ilena, unable to understand why the usually harsh Ilena would act this way.

Ilena, nailed to the cross, seemed to have fresh blood seeping from her abdominal wound due to the emotional fluctuation.

She remained silent. Her dim eyes slowly moved between Rose and the collapsed Sylvia. Finally, she seemed to abandon her last pretense.

“The last one.”

Four simple words, yet they seemed to exhaust every last bit of strength she had left.

Rose’s smile instantly widened. She even clapped her hands lightly. The sound echoed crisply and eerily in the empty, dark room.

“Love? You? Toward her? A human? A blood slave?”

Rose’s laughter rang like silver bells, yet it was bone-chillingly cold.

“Ilena, I don’t understand. Why… why do you and ‘her’ both fall in love with others so easily?”

“Am I… not good enough? Not strong enough? Not beautiful enough? Or am I not… special enough to you?”

Rose took a step forward, almost pressing against the cold cross as she looked up at Ilena.

“Answer me seriously, Ilena. If I’m in a good mood… I might consider sparing both of you, you know?”

The promise sounded light as spider silk, yet carried a fatally tempting allure.

Ilena looked at her—at this ancient, powerful, breathtakingly beautiful Ancestor who was engaged to her, yet had always been like a exquisite doll.

After a long time, she spoke, not using Rose’s given name but her surname.

“Hérodi, you are very beautiful and very strong. But you have never touched us, never truly interacted with us. To you, we fiancées are merely symbols of your power and status, aren’t we? You’re just imitating the other male Ancestors. You have no heart, right?”

Rose paused slightly, seemingly caught off guard by Ilena suddenly bringing this up. She raised an eyebrow and answered frankly.

“Heart? That fragile lump of meat that beats and pumps blood? Of course an Ancestor doesn’t need such an inefficient thing. We sustain ourselves with purer energy and laws. Not just me—the other Ancestors are fundamentally the same.”

“No.” Ilena interrupted her, her voice weak.

“I’m not talking about the physical heart. I mean… you have no ‘heart.’ No… thing that softens with emotion, burns with love or hate, aches with longing, or struggles with choices. You have no feelings, or rather, you cannot truly understand them, right?”

The smile on Rose’s face faded. For the first time, a trace of genuine confusion appeared in her eyes. She did not immediately refute it, seemingly pondering Ilena’s words carefully.

“Feelings… understand…” Rose murmured softly.

Sylvia held her breath, watching this bizarre scene. A terrifying Ancestor was actually showing a thoughtful expression because of a question about emotions.

After a while, Rose suddenly clapped her hands. A look of sudden realization spread across her face, as if she had solved a long-standing puzzle.

“Ah! I understand! You mean that because I lack the organ to carry and perceive emotions, I cannot understand your behavior, right?”

Rose’s eyes sparkled with the excitement of discovering a new toy.

“Simple! Then I just need to obtain one, don’t I?”

Before her words even finished—and without giving Sylvia or Ilena any time to react—Rose’s figure flashed like a ghost in front of Sylvia.

Sylvia only saw a pale hand, trailing afterimages, gently press against her flat chest.

An extremely strange pulling sensation came from her chest.

Sylvia looked down.

In Rose’s hand, a warm, faintly beating heart had appeared out of thin air.

It was her heart.

Rose examined the warm, pulsing heart in her hand and even poked it gently with her finger.

Then, under the dazed gazes of Sylvia and Ilena, she pressed the heart toward the left side of her own chest.

The heart sank into her body as effortlessly as a drop of water merging into a surface, disappearing without a trace.

Rose closed her eyes and tilted her head slightly, seeming to savor the sensation carefully.

A few seconds later, she opened her eyes. Her pure black pupils looked at Ilena with an expression mixing novelty and anticipation.

“There. Now I have a heart. It’s your little snack’s heart, by the way.”

Rose’s voice remained sweet.

“So, Ilena, can you now tell me properly? Why you shouted to stop for her, and what exactly this ‘feeling’ you mentioned is? As an Ancestor, I need to understand everything I don’t know. Otherwise, they might become my weaknesses!”

Ilena stared at Rose’s chest, then suddenly turned to Sylvia, who lay paralyzed on the ground. Her chest was now an empty, glowing cavity. Her face was turning visibly gray, and her eyes were gradually losing focus.

The last spark of light in Ilena’s eyes extinguished like a candle in the wind. It was not the dimness of death, but a deeper, more complete despair and emptiness.

Ilena no longer looked at Rose, nor at Sylvia. She simply lowered her head powerlessly. The body nailed to the cross seemed to have lost its final trace of vitality.

“Boring.”

Rose waited a moment, then pouted. The expectant expression on her face collapsed instantly, returning to her usual lazy, slightly impatient indifference.

She seemed quite bored that even after gaining a heart, she still couldn’t immediately understand Ilena’s reaction.

Rose casually waved a hand across her own chest. The heart that had just merged into her body reappeared in her hand, still beating faintly.

Without even looking, she stuffed the heart back into the glowing cavity in Sylvia’s chest.

Sylvia convulsed violently. Like a drowning person finally reaching air, her heart began beating again inside her chest, bringing an unreal pain and vitality.

She gasped heavily, her eyes toward Rose filled with incomprehensible fear and dazed relief at having survived.

Rose casually smoothed her perfectly neat black-and-red long hair and looked at Sylvia once more. But the curiosity in her eyes was gone, replaced only by cold appraisal.

“Little one who dared to touch my fiancée, tell me… what kind of death are you prepared to choose?”

“Let me remind you, something as easy and pleasant as directly crushing your heart… is not among the options.”