I woke up with a terrible migraine after managing to get some sleep, pushing myself off the bed with great difficulty. My body was a bloody mess, but at least I seemed to be more rested. And from the pain in my neck, it seemed that Relia had a fucking field trip with it.

  Still, the worst feeling of them all was the anxiety that haunted me now, wondering how the others would look at me.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said to the annoying voice in my head.

  [Good Morning.]

  ‘Still not planning to tell me what I’m turning into and why my humanity is still put into question?’

  Good old silence was the only thing that managed to leave Ephe’s mouth.

  ‘I assumed so.’

  With that poor excuse of a conversation over, I groaned as I pushed myself off the comfort of the bed and went to the toilet.

  In the past, I would’ve worried about Ephe or the clinging shadow in my clothes, but I stopped a while back. None of them seemed to care, and at this point in time, neither did I.

  Other things required my attention far more than this silly thing. Not to mention that the more I thought about it, the more I could already imagine Julia getting pissed at me for even thinking about it, so for all our sakes, I stopped.

  But now that I managed to distract myself for a bit, get dressed and ready for the day ahead, with my heart pounding to the point that I was going deaf, I walked down the stairs and looked to see who was around.

  The guest mansion was empty. It seemed that Enna and the others hadn’t yet returned, or at least weren’t here. A pity, really, as I wanted to speak with them, test the waters, and see how they were doing, or at least how they were watching me.

  With no luck there, I then left the building, walking toward the remainder of the main mansion, curious to see who I would find.

  “Hide your veins, a blood-sucker approaches,” William yelled the moment he saw me coming, prompting some of the nearby soldiers to start laughing as they were carrying away some of the rubble.

  “Ha ha,” I said sarcastically, walking toward the old man despite the words he said earlier.

  He was, for better or worse, crude, honest, and did not shy away from saying what was on his mind. He was the type of man who would cuss your mother out in front of you, but you knew he would not say the same shit behind your back, despite how he was.

  “Men, continue to work… actually, go take a fucking break, smoke a pipe and go fuck a lass, I have shit to discuss here,” said William, shooing away the soldiers who cheered for his brilliant idea.

  It seemed now that the battle was over, they moved a lot more than when we were in that cottage where I first met this man. Perhaps because William was in a good mood.

  Once I stopped in front of the old man, and once the soldiers moved far away from us, the old man turned toward me, his face serious.

  “I heard… and saw what you did,” he said, telling me to follow him with a quick tilt of his head.

  With a nod from me, we started walking around the mansion, toward the field that still held my spikes and the people dead and impaled in it.

  When I left the mansion, I did not turn my head toward it. I refused to. But now, seeing that I had to, I grimaced at the sight.

  “Julia would have hated my guts if she saw this,” I muttered more to myself than anyone else, but still, William caught it.

  “Julia? Who is the lass?” he asked, curiously looking at me.

  I smiled sadly at the question, realizing it was the first time someone in this world had heard her name.

  “She was my wife.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Dead?” he asked.

  “Dead.” I nodded. “A sickness took her from me.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel better,” he sighed, turning his eyes toward the spikes in the distance. “Yours was dead before you did this. All three of mine are alive to know and see the things I do. The blood on my hands.”

  Three wives??? The old man is related to bloody rabbits. But his words… yeah, I couldn’t face Julia if she was here now.

  “I didn’t want to do this, but I didn’t want worse things to happen either,” I sighed, watching the impaled men feet away from the ground. “A pity that what I did did not solve the issue.”

  “These fuckeries are always more annoying to deal with than you may think,” William chuckled to himself, relieved that I changed the subject. “One time, we had to hunt for an entire House. To this day, we have not killed all of them, despite it being fifty years ago. No matter how many you kill or thought you did, there is always one or two that you missed.”

  “Fortunately, I am not in this business,” I clarified, hoping not to be confused with some bloodthirsty, psychotic bastard. “This was a mistake on my part. I did not care for myself properly. Physically or mentally.”

  “Want a pipe?” William grinned. “Or a lass? Let me tell you, son, a good lass with a great head, or the proper type of tobacco, can make you forget you even know what the word ‘issue’ is. You are alone now. Best care for yourself as men do. Whether you like it or not, those two and plenty of alcohol in between is the only proper way men like me, men like us, get past the shit that we did.”

  I tend to forget that men in such times acted differently from the modern man did back on Earth. Yes, these cases were still prevalent even back home, but in history, William’s way was the only foolproof method not to get mad. That and locking yourself in a monastery for the rest of your life. We can all imagine what most men chose.

  “A pity then,” I replied. “I do not need more women; I had plenty once.”

  “One?” William asked, clearly surprised. “One is never enough.”

  “One was more than enough for me,” I shrugged, not trying to get into the morality of his earlier sentence.

  “But now that one is gone, find more. The people inside are fucking terrified of you, even if they tell you otherwise. You will go mad, King of the Great Velvet Forests. In your eternity, if you choose to spend it alone, you will go mad. And when you do, I will be on the other end of the sword, putting you to rest. Find people who will care for who you are, and if not, pretend you have them by doing what all of us are doing.”

  William pointed out a truth I didn’t want to hear, but that only annoyed me.

  “And what is that, Sir William of the Titan Road? Smoking, drinking, and fucking every other woman I lay my eyes on?”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh come on,” I clicked my tongue. “Do you see me as shallow as that?”

  “It would be easy if you were shallow,” he shook his head, pointing at the spikes. “Two more of these, and you will go mad. Learn to pretend or leave this place and go back to your Kingly Castle in the fucking woods, boy. It would be better for you that way.”

  The bastard, whether knowingly or not, was saying the precise things that were haunting me. And in a way, it was true. His advice was on point.

  I attached myself to these people, to their suffering, drowning my own. To Stevin, to Silvien, Melsa, and little Arthur. To Christof and his death. It was easier, despite my social anxiety, to hold onto the issues of others, aiding them in it… as if someone else was aiding my own.

  But, when I looked back on my life in this place… nobody was aiding my own. Yes, you could argue that Ephe did. That in some ways, Relia planned on doing on several occasions. But was I really having someone?

  No… I was not. Even if people wanted to, even if Ephe would’ve liked to, I kept my distance, watching, judging.

  I had feelings I refused to process, grief I failed to let out of my chest, a lifetime of suffering and bullying that made me distant from others. Yes, I helped, but only because there was a reason for it. Directives that would help me, coincidences that pushed my goal of having Julia again ever so closer.

  Yes… Machiavelli was wrong. It truly was better to be loved.

  “Should I just leave then?” I asked, turning my face toward him.

  “Are you a bloody retard?” he frowned. “All I said, and that is what you caught on? You stupid cunt. Come with me, you need to clear off all that trash and blood-sucking off your mind.”

  At that, he caught me by my nape, pushing me off past the mansion, cursing and speaking to himself down the hill and out of the estate.

  When we were on the main road, he whistled, and as if out of thin air, a magic circle opened, and a horse rose from the magic circle as if teleported into existence.

  “Get up,” he hissed, pushing me up on the horse. “We are leaving.”

  “Going where?” I asked in a panic, finding myself on top of a freshly-brought-into-existence horse.

  “To smoke… and to FUCK!” William yelled like a madman before jumping on the horse’s back.

  “BUT YOU WERE MARRIED!” I yelled back into his ear, clinging to the bastard as if my life depended on it. I never rode a horse after all.

  William started laughing despite my obvious panic, “SO WHAT?”

  What the fuck do you mean by so what, brother? But I didn’t have time to complain further, as with a loud ‘Hyah!’ the spawned horse dashed forward toward the city, making me hug the old man even further.

  “Aww,” he taunted. “Is our Vampire Lord King scared of heights?”

  “Shut the fuck up, old man.”

  And the bastard just kept on laughing until we were at the city gates.

  Gods… help me! Ephe… help me! Relia… help me! Julia, my love, help me! I am in danger!

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