Chapter 515: Heartache
Was it that shallow?
Cecilia looked at Ruby’s severed head in Arzhen’s hands. The moonlight caught every detail, how the blue eyes were still open, still wet, frozen in that final moment of ultimate terror and betrayal.
The blood still dripped free from the ragged stump of her neck, dark and jelly-like, dripping in thick, slow globs onto the mud below.
Strands of torn muscle and tendon hung like broken harp strings from the base of her skull. The white gleam of her cervical spine jutted obscenely from the gore, cleanly snapped at the third vertebra.
Her pink hair, once so carefully maintained, was matted into twisted ropes by blood and Arzhen’s grip, plastered against her cheeks and forehead in dark, wet curtains.
Her mouth was still open, lips parted, teeth visible, the tip of her tongue caught between them where she had been mid-scream when the end came.
A single tear track was still visible through the blood on her cheek. The last thing she had ever done was cry for help.
Cecilia stared at the face of the woman who had haunted her marriage, who had been held up as the standard she could never meet.
She had been loved by Arzhen in a way Cecilia had never been loved, yet died begging for mercy from the man she had trusted most.
His love for Ruby... was it always this shallow?
Or was it merely the same as how he had ripped out Cecilia’s heart for Ruby’s sake in their real world, and now, in this world, had ripped off Ruby’s head for her sake?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps this world’s Arzhen and Ruby were fundamentally different from their real-world counterparts. In the real world, their bond had been deeper and their history longer.
But knowing how the real Arzhen had seeped through the cracks to influence this one, knowing how his feelings and memories and desperate, devouring need had bled across dimensions, would he truly have killed Ruby like this?
Could the man who had once loved Ruby enough to be ready to do everything for her sake truly reduce her to a severed head?
Cecilia didn’t know.
She was merely... sad.
This deep, hollow sadness had nothing to do with Ruby, a woman she had pitied, never liked and never forgiven.
But it was everything to do with the man standing before her, soaked in blood, smiling through his tears, offering her a heart to replace the one he had ripped apart.
"Cecilia—" Arzhen’s voice trembled now, the manic confidence draining away. "I don’t know what else to do, alright?"
Suddenly, Cecilia answered, speaking for the first time since he had appeared.
"You clearly haven’t thought of everything to do."
Arzhen flinched. His breath hitched, and his heart skipped a beat.
"What... haven’t I done for you...?" He smiled, the expression flickering with hope. She was speaking to him. She was finally speaking to him!
Cecilia raised her right hand.
Seeing her slowly outstretched hand, Arzhen’s smile grew wider, brighter, more unhinged.
She was reaching for him. After everything, after the divorce, the lawsuit, the rampage, the head in his hands, she was finally... finally reaching for him!
He threw Ruby’s head aside without a glance, the severed skull tumbling into the mud like garbage, and reached back toward her with bloodstained fingers.
But suddenly, he stopped.
His heart—tightened.
A pressure closed around the organ in his chest.
What—
Cecilia’s right hand slowly made a grasping motion. The empty space between her fingers was the size of a heart.
"You said you’ll give me all your heart," she said. "What you haven’t done is to actually give it to me."
Her telekinesis grasped his heart tighter. The invisible fingers curled around the throbbing muscle and squeezed. Slowly... slowly suffocating the beat.
Arzhen’s face twisted. His previously outstretched hand flew back to his chest, clawing at his own ribcage as though he could pry her grip away from the inside.
His mouth opened, but no words came out, only a choked, gurgling, panicking gasp.
His dark eyes, still wet with tears, stared at her with an expression of pure, bewildered agony. Not just physical pain. Betrayal. Heartbreak. The dawning, devastating realization that the woman he loved, the woman he had killed for, was killing him.
His lips formed her name. "Ceci—"
ROAARR!!!
A golden lion, incandescent with fury, descended from the sky.
His full beast form was like muscles rippling beneath tawny fur that gleamed like burnished gold in the moonlight, a mane that blazed around his massive head like a corona of pale fire, and eyes, those golden lion eyes, burning with a cold, merciless rage that would have made gods flinch.
THUD—CRACK!
He landed on Arzhen with the full force of his weight and his wrath combined, the impact cratering the bloody earth beneath them.
RIIIIIIIP—
His claws, each one a curved scimitar of keratin and bone, raked across Arzhen’s torso and opened him from collarbone to hip in a single stroke.
Cecilia’s eyes widened.
"Eastiel...?"
Ribs cracked like dry twigs. The tiger’s scream, what was left of it, was swallowed by the lion’s roar.
His jaws closed around Arzhen’s shoulder and wrenched, tearing the arm from its socket with a wet, grinding pop of dislocating bone and snapping sinew.
"AAAAAAAAHH—"
Blood sprayed across the golden fur in dark streaks. The lion shook his head like a dog with a toy, and Arzhen’s body flopped and spasmed, his remaining hand twitching toward Cecilia.
He was still reaching, still hoping, until the lion’s claws found his throat and tore it out in a drawn out, deliberately slow motion.
The reaching and twitching stopped. The dark eyes, still fixed on Cecilia’s face, went dull and hollow. And the lion stood over the splatter of flesh, something that had once been Arzhen Vasiliev.
It was a rampage.
Cecilia watched the golden lion tear into what remained of Arzhen Vasiliev. The beast that had been Eastiel was not stopping. His claws raked through flesh and bone, his jaws crushed and tore.
The body beneath him had long since stopped resembling a man, but still he raged, his roars shaking the medic tents and sending the remaining civilians stumbling backward in fresh waves of terror.
No one dared approach and no hunter raised a weapon. This was not a fight they could intervene in—
Did he remember?
In the real world, Eastiel had wanted to kill Arzhen from the moment he learned what the tiger had done to her. He had carried that hatred across worlds, across scenarios, across timelines.
He even remembered everything the quickest the moment he saw Arzhen in that Academy Scenario.
And now, seeing Arzhen reach for Cecilia with blood-soaked fingers and desperate, adoring eyes, had something broken through?
She didn’t know. But watching the lion’s merciless fury, she suspected the answer was yes.
DING!
[You have succeeded in the Rank 3 task: Take Revenge on CEO Husband!]
[Reward Rank 3]
- [Get access to Love Interests’ Alternate Universe Shop!]
DING!
[Unlock Rank 3 of all Love Interests’ Scenario to gain this reward!]
[Would you like to roll?]
Ha—!