To His Hell and Back-Chapter 151: Duty and Responsibility

Cassius looked at his fingers and hummed, "Was that all you wanted to speak with me about, Auntie?"

Aunt Eve sighed and shook her head in response. She was still a little apprehensive about the changes that Cassius had shown, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. If he was too soft on her children of her family, they would see him as someone with care and concern, the two emotions that someone like him shouldn’t have for the future of the entire kingdom.

Letting the problem to side, she answered him, "Lady Isabelle will be appearing in the human hunt as well, and I want you to be on your best behavior when you see her. As you know, she’s someone who would be a lot of help for your future, so it would be best not to make her our enemy."

Cassius raised one of his eyebrows, "A lady, and for what reason should I entertain her?"

"Did you forget?" Lady Eve asked with a furrowed brow in question, "We talked about this, didn’t we? Since you have come into a perfect age, we have decided to find someone for you to be engaged with and marry soon. As you know, most royals would have been engaged in a far younger age, but your mother’s kingdom has practiced a different-"

"Why don’t I remember that we have discussed this before?" Cassius sighed as if another person was added to the castle, and to play this seesaw game of power balance in the castle, there would simply be too much to take care of on his plate.

Lady Eve looked at him in bewilderment, "We talked about this just last week, Cas."

"Did we?" Cassius leaned back as he turned to look at the crackling fire in the fireplace. He knew that he wasn’t going to marry someone of his choice. He also knew he was incapable of loving someone after seeing what had happened to his father and mother. Thus, he was never once against the idea of a political marriage. He was even supportive of it as it means that he wouldn’t have to act that he cares about the said future wife, considering the idea of caring for someone who would eventually betray him to be simply far too much of a waste of time.

His aunt wouldn’t choose a naive or a stupid woman for him either. It must be someone of his calibre, someone tricky to deal with, but would ensure their triumph against the people on the throne.

So he should simply accept this, but why is it that he suddenly was reminded of Arabella’s face?

The frown between his eyebrows deepened as he questioned what kind of face Arabella would have when she heard of this?

This marriage wouldn’t be born out of love. He wouldn’t care about Isabelle more than her. But something didn’t feel right, and Cassius couldn’t tell what it was. He tried to understand what felt so off, but for someone who had grown in a place where everything twisted was considered right, he couldn’t tell what was truly acceptable and what was not.

But the scratching annoyance he felt in his heart wasn’t his current priority. His priority was to get rid of both his father and Morgana for good, so those two wouldn’t continue to cause harm to his goal.

"As long as she is someone who understands boundaries," Cassius responded as he turned back to look at his aunt’s eyes, determined to see through his plan.

Aunt Eve looked at him with a slight apprehensive stare, "You will do it? Marry her?"

"Of course," Cassius answered, "You have chosen a woman for me, and if this is for the throne, I shouldn’t find anything against it. Well, perhaps unless she had decided to play a trick on me, which would then make me extremely unhappy. You also know what could happen when I’m unhappy, just like what had happened to Adele, so it would be best for you to let her know about it."

Aunt Genevieve should be delighted to see that, though Cassius seemed to have changed, it wasn’t entirely due to the human girl he had fancied, and that he was simply being more ruthless as the throne would soon fall into his hands. But then why does it feel so... strange?

It was strange, especially since as they talked, Cassius’s red eyes would then move to his bed chamber as if he was hiding something precious there and trying to keep his keen hearing to listen into the inside of the room. He was like a child who had stolen something and was worried that the thing he had treasured would be stolen by someone else if he just kept his gaze away from the treasure for a little while.

But Aunt Eve couldn’t hear anything from inside the room and doubted herself after a while.

"Well, that was all I had to say," Aunt Eve said as she walked toward the mahogany doors, "But do remember, Cas, if you see Adele, don’t be too hard on her."

"If I can say one thing," Cassius uttered while looking at his aunt, and a smile appeared softly over his lips. "It would be really best for you to tell her not to always pretend to be such a foolish and a bratty girl. If you continue someday and someone will teach her a lesson far worse than what I have done."

Aunt Eve tightened her furrowed eyebrows and shook her head, "That wouldn’t happen. Who would dare to try and harm anyone from our family?"

Cassius smiled, leaving his aunt unanswered. He didn’t feel like answering her stupidity, but that was fine on its own, as he had given her the warning as needed. Aunt Eve, who had always spoiled her two children, would eventually find out the hard way that her actions were going to slowly murder her own children’s future.

He then watched as his aunts walked away from his room, her straightened back brought back memories of his past when he had always looked at his mother, and it annoyed him.

Wilhelm’s figure came into his sight as the vampire doctor had become one with the walls, "Do you have a medicine to forget particular memories?"