Curse the Mainframe! 252 Butterfly's Kiss

Ophelia froze, her breath catching in her lungs.

Her vision shook as the bad feeling became more pronounced, almost threatening to overwhelm her.

She stepped back.

The voice that she heard from the masked figure was something that she heard even in her dreams for the past two months.

She couldn't believe it. No, she didn't want to believe it.

"My Alexander…?" she said with hesitation, her heart trembling violently.

The smile on the lower unmasked half of the figure's face widened.

Alec slowly reached up and pulled the mask covering his eyes off, and Ophelia took another step backward, disbelief colouring her delicate features.

"No, no…" she muttered, her eyes wide in disbelief and shock. She shook her head.

Next to her Alexander, the other masked figure stepped forward, a snarl painted on his mouth.

"Who do you think you're calling yours?" Dominique snarled at the presumptuous princess, but she didn't even flinch at his words, her mind still locked in stark disbelief at the way the situation was progressing.

Alistair silently choked back his laughter. While it would have been threatening with the Sin's original voice, and the way he glared into one's eyes, right now, the Sin sounded like a pure, fresh young man that had just barely entered into society.

It sounded funny no matter how the prince thought about it. He felt like he was being threatened by a puppy, growling and protecting his master.

Alistair shook lightly with laughter, but the princess didn't realize, as shell-shocked as she was.

Ophelia took a stumbling step forward. "Alexander…?"

Alec didn't say anything, just maintaining his normal smile at her.

Dominique smirked, crossing his arms. Hah. He knew it. How could that arrogant, stuck-up princess ever have expected to win his boss' heart?

Impossible!

"I… was everything a lie?" she continued to ask. She didn't want to know, yet at the same time, she did as well.

The thought of it was eating up at her insides, and she didn't even feel the urge of betrayal that should have been born in her.

She hated herself for that.

Even when it had come down to this, she was still deeply in love with Alexander – or at least, the idea of him – and how he had treated her.

She couldn't even begin to comprehend that it might all have been falsified.

Where did it start and where did it end?

She stumbled forward and latched onto his arm.

Dominique moved to intercept her and fling her away but was stopped by Alec's hand on his arm.

Dominique struggled as he reluctantly stepped aside, not happy with how the princess so presumptuously touched his boss.

Ophelia felt hope bloom within her. Maybe… he still had feelings for her, right? If it was like this, then wasn't he working with Alistair instead of being his lover?

In that case, he could still possibly be in love with her, right?

Even when the situation had escalated to this point, Ophelia was still harbouring false hopes within her, almost as if she was escaping from reality altogether.

Even as a voice screamed at her inside that she was being deceived by a bad man – a man whose smile called out to her very soul; she just couldn't abandon her hope.

Trembling hands clutched onto that strong forearm, and she looked into his eyes desperately.

It was still the same face, and the same feeling, so how could it be a lie?

How could it be a lie?

Yet, her hopes were shattered yet again by the words that came out of his mouth.

"My apologies," Alec said without any sincerity. His smile never changed, and he started to withdraw his arm slightly.

While he might have felt bad for her, just the slightest bit because he never expected her obsession with him to grow so quickly and so strongly, that was a whole different matter than him liking her as a person.

She'd killed many people whether it was directly or indirectly just because she no longer had any use for them, and someone who killed someone else would have to accept that some day they'd be the ones on the other end of the blade themselves.

Alec had certainly made his resolutions already, but it seemed Ophelia had not.

The thing was… he knew that Alistair wouldn't have harboured any killing intention towards his own sister had he just been a better person.

Just like how second princess Freesia was entirely kept out of this situation.

However, even when it had come to this, the first princess never showed any signs of remorse about what she'd done, nor did she seem to be very concerned with her own biological mother.

There was just something grating about that very distinct lack of sympathy or empathy that rubbed Alec the wrong way.

From the way the empress had looked at her daughter, she did have a bond with the princess. How could Ophelia just throw it away like that just because of 'Alexander'?

First princess Ophelia was… unsavable. That was his judgement in the end.

Ophelia shook her head, rejecting reality. But she could already hear from all the unspoken implications that were contained in those two words that it was hopeless between her and him.

She felt an overwhelming amount of despair consume her.

She collapsed on the floor, sobbing her eyes out.

The inhabitants of the room just silently stared at the princess crying for a minute, everyone having different reactions to her crying.

After a minute of tears, Ophelia stood up and threw herself onto his body.

Dominique's eyes bore into the back of her head as he snarled. How dare she! If the boss hadn't stopped him, he would really have already punted the woman across the room!

In the end, Ophelia didn't even harbour any thoughts about hurting her Alexander just as much as he'd hurt her. She was still deeply in love with him, and nothing he said had done anything to dissipate her feelings at all.

Right now, she'd already accepted that she was going to die by her brother's hands.

She was going to die here today, along with her mother.

The only thing she regretted was that Alec made no move to hug her back, unlike how he would have gently done so before Alistair had intruded in their lives.

Instead, he just stood there stiffly, allowing him to hug her since he'd managed to reduce her to this state.

Had there been the slightest wisps of killing intent or hostility, he would already have just stuck a knife in her neck, but she really didn't seem to have any of those intentions.

Tears sprung anew again.

Even if he didn't have any feelings for her, he still let her hug him.

She tilted her head up proudly, tears slowly trickling down her face. It was a sight that would have caused countless number of men to lose their minds as they hurriedly tried to console her, but Alec just stared at her without any fluctuations of emotions.

"Thank you for allowing me to love you," Ophelia said in the end. "Won't you give me a kiss?" she pleaded.

The princess shut her eyes, waiting with bated breath.

She didn't regret having been able to feel this sort of deep, unrelenting love for someone or something, really.

She just regretted not being able to make him fall for her as well.

She regretted that she'd never be able to see him again. That she'd killed so many of those people who had the same feelings for her, as she did for her Alexander.

She supposed this was her penance.

The princess shut her eyes for the last time, and she felt her Alexander's dagger draw a line over her throat.

It was so soft it felt like a butterfly's kiss along her skin, right before the pain bloomed, and she could almost imagine that he'd kissed her instead.

In the end, she still didn't even manage to get a corner of Alexander's heart.

Ophelia's body collapsed to the ground, her hair fanning out, but she looked relatively peaceful, considering the situation she'd just found herself in.

The empress made a choking sound, tears flowing down.

As much as she hated and despaired in turns how her daughter hadn't even given her a second glance the moment she threw herself into that monster's arms, she was still her daughter.

Thick despair choked her, and it was the last thing she felt when a sword arced through the air, slicing off her head in a single stroke, reminiscent to how the emperor's head had been separated from his shoulders.

Alistair clicked his tongue watching the real-life drama in front of him. He still had no idea how Alec had managed to enchant his sister to the point of her being obsessed with his every expression and every movement.

It defied all magic laws – he wasn't even using a Magitype, for goodness' sake!

Alec was an Awakening type, as far as he knew.

To the end, his sister had been completely enamoured by Alec, hopelessly caught in his web.

Again, he reiterated that the noblewomen of Rhys City were lucky that Alec wasn't using his real face.

Alec had been surprisingly cold to the end.

He'd have thought that the other would have shown Ophelia some form of mercy, but even so, she had choked on her own blood and died as she suffered.

Alistair sighed.

He took no pleasure doing this, but what had to be done had to be done.

It was time for the final act.

He nodded at both Dominique and Alec.

"Shall we?"

Chapter end

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