The two women exchanged looks—like how they always did, sharing looks that you couldn't quite grasp. No mental telepathy and yet the message was received all the same.

It was perplexing how they did it with a mere look, but somehow they managed to do it. As some people who were close did, telling each other something without me being able to understand it.

Perhaps that was just a thing between women, a power that surpassed even my psionic ability—because the two women then gazed back at me and didn't say anything else for a moment.

How irritatingly amazing.

"... do you wish for me to call you evil?" Princess Eleanor asked.

"The fact that you need to ponder about it is annoying," I remarked. "Shouldn't it be obvious and yet you hesitate to say it? Why?"

Rose stayed silent and didn't say a thing, instead, the princess again spoke. "So you wish to to be called irredeemable—"

A laugh finally escaped from my throat and my gaze fell on the two of them. "That's it—the word that I've been waiting for you to say out of your lips. That's what the two of you are attempting to do—redeem me, and yet I am already this and there's nothing you can do."

Rose finally raised her head and looked me in the eye. "Lord Blackwell—"

"I am vile, evil and the fact that I'm saying it aloud doesn't make it any less so," I said. "I've killed, destroyed and have become a Blood Tyrant, and your presence, the presence of the two of you who claim otherwise or attempt to lead me down a path that isn't that? It annoys me because I like our banter, our conversation no matter how brief it has been—but do not be so blind. The mere fact that the two of you are here and relying on me is—pitiful. Pathetic. Hapless fools. I sit here at the table with the two of you but that does not mean anything."

"Master—"

"And that word you say without any actual meaning and effort behind them?" I chuckled and picked up my goblet once more—draining it empty. "It's infuriating, I'm holding back from grabbing the neck of the two of you and strangling the two of you to death and that's funny. Hilarious. Does it mean that your words are actually reaching me or am I simply giving excuses on letting the two of you live? I am reviled, made to be reviled—and I should bask in it, and yet here I am pretending to be in some sort of found family situation? When did the past matter? How did the future you see actually prove anything?"

The two fall silent and this time it's a silence that grates me, not the peaceful kind and yet this was what I wanted.

I didn't know when this anger had built up within me, it seemed so sudden but as I let out a breath and smiled, it satisfied me to say it and get it out of my chest.

"Lord Blackwell—"

"What?" I asked. "What else do you have to say, Princess?"

"I..."

"There are tears in your eyes," Rose finally said.

I barely felt anything now, especially with the fact that tears were a foreign concept and thing to have among Vampires whose hearts were said to have stopped beating—but as my fingers grazed across my cheek, some pools of liquid were indeed present.

"Tears of frustration," I said and wiped them away as if they were nothing. They were nothing. "I don't like it that the two of you are here—I don't like it that I have woken up and things are now... different. Things were much simpler before, and yet now I'm stuck in this precarious situation of being in between—no, there's no line between good or bad. At least for me, my actions are evil... so at this moment, what am I doing now? it doesn't make much sense does it? Or does it? DOES IT?"

I laughed despite myself.

I was irate.

I knew their gazes were on me.

And now nothing was making sense to me so I stopped. I just stopped and stood up from the table.

It was pathetic that I was the one standing up, the one wanting to remove myself from this room and avoid them—as if I was some sort of woman. Some kind of person that was succumbing to their emotions, and so I blinked out and returned to my main chambers.

I sank down to the sofa, ever familiar, until my gaze landed on the dark coffin that beckoned and waited ever so patient.

My feet took me there, I climbed back down to the wooden confines of this dwelling place and noticed that the lid was splintered, broken by my own powers along with the snapped chains from what seemed to be a long time ago, yet only happening recently, but I didn't care about those details, thoughts or musing. All I need was the darkness and the coffin lid performing its duties—it floated and covered me again.

Claustrophobia didn't affect me. The space was so tiny, I could feel my own breath and yet this was the place where my kind sojourned.

Stuck between life and death.

I finally remembered.

After living such a long amount of time, even with all my powers, my memories were also muddied. Not as terrible as my Blood Servant's, but it was clear because I remembered this now, just now, even when I once mentioned that I knew naught about my kind.

Were my people undead? No, we hung in between the two—our forms whatever we wished to be. And yet the path that I was in now seemed so confusing—this weakness that afflicted me, something I didn't have before, I wanted it removed.

"If I close my eyes and take a quick nap for another century or two, I will feel better. I'll wake up refreshed and not bogged down by these people."

I said that and embraced the darkness, shadows and tried to slip back into sleep. Eternal Sleep, but not quite it.

It was hard.

The more you tried to sleep, the more energy you directed into trying and failing the process all the same.

Minutes passed. Maybe seconds.

I couldn't quite tell and soon I feel myself sinking, sinking deeper into an inky ocean of darkness—but then like a blot of brightness, I wavered. It's harder now, far more difficult to sink because it seems like someone is reaching out to me—was it Rose? Eleanor or Etoile?

I didn't know, the two should have realized what I was and the latter was already gone, and yet something prevented me from slipping back and returning to the comfortable darkness.

"Wake up!"

A shout somewhere, it was annoying as the realization struck me—a battle within the confines of my own mind, from a force that I didn't even recognize, or refused to recognize.

Because it was 'Me' all this time.

What terrible timing.