I Am The Game's Villain

Chapter 813: Alicia SS [2]

Elizabeth and Selene.

The twin vampire princesses of Sancta Vedelia.

Everyone knew their names. They were famous throughout Sancta Vedelia, not only because they belonged to the Tepes House, but because both of them carried the blood of the Vampire Witch, and because one of them, Selene was said to be the incarnation of the Vampire Witch herself. Their existence alone had perturbed the balance between the great Houses. They were the reason my grandfather had grown even harsher, even more demanding, and why he had shaped Cyril so mercilessly, raising him into someone he believed could one day stand against them when the time came.

To me, they had always seemed distant, almost unreal, like figures from rumor rather than people I might ever truly know. I never once imagined that our paths would cross so directly until the day I was sent to join a period of shared training with them, an arrangement accepted by both my family and the Tepes House.

Three vampire princesses from rival Houses placed together in the same setting.

At the time, I did not think it was a good idea. Perhaps I was even afraid. A part of me wondered whether I was now the one being placed before them in Cyril’s stead, as if I had somehow inherited a role never meant for me. Still, I accepted it. I was a princess of the Raven House, and whether I liked it or not, I knew I had to prove myself worthy of that name.

The moment I met them, I understood that both Elizabeth and Selene were abnormal.

Not simply gifted. Not merely powerful.

Abnormal.

Yet even between the two of them, Elizabeth stood apart at once.

She was only a year older than I was, and yet the first time I saw her, she frightened me. There was something about her that could not be mistaken, a presence unlike anyone else’s. She carried a unique aura, one that seemed to bend the air around her. She was elegant and composed, but there was something dangerous beneath it as though violence and grace had somehow been made into one person. Looking at her felt like standing too close to a beautiful blade.

And yet, despite my fear, admiration took hold of me almost immediately once we began training together.

She was frightening, yes, but she treated me as an equal. Not with contempt, not with the cold superiority I had half expected, but with a strange, natural ease. At times, it even felt as though she regarded me as a younger sister, in much the same way she seemed to regard Selene. That was what struck me most. Though Selene was the one whispered to be the Vampire Witch’s incarnation, it was always Elizabeth who led. Elizabeth who stood at the front. Selene, beautiful and frightening in her own way, remained quieter, more withdrawn, like a silent shadow beside the brilliance of her twin. But Elizabeth…Beth held the space around her without even trying.

Whenever she sparred with me, she wore a smile I never forgot.

It was a beautiful smile, but not a gentle one. There was something bloody in it, something terrifying, something thrilling. It was the smile of someone confident in herself, someone who understood strength so deeply that she did not need to boast about it. I admired her because she was everything I wanted to become. Strong, elegant, feared, and unforgettable. If my fascination with the Vampire Witch began anywhere, it began there, with Beth. With the image of her standing before me like the embodiment of everything dark, noble, and magnificent that a vampire woman could be.

She was the elder sister I had never truly had, yet had always wished for.

And I could tell that Selene felt something similar. There was no bitterness in the way Selene looked at Elizabeth, no rivalry, no struggle over which of them was superior. She admired her. She loved her. She followed her not out of weakness, but out of complete faith in who Elizabeth was. And Elizabeth, in return, treated both of us with that same quiet protectiveness, as though we were hers to guide.

As the years passed, my admiration for Elizabeth only deepened. It was impossible for it not to. The stories about her spread wider with time, and each one only made her seem more extraordinary. I still remember hearing of how she had stood alone against an assault by the Blood Elves in Valachia and driven them back when she was only twelve years old. Twelve. Even now, the thought of it stirs something in me.

She was the woman I admired most, the woman I wished to resemble, and when I stood beside her, I no longer felt so lonely. In her strength, in her frightening beauty, in the perfection of the way she carried herself, I found something to cling to. She became, in my eyes, the image of what a true vampire should be.

But perhaps it was after that incident in Valachia that things began to change.

I saw less and less of her. The distance between us grew slowly at first, almost too gradually to notice. Then came the moment she entered Trinity Eden Academy, and after that I scarcely saw her at all.

And when I did, something was wrong.

She had changed.

It did not feel as though I was looking at the same Elizabeth anymore. The terrifying aura that had once surrounded her, that dark grace, that bloodthirsty edge which had made her so magnetic to me, it had faded. In its place was someone quieter, duller, more withdrawn. Softer, perhaps. Kinder, even. She smiled more. She seemed more stable, more restrained, and perhaps whatever burden she carried had become easier for her to endure.

But I did not like that version of her.

Each time I saw her, I felt a heaviness in my chest I could not explain without sounding cruel. I acted coldly. I acted bitterly. I was upset by a change that should, by all sensible measure, have been a good thing. Yet that was not the Beth I had known. That was not the Elizabeth I had admired, the one I had loved like an elder sister. The woman who had once seemed born from moonlight and blood, from terror and beauty, was slipping away before my eyes, and I could do nothing but watch.

So once again, I found myself falling back into loneliness.

The light I had found in her had dimmed, and with it, something in me dimmed too.

Then a certain man appeared, and from that moment onward, both Elizabeth’s life and mine began to change.

The lost prince of House Olphean.

A criminal sent away from the Kingdom of Celesta, yet somehow admitted into the prestigious Trinity Eden Academy as my Senior.

Amael Idea Olphean.

No words could ever truly describe him.

He should have been no one to either Beth or me. A passing figure. A name of little importance. And yet, somehow, both of us became entangled in his life despite ourselves, drawn into his orbit in ways I had neither expected nor wanted to understand at first.

When he first appeared, there was nothing about him that seemed extraordinary. He looked like an ordinary boy, who carried no interest for attention, power, or trouble. If anything, he seemed like someone who preferred to avoid conflict whenever he could, as though the affairs of others did not concern him enough to warrant his involvement. There was something detached about him, almost indifferent, and in a place like Trinity Eden Academy, where every student seemed burdened with ambition, secrets, or pride, that kind of attitude was unusual enough to stand out.

And yet, one day, without warning, he chose to involve himself.

He changed. Or perhaps he simply stopped pretending to be uninvolved. Either way, the shift was impossible to ignore, and it began around the time of his sudden engagement to Beth, an engagement I could neither understand nor fully accept when I first heard of it. From that moment on, he no longer remained at the edge of things. He stepped forward. He began acting differently, moving with a purpose I had not seen in him before, and soon he even involved himself in the matter between Adrian and me despite having avoided both of us for so long.

In the Dolphian Capital, he went so far as to make a bet in order to break off my engagement with Adrian.

I remember how furious that made me.

I was angry that he would gamble over something so personal, as though my future could be staked and negotiated like some object placed upon a table. It offended my pride, and for a time I could think of little else. But beneath that anger, there was something else I could not deny: gratitude. However reckless his method had been, however infuriating his manner, he had seemed sincere. He had not acted out of mockery, nor out of cruelty. He had done it because he wanted to help or something else as well but also to help me in the end.

I think that was the day I truly began to see Senior differently.

Until then, he had only been a strange presence in Beth’s life, someone I observed from a distance without understanding. But after that, my view of him began to change. I grew curious, curious about him, curious about why Elizabeth had chosen him, curious about what truly existed between them. I wanted to know whether their engagement had really been decided by love, or whether something deeper, stranger, or more dangerous lay beneath it. Because if Elizabeth had chosen Amael, if she had allowed him to stand at her side, then he could not be ordinary. He had to be someone worthy of her. Someone unique.

He had stood even against Alvara, after all, whom I considered as Beth’s equal.

That alone was enough to make anyone look at him twice.

My curiosity deepened with every passing day, growing into a quiet fascination I found increasingly difficult to deny. Perhaps there was even a selfish part of me that felt strangely happy that the man chosen by Beth had begun to pay some attention to me as well. It was a small thing, and not one I would have admitted easily, but I felt it all the same.

The greatest turning point in my opinion of Senior came during the Utopian War.

After the exam at Vanadias, he vanished. For a time, there was only his absence, unanswered questions, and the uneasy sense that something larger was unfolding far beyond what any of us could yet see. Then, in the midst of the Utopian War as it raged across Sancta Vedelia, he appeared again.

I can still remember the relief I felt when I saw him.

It was a relief that I could barely conceal it, though I would have preferred to and wished he hadn’t seen it back then. In that moment, all the uncertainty surrounding him seemed to matter less than the simple fact that he was there again, alive and before me.

And then he betrayed me.

Not in some distant or abstract way, but in a manner so personal that it struck deeper than I would have thought possible.

He stole the necklace my mother had given me, a treasure whose true meaning I only learned later. It was no mere ornament, no sentimental keepsake alone, but the Seed of Eden, something priceless beyond measure, something capable of growing into a new Holy Tree like the Holy Tree of Eden itself. And Senior took it. He stole that precious thing from me and handed it over to Utopia, only to then openly announce his marriage to the Utopian Princess.

That moment wounded me more than I was willing to admit.

Even now, when I think of it, I remember the bitterness that rose in me first, humiliating.

Anger and and even bitter jealousy followed.

I had not believed myself capable of feeling such things so strongly, at least not over him. Yet there they were, laid bare within me. It was not only the theft that hurt. It was the image of it, the thought of something precious taken from me only to be offered to another woman. That was what made the wound feel almost unbearable.

I wanted to hate him for it.

Truly, I did.

I wanted to hate him because hatred would have been simpler.

Easier to endure than the truth. If I could have convinced myself that he was only a traitor, only a liar, only a man unworthy of trust, then perhaps I could have accepted the idea that he would never stand by my side. Perhaps I could have buried whatever feelings had taken root in me and walked away with my pride intact.

But I could not.

No matter how much I wished otherwise, I was unable to hate him.

And in the end, what shames me most is how little it took. Just a simple apology from him, nothing grand, nothing poetic, nothing nearly enough to repay what had happened, and it was enough for me to forgive him. Enough for me to let go of the anger I had clung to so desperately. Enough for me to forget, or at least to pretend I had forgotten.

That was how weak I was where Senior was concerned.

Or perhaps not weak.

Perhaps only helpless.