Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 335: Chapter 335: Sleeping Beauty [2]

Chapter 335 – Sleeping Beauty [2]

"How did you get back the eyes I gouged out myself?" Sleeping Beauty asked immediately, her frown deepening as time passed, as if she couldn’t understand how it was possible.

Cassius, meanwhile, was completely caught off guard by the goddess’s words. Trying his best not to lose his calm, he forced himself to think rapidly in that situation.

However, Sleeping Beauty was anything but patient. When she had only a limited amount of time to be awake, every single second counted and mattered more than anything.

"Why aren’t you answering, Adonis?" She pressed on. "Have you made a pact to regain your eyes and lose your tongue instead? Then open your mouth and let me see."

She said this, then immediately grasped Cassius’s mouth, about to force it wide open to see if his tongue was really there.

However, Ananke placed her own hand on Sleeping Beauty’s, making the latter stop.

The goddess turned her head toward Ananke with a confused expression, as if noticing her presence only now.

"I think you are mistaken here, Sleeping Beauty." Ananke said. "He is not Adonis."

"Oh?" Sleeping Beauty looked at Cassius again, who was still transfixed on the spot, then shook her head. "No. He is Adonis."

"No. He only has—!"

"His Eyes, you are trying to say?" Sleeping Beauty grinned coldly. "Do you think I am blind, Lady Ananke? I can very well see that only his Eyes are there. However, you are getting something deeply wrong."

She turned back, staring intensely at Cassius, making his heart speed up so much that he was beginning to fear it would give out from exhaustion.

"Adonis’s Eyes, the very Eyes I gouged out myself, cannot be used by anyone else but him." She said with strong conviction. "You must know that already, don’t you, Lady Ananke? Not just anyone can take on the Characteristics of other people. Some people’s powers are unique to them alone and cannot be used by others, no matter what."

The more the goddess spoke, the more Cassius felt like he was losing all his senses, and whatever plan he had built for this occasion burned into oblivion.

A terrible sensation spread through his limbs and throughout his entire body, making him understand that continuing this way would doom him soon enough.

"Which brings me to the sole conclusion that you are—!"

"The Eternal King’s Messenger." Cassius interrupted the goddess, making the latter instantly halt her speech.

She frowned next. And that simple action made the pressure inside the Gate increase tenfold.

Ananke said nothing, watching just as Cassius had told her to.

"What did you just say?" Sleeping Beauty asked, her tone laced with menace.

At that point, the Last Born of the Desdemona knew there was no turning back.

He gathered all his courage and parted his lips once more:

"I am your father, the Eternal King’s, Messenger." He said as strongly as he could. "I was appointed by him when he knew that he was about to be killed by the gods."

"What nonsense are you saying now, Adonis?"

"You will understand soon." Cassius replied, trying to ignore how Sleeping Beauty addressed him. "You must have known that your father was traveling everywhere to find a cure for your Curse, my lady."

The goddess said nothing, deciding to listen, suddenly intrigued by his words.

Cassius gained courage and continued swiftly, trying to build momentum:

"He searched for an untold number of years, entering the domains of other gods and even stealing their artifacts and treasures, all in order to piece together a cure for his daughter." He said. "I do not need to tell you that what gods hate the most is someone else trespassing into their very domains."

"I know that well. But you are wasting my time, and I have a matter to settle concerning your eyes and how you came back from the Nightmare I sent you into. You should have gone mad, or died." Her voice was now thick with hatred. "So speak, Adonis, and let me see how you will lie your way out of this one."

"Lies?" Cassius’s heart skipped a beat. "Why should I lie?"

"Because you have always been a liar." She hissed instantly, and her golden eyes began to drip with coldness. "You lied to me so many times, and I forgave you every single time because of my love for you. Can you imagine how much I had to restrain myself from killing Aphrodite, Persephone, Freyja, and all those women around you?"

’Queen’s skirt, I am not Adonis!’ Cassius wanted to shout that from the depths of his heart, but he knew it was useless.

This goddess seemed convinced that he was Adonis, and apparently, nothing could change her mind about it.

He wondered for a moment why High King hadn’t told him that it was Sleeping Beauty herself who had gouged out Adonis’s eyes.

That was bloodydamn information he would have loved to have!

However, Cassius’s mind worked fast, and his Innate was kicking in at full intensity, making him realize the dreadful situation his master had found himself in.

Instead of trying to prove that he was not Adonis, and probably save himself from a punishment he truly didn’t deserve, Cassius decided to embrace that identity instead.

However, not in the way Sleeping Beauty was expecting.

"You have already quenched your anger toward me by taking out my eyes and imprisoning me." Cassius said.

"Quenched?" Sleeping Beauty laughed incredulously. "Do you think I will let go of the fact that I waited for the time when I would return from my slumber to be with you, just like you promised me, only for you to be with my own mother, having sex with her in my father’s domain?"

’Wow. He really did that?’ Cassius was internally flabbergasted.

"Do you really think I would forget that, Adonis?" Sleeping Beauty flicked Ananke’s hand away before grasping Cassius tightly by the throat.

Ananke immediately tried to intervene, but Cassius spared her a glance, telling her to just let him deal with the situation.

"I killed my mother." She continued, her voice deeply cold. "You—!"

"You killed your mother, but you didn’t kill me." Cassius used that information to counterattack. "That means that somewhere inside you, you still haven’t forgotten me."

"You think that love will stop me?" She chuckled.

"No." Cassius said. "But it was that love the Eternal King noticed and decided to entrust me with your cure."

It was at that exact moment that Cassius finally summoned the Eternal Ring into his hand, showing it directly to Sleeping Beauty.

The goddess instantly halted, recognizing the aura and material of the ring itself.

The ring was made of a strand of golden hair, just as Cassius had noticed the first time. But that golden hair came from Sleeping Beauty herself.

And she could remember that day clearly. It was when she was about to be forced into Slumber again, only a couple of years old at the time.

She was crying, asking her father for the nth time why she couldn’t stay awake and who had done this to her.

It was so unbelievably painful to live only three months out of an entire year, and Sleeping Beauty’s mental stability had been broken by that fact.

However, her father had promised to find a cure for her, and he took a strand of her hair, saying it would be his lucky charm during his travels.

Hundreds or even thousands of years later, truly hard to tell, she woke up one day and found out her father was dead, killed by a number of gods.

She killed all the gods responsible afterward, but the pain of her father’s death and her curse still gnawed at her.

It was during that same period that she witnessed her mother having sex with Adonis inside her father’s domain when she went there to pay a visit.

Without hesitation, she killed her mother, gouged out Adonis’s eyes out of jealousy after finding him sleeping with her own mother, and imprisoned him in a Nightmare.

All these memories came back to Sleeping Beauty the moment she saw the ring made from her own hair in front of her.

Noticing her expression, Cassius decided to strike without hesitation.

"You understand now?" He said.

"How...how is it possible?" She inquired, confused and suddenly melancholic. "How did my father give you this ring and make you his messenger? Why didn’t he give it to me directly?"

’How am I supposed to know?’ Cassius grumbled inside his mind, but he needed to give a believable answer.

Something, hopefully, the contents of the ring would not prove false.

So he needed to be general, yet specific enough.

And something came to his mind quickly.

"He probably didn’t have time to give it to you directly because of the gods trying to kill him, or perhaps he was concerned for your safety if he gave you such a precious ring." He said. "I truly don’t know. However, what I do know is that he gave me this ring and sent me back to this mortal world for better concealment. Me, and not anyone else."

"He...is the one who liberated you from the Nightmare, then." Sleeping Beauty drew her own conclusion. "And the one who..."

She paused, trying to find the right words.

"...reincarnated you into this new body, isn’t he?"

Cassius’s lips twitched slightly before he nodded. "Yes. I reincarnated into this body."

That was, technically, not a lie.

"So here I am, coming here not simply as Adonis," Cassius said, grasping the goddess’s hand and slipping it away from his throat, "but as the Eternal King’s Messenger, standing before the Eternal Princess."

His face hardened.

"Will you receive me as the Messenger or as Adonis?"

The question was subtle, but both Ananke and Sleeping Beauty knew what Cassius was doing.

He was asking the goddess to choose one stance. Either the cursed daughter seeking help, or the betrayed goddess filled with vengeance.

"Before I answer, I have one question." Sleeping Beauty said, her ever-melancholic, beautiful face filled with something unknown.

"Which one?" He asked with hidden nervousness.

"Do you still love me?" She asked, bringing her face close to his, staring deeply into his eyes as if wanting to spot his lies. "Do you still love me after everything I have done to you, Adonis?"

—End of Chapter 335—