"Can you imagine it, Elijah?" Idalia whispered, before biting the tip of Elijah's right ear with her sharp teeth; golden blood trickled. She licked it.

Her body was still moving, up and down, the wet clapping sound of flesh against flesh echoing all around the chamber in a horrendous, lustful manner.

Elijah stayed there, golden-eyed and dazed as he tried to comprehend the information he had just received.

Yet he couldn't.

Idalia's words crashed on him like a thunderous tidal wave, threatening to sweep away the last shred of sanity he had preciously held onto since that day.

That day of betrayal, when Gold Eagle delivered him to Idalia.

Shakingly, he shifted his eyeballs inside their sockets without turning his head, looking at Marigold smiling down at him.

Elijah was not blind. He was anything except that. Especially not with his level of power and his personal Aspect.

Clearly, he could see the love Idalia held for him. But if it was only love, it would have been a simple affair.

It was not.

The love of Idalia came with a twisted desire. A desire that wanted nothing but to fill something inside of her. A void.

A deep, terrible void she thought she could patch with his love.

But,

"I," Elijah began to speak, golden eyes shining under the slipping sanity of his self, "didn't love you. I don't love you. And I won't love you."

Marigold suddenly halted her actions, staring down at Elijah, pupils dilating.

She could feel the depth of hatred inside his eyes. And each of his words felt like the piercing of a spear deep inside her heart.

It hurt.

Idalia suppressed a quiver, biting her lower lip.

Clenching his jaw so tight a creaking sound escaped the enclosed space of his mouth, Elijah Lightbringer, The Jugular of Light, Trusted of the Gold Phoenix, parted his lips once more,

"You will not obtain what you seek from me, Marigold. Hear me well, and don't you forget it."

He leaned his face over her in defiance, their lips almost brushing against each other,

"You are broken." He spat. She subtly shuddered. "And no one — absolutely no one, I say — can mend you back."

Here he paused, then chuckled darkly,

"Or maybe your brother may—!"

"Don't you dare." Marigold growled, her hands moving, coiling softly then tightly around Elijah's neck. "Don't you dare mention my brother in front of me, Elijah."

"Your brother or your lover?" Elijah allowed a smirk on his face.

Idalia's hand tightened even further around his neck, eyes dripping with wrath and pain.

Elijah's neck snapped like broken wood. Yet it healed just as quickly.

"I pity you, Marigold." Elijah said, regaining his voice. "I truly pity you. You have been abused by your brother, used to quench his sinful desire. How pitiful."

SNAP—!

He healed once more.

"Not only that, you have even birthed his child. A child you killed to hide your sins. How pitiful."

"Now tell me, who do you have? You are drought of love, Marigold. You have nothing and no one. And if you think your power will help you have someone that will love you, then you are in for a goddamn surprise."

"Just like before. You will return back to who you were in childhood. A pitiful creature—!"

"Shut…up!" Idalia growled each word, her body trembling with restrained anger.

SNAP—!

She snapped his head once more.

Elijah healed with a cold laugh.

"I wonder how Soleil would think? What he would say knowing his mother he is proud of, so afraid of, is nothing but a broken who—!"

"As you wish, Elijah." Idalia cut him off coldly. Inside her eyes, her pupils divided into twelve pupils in each eye, all of them real burning suns with different colors.

Elijah's mocking face immediately melted down. A tight frown colored his face, sensing Idalia using her Birthright.

"I have heard from the Mother of Dragons that she is in the Spirit World. Your dear Justicia, I mean."

Hope began to flicker inside Elijah's eyes, yet a grim realization settled within them.

And the next words of Idalia Marigold confirmed it with chilling intensity.

"For years and years and years," Idalia Marigold grated, her voice rising higher with each word, "for years, I have done my best for you! I have given you my heart, my body, my soul, and everything of me! I took the risk to detach myself from my brother! I went against his will, killing his faction one by one! I did everything I could, even giving Justicia a clone of you despite wanting you for myself!"

"BUT NOTHING! ALL OF THAT FOR NOTHING!"

Idalia roared with blazing anger.

The mansion detonated, transformed into smoldering ashes the wind scattered across the world.

Now, only fires of all colors shrouded them. A sea of flames burning everything, everywhere.

Overhead, twelve suns crawled up into the sky, mirroring the pupils of Idalia, bathing Elijah in a cruel luster.

Elijah's lips were sealed into a tight line of hidden fear, his body sensing a lethal danger to his life.

His Gold Phoenix was screeching.

Marigold finally stood up from him, popping away his cock from her pussy in the process. She took a couple of steps back.

Flames on the ground coalesced, then began to crawl into her body, from her feet to the top of her head.

When they receded, golden flaming clothes framed Marigold, covering only her breasts and private parts, leaving all the rest visible.

Elijah rested his eyes on hers, and for the first time, he understood how broken Idalia was.

And with that, he realized that his actions were the last straw keeping her together.

Her love was impure and twisted, but Marigold had been depending on him to fish away her sanity from doom.

He failed.

And he awakened with that failure something he shouldn't have.

"You said I have no one?" she spoke, her voice like the detonation of hundreds of suns. "You said I have no one to love me and that I am broken?"

She smiled emptily. Elijah shuddered.

"Maybe that's why you don't love me? Because I am broken? But what if…"

Her voice lowered, "…you become broken like me?"

"What—!"

"I will find her." Marigold said, interrupting him mid-sentence. "I will find Justicia, but I will not kill her. No, no, no, no…"

She shook her head like a lunatic. "I will do worse than kill. I will break her. And I will do it right in front of you, my love, Elijah."

"You said you will not love a broken being…"

Marigold bared a wide grin,

"Let's test that, my love."

She turned on her heels and began to walk away, her every step enough to flatten worlds.

Behind her, Elijah's face was blank. He wished to say something, or even to react, but the words were stuck in his throat.

He didn't need anyone to tell him that Idalia was serious.

She wanted to break him. She wanted to break Justicia.

She wanted to transform them into the very thing he had just loathed and accused her of being.

At that realization, Elijah felt, for the first time since he became the toy of Idalia, a sense of urgency.

In the past, he thought Justicia was safe, so he didn't act, afraid to pull upon himself the ire of many within this forsaken faction.

It no longer mattered.

"Stay here." Idalia said, her voice dancing with cruel laughter. "The next time we see each other, it will be with Justicia. I hope you will appreciate my efforts for you."

She paused, turning her head to look at Elijah over her left shoulder.

"I hope you will love me, as much as I love you."

Then her body transformed into exploding fire.

She disappeared.

And Elijah sat there, still naked and chained. But his eyes were hardened like steel, and inside his mind, he was whispering.

A whisper to something. A whisper to someone.

A whisper to…

'Icarus! Icarus! Icarus!'

'ICARUS, WAKE UP!'

—End of Chapter 458—

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