"Mm?"
Two golden eyelashes lifted.
Her expression stayed the sa, calm, indifferent, despite the soft, dostic smile she offered him.
Eveline looked like the kind of woman who would be a strict but gentle wife at ho: light golden hair falling in loose waves around her face, a white overcoat draped over smooth shoulders, and a small silver necklace resting against her pale neck.
Her eyes were cold, carved like stone, then filled with a wash of clear ocean blue.
Her lips, rose-red and untouched, completed the picture.
She could blend anywhere.
And still pull every gaze in a room.
n who saw her always carried the sa desire, to ta that soft, indifferent face, that gentleness that wasn’t kindness.
Wang Xiao once felt it too.
For a while, he loved it.
Then it beca frustrating.
So he started impregnating her, half out of spite, half out of punishnt, until it accidentally resulted in fourteen children.
He wasn’t a man who ever wanted children to begin with.
Each one he had was an accident of emotion, politics, or circumstance, Alia as compensation, Eleanor as a symbolic heir, Anran during a mont of weakness, Seraphina forced on her for the sake of her spiraling mind, Aurora born out of mutual arrangent.
None of it stemd from desire.
But this woman...
Looking at her now, soft smile, cold eyes, he rembered Aurora’s warning.
Maybe... maybe...
"...?"
Eveline’s brows faintly drew together.
Sothing in his stare was different.
Wrong.
He wasn’t annoyed with her, there was no frustration for her to savor, no familiar irritation for her to drink in like wine.
That alone made her uneasy.
His frustration had always been her private victory.
She enjoyed watching him be exasperated with her.
She enjoyed refusing to yield.
But now...
His fingers brushed her lips, slowly.
Gently.
Almost tender.
Eveline’s throat tightened.
What—
What was this?
He held her chin and lifted it, making her look directly at him.
The room went still, the others faded.
Her eyes trembled.
Fear crept up her spine, subtle but real.
Was he going to kiss her?
Here? In front of these won?
Would he strip her, take her right here just to humiliate her?
He had done such things before, it never broke her, but the idea of him doing it in front of these mortal won... she found it unsavoury, almost insulting.
Then she caught herself.
Unsavoury?
Since when did propriety matter to her?
And yet... None of this was enough to make her yield.
Not yet.
Not close.
But for the first ti in a long while...
Eveline’s heartbeat stuttered.
"You’ve lived for centuries..." his voice finally slid out low, quiet, almost gentle. "Do you... genuinely mistake survival for wisdom?"
Eveline’s lashes fluttered. She blinked once, slow, composed, and nodded.
He laughed, not loudly.
Just a soft, quiet exhale coated in frost.
"Then answer sothing simple."
He leaned in slightly, his shadow falling across her face.
"If a creature bares its teeth every ti you reach out... snaps whenever you show it affection... and waits for the first loosened mont to bite-"
His eyes dropped to her lips, then rose again.
"What do you think should be done to sothing like that?"
Her throat closed.
She’d heard insults before, but this... this wasn’t an insult.
It was a diagnosis.
Before she could form a rebuttal, he continued:
"And not long ago, when the sky was collapsing above you..." His voice sharpened. "Why did you reach up to it? What were you looking for? Escape? Freedom? Relief from ?"
She didn’t answer.
She couldn’t.
Because the truth was uglier than the question.
Wang Xiao slowly, deliberately, caught her chin.
Not gently this ti, his grip dug into bone.
Her breath escaped in a strained sound.
"Let make it easier for you," he murmured. "You want to be treated as an equal. You want the world to believe you stand beside ."
His thumb brushed her jaw, deceptively soft.
"But all you’ve ever done..."
His voice dropped, soft as a knife sliding between ribs.
"...is behave like a beautiful, untrained creature who bites the hand that keeps her alive."
Her eyes widened... She felt the blow before he spoke the words.
"So tell , Eveline..."
His gaze locked onto hers.
"Are you my equal?"
"Or my bitch?"
A second.
Two.
Then he whispered, dangerously soft:
"Or are you just a disobedient woman too proud to admit she still kneels when I pull her leash?"
The air froze cold.
Eveline’s world tilted. Her lips parted in outrage, sha, sothing between fury and humiliation...
But before she could speak-
A small hand tugged at Wang Xiao’s wrist.
Both of them turned.
Eirene.
Her tiny fingers held his sleeve, not pleading, not afraid.
Just... there.
Eyes large, ancient, unsettlingly calm.
A six-year-old who looked like she was sculpted from moonlight.
She gazed at Eveline, tilting her head, curious, not cruel.
"Why angry?" Her voice was soft, airy, the kind that made a room instinctively quiet.
Eveline swallowed, hard.
Eirene blinked again, then looked up at Wang Xiao.
"If she bites you," she said simply, "can I have her hands?"
Wang Xiao went silent and raised a brow. "Hands, hm?"
Eirene nodded.
Tiny, innocent, maybe?
Yet, utterly sincere.
"They break easy."
Eveline’s breath trembled, not because of the threat, but because a child had said it without emotion.
And that six-year-old... was her own child.
Her lips curved downward, a smile folding in on itself as a bitter laugh pressed against her throat. She had trained them, trained them to ignore everything except him. It was the only way he’d allow her to raise them at all. If she’d shaped them for herself, he would have taken them away long ago.
So she earned his trust.
So she made them see only him.
So she planted that loyalty deep into their bones.
She had even used it once, nudged them into a conflict to tilt things in her own favor.
She never imagined it would circle back and bite her instead.
Wang Xiao smirked, enjoying the irony.
"Not today," He tapped her nose lightly.
Eirene blinked, disappointed in a soft, almost adorable pout.
"...okay." Then she looked back at Eveline.
Her tone held no malice, just matter-of-fact innocence.
"Don’t make him sad again."
Eveline flinched harder at that than everything Wang Xiao had said.
Was she warning her? How laughable!
She opened her mouth, maybe to apologize, maybe to defend herself, but she never finished.
A sudden pressure hit her neck, and in the next mont-
Everything went black.
Her head slipped cleanly off her shoulders, as if soone had cut through silk.
A quiet gasp, then-
SCREAMS!
Real, human screams from those not used to death.
Eirene only blinked as blood dotted her cheeks, she wiped it with her sleeve like it was dust.
Wang Xiao bent, scooping her up effortlessly.
"Co on, Ei," he said softly.
She wrapped her little arms around his neck, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
"Dad slls pleasant," she whispered.
Wang Xiao’s expression softened, just barely.
Before he could respond, soone rushed in.
"I’ll take her-" Wang i’s voice shook, but her hands still moved with purpose. "She shouldn’t be seeing this."
Eirene frowned as she was lifted away, though she didn’t resist.
She only muttered under her breath:
"Don’t wipe my face so hard... it hurts."
Wang i froze, half-laughing, half-trembling. Seeing that tiny ivory-skinned face sared with blood stirred sothing strange and protective in her chest. She cupped Eirene’s cheek and cleaned it anyway, gentler this ti.
"You want to play with for a bit, Ei? Your dad is... very busy right now." she said softly.
"Um?" Eirene blinked up at her, i’s calm grey-blue eyes reflecting half the world in them.
She didn’t resist at all.
"Ah- give her here." Yue approached, rembering how dangerous it was for mortals to hold children like her. "It might not be safe-"
"It’s fine," Wang i said, holding Eirene closer. "She won’t hurt . Right?"
i pinched her tiny nose lightly.
Eirene wriggled free and stared up with mild displeasure.
"Don’t touch... Eirene’s face."
She rubbed furiously as if scrubbing away i’s scent.
i raised a brow but didn’t argue. She carried the little goddess outside.
Yue watched the retreating pair silently, then glanced at the other two sisters.
Wang Xueying looked like she’d seen a ghost, wide-eyed, bewildered.
Wang Jiarong had gone pale, hands shaking at her sides.
She thought she’d grown used to strange things in this house, she’d told herself that a hundred tis. But watching Eveline’s severed head hit the floor... watching those once-alive blue eyes stare blankly at nothing...
Sothing inside her cracked.
He killed her.
Right there.
In front of a child.
Her stomach twisted.
Wasn’t that girl on Eveline’s lap his daughter?
Then... did that make Eveline his woman?
His partner?
The longer she tried to make sense of it, the more horrifying it beca.
And the child, Eirene, had barely reacted. Just a blink, just a small wrinkle of her nose at the blood.
What kind of people are they?
Jiarong’s breath trembled. She didn’t dare make a sound.
Yue’s eyes followed Wang i retreating with Eirene in her arms.
Yue still didn’t understand how Wang i had managed to look so composed.
Because she hadn’t been.
i’s hands were shaking the entire ti she held the child, shaking from shock, fear, and the desperate need to get Eirene out of the room before anything worse happened.
But she forced herself to move anyway.
But she refused to let Eirene see that.
Soone had once told her:
If he doesn’t stop you, it ans he’s letting you do it.
If he doesn’t want it done, he’ll stop you himself.
So Wang i took the chance... and ran with it.
Only when she stepped outside did she quietly exhale.
In her hurry, she didn’t notice until-
Thud!
Sothing bumped her leg.
"Eh?
She looked down and found a small girl sitting on the ground, with deep watery eyes, holding her head, pouting deeply.
"Everyone’s ignoring today!"
Zhenxi.
Her eyes imdiately narrowed when she saw Eirene in i’s arms, jealousy, confusion, and indignation mixing like storm clouds.
Wang i blinked. When did she sneak out here?
She lowered Eirene to the ground.
The two girls, sa height, sa tiny posture, stared at each other.
"Zhenxi, where’s your mother? Didn’t she go for a walk with you and Chen ili?" i asked gently.
"Hmph." Zhenxi pointed down the right side of the road. "She said she had ’so work’ and ran off that way. Should we chase her?"
Wang i frowned.
Fu Yuxin never left her child alone.
Sothing felt wrong, but she forced a smile. "You want to eat so snacks first?"
"?? Are you bribing ?"
Suspicion squinted across Zhenxi’s entire face.
"..."
i felt personally attacked.
"What’s... ’bribe’?" Eirene asked quietly, unfamiliar with the word.
Zhenxi shot her a look. "You’re so stupid. Anyone could fool you."
She pressed her palm to her forehead like she suddenly had a migraine.
Wang i recovered enough to respond quickly. "If she’s stupid, shouldn’t you teach her so she doesn’t stay that way?"
Zhenxi made a face like that was the most unfair request in the world.
She peeked past i’s legs toward the house."...Is Daddy inside?"
"He is," i said smoothly, "and he asked to find soone ’wise’ to teach her. So I ca to get you."
Zhenxi blinked. "?"
She stared at Eirene again.
Both girls were tiny and serious in their own ways.
After a mont, Zhenxi nodded with grave importance.
"...Makes sense. Daddy can’t have stupid people taking care of him when he gets old. Since it’s Daddy’s order, I’ll accept it."
i bit her lip to keep from laughing.
"I can’t go alone," Zhenxi added, grabbing Eirene’s hand. "You follow ."
Wang i nodded...
But she didn’t move.
She wanted to see where this was going.
Zhenxi tugged Eirene toward the right side of the road, the sa direction Fu Yuxin supposedly ran.
i’s eye twitched.
’This girl... is she trying to trick ?’
As she walked, Zhenxi muttered under her breath:
"...My panda and dragon cubs are this way anyway. I have to catch them before they run off."
i could only stare.
This child was absolutely trying to follow her mother while pretending it was Father’s mission, and she had even sent her pets ahead to tail her mother discreetly.
Even knowing full well what Zhenxi was up to, Wang i still quietly walked behind them equal parts nervous, amused...
and genuinely impressed by her cunning.
She rembered how quiet and helpless this girl had seed at first... but every day, she was becoming sharper, bolder.
Was she pretending to be helpless only in front of Wang Xiao to gain his favor?
Wang i quickly pushed the thought aside.
She had a feeling she did not want to know what thods these little girls used to win his attention.
If she started digging, she’d fall into a rabbit hole she might never climb out of.
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