Chapter Seventy-Eight

---The memory continues---

Rivers lay slumped over the desk. His arms, which had been struggling fiercely, gradually stilled, no longer twitching or resisting. The veins that had stood out starkly beneath his skin slowly faded, leaving no trace behind. Under the drug’s effects, the contorted ferocity faded from Rivers’s face, leaving only his lips moving soundlessly, unable to utter a word. His gaze, fixed on Arthur, suddenly shifted to the portrait on the wall. A mocking curve appeared at the corner of his mouth, his lips silently forming words, the movement growing fainter and fainter, until—at last—his eyes closed forever.

He truly is just like you—willing to cast aside the honor of his family for the sake of a woman.

Those were Rivers’s final words, brimming with unwillingness, which vanished with his passing.

Arthur regarded Rivers with an unnatural calm, staring at the man’s now peaceful face.

“How fortunate for you, to be able to leave so serenely,” Arthur remarked coldly. The redness in his blue eyes gradually faded as he turned and walked to the window. Gazing into the darkening sky, he murmured,

“So this is how things truly are. The father I have always respected turns out to be so heartless and cold. In his eyes, people are divided into only two kinds—the useful, and the useless. The mother I never had the chance to meet left this world in such a way. So—” Arthur looked back at the portrait on the wall, studying the man who so closely resembled himself. His lips curved in a faint smile. “So, we really are alike, perhaps not just in appearance.” Arthur glanced at the blue eyes in the painting, then turned away to stare out the window, lost in thought.

Outside the door, Shadow Moon stood rooted to the spot, her gaze dazed. She could hardly believe what she had heard. Arthur’s mother had not died in childbirth, but was killed—killed by Rivers, the man who claimed that a woman’s only worth lay in bearing a valuable child. Once the child was born, her value was gone. Her love for Rivers had not saved her; in fact, it had hastened her death—for her pure love was, in his eyes, an insult, a stain upon the honor of the noble Rivers family.

How laughable it was, that the world’s most selfless love should become an express train to death, delivering her to hell.

And what of Arthur?

The thought stabbed at Shadow Moon’s heart: Arthur had killed Rivers.

Arthur had killed his own father with his own hands!

Her mind rang with a single phrase—Arthur had killed his father!

Suddenly, Shadow Moon turned and hurried back to her room. She stripped off her wedding dress and saw, over the left breast of the white fabric, a vivid stain of red. Her eyes filled with pain; she could not bear to look at it any longer. She changed into a maid’s dress, sat before her dressing table, and gazed at her striking violet eyes. She opened a small drawer, took out a pair of contact lenses, and put them on. When she looked up again, a green-eyed beauty stared back at her from the mirror.

Shadow Moon stood and slipped out, carefully avoiding the passing servants as she made her way swiftly to the door.

She had to escape quickly, while no one yet knew of Rivers’s death, while Arthur had not yet discovered her absence.

At the thought of Arthur, her steps faltered and pain gripped her heart. She glanced back toward the study, her eyes filled with reluctance, fear, and emotions she could not name. At last, hardening her heart, she turned and left.

---The memory ends---