Chapter 194: It All Turned Out to Be Completely Pointless

"If you’re not a reincarnated person..." Emilia said in a tone that tried to sound casual but carried a curiosity she couldn’t hide, "then probably one of your relatives was, right?"

Rose went still.

"Because a level of power like yours isn’t nor—"

The queen couldn’t finish the sentence because Rose’s hand closed around her throat, lifting her into the air with her feet dangling several centimeters off the ground.

Rose’s fingers closed around her throat with just enough force to make clear she could crush it whenever she wanted. Emilia looked down at her and froze.

What she saw on her face wasn’t irritation, annoyance, or rage.

It was pure hatred.

The vampire’s red eyes looked up at her from below with a coldness that Emilia had never seen in any person in her entire life.

"R-Rose..." Emilia stammered with a strangled voice as tears began forming in her eyes. "W-why—?"

The fingers tightened a little more.

"P-please...!" Emilia grabbed Rose’s wrist with both hands trying to loosen her grip but it was like trying to bend an iron bar. "P-please stop...!"

Her face was turning red.

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Her legs hung in the air, moving weakly.

And just as Emilia felt darkness starting to appear at the edges of her vision, as her hands began losing strength on Rose’s wrist and her eyelids started to close, Rose let go.

The queen fell to her knees with a dull thud, coughing violently as air rushed back into her lungs.

Her hands trembled against the floor and the tears ran down her face mixing with the saliva hanging from her lips. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Rose crouched in front of her and brought her face to within just a few centimeters of hers.

"Never relate me to that filth again," the vampire said in a threatening tone. "Understood?"

Emilia looked up through her tears.

"Because if you do it again," Rose continued, looking directly into her eyes, "I swear I will kill you."

"W-why are you saying that...?" Emilia said, trying to recover her breath. "Y-your Master is also a reincarnated person... what you’re saying makes no sense..."

Rose grabbed her by the hair and pulled hard, forcing her to lift her head until their eyes were directly level.

"My Master is not like them..." she explained in a tone that admitted no reply. "He’s different from those greedy, selfish pieces of shit who only came to this world to destroy everything they touched."

"..."

"And even if he doesn’t like to admit it, he is a good person," the vampire said, tightening her grip on her hair. "That’s exactly why I’m in love with him."

Then Rose released her hair, got to her feet, and kicked her in the face, sending her onto her back on the floor.

Blood began pouring from Emilia’s nose and her lower lip, which had split open against her own teeth.

And when Rose spoke again, her voice had changed.

It was no longer cold or threatening.

It was something more.

"Besides... I’m pregnant with his child."

Emilia went into shock.

The words hit her with such force that her mind went completely blank, as if someone had switched off all thought inside her head at once.

The queen lay motionless on the floor, staring at the ceiling with an empty gaze while blood ran down her chin and tears soaked the floor beneath her.

After watching her in silence for a moment, Rose turned around and walked toward the throne room door.

"Heal yourself," she said over her shoulder without stopping. "You’re supposed to be a healer, aren’t you?"

Her footsteps echoed through the empty hall as she walked away.

"Wait!"

The queen’s voice made Rose stop mid-step and turn to look at her.

Emilia tried to get up, but her body wasn’t responding the way it should. Her arms trembled with the effort and her legs refused to hold her.

In the end, unable to stand, she began crawling across the floor toward Rose.

"Wait...!" she repeated in a shattered voice.

"What do you want?" Rose said, looking at her with an expression that was half annoyance and half bewilderment at seeing the queen crawl across the floor toward her. "Have you lost your mind?"

Emilia reached her and grabbed Rose by the ankle.

"Weren’t you supposed to be sterile?!"

"...Where did you get such nonsense from?" Rose asked, confused.

"Answer me!" she shouted louder. "Are you sterile or not?!"

Rose looked in silence at the queen gripping her ankle, face bloody, tears sliding down her cheeks, desperation reflected in her eyes.

After a few seconds, she let out a long sigh, freed her ankle from the grip, and turned around.

"She’s truly lost her mind..." she murmured, shaking her head as she walked toward the door.

"Rose!!" Emilia shouted, stretching a hand toward her.

But it was too late.

Rose stepped out through the door and closed it behind her, leaving Emilia alone in the throne room as silence filled everything.

The queen slowly lowered the hand she had extended toward Rose and brought it to her abdomen, to the same place where, hours earlier, she had cast her spell.

"So it was all for nothing...?" Emilia murmured in a broken voice.

Because if Rose wasn’t sterile, then Zilu had given her incorrect information... or Zilu had misunderstood... or Mark’s subordinates had passed that information along for some reason that no longer mattered.

The only thing that truly mattered was that the foundation of her entire plan, the one advantage she believed she had over all the others, had just crumbled.

"What was the point of everything I did...?" Emilia murmured, squeezing the fabric of her dress over her abdomen with her fingers. "The speech... the marriage... last night..."

Tears clouded her vision completely.

"What was any of it for...?"

Emilia let her head fall against the cold floor and stayed there, hugging her abdomen with both hands as the tears kept falling without stopping.

She didn’t know how much time passed.

It could have been a few seconds or several minutes, for her, time had lost all meaning.

It wasn’t until the sound of the throne room door opening once more broke the silence that she became aware of her surroundings again.

"Your Majesty?... Are you in here?"

The queen recognized that feminine voice instantly.

It was her subordinate, the pink-haired archer.

Her footsteps echoed through the hall as she moved inside, but stopped abruptly just a few seconds later.

"Your Majesty!" she cried, running toward Emilia when she saw her lying on the floor with a bloody face and her body curled up. "What happened?! Are you alright?! Who did this to you?!"

The elf ran to her and knelt at her side. While she helped her sit up, holding her by the shoulders, Emilia slowly lifted her head from the floor.

It was then that she saw the deplorable state the queen was in.

The blood still running from her nose, the split lip, the eyes swollen from crying, and the reddish marks around her neck, as if someone had strangled her.

"Your Majesty..." the elf murmured in horror. "What happened to you...?"

Emilia looked at her before managing a weak smile.

But there was no happiness or relief in it.

Only a broken, bitter expression that was more painful to look at than tears.

"It’s nothing..." she said in a shattered voice. "It just turns out I’m the most unfortunate woman in the entire world."