Chapter 302: The Redhead Who Was Meant to Burn — Part 2.
Draculeus didn't look at Sharpy. His piercing, slitted eyes remained fixed entirely on the trembling form on the floor. The heavy aura radiating from his towering frame seemed to press down on the stone tiles, making the air thick and difficult to breathe.
He stepped forward, the heavy thud of his boots echoing in the absolute silence. He stopped right beside the kneeling Sharpy and looked down at the younger girl.
"Is this true? Was this a game, little sister?"
From the edge of her vision, the redhead saw Sharpy subtly tilt her head, her jaw tightening in a silent, lethal warning. It was the same signal she always gave… the promise of absolute torment once the doors were closed and the guards were gone.
For a single, agonizing heartbeat, the redhead froze. The urge to lie, to comply, to save herself from the immediate threat was suffocating. But as she felt the stinging heat still radiating from her singed hair, something inside her finally snapped. The terror that had kept her silent for years turned into raw, unfiltered desperation.
She didn't play along.
"No!"
She shrieked, the word tearing from her throat with a force that made several of the kneeling children flinch. She scrambled backward, away from Sharpy, her hands clawing at the dirt as tears streamed down her swollen, bruised cheeks.
"It's a lie! It's all a lie!"
She sobbed, her voice ringing out across the courtyard, completely shattering the quiet. She pointed a trembling, blood stained finger directly at Sharpy.
"She's not helping me! She is not training me, brother! She's always bullying me! Every single day!"
The entire courtyard went dead silent. A collective gasp rippled through the swarm of white-blooded children. Nobody ever spoke up. Nobody ever broke the unspoken rule of the hive.
"She calls me a red bastard!" the girl screamed, her chest heaving as years of suppressed agony came pouring out. "She hates me because my mother's hair remained on my head! Because of this, all of them insult me! They call me a hybrid, a parasite, a freak! They say a redhead like me doesn't deserve to walk with them in the summit, that I taint the family name!"
Sharpy's face went completely pale, her eyes widening in utter shock. She tried to shift, to speak, to cut the girl off, but the oppressive weight of Draculeus's presence kept her pinned to the floor.
"And it's not just a game!"
The redhead cried, her voice cracking as she stared up at her oldest brother, laying bare the darkest secret of the courtyard.
"Every single day, this girl tries to kill me! She burns me, she beats me, and she waits for me to break! She wants me dead before I can even stand before the altar tonight!"
When she finished, the silence that followed was deafening.
The jaw of nearly every white blooded child in the courtyard dropped. They stared in absolute, stunned disbelief. The weak, terrified redhead, the one who had spent her entire life cowering in the shadows, taking every blow without a whisper, had just standing in front of the First Prince and completely thrown the most feared bully in the courtyard directly into the fire.
Sharpy knelt there, frozen, the sweet facade entirely shattered, staring at the floor as the true weight of the First Dragonprince's gaze slowly shifted toward her.
Draculeus stood entirely still, his midnight blue dragon eyes unblinking as they reflected the fading embers on the stick in Sharpy's hand. Even before the redhead spoke, Draculeus had known the truth.
He had once been an arrogant, white-blooded child himself before the awakening, though never to this cruel extent. He knew the history, the old books, and the whispered rumors of the palace: the white blooded children were a chaotic, messy hive, fully capable of vicious bullying, or worse, quietly murdering their own siblings to thin out the competition.
As the redhead's powerful confession echoed through the courtyard, a heavy, suffocating silence fell over the crowd. The surrounding siblings froze, their jaws dropping in absolute shock. None of them had ever expected the quiet, broken redhead to stand up in front of the First Prince.
Sharpy's face drained of all color, her elegant composure shattering instantly. But as the weight of the exposure sank in, her panic rapidly twisted into a blind, murderous rage.
"How dare you?!" Sharpy shrieked, her voice warping into a manic, desperate scream. "You worthless, lying rat!"
Losing all control, Sharpy snapped the burning wooden stick over her knee, leaving a jagged, dangerously sharp point on the broken edge. With a wild, furious swing, she lunged directly at the redhead, aiming the sharp splinter straight for the girl's eye to silence her forever.
"Die!" Sharpy screamed.
The redhead flinched, bracing for the impact but the blow never came.
Before the jagged wood could even get close to the girl's face, Draculeus didn't even turn his body. He simply raised his hand and casually flicked his finger.
A sudden, explosive gale of concentrated wind erupted from the motion, striking Sharpy with the force of a battering ram. The sheer pressure blasted through the courtyard, lifting Sharpy completely off her feet and throwing her violently across the stone floor. She crashed heavily against the distant wall and slumped downward, completely knocked out cold. The broken stick clattered uselessly away into the dirt.
The remaining siblings gasped, burying their faces deeper into the ground, trembling at the First Prince's casual display of overwhelming power.
Before Draculeus could speak another word to the weeping redhead, the heavy iron gates at the edge of the courtyard creaked open. A formal messenger dressed in the grand robes of the kingdom's staff stepped inside, looking pale and deeply unnerved by the heavy atmosphere.
The staff member bowed low to the towering dragonborn.
"Lord Draculeus, forgive the urgent interruption. The Grand Chamber is fully prepared. Your presence is required immediately for the ritual blood pact with your chosen dragonguard."