Anastasia waited a full, agonizing hour, staring blankly at the ceiling of her bedchamber. She deliberately forced her ragged breathing to slow, letting her raw, scorching rage simmer down into something far more dangerous—something ice-cold, sharp, and mathematical. Only when she felt she could speak without screaming did she reach out with trembling, bandaged fingers and drape the silver mantle over her shoulders once more.
The telepathic connection snapped open immediately.
"Welcome back, Lady Anastasia," Yae greeted her smoothly.
Through the visual link of the mantle, Anastasia saw her spy relaxing in a comfortable armchair within the resort's lavish lobby, elegantly clad in a yukata that perfectly suited the luxurious hot springs atmosphere.
Anastasia's voice cut through the link like a guillotine. "Why aren't you spying on them? Why are you sitting there idling?"
Yae sighed softly, adjusting the collar of her robe. "It's rather difficult to spy when they already know I'm on the premises, my lady. Besides, you completely ruined the element of surprise when you confronted Sir Julius directly through the link earlier. You blew our cover."
Anastasia's irritation flared, but she clamped her teeth together, holding her tongue as Yae continued to report.
"Right now, Rem is huddled in their room, crying her eyes out. She's absolutely terrified that Subaru will find out about her infidelity. Julius, on the other hand, asked me to deliver a direct message to you." Yae's tone turned insufferably amused, a small smirk playing on her lips. "He said: 'Tell Anastasia not to even think of telling Subaru about Rem.' He is practically pleading with you, mistress—if you love him even a single fraction, just this once in his life, please listen to his request."
Yae couldn't resist adding with a light, mocking chuckle: "It seems your proud knight cares vastly more about protecting his precious maid's pure image than he does about your little threat to go suck Subaru's cock."
Anastasia's face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. If Julius is truly willing to drag his own dignity through the mud just to protect that home-wrecking slut...!
She took a shaky, rattling breath, forcing her frail body to stay composed. "Yae, from this moment on, you will stay glued to the both of them. Give Rem the second metia mantle. I want direct, unrestricted access to her mind. And if you want... when that blue-haired piece of trash inevitably loses consciousness from exhaustion, you have my explicit permission to join Julius in that bed. It would do my husband some good to fuck a completely different girl. Let's see how long his sickening obsession lasts when his pristine maid's image is sabotaged by a common whore."
Anastasia's voice dropped into a dark, suffocatingly possessive whisper. "I will control Rem's actions myself from now on. No one is better at breaking a person than me."
Yae remained silent for a beat, the gravity of the command sinking in, before answering with quiet obedience. "As you wish, my lady. I'll deliver the mantle and stay close."
Yae knocked softly on the door of the deluxe couple suite before sliding it open, slipping into the room without waiting for a formal reply.
Julius was sitting rigidly on the edge of the plush futon, Rem huddled beside him, her entire frame still visibly shaking from the weight of her guilt. The very second Yae stepped inside, Julius stood up, placing himself squarely between the spy and the maid.
"I want to talk with Anastasia. Open the link," he said firmly.
Anastasia, listening intently through the silver cloth, felt a violent spike of irritation at how instinctively protective he was acting toward her rival.
Yae simply nodded, bypassing Julius completely to approach the trembling maid. She held out the second silver mantle. "Lady Anastasia wishes to speak with you directly, Rem."
Rem's blue eyes widened with a volatile mixture of fear and anger the moment her fingers touched the magical fabric. The telepathic link activated instantly, and Anastasia's icy voice rang clearly in her skull.
"Rem."
Rem's face twisted with pure fury, her voice cracking as she snapped through the connection. "Why are you doing this to me?! I never did anything bad to you! I served you! Why are you systematically ruining my life??"
Inside the privacy of her own thoughts, Rem was screaming a bloody, desperate mantra: I'll kill you... I'll really tear you apart, you crazy, manipulative bitch.
Anastasia's telepathic reply was horribly calm, dripping with a detached, terminal exhaustion. "I'm going to die anyway, Rem. My body is failing me. But before I rot away, I am going to ensure that your little fairytale marriage with Subaru is completely, irrevocably over."
Rem's voice shook with a cocktail of rage and sheer disbelief. "What do you want from me?! You engineered this! You forced me into a corner until I let him touch me! You got exactly the sin you wanted to witness, and now you still want to destroy my entire existence?!"
Anastasia let out a bitter, mocking laugh that echoed painfully in Rem's mind. "My plan didn't go the way I wanted, you foolish girl. Because Julius—that stupid, monkey-brained knight of mine—actually fell in love with you. He looked at you with eyes he should only reserve for me."
Her mental voice turned firmer, sharpening with a desperate, twisted logic. "First and foremost, I love Julius. I want what is best for his lineage. I absolutely cannot allow a proud knight of his stature to become your hidden second partner, sneaking around in the dark like some dirty little secret to satisfy your pathetic guilt. I really tried to empathize with your plight, Rem... but you are just inherently evil."
Rem's voice cracked, a devastating mix of anger and weeping. "You're crazy... You're the one who is evil!"
"You cheated, Rem," Anastasia's tone sharpened to a razor's edge, utterly stripping away the maid's defenses. "You let my husband ride you all night. You begged for his cum. You enjoyed every single second of the degradation."
Rem started sobbing openly again, her hands clutching her head. "I regret it... I regret everything..."
"You regret it?!" Anastasia's anger flared hotter than a furnace. "Julius is a perfect, flawless man! You should love him more than that pathetic husband of yours! Subaru should be placed in second room! He should be nothing compared to the man who claimed you last night!"
As Rem continued to sob quietly, Anastasia took a slow, deliberate breath, steadying her racing heart. The trap was ready to snap shut.
"I have a proposition for you, Rem."
Rem's voice came back cold, guarded, and laced with absolute dread. "...What do you want?"
Anastasia paused, choosing words with lethal precision, her voice turning dangerously sweet, almost motherly. "I want you to let Julius breed you. I want his child in your womb."
The silence that followed within the telepathic link was deafening.
Rem's voice cracked through the silver mantle, filled with an overpowering wave of visceral disgust and fury. "No. I won't do it. I will never let Julius impregnate me. I will never carry his bastard."
Anastasia's anger exploded with unhinged ferocity. "You ungrateful, hypocritical bitch—!" She didn't even try to mask her venomous rage anymore. "Rem, say that again. Say it out loud. Let Julius hear exactly how much you despise his seed."
Rem's face hardened into stone. She lifted her tear-stained face, looked straight into Julius's eyes, and spoke with cold, unyielding determination. "I will not let Julius impregnate me. I already betrayed Subaru once... but I will not do something so utterly monstrous to him. This would be the worst, most unforgivable kind of betrayal."
She turned her gaze fully to Julius, her eyes glistening with absolute agony. "I thought you—"
Julius suddenly raised his hand, cutting her off. His handsome face was completely dark with an overwhelming, dangerous fury as he turned his gaze directly toward the mantle, knowing his wife was listening to every word.
"Anastasia... that was the absolute last straw." His voice was incredibly low, trembling with a barely contained, lethal rage. "I was willing to forgive a massive amount of your madness. I tried to understand your illness, your jealousy, your insecurity. But what you are trying to force Rem into right now... is the most despicable, subhuman thing I have ever witnessed from you."
Anastasia's voice shot back through the link, sharp, mocking, and venomous. "Oh, is that so, Julius? Rem... why don't you ask your beloved knight about your wedding ring?"
Rem frowned, her mind spinning in confusion. "What? What do you mean by 'my wedding ring'?"
Before Julius could even attempt to find an excuse, Anastasia used the full power of the metia to project a raw, unedited image directly into Rem's consciousness.
The mental vision hit Rem with the force of a tidal wave: a crystal jar sitting on Anastasia's vanity. At the very bottom lay Rem's precious, irreplaceable wedding ring from Subaru—completely submerged, drowned, and soaked in thick, heavy, stagnant layers of Julius's dried, white semen from their night of lust.
Rem's eyes widened in pure, unadulterated horror. Her soul fractured right then and there. A blood-curdling, animalistic scream tore violently from her throat, echoing off the walls of the deluxe suite.
"I'LL KILL YOU! I HATE YOU! YOU MONSTER! YOU ABSOLUTE MONSTER—!"
Anastasia's voice chuckled within her head, cold, detached, and utterly triumphant. "I'm going to teach you to respect your master, Rem. I am going to teach you your place."
Rem was shaking so violently she could barely stand, tears pouring down her face like a river. "You're going to explain your cheating to Subaru anyway, aren't you? Beatrice saw everything. There is undeniable proof."
With a wild shriek, Rem tried to lunge out of the room, but Julius grabbed her firmly by the waist, pinning her arms and holding her back with strained, desperate strength.
"It's going to be fine," he whispered into her blue hair, his own voice cracking under the pressure. "Rem, please, look at me. Breathe. Just breathe."
He then snapped his head toward the mantle, his voice roaring with command. "Anastasia, stop this! Right now! Sever the connection!"
Rem sobbed uncontrollably, her face buried against Julius's chest as her energy left her. "Anastasia is a monster... a literal monster..."
Anastasia's voice remained unnervingly calm, almost robotic in its certainty. "You already cheated, Rem. Your purity is gone. What's one or two more times? I swear on my remaining life that I won't utter a single word to Subaru... if you behave like a good girl from now on." She paused, adding with a dark, twisted sincerity, "Consider this my very last gift to you, Julius. Even if you end up hating my guts for the rest of your days."
The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the sound of the wind outside.
Julius held Rem gently against his chest, his eyes swimming with profound regret as he looked down at her ruined, tear-filled face. "I'm so sorry, Rem... about what Anastasia did to your ring. I swear to you, I only found out... I am truly, deeply sorry."
Rem froze. She stared up at him, her expression slowly morphing from sorrow into pure, unadulterated disgust. The realization tore through her like a blade. With a sudden burst of frantic strength, she shoved Julius away hard, stepping back until her spine hit the paper screen door.
"You were in on it with her, weren't you?!" she accused, her voice shaking with the ultimate sense of betrayal. "You planned this entire nightmare together! You engineered this whole trip just to break me, to turn me into your breeding sow!"
Julius's expression darkened with profound, agonizing pain. He reached his hand out toward her again, desperate to anchor her. "No, Rem! I swear to you on my honor as a knight, I didn't plan a single second of this horror with her! I love you. My feelings for you are entirely genuine. Even though Anastasia forced the initial scenario... I still genuinely wanted to be with you. I never forced your compliance. Everything that happened between us in that bed... I wanted it because it was you."
He took a deep, ragged breath, his voice becoming incredibly soft, stripped of all pride, completely desperate. "I was ready to watch you be with other men if that was the path you chose. But Rem... you are the only woman I want now. If I could turn back the wheels of time, I would choose you from the very beginning of my life."
Anastasia, listening to every single syllable of his confession through the mantle, completely exploded with unhinged fury. Her voice screamed through the telepathic connection in raw, venomous, screeching bursts.
"You disgusting, worthless whore! You filthy, home-wrecking parasite! How dare you cast spells on my husband! How dare you steal his mind—!"
Julius completely ignored his wife's frantic, screeching insults. He kept his eyes locked onto Rem with absolute, unwavering sincerity. "I'm going to divorce Anastasia, Rem. I am officially ending it. I'll accept any execution, any punishment you want to sentence me to for my actions. Just... please, I beg of you, don't shut me out of your life."
Rem's eyes widened to the size of saucers, the sheer shock stealing the breath from her lungs. She started crying harder, her voice breaking violently between ragged sobs. "You... you're really going to throw her away like that? Your own princess? After all those years of marriage? Because of one night with me?"
Anastasia's screaming through the mantle grew louder, entirely unhinged, her voice cracking as she began to hyperventilate back in her mansion. "Julius, you bastard! You treacherous piece of shit! Don't you dare leave me! Don't you dare throw me away for her—!"
Rem looked straight toward the silver cloth where she knew the connection was broadcasting from. A dark, venomous satisfaction suddenly cut through her tears, and she let out a cold, watery laugh.
"You're pathetic, Anastasia," Rem spat, her voice dripping with pure malice. "Look at you. Your own loving husband, the legendary Spirit Knight, is choosing a common, filthy maid over his wealthy princess. He is throwing you into the gutter. How does that feel, Master?"
Anastasia didn't reply with venomous words anymore.
The fierce facade completely disintegrated, and only broken, pathetic, utterly devastated sobs could be heard echoing through the mantle. The Greedy Princess had lost her most valuable possession, forced to listen to her husband officially terminate their vows for the very woman she had tried to use as a puppet.
Rem collapsed onto the edge of the futon, crying bitterly for her broken life, while Julius immediately dropped to his knees in front of her, gently grasping her trembling hands despite her weak, exhausted attempts to pull away from his touch.
The silence that followed within the suite was heavy, broken only by Rem's quiet whimpers and Anastasia's distant, heartbroken weeping over the magical line.
Rem sat frozen on the edge of the mattress, her body still vibrating with trauma. She stared at the polished wooden floorboards for a long, agonizing minute. Her initial spike of spite toward Anastasia quickly evaporated, leaving her hollowed out, entirely stripped of any remaining pride. The sheer weight of her sin crushed her completely. She dropped to her knees right there on the floor, burying her face in her hands as violent, agonizing sobs tore from her chest.
"Subaru... please... Subaru, please save me..." Rem wailed, her voice cracking into a desperate, guttural sob. She was completely broken, weeping frantically for the husband she had betrayed. "Subaru, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... Please help me, come find me, don't leave me alone... please..."
She clawed at her own clothes, entirely hysterical, begging for a rescue she knew was never going to come. Julius watched her from his knees, his heart shattering at the absolute desperation in her voice, but he remained paralyzed, unable to offer any comfort that wouldn't further poison her mind.
Through the mantle, Anastasia's crying ceased, replaced instantly by an icy, robotic focus. Anastasia forced the connection deeper, bypassing the standard audio link to lock their actual thoughts directly into a singular mental bridge. The moment the telepathic bridge solidified, a massive wave of pure, freezing, mutual hatred crashed violently between the two women.
Rem's mind was an absolute blizzard of frantic panic:You disgusting, manipulative, deformed monster! I will never do it! You can threaten to tell him! You can expose my affair to the entire world! I don't care anymore! I would rather Subaru hate me and look at me with disgust for the rest of my days than let Julius touch me again! I refuse! I will never let your husband breed me, do you hear me?! Exposure means nothing to me now! I will not do it!
Anastasia realized with a jolt of panic that her original leverage had failed. Rem was too distressed, too unhinged by her own guilt to care about her reputation or her marriage surviving. The threat of revealing the affair was useless against a woman who had already discarded her own pride.
Anastasia's mental voice shifted, turning incredibly dark, sharp, and lethal.Oh, you think your confession is the only thing at stake here, Rem? You think I am merely targeting your marriage?
Anastasia forced a terrifying, vivid image into Rem's mind: Subaru walking up to the Hoshin mansion tonight, completely oblivious, entering a room surrounded by Anastasia's private, armed guards.
Subaru is coming to my mansion this evening,Anastasia whispered directly into Rem's frantic consciousness, her thoughts dripping with pure malice.He trusts me. He thinks we are discussing a festival. If you do not submit to Julius right now—if you do not agree to carry his child—I will have my guards drug him. I will have him locked away in the deepest, most forgotten dungeon beneath my estate. I will ensure his limbs are shattered, and I will personally see to it that he suffers an agonizing, prolonged death while you are forced to watch through this very link. Your husband's actual life is in my hands, Rem. Choose right now: let Julius breed you, or receive Subaru's corpse.
Rem's visceral disgust and terror were immediate. Her thoughts lashed back like a spiked whip, her entire mental state completely fracturing at the threat against her husband's life: NO! NO! Don't you dare touch him! Leave him alone, you vile, pathetic bitch! Please, don't hurt him!
Anastasia's mental voice remained eerily, horrifyingly calm. "It will obviously take some time for a stubborn oni like you to learn your proper place and become my functional replacement. But we share a brain now, Rem. No more secrets. Make your choice."
In that instant, Rem was flooded with vivid, disgusting flashes of Anastasia's innermost fantasies—visions of Rem on her knees, completely submissive, broken, and obedient, calling Anastasia "Master" while Julius watched with nodding approval. Rem recoiled in absolute revulsion.
You're sick. Disgusting. I'd rather take my own life.
Anastasia shot back with a malicious mental sneer: And if you die, Subaru dies right along with you. We truly are perfect for each other, aren't we?
To push the psychological warfare further, a new, sickening image appeared in Anastasia's mind—a vision of herself gently pressing a soft kiss against Rem's lips, whispering: "We can still be friends, Rem... forever united in our shared love for Julius."
Rem's mental scream was filled with pure, unadulterated loathing: GET OUT OF MY HEAD, YOU CRAZY WHORE! I'LL KILL YOU! I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND TEAR YOU APART MYSELF!
Anastasia's mental laughter chuckled softly within the link, entirely twisted and devoid of any human empathy."Oh, how truly delightful, Rem. I am so happy that you already see me as a sister. You threaten to murder me in cold blood... just like that dear older sister of yours whom you abandoned and left to death in your past. You truly are a wretched, broken monster, aren't you?"
Anastasia completely ignored the rest of the maid's mental thrashing, her mental voice dropping into a cold command. "Now look up and tell Julius that you have accepted the terms. Tell him he is going to breed you. Don't worry about the phrasing... we pretty much share a consciousness now anyway."
Rem's hatred burned like liquid nitrogen. I will never—
"Do it," Anastasia cut in, her thoughts turning sharp as a guillotine blade, "or the executioners begin their work on Subaru the moment he steps through my front door."
Rem's physical body shuddered with deep, autonomous revulsion, her hand dropping away from the collar of the mantle. She couldn't take it off. She was entirely trapped, forced to sacrifice her womb to keep her husband alive.
She turned her dead, hollow eyes toward Julius, her voice sounding completely vacant, like an empty shell:
"...I accepted the terms. Julius... you can breed me."
Julius's eyes widened in absolute, paralyzed shock.
Back in her distant bedchamber, Anastasia's mental voice whispered with sweet, terrifying malice directly into the maid's skull:
"Good girl. See? We're already working together beautifully."
Rem's only response was a massive, crushing wave of pure, murderous hatred that washed over the telepathic connection like freezing water. The toxic deal had been finalized. And the psychological war between princess and maid had only just begun.