Depraved Noble: Forced To Live The Debaucherous Life Of An Evil Noble!

Chapter 829: Show Me Your Love

Darius felt as though the entire world had collapsed around him. And in truth, it had.

His mother, his father, his sisters, his brothers—every single person who had ever loved him was hanging right there in front of him, their lifeless bodies swaying gently in the morning breeze.

He couldn’t even fathom why he should keep living.

After all, the only reason he’d been able to terrorize and pillage and destroy with impunity was because his family had always been behind him.

They’d backed him up no matter what, shielded him from consequences, made sure that the Valheim name was a shield he could hide behind.

He’d shouted that name everywhere he went like it was some kind of divine protection.

But now? Now he was the last one left.

The final thread of a once-mighty tapestry.

What was the point of shouting a name that meant nothing anymore?

What was the point of being a Valheim when there were no Valheims left to stand beside him?

When he looked around, he could see that Cassius had even dragged in the distant relatives from the countryside.

Uncles and aunts he’d barely met. Second cousins who lived in remote estates.

The entire Valheim bloodline had been systematically eliminated. Cassius hadn’t left a single branch of the family tree standing.

That meant Darius didn’t even have any minor families to run to.

Just thinking about what would happen if he stepped outside was terrifying.

The Valheims had done so much horrible stuff to everyone—commoners, nobles, it didn’t matter.

They’d been equal opportunity oppressors.

If he showed his face out there, the commoners would probably tear him apart limb by limb and eat his flesh.

Or the nobles would capture him, drag him to their mansions, and torture him slowly for everything his family had done. Years of brutality and arrogance had made enemies of practically everyone.

It made him feel sick.

And when he thought about how it all started—just over a couple of women, just over offending some minor noble—it felt so absurd. So stupid. So utterly pointless.

No, Cassius wasn’t minor. He was at the same level as Darius.

But everyone said he was useless, that his family didn’t care about him.

So how did this happen? How had a man who was supposedly worthless brought down the entire Valheim bloodline in a single night?

Why? Why? Why?

The question kept spinning in his head as he sobbed, each repetition driving the knife deeper into his shattered psyche.

His family was probably blaming him too, right now, wherever they were. They were probably cursing his name, wishing he had never been born.

That thought shattered him completely.

Tears came then. Hot, humiliating tears that streaked through the gore on his face.

He sobbed, great heaving gasps that shook his entire body. He was a child again, lost and afraid, but this time there was no mother to comfort him, no father to make the monsters go away.

The monsters had won, and they wore his family’s skin.

—

"Cheer up, Darius! I have a gift for you!"

Cassius’s voice cut through the haze of despair. It was cheerful, almost singsong, the tone one might use when presenting a puppy to a child.

Darius didn’t look up. He kept his head buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking.

A gift? What could possibly matter now? Gold? Lands? Women?

The very concept of happiness felt alien, a memory from another life.

He would never smile again. Every attempt would be choked by the image of his mother’s empty sockets, his father’s spilled intestines.

"Come on, Darius." Cassius coaxed, his voice taking on a playful edge. "Do me a favor and look up. There’s something you’ll definitely like. I can assure you, you’ll get quite excited."

Darius remained motionless, a statue of grief.

Lucius’s patience, always thin, snapped.

"My young master TOLD YOU TO LOOK UP!"

He grabbed a fistful of Darius’s hair and yanked, forcing his head back so sharply Darius heard vertebrae pop.

Darius didn’t resist. What was the point? He stood there, limp, his eyes dead. They could show him mountains of gold, paradises of pleasure—nothing could restore the man he had been. He was hollow.

Then he saw it.

And the world, which had been gray and silent, suddenly blazed with color and sound.

"TIMOTHY!" The name ripped from his throat, raw and desperate, echoing across the silent grounds.

There, standing beside Cassius, gagged and bound but unmistakably alive, was his little brother.

Timothy. Ten years old. Purple eyes wide with terror, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on his face.

His fine clothes were torn, his hair a wild mess, but he was breathing. He was alive.

A surge of emotion, so powerful it was physical, slammed into Darius.

Hope. It was hope, a feeling he thought had been incinerated. His dead eyes ignited with sudden, frantic vitality. His breath came in ragged gasps.

Darius tried to lunge forward, to touch him, to make sure he was real.

But Cassius grabbed his neck and held him back.

"Ah-ah-ah." He chided, his voice soft but carrying an edge of steel. "You better not do that, Darius. This brother of yours has quite a delicate neck."

He rubbed his thumb against Timothy’s pulse point, a grotesquely intimate gesture.

"One wrong move, and it might crack like a fragile vase. So if I were you, I’d sit down and listen to what I have to say."

Darius dropped back into the chair as if his strings had been cut. The realization was a bucket of ice water: they were still in the devil’s hands.

His voice trembled as he forced the words out.

"Why?...Why are you involving children too?"

"Why did you kill them all?!"

He pointed at the small bodies hanging around the tree.

"They were just kids! They had their whole lives ahead of them! Why?!"

Cassius didn’t just scoff; he laughed.

"Children? You call him a simple child?" He gave Timothy a small shake. "What a joke. What an absolute, pathetic joke."

Even Lucius shook his head, a look of profound disappointment on his face.

"You should already know, Lord Darius." The butler said, his voice dripping with contempt. "You should know exactly what these ’innocent children’ have done."

Cassius pointed a languid finger at one of the small, hanging forms—a girl of about twelve.

"Your sister Leota, hanging over there. She once saw a commoner woman wearing a dress nicer than hers."

"So she had her guards strip the woman right there on the street, in front of everyone. Then she burned the dress while the woman watched, naked and humiliated."

Cassius’s eyes grew colder. "And then she had her guards drag the woman behind a building. You can imagine what happened next."

Darius’s blood ran cold. He had heard those stories. He’d laughed about them at dinner parties.

"Your cousin Terry." Cassius continued, pointing at another small body. "A prodigy with fire magic. Very proud. He wanted to show off for the family, so he sneaked out one night with a contingent of guards to a village on your eastern border."

"He stood on a hill and cast ’Firestorm.’ A third-circle spell on a village of sleeping people."

Cassius’s voice dropped to a whisper.

"Forty-eight dead. A hundred and twelve injured, many permanently. Houses, livestock, generations of work—ash."

"All because a little boy wanted applause."

Darius trembled. These weren’t rumors. They were facts. Incidents he knew about, had helped cover up.

He’d thought them...minor. Unfortunate necessities of maintaining status.

"And this one. Your precious Timothy."

Cassius shoved Timothy forward, his grip tightening on the boy’s neck.

"Just last night, he and his sister trampled a young woman with a carriage, then spent a couple of minutes stabbing her with a spear for sport."

"But he was incompetent. He didn’t kill her."

Darius blinked. "She...survived?"

"Barely." Cassius nodded, a flicker of something like respect in his eyes. "The most fatal wounds missed by millimeters. Her heart was nicked, not pierced. She was lying in a refuse pile, bleeding out, when we found her."

"One minute later, and she’d have been gone. But I healed her in time with a potion."

His expression softened for just a moment, a flicker of something almost human crossing his features.

"Apparently, she had a sick mother at home. The thought of her mother dying alone without anyone to care for her was the only thing keeping her alive."

"That’s real love, Darius. Something your family never understood."

Even Lucius looked moved for a second, his cold exterior cracking just a little.

"So don’t you dare tell me they’re just children."

Cassius shook Darius hard, bringing him back to the present.

"They’re devils wearing kids’ skins. They would’ve grown up to be even worse monsters. I just clipped them before they could bloom into something truly horrific."

Darius felt despair crush him once again. He’d heard that in war, you spared women and children.

That was the rule. But Cassius didn’t follow any rules.

If he judged you evil, you died. No mercy. No exceptions.

"However." Cassius said, his tone shifting to something almost conversational. "Luck is on your side today, Darius."

Darius’s head snapped up. "W-What?"

"I’ve decided to give you an opportunity to save Timothy."

A wild, desperate hope flared again.

"N-No. You...You’re lying. You wouldn’t."

Cassius placed a hand over his heart. "On the name of the Holyfields, I swear it. I am willing to let Timothy go."

Darius stared, searching for the trap. It had to be there.

"You see." Cassius continued, leaning forward. "That girl’s perseverance moved me. The power of love, of sacrifice for family...it made me wonder if such a thing existed in your rotten bloodline."

"I want to see it. I want to see if you, Darius Valheim, are capable of sacrificing for your family."

"I will!" Darius shouted, the words bursting from him. "I’ll do anything! Anything at all!"

He looked at Timothy, who was crying silently, his eyes begging.

He needed this. He needed someone. Anyone.

Cassius’s eyes went cold. "Prove it."

Bang!

Lucius slammed his dagger onto the table in front of him, the blade gleaming in the pale morning light.

Then he dragged something heavy out from under the table.

Bang!

It landed with a sickening thud on the ground.

It was a jar. A glass preservation jar, about the size of a melon.

And it was filled with liquid—a clear, viscous fluid that looked like glycerin or embalming solution.

Floating in that fluid were eyes!

Dozens of them. Scores of them. All with distinctive purple irises.

The eyes of the Valheim family.

They stared out from the jar, some looking upward at their corpses, others staring straight ahead, others tilted as if regarding Darius with curiosity.

They were perfectly preserved, the purple color vivid against the white sclera.

Darius felt all the air leave his body. It was as if a giant fist had punched him in the chest.

Timothy, seeing the jar, convulsed. He vomited against his gag, choking as he tried to swallow it back down. He shook violently, his eyes wide with primal horror.

Cassius tapped the glass with a fingernail.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The eyes jiggled slightly, making a soft, sloshing sound.

"No matter how despicable your family may be." Cassius murmured, almost to himself. "I have to admit your family had good genetics. Such pretty eyes. Especially yours, Darius."

He looked up, his crimson eyes meeting Darius’s purple ones.

"That’s why...I want them."

Darius was still struggling to breathe.

"You...want my eyes?"

"Not just want." Cassius corrected pleasantly. "I want you to give them to me. As a gesture of good faith. Use that dagger. Pluck them out yourself."

Timothy made a frantic, muffled sound behind his gag.

"Of course, I would prefer if you scooped the whole eyeball out neatly, but I know you lack the surgical precision for that. So, I’ll compromise."

He slid the dagger closer to Darius.

"Just thrust the blade in. Destroy your sight."

"Do that and Timothy walks out of those gates completely free."