Pride.
Germain had pride. A staggering amount of it, to be honest. As a man of esteemed royalty—as a Count Saint, as a vampire lord, as a being who had walked the earth for longer than most nations had existed—there was no conceivable world in which he could lack such an essential aspect of his nature.
And yet, it was this very pride that had been used against him. On multiple occasions throughout his existence. If you asked him, he'd claim he'd already gotten through it. Already risen above.
But pride, once wounded, never truly heals.
"Don't be absurd." Germain's voice carried just a fraction too much force. He was already working to compose his features, to return them to their normal state of calm superiority. "You're just saying things to throw me off."
"You asked me what I think your true intentions are." Rika shrugged with practiced nonchalance. "And honestly? That's what I think."
She was lying, of course. If you hadn't caught that—well, consider yourself informed.
'I won't deny Germain has a better brain than mine,' Rika admitted internally. 'He can think on his feet. Adapt. Reach reasonable conclusions faster than most. But I have one advantage going for me...'
I'M A WOMAN!
I kid you not—that was her actual reasoning.
'And as a woman, I can manufacture fake scenarios and present them as genuine. Blind him mentally. Confuse him.' A small, vicious smile touched her lips. 'Men do have a habit of believing women are emotionally unstable. They never know when we're performing.'
"Are you insane?" Germain's voice rose slightly—the first crack in his composure. "What part of our current conversation has you thinking that?"
"Well, for starters..." Rika leaned back, closing her eyes as if bored. "How is it that the only time you think to contact me is when he's in custody?"
"That's—"
"At first, I thought it might be your job. Professional obligation. But in reality?" She opened her eyes, fixing him with a gaze that dripped pity. "I don't have to be involved if it's a job thing, do I?"
"Well... yes, perhaps I was simply bored." Germain coughed into his fist—an oddly human gesture. "You and I are in the same town, so—"
"I understand you have a surplus of concubines, do you not?" Rika cut him off smoothly. "Not to mention we've been in the same place multiple times over the years. You've never once tried talking to me." She tilted her head. "Give me a better excuse. Please."
'This...' Germain's mind raced, trying to find purchase on slipping ground. 'This isn't going as planned. She disrupted my game pattern once, and now I can't seem to find the flow again.'
There was no reason to believe what she was saying. No logical basis for her claims.
!!!
But then it hit him.
'Women operate on the basis of how they feel—despite logic.'
Rika's bluff had landed. Fully. Completely. In the span of a few sentences, she'd thrown him entirely off-balance.
2-0.
The scores were not looking good for the Count Saint.
'Meaning,' Germain calculated grimly, 'that she could be telling the truth—according to her reasoning, anyway.'
"Are you trying to say I'm wrong in that assessment?" Rika looked at him with eyes full of manufactured pity. "If so, please enlighten me. What are you truly after?"
'Damn this woman.'
It might be a bluff. It probably was a bluff. But Germain had learned, across centuries, to never underestimate opponents. And Rika, at the end of the day, was the same woman who ran one of the largest empires in the world. He couldn't be certain whether she truly believed what she was saying—or if it was all a front designed to make him slip.
There was a simple way to regain his footing. A straightforward path that would allow him to reclaim the upper hand.
But sadly, due to his own ignorance—his own pride—that path never even occurred to him.
'But now that I'm thinking about it...' Germain's thoughts drifted, unbidden, in an entirely different direction. 'Why did I invite her here?'
The question was troubling. The invitation had been impulsive—something he wouldn't normally do, regardless of how he felt.
'But then again,' he admitted, 'I haven't really been feeling like myself these past few weeks, have I?'
"You're leaving already?"
The words echoed in his memory—a curse, perhaps. Certainly a recurring refrain.
"You aren't leaving, are you? You'll come back, won't you?"
"Do... do you have to, though?"
It would appear Blake's move—that quiet, devastating exposure to normalcy, to feeling—had already drained his heart of the malice and cunning he required for situations like this.
'Why do I still remember those words?' he wondered. 'It's not like I had a choice. It's my job to come here. To figure things out. To make some sort of amends...'
"Do... do you have to, though?"
As stated at the beginning of this chapter: Germain is a man of principle and pride. So much so that he perhaps lacks the emotional intellect to understand people's feelings.
Even now, it felt like he was making the same mistake.
'How can I possibly empathize with them,' he thought, 'if I'm never with them?'
How could he truly understand other people's emotions? Their challenges? Their hearts?
In Germain's mind, he truly believed he couldn't. That such connection was beyond him.
But there was something untrue about that statement.
No—there was someone who could prove it false.
The words that came next surprised even Rika.
"I think we should cancel the engagement."
!!!
Rika's face contorted—not with sadness, not with relief, but with something closer to disgust.
"You called me here," she said, her voice rising dangerously, "so that you could cancel our engagement?!"
DO THE SCORES EVEN MATTER ANYMORE?
TO BE CONTINUED!