The Crown's Obsession (WN)

"What do you want to know about her?" she asked him.

"Everything. From the day she entered the castle until the day she was thrown out of the castle by the royal family members," said Vladimir, he increased the pressure on her neck, letting her take a peek at his strength.

Rosamund felt him move his hand away from her neck, and she felt the tension in her body slowly starting to subside.

Vladimir didn't go to the couch to sit, and instead, he went to the window, his eyes looking through the intricate gaps of the curtain. He knew what happened to his daughter. How Constance had left Belmount and ended up in the Hawthrone castle, of how she was thrown out and misused by many men and how she died. But he wanted to know more about her life when she still lived in the castle.

It wasn't many who knew how his daughter was, not like the way he knew her. The people who mostly knew about Constance, they believed her to be a woman who sold her body to make a living, a whore. Vladimir's hands clenched into fists before he released them. Constance's name had been sullied, and people didn't know the kind of person she was.

On the vampiress's question, the answer was simple. He missed his daughter. Somewhere he was glad that Constance had left a piece of her behind, her son, Calhoun, to be the only family he had right now. But that didn't mean it reduced the existing emptiness in his mind.

"Why do you want to know about Constance?" asked Rosamund. Was this one of the men who had used Constance? wondered Rosamund.

And as if Vladimir heard her thoughts, Rosamund started to shake in her chair as bolts of lightning passed through her body. She could feel the bolts biting into her very bone and drying up her blood from inside. She gritted her teeth in pain until Vladimir stopped the pinch of torture. The vampiress metallic taste in her mouth.

Hearing Rosamund's screams, who was being punished by Vladimir, Sophie came running into the drawing-room to see her mother on the chair and there was a stranger present in the room. Her mother was huffing for air and appeared to be in pain.

"What's going on?" demanded Sophie. "I will call for help right away!"

But Vladimir moved his hand towards her and it had Sophie sit on the couch without her free will so that she wouldn't be able to leave. "Who are you?! What are you trying to do?!" Sophie went on to speak, and when Vladimir snapped his fingers, her mouth suddenly sealed itself. Sophie no more had lips, and it was left with a smooth surface.

Sophie's face turned into horror, and so did Rosamund's on seeing the mouth disappear from her daughter's face.

"Don't hurt her!" Rosamund screamed, "What did you do to her?"

"She's too noisy and whiney. I made sure that she wouldn't interrupt our conversation," responded Vladimir. He then said, "I lack patience. Tell me about Constance," he stared back at the barren land that was next to the mansion.

Rosamund was distracted by her daughter's mouth being sealed, and she couldn't help but question who Vladimir was. And as much as she was her mother's daughter, she was also shrewd enough to know where to stop pressing someone's buttons. Worried for her daughter, she looked back at the man to see a shadow of evil behind him.

"I will tell you everything that you want to know, but please don't harm my daughter!" pleaded Rosamund. She had lost her son, and then she had lost her stature. People didn't respect her anymore, and she was a nobody. Her husband and Sophie were all she was left with.

"Speak," ordered Vladimir, not bothering to hear her pleas which he was hardly interested in.

Rosamund tried to remember from the beginning, and the girl's face that she had always tried to forget often came to haunt her.

The vampiress started, "My brother Laurence was the one who introduced her to me in the castle. He had met her in one of the soirees through another woman, who had given Constance shelter. Laurence fancied the girl, and I still remember how he wouldn't shut up about it. Mother didn't care much about it because most of us believed that she was just another passing time for my brother. Laurence was the apple of my parents' eyes. The male heir who would rule Devon."

"Poor Rosamund was being ignored?" Vladimir's voice didn't have a hint of sympathy in it.

Rosamund looked down at her hands that had turned paler than before as if her death was right around the corner, and it would only speed up if she didn't answer Vladimir's question.

"I wasn't ignored, but my position was less important compared to what my brother held in my parents' hearts," replied Rosamund. "Constance was beautiful, and my brother hardly found any time to look at other women whom my mother brought in for him to build a relationship with. There were proposals from the richest and highest status of the Dukes and Lords daughters, but he spent his time with Constance."

"And what were your thoughts on it?" questioned Vladimir, his body turned along with his gaze shifting to look at the older vampiress. Sophie made squeaking noise like a rat, and Vladimir said, "Keep doing that and I will rip your throat out so that you won't have any way to make a single sound ever again." This was enough for Sophie to stop making any sound, and silence fell in the room.

Rosamund said, "I didn't like her. She smiled too much, and she was too nice to people around her, not knowing where to stop speaking and whom not to speak. When my parents' were still ruling the lands, things in the castle were much more strict. We had rules to follow, and it wasn't just for servant's but also the members of the royal family," she shook her head, remembering Constance's face that was sweet and pleasant.

She knew why her brother had fallen for Constance, it was because there was no other woman who was as pure and beautiful as her, but at the same time she was naive with the lack of knowledge of how the royal family worked.

The older vampiress continued, "Laurence was smitten by her, and all of us could see it. He boldly insisted on having her come to stay in the castle. I thought it would be for two days or a week, but never would I have imagined that she would be living in the castle for more than a year. Obviously, my mother didn't like a poor girl hanging around in the castle by the word of my brother."

"Hmm," Vladimir responded, "I heard that you gifted her a chain. You must have loved her dearly, supporting your brother."

Rosamund's eyes snapped to meet Vladimir's eyes, "What?"

"The chain? Didn't you gift the chain to Constance that was supposed to be cursed and kill the person over time?" Vladimir let his body lean back, and he folded his hands across his chest.

Hearing this, Sophie, who was quiet, turned her eyes to look at her mother in question as she had never heard about this.

Rosamund's lips trembled without a word. No one knew about this! This was something that only her mother and she knew about. How did this man know?! She then tried to school her expression, her lips opening and closing many times.

Under the scrutinizing gaze of the man, Rosamund closed her eyes, "My brother was planning to have Constance as his wife, and it was not only causing a strain on my mother, but also me… My mother didn't want to lose control on the throne, while she also wanted someone much more suitable to be his wife, not some one picked up from the soiree." Rosamund continued to speak, "Mother spoke to brother about looking at other girls, but it didn't work. At that point of time, the Hanima's treasures were not seized by the High House as they didn't exist at that point of time. We somehow got a hand on one single piece, and I gave it to Constance as a gift."

"I wonder why I shouldn't kill your daughter. For someone who doesn't think about other's lives, you don't deserve to have a daughter," Vladimir brought his hand in front of him when Rosamund caught sight of his nails that started to elongate.

Rosamund quickly shook her head in dread.

"I only did what my mother wanted! Constance wore it for two days, but she took it off her neck, keeping it with her without wearing it," Rosamund had a confused expression on her face. "I don't know why she did it and it had failed the purpose. At the same time, a misunderstanding broke between Laurence and Constance, and my mother used the opportunity to set my brother with my sister-in-law."

"You don't look pleased about it," observed Vladimir.

Right now, Rosamund looked nothing less to a criminal who was being interrogated by a person, who had disappeared her daughter's mouth from her face.

"Let me guess, you wanted to have control, instead of your brother," guessed Vladimir, and the guilty expression on the older vampiress's face said it all. "You know we would have been friends if you didn't do what you did to Constance. But knowing what happened, you automatically turn to my enemy."

Rosamund gritted her teeth before she said, "Everyone knew I was the better choice when compared to my brother. He was just half-assing while I was the one who worked hard. But I couldn't openly fight for the position."

"So you took the passive approach," stated Vladimir and Rosamund raised her head, holding it high before she nodded her head.

"Though Constance was removed from my way, my brother went ahead and got married to his wife, Samara. All they needed was a male heir to clinch the throne. At that time, I wasn't married. I had to have a male heir to place on the throne and call it mine. Samara had a couple of miscarriages, and everything was going according to my plan. The only child Samara had was Lucy, and by then I had already married and had my first male child, Markus. Everything was perfect," said Rosamund as she recollected it.

"Before my father died, he wrote his will where if Laurence didn't have a male child, the throne would automatically go to Markus. But who would have guessed that Constance had already given birth to Laurence's child. It was something unexpected."