Chapter 288: Heart Beginning to Melt

Anastasiya listened to that with a discreet smile on her lips. "Sounds like Chysis." She placed the glass back on the table with all the calm in the world. "If she weren’t satisfied with your progress, it would be much worse."

Grace made a small grimace. "That’s what worries me most. I know she’s being hard on me because she recognizes me as someone who can improve, but still..." She hesitated for a moment and looked toward the window. "Sometimes it feels like she wants to kill me."

"If she really wanted to, you’d know." Anastasiya replied with such serenity that Grace could not even argue. The woman then tilted her head slightly, analyzing her daughter with the careful attention of someone who knew every minimal change in her expression. "But it seems to me that this isn’t the only thing occupying your mind."

Grace raised her eyes back toward her mother, and before she could even ask what she was talking about, Anastasiya continued.

"I heard you’ve been getting quite close to the Blood Divine Dragon." Her tone remained soft, almost innocent, as if she were commenting on the weather.

Grace, who had just taken another sip of tea, choked immediately. The liquid escaped from the side of her mouth, and she quickly turned her face away, coughing twice before widening her eyes, completely unprepared for that.

"Mother!" she complained, still recovering, quickly wiping her mouth with a napkin beside the plate. "It’s nothing like that!"

Anastasiya merely raised an eyebrow delicately, watching her daughter turn completely red. "No?"

"No!" Grace replied far too quickly, which only made her situation worse. She straightened her posture in the chair and tried to recover some dignity. "Victor and I are just..."

"Friends?" Anastasiya completed with a small mischievous smile, tilting her face slightly. "Your father and I were also just friends, until I had to drink his blood~..." The playful way she said it completely dismantled whatever defense Grace still had.

Grace became even redder and immediately turned her face away. "Mother..." she murmured, almost tightening her fingers around the cup. "It’s nothing like that. And he wouldn’t even care about me that way."

Anastasiya did not answer immediately. She simply observed her daughter for a few more seconds, as if measuring not the words, but the way they came out. Only then did she rest her elbow on the table and her face against her fingers, continuing to watch her with a sweet expression.

"You know I don’t like insisting on things like this for no reason." Her voice became a little more serious, although it remained extremely gentle. "But when I read the report about the incident at that gathering your father and I couldn’t attend because of the problems in the North... I found a few things interesting."

Grace shifted slightly in her chair, already knowing exactly where this was going.

Anastasiya continued without hurry. "In the description of the moment of the explosion, it was clear that he protected everyone present. But in your case, the report mentions multiple layers of Black Ice structured in a much more refined, much more careful way." She picked up the cup again and took a small sip before concluding with complete naturalness: "With the others, he improvised protection. With you, he worried."

Grace opened her mouth to answer immediately, but no response came out. She had thought about that scene more times than she would like to admit. In fact, since the day of the explosion, that memory had returned to her mind at very inconvenient moments. The way Victor had reacted. The absurd precision. The fact that, in the middle of the chaos, he had still managed to raise enough protection to preserve the weaker ones. And in her case... well, her mother was right. She knew she was right.

"That doesn’t mean anything." Grace murmured, but the sentence came out weak, unconvincing even to herself.

Anastasiya let out a quiet laugh, but not a mocking one. "Of course." She placed the cup on the saucer and folded her hands over her lap. "Just like that red little face doesn’t mean anything either."

Grace closed her eyes for a second, clearly defeated in that part of the conversation. "You’re enjoying this far too much."

"I am." Anastasiya admitted without the slightest shame, smiling serenely. "Because it’s good to see you like this."

Grace turned her face away again. "Like what?"

"Honest." Anastasiya replied without hesitation, and the mischievous smile gave way to a much softer expression. "Or at least almost honest."

Grace fell quiet.

Anastasiya looked at her daughter for a long moment and then spoke in a more affectionate tone. "You were always a difficult child to read. Not because you hid anything out of malice, but because you seemed to be born with your heart covered in ice. You were quiet, controlled, far too reserved. Even when you were happy, you barely showed it." She let out a small nostalgic sigh. "I remember how much I had to insist just to get reactions out of you when you were younger."

Grace lowered her eyes toward the tea. She could not deny that.

"Chysis, as chaotic as she is, broke quite a lot of that ice." Anastasiya continued calmly. "She’s intense, loud, exaggerated and far too direct. Living with someone like that forced you to react more, to express yourself more." She tilted her head slightly and smiled tenderly at her daughter. "Even so, seeing you embarrassed like this is still new to me."

Grace breathed deeply through her nose and slowly released it. After a few seconds, she finally picked up the cup again, just to have something in her hands.

"I don’t know what I feel." She spoke more quietly this time, and there was no longer any automatic denial in her voice. "I only know that... when I’m near him, things feel strange."

Anastasiya did not interrupt.

Grace continued, choosing her words carefully, clearly uncomfortable with opening up so much. "He’s irritating sometimes. Too confident. Acts as if everything is simple. And even so..." She paused briefly, frowning slightly at herself. "Even so, I never feel like he’s pretending. When he does something, he does it for real. When he speaks, he speaks as if he doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone."

Anastasiya listened to every word in silence, not moving a muscle so she would not break the moment.

Grace tightened her fingers slightly around the edge of the cup. "And when that explosion happened..." She looked down at the table. "I thought everyone was going to die. It happened so fast I barely had time to think. But he reacted first. And then... then he simply collapsed."

The silence between the two lasted a few seconds.

Anastasiya spoke very softly. "You were worried."

Grace took a while to answer, but eventually nodded slightly. "I was."

Her mother smiled with discreet affection. It was not the smile of someone who had won an argument, but of someone happy to see her daughter finally say something that had been written all over her for far too long.

"That’s not a bad thing, Grace." Anastasiya said, keeping her voice low and calm. "Liking someone doesn’t make you weak. Caring about someone doesn’t either." She leaned slightly forward. "And even if it doesn’t turn out to be love in the end, there’s still nothing wrong with recognizing that someone has become important to you."

Grace fell silent again, but this time there was not only denial in her expression. There was reflection. Perhaps even relief from hearing it said so simply.

Anastasiya then smiled again, now with a trace of mischief returning to her eyes. "But honestly, I find it hard to believe it’s only importance."

Grace closed her eyes for a second, clearly regretting having lowered her guard that much. "Mother..."

"I’m only saying." Anastasiya raised one hand innocently. "If a man protects my daughter like that, carries her around in his head that often in mission reports and still manages to make her blush just from hearing his name mentioned, then at the very least, I’m going to pay attention."

Grace brought a hand to her forehead. "I hate it when you’re right."

"You hate it because I usually am." Anastasiya replied with an almost irritating calmness.

Grace eventually let out a quiet laugh through her nose, involuntary. Small, brief, but real. That made Anastasiya smile even more.

"There." Anastasiya said, satisfied. "That kind of reaction suits you much better than that icy princess pose of yours."

Grace raised her eyes toward her mother, still slightly flushed, but much less tense than at the beginning of the conversation. "If you tell anyone about this, I’ll deny it until the end."

Anastasiya placed a hand over her chest in false offense. "Grace, I’m your mother. Of course I wouldn’t go around spreading it."

She paused very briefly.

"Maybe only to your father."

Grace stared at her in absolute horror. "Mother."

Anastasiya laughed heartily this time, the kind of light laughter that filled the room without weighing it down. "I’m joking." She then softened her expression again and added affectionately: "But seriously, don’t force yourself to find an answer right now. Just don’t run away from what you’re feeling out of pride or fear of seeming vulnerable. That would hurt much more later."

Grace looked at the nearly cold tea in front of her and remained silent for a few moments before nodding. The movement was small, but sincere.

Anastasiya noticed and did not insist any further. Instead, she simply reached across the table and lightly touched her daughter’s fingers. "Whatever it is, I’m just happy to see that your heart is finally beginning to truly melt."

Grace lowered her eyes toward her mother’s hand over hers and, for the first time since the conversation began, did not try to defend herself.

Perhaps because, deep down, she already knew Anastasiya had been right for a long time... Well... If Grace knew what was happening with Victor, her heart would probably freeze again—

"Baby..." Rakshasa spoke in a sweet voice filled with ulterior motives while wrapping her arms around Victor’s neck, who was truly immersed inside that powerful Vampire’s body.

He held one of her breasts while she slowly bit his neck.

"What is it~" He said while holding his breath and feeling his heartbeat race— She scratched his neck, slowly moving toward his ear.

"Enough taking so long... Fuck me so hard~?" She said while biting it—