Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 29: The second cousin

Lady Cordelia beamed at Rohan when she came to stand before him. Without the courage to hug him, she bowed her head and then said, "I wanted to come to you all this while, but you know how Papa is. He didn’t want me exposing myself to a place like the asylum. How have you been?"

Belle stood to the side, watching their interaction, where her husband looked bored and totally uninterested in the excited female vampire before him. Lady Cordelia was a very beautiful woman, Belle noticed, with black hair that was tied up in a bun with delicate flowery pins that matched her earrings and necklace. She wore a black gown that made her pale, unblemished skin even more paler and glowy, and her lips were as red as her dark red eyes, which made her lineage as a pure-blooded vampire evident when she turned briefly to Belle, who stood at the side with her left hand gripping her right elbow in a self-conscious way.

Rohan did not reply to his cousin’s words and instead walked up to the head of the long table, sat down, then gestured for Belle to come and sit on his right side.

The table was so long, Belle thought it would fit more than thirty people, and the end of the other side was more in the shadowed side. On it were a line of different kinds of food, from steaks to vegetables, ham, French rolls, and toast, and many more others that made her mouth water. On one side were fresh apples, pears, and berries. She had not thought vampires had human meals, and the table had many more than that.

Belle was walking to where Rohan patted on his right side of the table when Cordelia’s smile slightly wavered as she seemed to finally take note of the human in the hall. She had been too excited to see Rohan that she had failed to notice that a lowly human was there and must obviously be the so-called wife from the human land everyone had been speaking of—who was married to Rohan.

She watched as the blonde human walked past her with a small bow of greeting, and Cordelia gritted her teeth at the fact that Rohan had not acknowledged her presence and instead was beckoning for his wife to come and sit beside him.

Though Cordelia was well aware that he was married to a human, she had believed she would not come and see the human in the castle. From what she knew, her second cousin was good at putting these lowly beings right where they belonged. Not giving up, she smiled brightly again and went to sit on the seat to his left without invitation.

"Cousin Rohan, you did not introduce me to the lady," Cordelia said with a polite smile that, if one did not know her, might be believed to be genuine.

Belle was reaching for her plate to place her food on it, as she couldn’t wait to start eating, when the vampiress asked that question of her husband, causing her to look up towards him to make the introduction. She couldn’t help but wonder who the woman was to him, but instead of making the introduction, he smoothly reached out his hand towards her, took the plate she had placed in front of her, and put it in front of him, taking her aback.

Cordelia watched as Rohan took away the human’s plate in front of her, along with the food she tried to reach for. When she attempted to take another plate of ham, he snatched it from her hand without so much as glancing at her and placed it in front of him. He carefully cut it with his knife and used his fork to bring it to his parted, gorgeous lips, where they closed around the fork, and he began to chew.

Cordelia smiled while Belle frowned at his actions. Good, he would deny the human food and starve her to death, that was so much like the man she knew. He would make her watch them eat. She had been worried for a moment that her cousin was going to take this marriage seriously and treat a human as his equal—letting her dare eat with him on the same table.

Rohan did not look away from his plate of food in front of him as he picked up the omelet Belle wanted to reach for again, cut it, and brought it to his mouth once more. He finished the omelet in two bites. He then began to add avocado spread between the toast he had taken yet again from his wife while replying to Cordelia for the first time since she had started talking.

"There is no need for an introduction when you already know who she is. She’s my little bunny, given to me by the beautiful universe," he said as he raised his head to Belle, who was slightly fuming in silent anger when he kept wordlessly taking away every food she tried to reach for. He then said with a charming smile, like he had not done anything, "And Isa, meet my second cousin from my mother’s side, Cordelia."

Belle could hardly rein in her anger at his behavior. Was he planning to make her only watch him eat? She thought to herself in silent rage before she decided to turn away from him to the vampiress, who was smiling and staring at her with dark red eyes.

Cordelia’s eyes made her uncomfortable, as she had not sat in this close range with a vampire who looked every bit like a vampire. Her husband’s looks made her not worry, but this vampiress was different. Her eyes were like the vampires in her worst nightmare, and her smile was too polite for a pure blood vampire’s nature. Belle did not like her but did not show it.

"It’s nice to meet you, Lady Isa, you—"

"Don’t cross it, Cordie. You are not allowed to call her that. It’s a name only I can use. Her name is Isabelle. You can call her Lady Dagon," Rohan corrected with a harmless smile on his face that made Cordelia’s smile waver slightly, but then it did not fall as she nodded her head.

"Very well, Lady Dagon. It’s nice to meet you," she smiled as she narrowed her eyes slightly at the human, who smiled back and bowed slightly to say, "It’s nice to meet you too, my lady." Then she shifted uncomfortably in her seat because of the way Cordelia was staring at her.

Cordelia could not help but notice that the human was not as pretty as everyone said she was. It was said that the wife Rohan was to marry was a beauty to behold and that the way her skin shone could reveal the rays of the moon, which was why Cordelia had put so much effort into her own dressing and makeup to match this beautiful human bride. But it seemed she needn’t worry when even her cousin was depriving her of food, and she wasn’t even half as beautiful as Cordelia herself.

Belle, who was starving and yet could not reach any of the mouth-watering food as her husband kept snatching it away from her, sat and watched as the vampiress across from her flicked her fingers in the direction of the door. Belle saw a young girl in a plain, off-white gown walk in with her head bowed, her hands gripping the sides of her dress to the point that it had gained permanent wrinkles with patches of dirt on the sides. She was human, Belle could tell—even without looking at her eyes—from the way she was slightly trembling and the unhealthy glow of her skin.

"Come here, mix my blood tea and fix the plate for me to eat," Cordelia ordered the girl as she fanned herself with a fancy red-colored hand fan.

Since Belle was not eating—because the devil had suddenly decided to starve her when he had been the one to force her to come and eat with him—she watched as the girl who had walked in poured a cup of tea from a milky porcelain kettle and then took a knife from the table. Without so much as flinching, she ran the sharp side against her thin wrist, and immediately, red blood began to roll out into the cup of tea, causing Belle to grimace and gasp softly in shock, as this was the first time she had seen something like this.

The girl proceeded to fix and arrange the vampiress’s plate, placing food onto it without bothering to stop the bleeding in her hand, which dripped into Cordelia’s meal as if to add blood flavor into the food. She then careful handed her the blood tea.

Cordelia took it and elegantly brought it to her red lips, but the moment she took a sip, she spat it out on the slave girl at her side and exclaimed, "You disgusting bitch! How dare you add too much sugar to my tea? Do you want to kill me or harm my stomach?!"