She Belongs To The Devil

Joyce's anger subsided to some extent upon hearing what the victim said to her. And she asked herself, "Will I be able to live with myself if I took a soul in a fit of rage?"

And the answer was simple. "No."

His broken limbs were enough punishment from her side. He wouldn't heal anytime soon and would remain in constant pain.

Joyce hastily glanced at that woman and said, "You might want to take your hands off of the thorns and maintain some distance."

The woman instantly took her bleeding hands away and stood a little further away from Joyce.

Joyce turned her head and looked down at that man. She wasn't able to see it, but the Hell's plant had already sucked a part of that man's soul. And it was still pulling the remaining part of the soul so as to devour it whole.

Joyce tried to turn her palms away from that struggling and gagging man. However, her palms didn't budge at all. There was some invisible force that was stopping Joyce from moving her hand. It was as if those Zobekker flowers were attracted to that man as though he was some kind of a powerful magnet.

"No… Stop! Stop!" Joyce shouted while glaring at those flowers.

However, the plant wasn't listening to her commands. It never did.

She then took her stance and firmed her foothold so that she could use all her force into pulling her palms away from that man. She gritted her teeth and did just that, she used her maximum energy to pull herself.

"Aahhhhh…" Her arms and shoulders hurt, but nothing happened.

That man was now starting to convulse. Only the whites of his eyes could be seen. And he was hanging on for his dear life.

That woman was panicking upon seeing Joyce struggling to stop herself. "Do you want me to pull you?" she asked, hoping if she could be of any assistance to her savior.

However, Joyce outright denied the offer. "No! You should stay away from me." She was afraid that the plant would suck that woman's soul as well if she was in the vicinity of that mad plant.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Come on! Stop! Don't turn me into a killer!" she shouted at that plant again, but again, the plant didn't stop.

She did, however, hear the same voice that she had always been hearing whenever someone nearby was in danger. "Joyce… calm down… And so will it."

Joyce felt a chill shiver running down her spine and down to her toes. She knitted her brows in confusion because until now, she had always believed that it was the plant's voice that she heard. But now, it seemed like the voice and the plant weren't a single entity.

"If it wasn't the plant, then who has been whispering to me all this while?" Stay updated with empire

Joyce pushed that thought aside for now because now was not the time to be lost in her thoughts when a soul was being sucked out because of a bad decision that she took in her rage.

Joyce closed her eyes and tried to find a happy memory to calm herself. She knew that breathing in and out wouldn't be of much help here.

"Think... think... think..." She dove deep down into her mind and found one memory.

She was happily running around inside a mansion. And when she heard a footstep approaching, she ran in that same direction while shouting, "Mother, can I go and play with the puppy?"

"I will only allow it if you promise to be good," she heard an unfamiliar voice of a woman who clearly wasn't her mother.

"I promise to be good," she heard herself, but she was sure that she sounded nothing like that in her childhood.

She then saw that woman smiling brightly at her. "Come along then, sweetheart."

"Yay!" She happily jumped and followed that woman.

Joyce was so confused because of that vague and foreign memory that it actually worked; she was able to divert her rage and calm herself down, ultimately stopping the plant from sucking the soul.

When she opened her eyes, she instantly searched for the lid. It was lying on the ground close by. She tapped on the capsule and the thorny vines uncoiled from her arms and entered its tiny prison. Joyce instantly put the lid back on to stop it from taking control again.

Joyce then focused her attention on that man. She held her breath when she saw that man lying down motionless.

"Hey! Can you hear me?" she swallowed and asked him.

But when there was neither reply nor any movement from him. Joyce got scared and hastily leaned down to check that man's pulse.

She found a faint pulse in him.

Finally, she heaved a deep sigh of relief. She was glad that she didn't take a life, even though he was a criminal.

Joyce kept on staring at that unconscious man for a while. "Did I go too overboard?" she wondered.

For a brief second, she even thought of healing that man a little so that he would at least regain his consciousness.

However, she recalled the state she had found that poor lady in her bedroom. "She would have died a horrible death if I hadn't interfered," she thought to herself.

He didn't deserve her pity. So she left him be.

"At least he won't run away from here. I better make sure that the lady will be safe." She got back up on her feet and then went and stood by that woman's side.

"What's your name?"

That woman tore off her glare from that unconscious man and looked at Joyce. "Miriam," she said in a soft whisper.

Joyce then asked again, "Miriam, do you have any close relatives or anyone who might look after you until you recover?"

Miriam thought for a while. She had some distant relatives, but they lived in another Kingdom, far away from Romania. So she shook her head and then said, "I will be fine on my own, kind madam." She gave a slight bow and further added, "Thank you for saving my life."

Joyce knitted her brows and looked at that frail woman. There was no way she would be fine on her own; that also after what she went through just a while ago.

She took a deep breath in and introduced herself to that woman, "Miriam, I'm Princess Joyce of Romania."

Miriam was speechless upon finding out the real identity of her savior.

And she was even more stunned when Joyce offered, "Why don't you come along with me to the castle? You can stay there until you recover, or as long as you like."