Chapter 32

Part 32

“Lady Livia is here to see you, my king,” The secretary announces her entrance without fanfare, and holds the door open for her as she passes by him.

“Thank you, Secretary Tevault,” King Grail says, looking up with a deep furrow in his grey brows.

Livia enters slowly, her long, plain dress brushing softly over the floor as her eyes scan over the room in seconds. She comes to a stop and curtsy respectfully as one of her status and birth is ought to. Livia is all elegant and delicate movement.

Not a trace of fury or anger on her bland expression, not even a twitch of irritation. She seems perfectly calm, exuding OG Livia from every pore. It was as if time had been reversed. Like she was once again fifteen and oblivious to her true self.

“Thank you for receiving me your highness,” Livia says as she is taught, perfectly soft and demure, then she straightens and looks King Grail dead in the eyes without blinking.

The king was not alone.

Four different sets of eyes landed on her the moment her presence was announced. Before she had been escorted to the King’s office, she could hear the muffled voices from outside. It seemed the King still had ruffled feathers to smooth over from the nobles directly under him.

Though...the three beside him did not look like any other nobles. They weren’t wearing extravagant tailored suits like the other nobles, but army uniforms of different coloring, with many badges and accomplishments hanging proudly on their chests. These nobles...they probably didn’t just own land, but an army of their own, like her father.

Livia tucks the knowledge away as King Grail dismisses the opposing men of varying ages. They range from old, wrinkled, and completely grey, to startling young, likely barely out of Aster Academy.

They do not argue against the sudden dismissal from their king. Each of them bows and leaves without prompt. As they pass her seemingly looking straight ahead, Livia can feel their subtle gaze glance over her, mildly curious. One, in particular, she finds her eyes meeting for but a brief second.

He was pretty.

He had long black hair tied in the back with a blue bow and equally black eyes framed by long eyelashes that only made them more intense. He towered over Livia easily and was rather broad in the shoulders. His uniform did little hide his muscular stature.

His face was as impassive as hers, and his eyes didn’t seem to miss a single detail. He reminded her of Sen. They both had the same untouchable and unapproachable aura around them.

He looked fairly young. Probably in his early twenties.

For him to be included in the meeting she had interrupted, he must be of great talent.

He also looks like he could be related to one of the captured targets or one of the captured targets (There were many, and Livia did not know them all just off the top of her head.) Just like the blue-eyed duke she had seen earlier. They had stood out amongst the crowd.

Livia was a bit curious herself, but...it really didn’t matter either way, did it?

If everything goes according to her plans, she would have nothing to do with heroine or the other captured targets beyond the Royal House of Silvan ever again.

Amelia was a vapid idiot with the personality of a blank sheet of parchment, but otherwise, any grievances between them were of Livia’s own making. Livia will own up to her past bullying of the heroine by leaving her be. She will no longer directly torment Amelia or include her in her revenge.

Amelia was simply a means to an end, and serve no purpose to Livia any longer. She would not sink to the level of blinding putting blame on the other girl when she knows full well it takes two people for an intimate relationship to work. While the one-dimensional heroine did infringe on the arranged marriage between her and Rodale and was no doubt a home-wrecking little wench, in the end, she was just an incredibly foolish and naïve girl.

She was place holder of the one who was actually playing Aster Academy: The Feuding Houses. She did not have any actual characterization much less a personality. She was created to be as bland and unassuming as possible so the player could easily pretend she was them.

After playing through Amelia in the past, after seeing everything from her perspective, and then meeting the girl in person, Livia was made painfully aware of something.

Amelia was just the heroine.

And suddenly, she was just done.

Livia will get her revenge, but she saw no reason to make it unnecessarily difficult on herself. Getting tangled up in the original plot, interacting with other captured targets, the heroine. It would needlessly complicate things and in all honestly, Livia simply did not care.

Her focus was only on the Royal House of Silvan and anyone else directly responsible for the past events of her life.

Anyone beyond that...Livia simply did not have the time or energy.

So, when black eyes meet purple, Livia's eyes do not hold the gaze for long. She casts her attention back to King Grail and ignores the intense stare that lingers on her a few seconds longer.

Once the door is shut behind the three men and the king's personal secretary, Livia's hands, which had been resting below her stomach, cradling the weight of her child, comes up and her fingers curl subtly.

Instantly, all noises outside King Grails' office cut off and an unnatural silence falls over the room. No one will be able to hear what is going inside the office from the point onward.

King Grail had once been one of Wisteria’s greatest warriors in his prime. Though he could not sense any magic in the air, he noticed the void of noise.

His eyes, so similar to Orin’s in color, narrow the slightest bit, eyeing the door suspiciously before he turns to Livia and puts on his solemn, kingly face.

“Lady Livia, please take a seat,” He says, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk. Livia does so without a word, eager to be off her feet.

As she gets comfortable, King Grail continues one.

“I understand you had requested to see me to further discuss the matter of your re-engagement to my son, the crown prince,” He starts off while folding his large hands in front of him on his desk, “I know it was an unexpected outcome for not only you but many others, but you must know, I only have your interest at heart.”

His tone rings with such truth and genuine care, that Livia has to bite her lip to stop something foul from spilling from them. She instead softens her eyes, her mask melting the slightest bit as if she actually believed him. As if she was taken aback by this.

You did that for me? Really? Her expression seems to say in muted shock and disbelief. As if she couldn’t put together her mother's apparent scheming in the background. As if she was completely oblivious to it.

Taking note of this face, King Grail's expression gentles, almost becoming fatherly.

“I know it does not seem that way, but it is true,” He tells her seriously, “The circumstances you found yourself in because of the foolish mistakes my sons had made is no light matter. Things have been done that cannot be undone. Horrible, unfortunate things that you did not deserve to endure. I can only ask that you understand, this is my way of taking responsibility for that beyond returning your rightful status back to you.”

Livia's eyebrows draw up in confusion, her expression still conflicted.

“But how?” She asks in a small voice, “Surely I am no longer fit to become the Crown Princess of Wisteria?”

Livia presses a delicate hand to her belly, “My state...” She trails off. As if she couldn’t finish the sentence, looking vaguely ashamed.

As if that was the real problem.

Her pregnancy was not the problem.

Rodale was.

But Livia had set the scene King Grail expected her to. Otherwise, why else would she be upset? Surely it could not be because she was re-engaged with his son. No. What sense would that make? Livia’s only ambition in life had been to be wed to Rodale, her only obsession love, and to one day be the Queen of Wisteria. It had been her ultimate goal. Her only value. Now that she had been ‘ruined’ of course she could only be grateful if not a bit confused for King Grail being considerate enough to take full responsibility.

King Grail clears his throat, looking a bit uncomfortable as his gaze look at anything but her pregnant belly.

“Under normal circumstances, that would be true,” The old king says, “But, I have been made aware that this is a special occasion that deserves a unique response in accordance too it.”

Livia nods slowly, as if she completely understood his fucked-up sense of logic.

“Yes, I suppose my mother would dress it up that way. She is a crafty bitch, isn’t she?” Livia says nonchalantly.

King Grails nods, “Yes, I knew you would-…...what?”

Livia pristine posture and respectful disposition drops. She slumps into her chair and sets her elbows on the arm rests so she could rest her chin on the palm of her hand.

“My mother, she is truly a piece of work, isn’t she? She never misses preying on an opportunity the moment it comes by and this,” Livia does a little spin of her finger to encompass her current circumstances, “this is pretty much a shitty pot that turned into a gold mine for her. Lynette is once again the mother of the Crown Princess of Wisteria.” She mockingly claps, “Good on mummy dearest. She took back her place in society, and all it cost was her daughters pride and dignity.”

King Grail stares blankly at her, uncomprehending.

“It’s unbecoming for a person of your station to gape so widely. I can see your uvula.”

King Grail mouths closes.

He opens it again, looking agitated and put upon.

“That is no way to speak to a king!” Livia bellows, saying the words before he could.

She laughs openly and rudely at his expression of shocked fury, not the least bit intimidated. When his eyes glance behind her to the door, Livia just shakes her head.

“Don’t bother. No one will come. Even if you yell,” She says, her tone suddenly cold and her face unamused.

“Lady Livia, I don’t know why you are acting like this, but you must cease this nonsense immediately. I understand-”

“Understand?” Livia interrupts before bursting into an ugly laugh that don’t reach her eyes. Once she calmed down again, King Grail was standing, braced over his desk to glower down at her.

“You,” Livia points, “Don’t understand a damn thing.” She snarls.

“Now listen here!” King Grail voice was thunderous.

Livia eyes flatline. The blood curse flares alive.

“Shut up.”

Lips snap close over a word and large hands come up to pat over sealed lips frantically.

“That’s better,” She gestures to the chair behind Grail, “Sit. Your looming presence is annoying.”

King Grail sits like an obedient puppy.

Rage.

Confusion.

And finally fear, when Grail realizes he could not break the compulsion over him. All three emotions danced in a violent storm in eyes of King Grail, ruler of Wisteria.

What could the strong, dependable king do in the face of unknown and completely foreign magic?

Nothing.

Livia opens the palm of her left hand. Inside was the small relic she had stolen. It was a rock with a barely visible sigil written on it. She shows it to Grail.

“Know what this is?” She asks as if he could answer her.

Livia snorts, “Right, of course you don’t. To you, this ancient relic is nothing but an item to showcase and brag about. How could you know it isn’t just an old remnant of a past long forgotten but also very powerful?”

Livia closes her hand around it, gently coaxing the magic from it.

Then she orders, “Speak. Do not shout.”

“How are you doing this?” King Grail says instantly. His lips felt weird and stiff. As if they could close up again, sealing off his voice.

“Because I can,” Livia says flippantly.

“No, impossible,” Grail denies, “You were never gifted with magic. You do not have the power to overcome me.”

Livia lifts up the relic, “I do now.”

Obviously, she doesn’t tell him that the only reason she was relying on the relic in the first place was because her pregnancy dampened her magic over time. He did not need to know the details.

Grail's eyes fall on the relic, looking once again confused, “It’s just an old artifact. Its value is only in its price.”

“It’s not,” Livia says simply.

“There is no magical energy coming off that stone!” Grail hisses, “I would have sensed if it was able to incapacitate me!” His muscle strains visibly as he tries to get up, but it only leaves him breathless and red in the face.

Livia looks over his head, outside. It was almost noon. Her parents would arrive soon.

“Listen here, Lady Livia. I don’t know how you are doing this, are what spell you are using, but know, I will get out of this.” The kings say menacingly.

“Once I do, you will be detained immediately for attempting to restrain and hold on of royal blood against their will. There will be dire consequences for your reckless actions! To think you would resort to such a thing! What could you have possible gained from this? It is only a matter of time before someone outside my office realizes that something is wrong,” He continues on, attempting uselessly to get up. Gold magic, exactly like Rodale’s, flares up around the king before sputtering out, then flaring up again.

“To think that I even sympathized with your plight for even a second. I should have known my sons had been right in their judgment of you! You will not get away with this. Exile will be the least of your worries,” King Grail rails, growing angrier the more he sits stuck to the chair. After a large heave, where all his muscles tense up and his face turns a deep red, King Grail slumps over, trying to catch his breath.

Livia looks up from picking the bright pink nail polish that was forced on her nails.

How little it took for him to change his tune. From a half-assed grandfatherly figure who cared about her plight and wanted to help, to raging and agreeing with his son's viewpoint of her. Meaning he was aware that Rodale hated her and still sought to engage her to that son of a bitch.

Livia was beginning to see a common trait amongst the members of the Silvan House. It seems being two-faced was as natural as breathing to them.

She lifts an eyebrow.

“Already tired out? I thought you would go on a little longer. Guess old age would do that to you,” Livia says snidely.

A thick vein pulses on a wrinkled forehead as King Grail opens his mouth to rage.

“Shh. Remember? No shouting.” Livia chides mockingly.

“You-...You-…"

“Can’t speak further than that, huh? You must really want to yell,” She snickers.

“You are a menace,” Grail manages to grit out.

Livia tilts her head and just smiles. As if saying, yeah, so?

“You poisoned that girl, didn’t you? If you had the capability to do this, then trying to murder a baron’s daughter would be all too easy,” Grail realizes.

“It was attempted murder. Mustn't forget that important detail,” Livia says breezily.

King Grail stares at her as if he has never seen her before.

Livia just goes back to picking at her nails. She only just realizes Grail had a small clock above a bookcase. Wonderful. She hadn’t wasted as much time as she had thought.

She waits as Grail continues to strain and fight against the hold she has over him. Once he tires himself out again, his limbs shaking from the strain he put them under, he finally asks the right questions.

“Why are you doing this?... What do you want?” He asks warily.

Livia snaps her fingers and points fingers guns at him, “Bingo! Give this elderly man a prize!”

King Grail only stares at her, obviously not know what she was going on about.

She attempts to cross her legs, realizes her stomach gave her no room, and instead tucks her feet neatly and sits up straight, almost the edge of her chair.

“Indeed. This seems a lot of work for something that could get me killed on the spot. Especially with two very powerful guards just right outside, and a king who should have been able to easily take down a pregnant woman. Just what could I possibly want?” Livia asks brightly, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

She looks up at the king through her eyelashes, “Any guesses?”

He jerks in his seat. Manages to move a bit before he is forced back into place.

Livia's eyes sparkles and she claps, “Wow. You managed to move a whole centimeter. They don’t call you the Stone King for nothing.”

“Why?” King Grail hisses, his face still flaming red and dangerously thunderous.

“Because it was well deserved,” Livia says easily.

“I tried to help you!” Grail growls.

Livia laughs in his face again.

“Oh fuck. Wasn't that a good joke?” She mocks, wiping away an imaginary tear.

“I gave you everything that had been taken away from you. Your status. Your family. Your engag-”

“What about my virginity? Can you give that back?”

King Grail is at a loss for words. His mouth opens and closes, as his expression sobers up.

“Ooh, how convenient it must be for you,” Livia says, leaning back heavily, “To be able to just forget the facts you don’t want to face. To be able to pretend they don’t exist because you can’t face it. I envy you. I truly do. It must be so handy.”

Grail slumps forward, looking like he aged a hundred years. Tiredly, he asks again, “What do you want, Lady Livia?”

“Retribution.”

“An investigation is already underway, surely it is only a matter of time before you captures are fou-”

“Sweet, but pointless. You and I both know that I already know the culprits.”

“Then if you would just tell me their names, I can send men out to search for the-”

“Rodale Franklin Silvan and Orin Victor Silvan,” Livia says coldly.

King Grail freezes, his eyes rounding, “No. No, my sons would never. They could not have!” He tries to shout near the end, but his voice becomes strangled.

“Certainly, they weren’t the ones that did the actual deed. Those fuckers are still at large. But they were the masterminds behind it. They weren’t satisfied with just my exile. I’m sure they would have happily murdered me themselves if we had been alone, but alas, they had to settle for me being kidnapped, taken into a slave market, and sold,” The words were flat with no emotion attached to them.

King Grail attempts to lunge forward at her and only slams back into his chair, nearly toppling it. Seriously, this ferociously struggling man was a king? Where was the grace? The dignity? Not even a hint of his usual imposing self could be seen.

“You lie!” Grail garbles, “My sons would never be so bloody stupid! They would not jeopardize the kingdom that way!”

“I guess it’s best I just showed you, huh?” Livia says under the strained ranting. She reaches for the plain back choker around her neck, her fingers curling around the small crystal ball hanging at the bast of her throat.

She taps on it twice, and whispers, “Bîr.”

She uses the same two fingers and points it at King Grail, “çûyin.”

Livia has never done this before, so she is a little startled when King Grail's head is flung back violently. She gets up and walks around to get a better look.

The old kings' eyes were wide open but glazed over as they flickered wildly around in their socket. It was more than a little creepy so Livia retreats back to her chair to wait it out.

In the meantime, she wonders if she should explain the bond to Grail as she had to Sen. The blood curse, and the blood pact was not dissimilar, but they were made for almost completely different purposes. The bond Livia has with Sen was to enforce trust, and was double-sided. A bond based on giving and take that was somewhat mutual.

The blood curse was completely one-sided and based on culpability, which transferred into a sort of magical debt. The easiest imagery Livia could think to explain how the blood curse works were chains, and so they manifested that way.

Seen by her eyes only, a deep red, metallic chain was attached to a heavy collar at the base of King Grail's throat. The chain was thick, and trails over his desk, and splits off in five other directions before thinning out and connecting directly to Livia’s wrist. Or more accurately, the veins on her wrist.

For now, King Grail was the centerpiece.

And if she focuses on a single red leash and says, “Wake up!”

King Grail snaps to consciousness, breathing heavily.

“Your sons’ are guilty,” Livia says without prompt, not waiting for the elder man to compose himself.

“You are guilty.”

“I tried to help you! To fix what my sons had done,” King Grail entreats even after seeing what his sons had done himself. Livia had only shown them admitting the fact they played a dominant role in her ruin.

“If that were true, then the blood curse would have never settled so heavily over you. I would not be able to tug and pull at you like a puppet if you had been completely innocent,” Livia says lowly.

“I can still fix this. That’s what you want right? My sons will be brought to justice. They will be put on trial-”

“And exiled? For how long? Months? Days?”

“They will pay for what they have done,” King Grail intones firmly, trying to pull up his kingly guise.

“Ah, just like they ‘paid’ for wrongly accusing me of murder? What was their punishment again? Grounded, right? No more toys? Poor babies. I’m sure they are really struggling to adapt.”

“They had been right in that regard! And it was simple enough of a mistake. Anyone could have made it-”

“Wow. I thought you had put Wisteria even above your own family, but it turns out, your actually really protective of your sons. So much so, you were willing to turn a blind eye on their past deeds and basically gave them a slap on the wrist for their present ones,” Livia says, blinking slowly. As if she didn’t already know this.

“I-…" King Grail stops arguing long enough for what Livia said previously to finally register, his face paling, “Wait. Did you say blood curse? As in dark magic?”

Livia just blinks at him again, “Mmhmm.”

“That magic is forbidden. How dare you. To cast such tainted magic on royal blood. You will be hanged-”

“And were back to violence,” Livia sighs, rolling her eyes.

“Lady Livia, you have been through a lot,” King Grail starts, trying to gain control with reason, “Most people would not have survived what you have, and it is understandable that you would want those who hurt you to suffer, but you are going up against an enemy you cannot even fathom. What can a single woman do against the might of a whole nation? You will not come out of this unscratched. If you let me go now, I will let you off easy and only exile you. No matter what you have planned, there will be nothing you can do once those doors fling open. And even that black magic you use to compel me to your command last only so long. I can feel it lifting up. It’s only a matter of time before it disperses from my person completely.”

Livia raises a single brow, “Impressive. Though in all honesty, I expected you to realize that much five minutes ago. You are correct though. The compulsion, as you like to call it, has a time limit.”

King Grail's smile, unfriendly with too many teeth, is one of victory. He renews his attempts to free himself.

“At least, for you it does.”

King Grail stills, his smile wavering.

Livia smirks coldly, “Your sons on the other hand...well, let’s just say if they were in the same situation as you are, by the time the spell lift, they would have died of dehydration. Or any other fatality that happens from sitting for days on end.”

The blood curse weighs heaviest on Rodale and Orin. Of course, it did. If Livia wished to appease their dept by killing them, she only had to simply ask them to slit their own throats.

But...what was the fun in that?

“Tell me, your highness, if your guilt is a byproduct of your sons' actions, just how heavy must theirs be in comparison to yours?” Livia wonders aloud.

King Grail was no longer smiling.

“What. Do. You. Want?” He snarls out roughly after simmering in a loaded silence.

Livia smiles sweetly.

“Revenge,” She says then leans forward to whisper dangerously, “And you will be the one to help me obtain it.”