- At the Carabell Estate after Allen shut the door on Elisabeth and Teresa -

The young man started gasping, his two limbs beginning to give out under his weight. Without waiting for another moment, the duke rushed to summon for some of the nearby maids. “Jillian, hurry up!” The girl with cropped blonde hair sprinted over to the kitchen faucet to fetch some cooling water. The entire estate buzzed around the lord within seconds. “My son, you are safe. I am here for you.” The duke tried to conjure up any feasible approaches to assist Allen. No matter how concerned the esteemed duke was for his dear child, he could do nothing to soothe him but mutter how much he cared for his son. Although he seldom showed it, it was true he loved him.

Allen began coughing, falling to his knees and hands. Salty tears streamed down from his emerald green eyes as he choked, gasping desperately for air. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. Jillian dabbed at his face with a damp towel and provided him with the retrieved water. The distraught duke just paced back and forth as his son melted down into a mess. He felt helpless. The only individuals capable of causing the duke’s sharp green eyes to be filled with sorrow were his children⎯that didn’t exclude Elisabeth.

“Marianne...Marianne!” Duke Carabell roared, his face contorting to dread. The duchess flashed before him in a wisp of black smoke, and swiftly calculating the scene, she nodded to her troubled husband.

“Clusi yuaras monde ende sliipaq. Thonkal ufag thi cluadsat,” the duchess chanted the language of Whitensen mages. Holding her hand out, a flash of dark magic, exuded from her fingertips, enclosed Allen. The motion made his body go limp like a ragdoll, and the panicked maids encircling him shriek.

The duke rushed over to his son and brought him up into his arms. The warmness of his son in his grasp made him relieved. “Close your mind and sleep. Think of the clouds,” he translated out loud. His rapid heart rate gradually slowed down, and his mind felt at ease.

“Hmph! And many, many, years ago, you would have thought the language was dirty. Let’s have him sleep in the guest room,” his wife proposed. The duke was visibly peeved at the objectionable timing of her remark.

The duke and the duchess only wanted to convince their son to come back to the estate and stay. The thought came across the ducal couple a few days ago.

“Allen has to return home. I don’t want him to stay in Leonard. Grenada, do you know what is going on there? Do you know about how the Leonard mages are trying to round up the non-magic users and murder them?” Duchess Carabell questioned her husband at the dinner table.

They had a species of boiled and seasoned crustacean that was common in Whitensen, senters. Senters are almost like a cross between lobsters and crabs. It was left untouched by the duchess, and so were her dining utensils. The inquiry hung in the dining room like the illuminated chandelier overhead of them.

“We cannot ask for him to return if he refuses to. That son of mine is as stubborn as any of the Carabells,” the duke remarked, confliction obvious in the way he frowned.

Should he be proud that his son is almost just like him? Or, should he also demand that Allen come home on the grounds of dragging him back?

“Leonard mages have no discipline. Oscar is a rare exception. To think we would send both our children to an academy run by a Leonard maniac.” The duchess chuckled, covering her mouth with her hand. “Things have changed quite a bit since our times, but it seems the ones that remain in Leonard are still trying to create anarchy.”

Duke Carabell propped his head in his hands. His wife watched him agonize over the thoughts inside of his mind. She reached out to his shoulder and rubbed him in an attempt to comfort her husband.

“For once, Marianne, I don’t know what we should do. Our children, I don’t know what I will do with them. Elisabeth has stayed quiet these couple days. However, Allen is still traumatized. That incident has permanently changed him. Couldn’t they just make amends? This is ridiculous!” he shouted without warning.

Grenada slammed the table and stood up. Marianne swiftly blocked him with the flick of her finger. A burst of inky dark magic restricted him from moving away.

“You blasted mages.” The man gave up almost without hesitation. At first, he thought of breaking through the magical barrier, but he knew how almighty Marianne was. Before he met her, he thought he would never marry a mage. In the end, the influential duke strove to pursue her, his heart stolen by the mischievous vixen. He speculated that if she was the most powerful mage in the Whitensen kingdom, perhaps, she could be an exception. If it weren’t for the fact that this woman was his beloved wife, the table would have been splattered with blood by now.

His wife peered at him with a face of commiseration. “You know you can’t just tell them to overcome their fears and issues. We can’t change what went down that day. As usual, I contacted Allen’s therapist in Leonard, and he’s informed me that Allen hasn’t been visiting his office recently. We aren’t with Allen in Leonard, there’s nothing we can do besides sending letters. I promised him I wouldn’t use magic.”

“Couldn’t you just use your magic regardless of the promise?” The mere suggestion made the duchess want to strangle him. She shot him a menacing glare. “I’ll never break our marriage promise if you’re concerned.”

The duchess silently stared at her husband, and then she burst out in a cackle. “Of course, I know that!” She wiped a tear from her eye. “I gave you two shackles already, and society knows them too well for you to get rid of them.”

“Don’t refer to our children as shackles,” the duke returned. He poked away at his senter. Their dinners have already gone lukewarm.

The influential mage leaned over to Grenada. “The children are shackles, and I’m the chain.” Her sultry voice stimulated goosebumps up and down the man’s scarred arms. His eyes were in the rapture of his wife’s beauty. Then, she quickly added, sitting straight up, “I don’t want anymore. The more children I give you, the older you look.”

The duke gazed upon her with disapproval, heaving a sigh. “I want to be a good parent.”

“Why don’t you try then?” the duchess questioned him. “You don’t look like you’re trying.”

He sent her a scowl. “Of course, I’m trying! You don’t bother with communicating with our children!”

“You are trying to lecture me? I can’t look at either of them since the incident. Elisabeth has a mind of a devil, and Allen is beyond saving.” The duchess wanted to slap the duke across the face for turning the conversation against her.

Grenada rubbed his head with firm circular movements. “We must do something. How many years has it been, Marianne? Here we are, trying to resolve an issue that has lasted for nearly five years now.”

“You know why. We’ve been avoiding it, and this is our punishment. Our son has escaped to a country starting a civil war due to our other child. You cannot disregard how our daughter was recently put on trial for poisoning the Lancasters’ eldest daughter,” Marianne reminded him. “I can’t stand to think that Elisabeth came from my womb.”

The couple was miserably recalling all their faults in parenting. One of them didn’t know how to communicate with their children, and the other wanted nothing to do with them.

“I am a duke, and you are the last of Whitensen’s mages. We know how to hurt so easily, but we’ll never know how to heal. This is exactly why I should have never started a family.” The duke began to cry, droplets rolling down his wrinkled face.

Duchess Carabell pushed out her chair and glared at him. “You can’t possibly be regretting these past years now! Are you trying to tell me you wouldn’t have married me and had kids? Just a moment ago, you were saying that you would never break our marriage promise. Here you are, saying that you don’t want this family!”

“Marianne, I don’t know anymore.”

Slap!

“Grenada, don’t you dare speak to me until you have your act together! I merely suggested bringing our son home, and now you’re blurting out nonsense about not wanting a family!” the duchess screamed.

For the next three days, Duchess Carabell avoided the rest of her family, not bothering to speak to her husband. Sitting at his desk, the duke poured over his work, straining his eyes to focus on the words on the neverending papers.

“This...this is not right,” he said aloud.

Both of his hands were stained with ink, black and red. The duchess’s words rang in his ears.

“Grenada, don’t you dare speak to me until you have your act together!”

The duke may be all-powerful because of his status, but he had plenty of familial predicaments. His son is traumatized, his daughter enjoys attempting to murder people, and he may or may not have a future divorce on his case. The Carabell family didn’t have the image he yearned for: happy and closely-bonded.

“Where did I go wrong?” he questioned himself. “Where did I go wrong?!”

His butler brought his meal straight to his office. However, the man had lost his appetite days ago.

“Duke, you must eat,” the butler warned him. Not heeding his words, the duke waved him away.

He, his wife, and his daughter all lived within the same estate. Even so, they never crossed paths. It’s as if they were all steering clear of one another. The academy debutante ball was right around the corner. The duke thought that if he visited Elisabeth under the pretense that he was just making sure she was prepared for the ball, he could see someone of his own blood. Teresa, his daughter’s maid, had requested to order some black tea leaves from Leonard. He was already immensely suspicious of his daughter’s ploys, so he looked into the order, and there was nothing that was off.

That’s odd.

He was informed that Jillian would be receiving the shipment. The man adjusted his golden rounded-rimmed glasses and checked the time. It was evening already. Staying still, reading documents and handling so much of the duchy’s work, was eating away at his motivation to continue. Ever since that dinner, the duchess has continued to discreetly do her duties as his wife. She usually did the estate’s calculations while the duke worked on the business relations.

A thought crept into his mind. It wouldn’t be strange if I go check Elisabeth’s room, right?

He eventually convinced himself to visit his infamous daughter. “A duke shouldn’t need a reason to visit his daughter.”

Walking through the halls, maids curtsied, and servants bowed. He scarcely paid them any attention. The duke strode through the eerily quiet halls nearby Elisabeth’s room. He had an ominous feeling about this visit, so he picked up his pace. Upon reaching his destination, there was a ginormous wooden door painted white with golden embellishments. He knew his daughter adored the style, so she remodeled her room with all of the same patterns. He could recall the costs straight from the top of his head. However, he didn’t want to think of the expenses now. The unmindful father put his hand on the smooth emerald handle and pushed it open.

This was where he was going wrong. A parent should knock on their children’s door before proceeding in. Then again, it didn’t matter. Elisabeth’s maid greeted him without failure. He observed the room and noticed how there were crumbs on the ground. Once the duke laid his eyes on his sleeping daughter, his veins started pulsing with adrenaline.

“Elisabeth is still sleeping? Ridiculous! How could she be my daughter if she never studies hard nor puts an ounce of effort into anything she does? The academy debutante ball is tomorrow! Every single time she disappoints me with her lax and uncaring attitude.”

To his disbelief, Teresa dared to stop him from proceeding to berate his daughter. “I’m sorry, please do not disturb Lady Carabell. She had fainted from overwork. I moved her to her bed for her to rest,” Teresa explained quickly.

It was only the beginning of his observation of the abnormal change within the Carabell Estate.