Chapter 119: Father and Daughter
**Thelma Zane’s POV**
Master Mary’s expression was unreadable as she stared at the southern Duke. With a deep sigh, she chose to say nothing and instead turned her attention to the task at hand. She cast a spell that incinerated the hair strand into ashes, blending it with a small drop of blood she had extracted from the southern Duke’s fingertip. With the mixture, she carefully drew a hexagram on Adele’s forehead.
Moments later, Adele’s erratic behavior subsided. She slumped in the chair, her body limp, resembling a lifeless doll.
“You’ve been cursed,” the southern Duke said, his voice dry and heavy with meaning. “Your master, the night magus Kafka, must have forced you to swear on your parents‘ blood to protect his identity, didn’t he?”
Adele coughed weakly but then broke into a sharp, unsettling laugh. Her eyes glimmered with defiance.
“Yes and no,” she replied cryptically. “I did take an oath upon my bloodline, but no one forced me. I accepted the curse of kinship willingly. I chose to bear the punishment of my blood if ever I betrayed the secret.”
The southern Duke’s composure cracked as confusion flashed across his face. “Why?” he
demanded.
Everyone in the room was equally bewildered, the tension thick enough to cut. Adele’s cryptic answers left us grappling for meaning.
Adele’s lips twisted into a mocking smile. “Stop pretending, you noble hero. Don’t act as though you don’t know why. Are you really going to stand here and feign ignorance about my identity in front of all these people?”
Her words struck like a bolt of lightning. Gasps rippled through the hall as shock registered on every face.
Could it be? Did the southern Duke and Adele share a history?
The elder aligned with the anti–king faction seized the moment like a wolf scenting blood. He leapt forward, pointing an accusatory finger at the southern Duke. “What is the meaning of this, Your Grace? Have you been consorting with this despicable witch? The people answers! If you refuse to explain yourself, I have every reason to question your loyalty to the throne!!
emand
The room was silent, but the expressions of the other anti–king faction members made it clear they saw an opportunity. They were poised to exploit the situation to discredit the southern Duke, if not outright destroy him.
Chantée 190 Fallier and Daughter.
Sensing the brewing storm, my father stepped in his voice steady but firm. “Lennon, don’t let this witch’s provocations shake you. Let us return to the interrogation and-”
“Thank you for your concern, Your Majesty,” the southern Duke interrupted. His voice was laced with a strange mix of resignation and determination. “But it is time I face my mistakes.”
“Lennon…” My mother’s voice joined Duke Frank’s, both attempting to dissuade him.
But the southern Duke had made up his mind. His resolve was unshakable as he prepared to unearth a truth that promised to shatter everything we thought we knew.
Adele’s eyes blazed with intensity as she locked her gaze on him. Her voice dripped with venom. “Mistakes? Is that what you call it now? Lennon Kavici Asistina, when you swore to my mother with that name, did you think the day would come when you’d reduce everything to a mere ‘mistake‘?”
“This has nothing to do with your mother!” the southern Duke growled, his voice cracking under the weight of his anguish. “It’s all my fault I caused everything!”
His confession only deepened the mystery. Whose mother? What mistake?
Adele’s laughter was cold, devoid of any warmth. “An apology? Do you think a simple apology can erase the past? Let me tell you, my mother was a fool for ever trusting someone like you. Her misery was her own doing. She paid the price for loving a man who never deserved her devotion.”
Her words were like daggers, cutting through the southern Duke’s stoic demeanor. He was trembling, his breath ragged, his chest heaving like a storm about to burst.
“You will not insult her,” he snapped, his voice trembling with both fury and pain. “She was your mother!”
Adele’s calmness in the face of his outburst was unnerving. “She wasn’t my mother,” she said
flatly.
The room fell silent as everyone hung on her every word.
“She didn’t even give birth to me,” Adele continued, her voice a monotone. “To save a man- a foolish man–she cut open her own stomach. She turned her unborn child into a concoction of twigs and rotting leaves, sacrificing herself for some delusional idea of love.”
She
paused, her expression hardening into something unrecognizable.
“God is strict, isn’t He? A life for a life. One cannot barter for more than what the heavens. decree. Yet she tried. She thought she could cheat fate by offering her own life and mine in exchange for yours.”
The hall was thick with an oppressive silence. Each word from Adele was a stone dropped into
an endless void.
“Women who love are fools,” Adele sneered. “She knew you weren’t afraid of death. You gloried in it, eager to enter the Moon Temple as a hero. But she still sacrificed herself, giving up everything her body, her child–Just to save you. And what did she get in return?
“You forgot her. You wore the hero’s badge and basked in the adoration of thousands. You married a woman blessed by the gods, had a child of your own, and built a life far removed from her memory.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper, the venom still potent. “Meanwhile, her body rotted in an unmarked grave. Her soul dissolved into the ether. She was erased from existence, remembered by no one, mourned by no one.
“So tell me, why should I respect her? Why should I honor a woman so foolish, so self-
for you, destructive, so cold as to abandon her child for a man who never looked back? And as my hypocritical father…”
Her words hung in the air, the weight of them almost unbearable. The southern Duke’s eyes filled with unshed tears, his face a portrait of devastation.
not
The truth Adele had revealed was staggering. Her pain, her fury, and her bitterness were the product of mindless malice but the result of a story so tragic it left the room breathless. And yet, the questions that lingered were even heavier: How much of this would change what we thought we knew? And how much more of this harrowing tale was yet to be told?
