The Villainess was Loved

Chapter Sixty-nine: When It Rains IV

“How do you feel?”

Breca asked as she walked into my room with hot chocolate in her hand.

“The maids said you haven’t eaten; I thought you’d need this?”

“Thanks.”

I pointed to the space on my desk, gesturing that she should place it there, then leave, but the message must have gotten cross-wired because she put the drink then threw her body to my bed.

“How long will you keep working? It’s midnight.”

“Where is Kat?”

“Oh, Wow…”

“Did you tell her you like her?”

“Bringing a gun to a knife fight, are we?”

She answered, smiling.

I placed aside the strained financial documents I was hell-bent on rectifying, then turned my attention to Breca.

“Is there something you wish to discuss that can’t wait till morning?”

“You know how I know you are pissed off.”

“Pray tell…”

“You get weirdly formal, serious and distant.”

“Thank you for your astute observation.”

“ ‘Astute’! Can you even hear yourself? ‘Astute!’ Damn, some difficult words up in here! You think we all walk around with thesauruses.”

“What do you want, Breca? I am not in the mood.”

“And boy, don’t you show it.”

Under the assumption that Breca had no more to say, I took the papers I had previously placed aside.

“Kat, at the beginning of the evening, followed Wreigner to the pub in town and caused a stir. Currently, however, Kat’s jet-lagged, and Wreigner is on his way to the capital.”

“Hmm…”

“ ‘Hmm…’? That’s it? You don’t have more to say on my summary?”

“We may have lost any connection we previously had to the west because of Kat’s stupid cupid plan.”

“Okay, that’s not fair. He was going to confess sooner or later.”

“I would have preferred later! Perhaps by then, I would have been married, and he would be too ashamed to confess-”

“He confessed while he was engaged. Hell, you two slept together while he was engaged. Don’t you think that by now, you have already established how little you deem arranged marriages?”

“Anyway…”

I stressed, then continued.

“The Empress might be the only way for us to establish trade routes with Central.”

“Did you reject him because of that? Because you wanted to get on the Empress’s good side, for Clay?”

“I would also like to keep the slave witch under Kat’s protection for the meantime before the trial date is set. Could you let her know tomorrow?”

“Arusei.”

“I’ll take the soldiers and slaves for training in the mountains, and a month later, we should be ready to attack the Theocracy; as per judicial law, I have already informed them of what I intend to do.”

“For god’s sake Arusei, you just lost a friend. It is okay to pause! You are human and wholly pregnant at that!”

“Well, what do you want me to do? I can’t stop because time doesn’t allow me to; Breca, at most, I have a few months before the cut off to terminate the pregnancy legally. I can’t waste time running around with children dressed in imperial uniform claiming they are knights! This is the third case of them fighting with the enslaved people because of their false sense of superiority?”

I tossed the documentation presented to me by both Leon and Tara.

“So you intend to kill them in the mountains!?”

“NO! I intend to let the ones with enough skills survive.”

“The slaves don’t have enough skills!”

“I will protect the slaves training to be knights, but imperial knights are supposed to uphold their honour!”

“You will be sued.”

“If some die, the death will be caused wholly by their incompetence. Plus, no court will take up a military case from Clay after I am done with the Viscount!”

“And no knight will want to be posted here either?”

“They will.”

“Hah! Before that, cases concerning your methods will pile up at some point!”

“But won’t it be interesting to know if they will have gotten their heads out of their asses and understood that they need each other to survive before then?”

Breca sighed, then dropped her back to the bed.

“I don’t think you should terminate the pregnancy.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“It’s not a girl.”

“What?”

“The witch doctor, between you and me, I don’t think she can be called a physician, told me that you were to expect a boy.”

“What the hell happened to doctor-patient confidentiality!! And why did she tell you yet refuse to tell me?”

“First of all, she’s not a doctor, maybe a herbalist? Second of all, the earth told her?”

“Breca, I am serious!”

“So am I! She told me this when I gave Kat a town tour. She didn’t tell me with Kat, so you’ll have to break the news to her yourself.”

My head flashed to the chubby goldened-eyed creature laughing in my vision.

Save for the eyes; they reminded me very much of Aran.

Aran, who I left behind, no better than abandoning him alone.

‘Gods!... I wish I didn’t know the gender… it’s too much!’

“A boy will not be of any advantage to my goals.”

I said curtly, and rather than still at my curt tone, Breca eyed me suspiciously.

“Try that…less, formally?”

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

“You should leave; I am getting sleepy.”

“Does the fact that you turned Wreigner down mean the first prince is the father?”

“I swear, Breca! If you came into my room to piss me off-!”

“I know you are scared, terrified even, but I don’t think your reasons for terminating the pregnancy are personal. I feel like you want to fit into the Empress’s plan, but do you know how painful and empty it feels to give something so precious away because of external validation? You already can’t marry Harell; you said your personalities don’t mix, so why force yourself to?”

“I swear to-,”

“I am not saying this as ‘you have to keep the child for us to be friends’. I will be right by your side no matter the outcome; I am just saying this so that you know there are other options. I will be here for whatever you choose so-.”

“We can’t fight against-,”

‘Why the hell is my voice trembling so much?’

“The royal family. We can hardly establish ourselves within their constant interference. Breca, do you know that they can tear this thing inside me apart? I told you that I seem to lack the capability to end the lives of-”

I was spiralling; perhaps that is why Breca chose that exact moment to cut my sentence off.

“The Empress only has so much control.”

“Not just the empress but the first prince! What the hell am I supposed to do if he finds out? Did you know dragons can smell their kin?”

“I knew I should have prevented you from going on a book spree. You read too much!”

Breca said quietly, then took a deep breath to continue.

“You didn’t read? Did you?”

“Read what?”

“The gossip section of…, we receive newspapers two days late, right? So if it came yesterday, then that means…Godsday?”

‘So that’s like Tuesday.’

“Rheyes was spotted going shopping with Mitchelle Sinclair. She is the second born of the Lundossa household, which a powerhouse in the north; if he mates with her, he will lose interest in anyone else, even offspring outside his mate.”

“I don’t know if you know this.”

She continued.

“But once a dragon mates, they lose interest in other people outside of their family; even children born out of wedlock are often forgotten.”

“Hah! How cruel. Breca, what if I die and they have no one who will love them?”

“First of all, you won’t die because you will join a monastery and live a life of abstinence until the little jelly bean inside you is at least twenty, and what do you mean no one to love them? Do I look like a cow?”

“Kat might leave to start her family soon. Won’t you do the same?”

“Are you mocking me? I’ve been single since I was born, hopelessly devoted to a love so unrequited that its bitterness is all that’s left at this point, so I’d say not likely.”

My hand clawed at my mouth as a wail escaped me for the first time in what felt like forever.

Without knowing, I was doing it again.

Putting others’ needs so far beyond my own that the possibility of carrying a baby to term felt impossible; no instead, it felt ill-permitted.

But now…

“Don’t cry!”

“Bu…t I do…n’t wanna…!”

I wailed even louder.

“Oh god, how the hell will you ever survive without me?”

With those nagging words, Breca stood from her position and embraced my wailing self.

It was hard to tell why I was crying.

Hormones, relief, grief, Étienne’s words at the ball, the cruel reality that the child might not leave Clay until the announcement of the wedding of the first prince and the Lundossa household, where they will be expected to mate, or perhaps it was the loss of someone to blame if I perhaps did not keep the child.

After all, what would I know about motherhood, about love?

*

*

*

The days passing were eventful; perhaps, due to no fault of his own, because the Viscounts’ wife leaked the injustice of her son’s death to the media. A move that, for good reason, had been prevented by the Viscount’s lawyer.

This, in turn, pushed forward a court case before they had time to collect any information I had.

A letter with a request for interference was sent to Clay from the Empress, and rather than the long-awaited response, a rejection letter for both the interference and marriage proposal was sent.

Two weeks passed, and the scheduled training camp was underway; of the fifty-four knights, forty-seven returned.

The indisciplined cases dropped as more knights preferred to use their time training than picking fights with those ‘protected’ by the countess.

A month later, towards the end of summer, the militia attacked the theocracy.

The war, which had been ongoing for years, ended in two months, with the assimilation of Evlon Thecoracy from the Aquellian continent to Norvig. The war was finally over, and I was summoned to the capital, four months pregnant.

For two reasons, the first was the viscount trial, and the second for an honorary reward which comprised of an increase in salary, militia and compensation of my choosing.

The case lasted longer than I would have wanted it, three days. Without a satisfactory conclusion, because I had too much evidence against the entire family that pointed them to the a*******n of prisoners for slave trade, they settled by agreeing to pay a reasonable sum for wasting my and the judge’s time.

The Viscount’s wife filed for divorce, but I ignored much past the twenty billion in gold and two diamond mines transferred to my name and just like that, at the beginning of Autumn, I believed that the rain had lifted.

I had a week more before my summoning, where I would confirm in detail what would be given to me. Breca, surprisingly, Leon, who had been glued to me since the rejection letter I sent to the Empress and me, left for the noble city of Patum.