Ripples

Anchor V

Includes blood, character illness, and mentions of previous character deaths, murder, and homicidal thoughts

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"I heard... that you have been sleeping with a boy," Claude began one afternoon. His daughter, who was sipping her tea daintily, nearly choked on her drink. "Wh-What?"

"The maids were gossiping about finding a boy in your bed last week," Claude continued, taking a sip of his own tea before lifting his head to reveal a smirk. Although his eyes were clear and content, happy if Athanasia dared to say, the princess still felt a chill run down her back. "We just slept, nothing else."

"We're children, what did you expect?" Athanasia thought with a sigh. However, even as she stared at her father, eyes wide and gleaming with mild adoration, she felt that something was wrong.

They were sipping tea, as they did daily, with an assortment of snacks for the sweet-toothed lady. Still, as she took a bite of some random chocolate fudge, she felt her heart throb painfully. "How odd. Then again, it doesn't matter. Maybe I just drank something spoiled this morning."

Turns out that it was something far more concerning. When her heart throbbed painfully again, the princess coughed and spilled her drink. But that aromatic Lippe tea dripping on the ground was the least of her worries when she glanced around. There were drops of a liquid on her dress and the grass, ruby as the eyes of the mage that she loved.

"Lucas," she whispered before falling to the ground.

~~~{•}~~~

Claude couldn't quite handle the irritation when he heard that his daughter was fraternizing with some boy. He guessed that it was the same man as the one that he saw her greet, but that excused nothing. How dare that boy to sneak into the chambers of a princess? So he ordered Felix to investigate it.

Lucas knew that they were investigating him. It was difficult not to when there was suddenly an increase of guards in the palace, and a knight had been placed outside of Athanasia's chamber. "How laughable. As if they could ever do anything to me."

However, whenever he thought that, Athanasia's doubtful expression would appear in his mind, leaving him to remember about their deaths and last life. He gritted his teeth, remembering about what the emperor could do while Lucas was still so weak, his mana unstable and severely lacking. "I need to go to the world tree."

Just as he was beginning to think that, the unthinkable happened. The wizard knew that Athanasia had massive amounts of mana. That was the whole purpose of the holy beast that she named "Blackie." Still, with the regular head pats and forehead taps that he has done, he had not expected for her mana to explode.

By the time that Lucas felt her consciousness waver, his name on her lips and calling him, Claude was frozen with confusion and a blizzard of memories.

"I've seen this before," he thought with fascination and horror as he stared at the blood, vaguely remembering a rainy evening with his daughter on the ground. She was facing a black-haired teen, one whose ruby eyes were glaring at him. But he didn't care. All that he saw vividly was the foot on his daughter's neck. Claude knew, with a great deal of horror and shame, that he had killed his precious daughter.

"Princess!" Felix exclaimed, sending Claude to his feet as he panicked. He gathered the maiden into his arms, yelling at Felix to call upon an imperial doctor. While the red-haired man ran to follow his command, the emperor clung to Athansia and sprinted to the direction of his chamber. It was only when he got there, placing the unconscious maiden on the bed, that Lucas arrived with a frown on his face.

The mage took one look at his princess before swiftly realizing the cause of everything. However, he couldn't stop the rage from overflowing when he saw the man that killed him. "Useless, just as always."

Claude was frozen, staring at the younger version of the teenager in his memories. He had caught a glimpse of him before, in the forest of the garden, before his daughter. However, the memories were never so vivid. Of that rainy day, all of them in the middle of a field of flowers, Claude remembered about them. "One dead and the other filled with hatred."

His head throbbed painfully, a vicious stab that nearly sent him to his knees, but he pushed it away and glared at a pair of rubies. When hatred clashed with hatred, raging lava with the tumultuous sea, Claude opened his mouth and spoke through clenched teeth. "Heal her."

He could not explain his ire, nor the hatred that he felt. Perhaps, it was because he knew, with distinguishable certainty, that this was the boy that she had been seen sleeping with. Either way, it didn't keep him from knowing that the child was loyal to his princess. So, even if Claude wanted to kill him on the spot, he had to squash his anger and simply watched Lucas heal Athanasia.

And, when his daughter woke up with a smile on her face, screaming "Papa" for the entire empire to hear, Claude clung to Athanasia and thought, "Maybe that wizard isn't so bad, after all."