Alex’s face immediately darkened. His eyes narrowed as he held Abi’s hand even tighter, as if he would never let go of her if they tried to take her away.
“What are you saying?” he asked, glaring at Zeke.
“Shall I remind you about what I said last night? She failed to do her job, Alex,” Zeke stressed. His voice was as authoritative as ever, as expected of a Crown Prince. “Now I have to punish her because it seems to me that she’s not taking her job very seriously.”
Zeke glanced at Abi with a menacing look. If Zeke hadn’t warned her last night, she would’ve been trembling by now and she might even be clinging onto Alex because of how serious and terrifying Zeke looked like that moment. This man was at it again – putting on his out of this world and unquestionable acting skills. He was just too much into it that he still managed to send shivers down her spine despite her knowing what he was up to.
“Now come over,” he said, looking at her and Abi flinched. She stared at him and then she tried to pull her hand off Alex’s grip to follow this prince to take her punishment.
But Alex didn’t let go.
“Zeke, aren’t you way too into this? You really think this little fragile maid could do her job and follow me? Give her a chance, this is just her first offence.”
“Alex, I don’t understand why you are defending this measly human but… you already know, right? That I will never take back my word no matter how small it is. If I let her go this time, she will take my word to be insignificant and worthless. I will become a laughingstock. Besides, I am sure you very well know that I…” he paused and leaned in on him. “…don’t ever forgive anything or anyone, just like you. Don’t worry, this is only a punishment. It’s not like I have sentenced her to death. She won’t die… I hope.”
As those words left Zeke’s lips, Abi managed to pull her hands off Alex and she stepped towards the guards with a straight back, as if she was a martyr being sacrificed for a cause. She was going to have to play the role that Zeke assigned to her and play it well, just like how he played his role to perfection.
Zeke looked at her and he was impressed by her performance. Good, they needed to make this as realistic as possible for it to have the best effect. They needed to push Alex to the max.
Zeke surveyed Alex’s face. The man was glaring at him with great displeasure. Zeke was still mystified as to why Alex couldn’t defy him, as to why he listened to him. He had been looking for answers since that night he returned but he wasn’t able to find anything, probably because no one has ever done what Alex had done nor gone through what he had gone through. There were just too many mysteries that none of them understood, even now. And the worst thing was that Zeke couldn’t even find a single clue on what was going on. He had many theories, but none of them bore any fruit. He had gone through all the books they had about curses, souls, immortals but he found nothing that was similar to Alex’s situation.
It seemed that their only choice right now was to bring Alex’s memories back to the surface to find out the answers to these mysteries because Zeke believed that Alex might have known all along that all this would happen when he decided to let himself get stabbed.
Over the last three months, he had tried many things to bring Alex back, but he always failed. He went through the list of all the ideas he could think of but nothing seemed to work. He had not really looked into dragging Abigail into this because he knew that it was Alex’s wish for her to forget about him. However, when the information got to him that she had tried multiple times to try to get into Country V, he sent someone to investigate and they found out that Abi retained her memories and that was what drove him to do what he did.
Turning his back from him, Zeke signaled the guards to move. Abi silently followed, throwing a glance at Alex. She was nervous despite putting on a good show for Alex. She should have asked Zeke what kind of punishment was waiting for her. Was he going to whip her? She had heard that this was something that people did often in centuries past. Would they still uphold such old customs?
That thought made her shiver and she shook her head. No, Zeke wouldn’t go that far, right?
Alex just stood there, watching them as they left. His eyes were locked onto the maid’s silhouette. His insides were in chaos again and before he knew it, he followed them. He was holding onto Zeke’s words that this was only a punishment. However, he couldn’t help but frown because all the punishments he could think of that Zeke might give her, were not simple nor painless. He had never seen Zeke give out light punishments and he knew that this time wouldn’t be an exception.
He was torn. Why did he care if she was punished? Well, it was indeed her failure to serve him. She literally kicked him away last night when she was supposed to pull him in to keep watch of him. Had she not refused him last night, he wouldn’t have left and it certainly would have never come to this.
With these thoughts running around in his head, Alex reasoned out that this might give that defiant little lamb a lesson, that it was her mistake that she had refused him. She would even get to see that the man she liked would not hesitate to punish her, and that he gave no second chances. He even thought that this might be good because the little lamb might start to hate Zeke after this. That would be such a good thing for him. One less rival!
Alex leaned on the pillar, planning to watch her from afar. However, after a long while he moved and followed them because they didn’t stop where he thought they would. As he followed them, he started to clench his fists.
He knew where this path led to… the underground dungeon.
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