I can’t believe how stupid he is…

  Amara sat before her father, uncle, aunt, and two of her cousins with her head bowed.

  That didn’t stop her uncle from kicking her in the face.

  Amara slumped against the wooden floor as her father barked at her uncle, his shadow flickering fiercely from where she laid. One of her cousins flinched at the commotion.

  “Luthor, I’ve told you about striking her! You wish to ruin the girl’s beauty as well as her reputation?”

  “Apologies, Farro,” Luthor Regis spoke with a tone that was anything but apologetic. “But the dishonour she invites upon our family deserves a mark of shame! Are you not able to see it with your own eyes, how we appear to the others?”

  “What I see,” Farro Regis, Amara’s father, slowly spoke. “Is that your last ‘mark of shame’ has not yet faded from my daughter’s face. If your ‘corrections’ did anything useful, we’d have witnessed that by now.”

  Amara simply laid on her side for a time. Her face stung, but the truth of it was, she’d endured worse from him. Still, if she seemed to recover too quickly, her uncle would take offense, and she didn’t want to end up with an injury she couldn’t handle.

  “Well, do you offer a better solution?” Luthor raged. “I’ve heard both the Falcon and the Porter clan talk of this girl and her foreign lover attempting to run off together! Sneaking over the guild walls in the dead of night, only returning after her cash cow prince managed to hospitalise himself, again!”

  “I’ve heard a different story from my daughter,” Farro said, stroking his beard as he spoke.

  Amara stirred a little. She still felt woozy. She knew it wasn’t time to sit up just yet.

  “I’m sure you have,” Luthor spat. “I’m sure she had a million good reasons for trying to leave. She’s a conniving whore, just like her mother.”

  “Careful,” Farro said, eyeing his brother by marriage.

  That one word was all it took for Luthor to draw a shallow breath and shut up.

  Amara sat up afterwards, feeling his power had been stolen away from him.

  As far as Amara was concerned, Luthor was a pathetic man. Her mother’s brother, a man who’d married into the family and bore little talent, Awakening in his twenties and aging more than half as rapidly as a commoner might. He was obsessed with his own success, obsessed with his public facing image to the point that he wore makeup to hide the lines forming on his face.

  And yet, he had many noble connections. Connections which had brought the Regis clan from a small and struggling family to a family with a moderate standing and decent fortune.

  Her father knew all of this and wouldn’t ever kill him. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t take Luthor’s tongue. Especially for bringing up Amara’s mother.

  “I’ll tell you as I told my father,” Amara spoke with a straighter voice and more conviction than she’d believed she could muster. “I saw my union to Damian Voss as hasty. I entertained the pursuit of Cael Soulgrave due to the prestige and far reach of his family name and his brazen interest in me. Two nights ago, I assisted him with fighting beasts in the forest. That is how he came to be injured.”

  “And why was it that Cael Soulgrave sought to do such a thing?” her father’s younger sister asked.

  Amara cleared her throat. “He wishes to grow stronger so that he might challenge Damian Voss. He believes that if he were to lose their next duel, you would exile me from this family.”

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  “You told him this?” her aunt asked.

  “Yes.”

  Amara’s uncle looked as if he really wanted to say something right now, but he was staying his tongue. It was likely something nasty.

  “Well, she could hardly tell him the truth of the matter, could she?” Farro said, sounding exasperated. He sighed. “This whole business of marrying you off has been exhausting. If Cael Soulgrave recovers, again, then have him write to his family and ask them for a suitable dowry. I’ll at least try to pacify the Voss clan in the meantime, but I worry it’ll be the same as last time.”

  “They’re stubborn,” Luthor said, testing the waters. When no one chastised him for speaking, he continued. “The moment their affair was discovered, the Voss clan wanted Cael dead and Amara shamed or gone. Now both.”

  He lowered his voice. “They’re the most powerful family in Skyreach, Farro. Defying them is bad for this family. You have many sons to consider, sons who could yet live good lives and father exceptional children.”

  “I am the leader of this family,” Farro spoke. “You do not need to tell me such things.”

  “Then consider it,” Luthor continued, his voice calmer than earlier. “This Cael Soulgrave has an impressive name, but who are the Soulgrave clan to us? Foreigners from half a country away. Have you ever met one besides him?”

  “That clan has levelled entire regions alone.”

  “In our lifetimes?” Zhong put his hands up. “Besides, who’s to say Cael is even favoured by his family? There’s hundreds of them, and he’s a rather unremarkable mage, or warrior. Early Tier 1 at age twenty? With all the resources he’s surely had access to?”

  “I understand your point,” Farro said. “Even still, I believe he’s worth considering.”

  “I’ve already contacted the necessary people about Amara,” Luthor said. “Was their proposal not simpler? Less reliant on young scions waking up from comas?”

  “The people you contacted can wait,” Farro grumbled. “Amara is a child of great beauty, touched by the heavens. It would do to marry her, not ship her off like livestock.”

  They talked around it. Amara knew from her and her father’s last discussion what he was alluding to, but her cousins in the room at least didn’t.

  It was an uncomfortable topic, enough so that it made her aunt a shade lighter.

  Enough so that it made Amara’s skin crawl.

  She knew her father didn’t want it for her. That he wasn’t comfortable with the suggestion.

  That said, even the partriarch of the Regis clan was only as powerful as his empathy.

  And to Farro Regis, the idea of selling his daughter off to the kingdom’s royal family was a mild discomfort at best, despite whatever atrocious rumours about them he might have believed…

  She was sure the price they offered was more than fair.

  Luthor smiled, his pastey lips stretching wide.

  “She has valuable blood, Farro. It wouldn’t do to waste a drop of it.”

  ***

  Amara went to the hospital wing and checked on Cael every day from then on, so much so that Elder Morris started readying an extra cup of tea in the mornings. She slipped him the best medicines she could. Even the ones she knew she’d eventually get discovered for having stolen. It didn’t matter any more. Discretion might as well be out the window by now. She just wanted him to wake up, the idiot.

  He’d been in her corner. Even if him writing to his family didn’t solve everything, even if he couldn’t magically become strong enough to fight Damian Voss… it didn’t matter.

  Maybe they could just run away together this time.

  She’d tell him that when he woke up. That there was nothing worth staying for here, and that they should get the hell out. She’d apologise for lying to him and beg that they leave.

  Hell, Amara would insist that he leave if he didn’t want her around after. As long as he didn’t stay and get killed for her sake.

  She hadn’t wanted to lie to him. She simply couldn’t utter the truth.

  Amara was terrified of being sent to that place.

  But she wasn’t worth being killed for.

  Wake up, Cael.