Chapter 395: This Is Why I Hate Prophecies

After dinner, everyone turned in for the night. Lily still didn’t show her face even once. The next day, most of us woke up late for breakfast.

No one could blame us for savoring the luxury of actual bedding after spending weeks (if not months by Earth’s standard time) wandering through a nightmare-infested jungle.

Honestly, I didn’t even want to get out of bed. Half because I was still sore and bone-tired, and the other half because I spent most of the night tossing and turning.

Why did her reaction bother me so much?

Should I apologize?

How would I even apologise?

Wait a second! I’m her Master! She should be the one apologizing to me!

Thoughts like those kept bombarding my mind in a loop.

By the time I finally dragged my sorry self down to the dining hall, the sun was high enough to be offensive.

The smell of an actual, decadent breakfast — sizzling bacon, toasted bread, exotic soups, and expensive teas — was like a glimpse of heaven.

Mostly everyone else had already eaten at a reasonable hour that was usually reserved for breakfast, so there weren’t many people present here.

For starters, there was Michael.

He had his face pressed against the long dining table next to a plate of half-eaten eggs, while Ray was very aggressively nursing a cup of coffee next to him.

"Morning, Sunshine," Ray muttered, not even bothering to look up. "Or is it afternoon now?"

"Shut up," I said, sitting down as my joints popped in protest. "How do you have this much energy? I feel old."

I suppose my body was still recovering from the added strain of the grafting surgery, because I certainly looked like I was having a worse time than anyone else.

There was also a constant chill in my right arm, though its intensity wasn’t nearly as unbearable as the first time I’d felt it.

Ray smirked before nodding sagely like he was about to impart some grand wisdom. "You act happy, you feel happy. That’s the secret to life, young one!"

I gave him a deadpan look. "So, I take it they returned your drone?"

His smirk immediately widened into a full-blown grin as he produced a drone from behind his back, holding it up high.

"Yup! Not a single second of footage deleted! Well, except for that conversation between you and your aunt. They purged that. But I’ll be generous enough to forgive your family for such a minor transgression—"

A guard standing behind him cleared his throat with a loud cough.

"—I’m glad your family is generous enough to forgive someone as lowly and impatient as me," Ray corrected smoothly, tucking the drone away with blurring speed.

The guard didn’t move. He just remained there by the wall at full attention, looking like a particularly judgmental suit of armor.

I ignored them both, reaching for a piece of toast and buttering it.

"Where is everyone?" I asked. Gods, my voice sounded like it had been dragged through gravel.

"Vince is in the keep, greedily eyeing all the golden statues. He can’t seem to wrap his head around how much of this fortress’s architecture is made of actual bullion," Ray replied. "Sweet Alexia is somewhere being the doll she is. Michael, as you can see, has fused with the mahogany. I’m just keeping him company."

I... didn’t know if what he was doing counted as keeping company.

Michael let out a muffled groan into the table, which I took as a greeting.

"And Juliana?" I tried to make the question sound casual, like I was just taking attendance.

I failed.

My hand applied a bit too much force to the strawberry jam, and the butter knife tore straight through the toast. It was a tell so obvious that Ray might as well have caught it on his drone in 4K.

Thankfully,

because

it was Ray, he didn’t notice a thing. "Ah, the Ice Queen has finished breakfast long ago and has now been practicing sword arts in the second-floor garden. It’s a beautiful garden, by the way. Very scenic. My family has one just like it."

I offered a stiff nod in response but my mind was already elsewhere.

As I ate, the two of us talked about a dozen different topics, occasionally trying to cheer up Michael.

Nothing worked.

After I finally finished my meal, we gave up on words and simply dragged the heartbroken boy toward the bathhouse.

•••

Just so we’re on the same page, it wasn’t an

actual

bathhouse.

It was simply the communal bathing area of the main mansion, but it was so incomprehensibly large it could have doubled as a small lake. (I’m

slightly

exaggerating.)

The steam rising from the hot water within the carved marble tub in the floor was thick enough to reduce visibility to barely a meter. It was perfect, honestly.

Because I didn’t want to look at Michael’s moping face or Ray’s surprisingly toned physique while I tried to wash away the literal and metaphorical grime of the last few weeks.

I still had thick layers of gauze wrapped around my right arm to hide its monstrous appearance, so no one noticed the difference much even as we all stripped down.

Then, we dumped Michael into the shallow end of the pool. He floated there like a piece of depressed driftwood.

"Please don’t drown," I told him, leaning my head back against the heated stone of the tub’s edge.

"Don’t worry," he gurgled.

I

was

worried. The guy was actually in depression.

Ray, meanwhile, was busy seeing if he could use the rising steam to pull off some kind of theatrical entrance, disappearing into a fog bank only to reappear a few feet away with a splash.

For the second time in a single day, I ignored him.

After we finished bathing, I called in a few butlers to give us all a proper shave and a civilized haircut.

Even with the rough stubble on my face, I didn’t look

terrible

. But I just...

You see, I didn’t have much in common with my father in terms of appearance.

We had the same shade of hair, sure. But he liked to keep his styled in waves that flowed down to his neck like a lion’s mane. I preferred to keep mine short.

As for our eyes — his were a tinge lighter than mine, and much scarier. Although people told me my eyes held the same egotistical resolve that was the signature trait of every Theosbane, I never really saw it.

Also, he was broad and heavily muscled. But I hated his physique because it wasn’t aesthetically appealing. Not to me, at least.

So, despite being father and son, we shared no strong resemblance in features or build.

...Except for our beards.

Both our facial hair was dark black, in stark contrast to our golden-blond hair. It’s a weird combination, I know. I’ve been told.

But that was the reason I hated keeping a beard. It made me look too much like him.

So, I sat there in the plush barber’s chair, the scent of expensive sandalwood shaving cream was all that filled the air as a very focused butler worked a straight razor along my jawline.

Before long, the three of us were looking as clean and sharp as men’s magazine models.

•••

By the afternoon, our weapons were returned to us.

The knights had retrieved them from the depths of the

Lake

after my father had rescued everyone. Along with

Aurieth

and my Vajra, the trident — the one that wasn’t currently soul-bound to anyone — was also handed back to me.

I never offered it to my companions because I had a very good candidate in mind for it. I just needed to get back to the Academy.

Speaking of going back... it was time.

An entourage of guards was making the final preparations to escort us back to Earth — specifically to Luxara, my hometown and one of the two Ducal capitals of the West.

My father didn’t come to bid me goodbye, which was expected.

...So I went to him.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t exactly excited to see the man. I just needed to clear up a few things I hadn’t had the chance to address during our last chat.

To start with, I needed to know what Thalia’s death prophecy even was.

•••

"You’re asking me?"

"...Who else am I supposed to ask?"

Uncle Thorax blinked at me. I blinked back harder.

Yeah, apparently, my father wasn’t in his office, and I had no idea where else he’d be in this massive fortress. So, I’d just grabbed my uncle when our paths crossed outside the throne room in the garden.

"Why do you even want to know her prophecy?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

His suspicion was logical.

If you know a person’s death prophecy, you can

try

to guide them toward it. You won’t always succeed, but an attempt wouldn’t hurt.

And considering how much drama there was between Thalia and me, my uncle was likely assuming that I was planning her murder.

"I’m not planning her murder," I said bluntly, rolling my eyes. "I just want to know if it’s related to the war I’m being sent to."

"It isn’t," he replied, already beginning to turn away.

I quickly sidestepped to block his path, staring directly into the eyes of a man who stood more than two heads taller than me. "Let me be the judge of that. Or am I trusted enough to bleed for the family, but not trusted enough to know the dangers involved?"

Uncle Thorax kept looking at me. Then he sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. Finally, he gazed down at me, and just as I was preparing a follow-up argument, he began to recite a poem in his rumbling baritone voice:

"Chained in iron, walled in stone,

Far from family, you die alone.

The war is lost, your banners fall,

Slain by the one your own you call."

...Fuck.

The ominous words hung there for a moment too long, like the humidity before a thunderstorm.

I felt that familiar, nagging chill in my right arm again — a prickle that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the garden around us.

"

Slain by the one your own you call?

" I repeated.

Uncle Thorax didn’t nod, but his silence was loud enough.

I still pressed ahead anyway. "That sounds like we’re going to be betrayed from the inside. I really don’t like that phrasing, especially when Aunt Morgan just confirmed we found assassins embedded in the household staff—"

Uncle Thorax grabbed my shoulder to cut me off. "Hey. Not

we

.

She

. This was your

sister’s

prophecy, Samael.

She

was the one fated to be betrayed by someone she called her own. There are a thousand ways to interpret a prophecy. Don’t panic more than you need to."

That did absolutely

nothing

to reassure me.

"Besides," he continued, all but hissing now. "We have already cleared any suspicious personnel from the ranks. We have been thorough. Your job will just be to lead our fleets to Ezra, hand over command to him, and only fight when absolutely necessary. Got it?"

...That

still

didn’t reassure me.

But I answered anyway, keeping my voice flat. "Lead the fleets, hand over command, fight only when needed, and don’t die. Got it."

Yeah, I added the

don’t die

part myself.

Still... it sounded simple when he said it.

But prophecies have a nasty habit of turning

simple

into

confusing

.

’Slain by the one your own you call.’

If that was Thalia’s fate, then the traitor wasn’t just some disgruntled foot soldier or a lowly servant.

It was someone in the inner circle.

Someone who shared our table.

Maybe even someone who shared our... blood.

...No, hold on!

That would contradict the

’Far from family, you die alone’

part.

Actually, on that note, if Thalia was originally going to join Ezra at

Iron Height

, how was she supposed to end up

’far from family’

?

...Argh!

See? This is exactly why I hate prophecies.