Ch 95: Too Cruel

I fucking hate you.

Olivia grumbled as she glared at the spot where Lucien had been standing just a tenth of a second ago. She burned with a deep sense of injustice watching him simply vanish, leaving the two of them stranded before a mansion-like estate. At its entrance stood a woman in a maid's uniform, her black hair pinned neatly into a bun, her hands clasped together at her front. The maid glanced at Olivia, then at Joseph, and with a smile, parted the doors open and gestured for them to come inside.

"Lord Lucien must have had something important to attend to," the maid offered gently, having clearly noticed the anger etched across Olivia's face.

Joseph had already stepped through the doors without a word.

Olivia made sure to linger a moment longer, turning back to stare at the very spot where Lucien had disappeared from. He could have at least said goodbye. And she had not even managed to thank him. Part of her anger was because he had abandoned them at some stranger's house with nothing more than a promise that the person could be trusted, and part of it was because the chance to thank him properly had passed her by entirely. She should have said something when he had pulled them out of the miasma forest. She was furious at Lucien, and furious at herself in equal measure.

Stomping her feet lightly against the floor, she followed Joseph inside. Behind her, the maid seemed to worry slightly at the weight of Olivia's mood.

***

Melissa swung her legs back and forth idly in the air. She was sitting on one of the vacant benches that lined the edges of the training ground, her head hanging low, her face drawn into a pout as her feet brushed lazy arcs through the empty morning air. "Does he not want anything to do with me anymore, because I cried yesterday?" she murmured to herself, pressing her fists against the sides of the bench.

The sun had already climbed well above the horizon, bathing the world in layered hues of gold and pale blue. The training ground, unlike the day before, held a few scattering of students. Some were running laps around the track while others sparred at the far end of the field.

And yet Lucien had still not arrived, even though the hour had crept well past six and was now edging toward seven in the morning. She knew she ought to have returned to her dormitory by now. But she had not moved, because she knew Lucien was a rigid and reliable person who always kept to his word. And that was precisely what unsettled her. He had not come, and that absence was feeding thoughts she did not want to have. Thoughts that whispered he had been irritated by the way she had hugged him yesterday, that a person who prized keeping himself neat and clean above all else must have been irritated by her rubbing her tears against him, and that he no longer wished to train someone like her.

Lucien was someone who placed strength and power above everything. He would have no patience for someone as weak as Melissa. She bit down hard on her lower lip and felt a surge of anger directed entirely at herself for breaking down over Eleena's words the day before. She should have held herself together. She should have swallowed her tears and kept her composure, but she had not, and she had cried so thoroughly that when she had returned to her dormitory room and caught her own reflection, she had nearly frightened herself.

She tilted her head up to scan the training ground for any sign of Lucien, but instead her gaze snagged on Eleena, who was jogging along the track at the far side of the field. Melissa snapped her eyes away immediately, the motion was too fast. She wanted nothing more to do with Eleena. The girl had been cruel and vicious, calling her slut and bitch the day before, simply because Lucien had chosen to train Melissa. As though that alone made her something shameful. Melissa had never done anything to deserve such words, and she never would.

What made it even more infuriating was that Eleena was the direct cause of Melissa's tears. If Eleena had kept her mouth shut, none of it would have happened. Melissa felt the anger kindle anew inside her chest at the mere thought of it. She was not some pitiful, fragile creature just because she had cried. She was strong, and she refused to endure that kind of treatment quietly. Looking back, the signs had been there from the very first day they had spoken, that Eleena did not like her. It was evident on Melissa's very first day in an academy, when Eleena asked Melissa about her relationship with Lucien that Eleena did not like Melissa. But Melissa had been too forgiving and let it go. That kindness had only invited something far worse.

She shook her head and slapped both palms against her cheeks, trying to scatter the thoughts. She was done with Eleena. She had already delivered punishment to Eleana with a slap the day before, and though Melissa clearly did not consider that the slap had evenly returned the humiliation. But, nevertheless, Melissa had made her peace with it. But if the girl ever spoke badly of her again, the next slap would be hard enough to leave a mark that would make Eleena think twice before opening her mouth.

Melissa’s eyes were beginning to blur and sting just thinking about how close things had come to going truly wrong. Had Lucien not appeared at that precise moment, she did not want to imagine what would have followed. Eleena was a powerful noble. Melissa was the daughter of an unknown commoner from a small village that most people had never even heard a name of.

"The world is so cruel," she muttered, pressing her nails into her palms.

"Indeed," a voice replied, and Melissa's head snapped upward. "But you could always carve out a good life for yourself."

***

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