My FAIR Lady |FAIRVERSE Book ~ 1|✓

Chapter ♦ 38

Zylith.

I'm a very forgiving person, I really am, but... there are somethings even I can't digest without a qualm; such as knowing that Fredurd was appointed to be my personal knight not because he was promoted, but because he was demoted.

I could no longer maintain the smile on my face when I heard Fredurd's words.

".......What did you just say?" I asked in a slow foreboding voice.

"I was punished to be the first Queen's personal knight. Whuwaaaaa!" He repeated again and the words almost pierced through my poor heart.

"....It was a punishment?....."

"Yes Your Highness, at first I thought it was ridiculous that I was appointed as your personal sworn knight as my punishment, it seemed more like a promotion to me as well. But after I met you, I finally understood that it really was meant to be a punishment(Sob, sob~)."

I wonder why I had the sudden murderous urge to throttle someone.

"......I see, and what was your grave mistake for such a punishment?" I questioned with gritted teeth.

"I.... I was accommodating my mother and her actions which went against the laws of Reveldron." He said in a sorrowful tone, as though it brought him great shame and hurt to even reminiscence the incident, "I was never really accepted in the house of the Baron Heatcrift even if the Baron brought me back into his mansion. I wasn't even recognized as an illegitimate son of the Baron and nor was I given his last name. Even though I never again saw my mother after I was taken under Baron Heatcrift's wing, I remembered she was a good mother to me. In those quiet moments of my loneliness, she used to come to my dreams, ghost-like, a shadow of who she was. I remembered, when I am calm the spectre was always so kind, she laughed and I recalled the times I felt like she loved me. I dreamt of the times she coddled me and held me tight. So without much thought, I resolved to take my mother's last name 'Vanner' after I got recruited as a royal knight. And as such, I did. I meant to go back for her after I was appointed as a royal knight and established a stable career; hence, after ten long years, I finally returned to those slums of the redlight district to only find my mother selling slave girls to the minor nobility of the country for a living."

His backstory got darker and darker as I kept listening to him. I felt a bit uncomfortable for I deemed I shouldn't be hearing this. This was his personal life, it was as if I was forcefully prying into his life without his permission. It felt wrong at many levels, but I couldn't open my mouth to tell him to stop at this point for the simple reason that I was a very curious individual. If I was gonna be the villain in his life, so be it. It was too late now anyways, I knew when he came to his senses I would be in for a big load of trouble. So I peacefully embraced my fate and decided to satisfy my unsatiated curiosity and let him continue.

"Your Highness must know that slave-trading in Reveldron is strictly prohibited since His Majesty, King Reuben ascended the throne, and to find one's own mother so deeply tangled in such a heinous crime was a blow big enough to leave one wrecked." I knew that slavery and slave-trading was illegal in Reveldron because the slave-traders who caught me back then were foreigners, they were nomad slave-traders who were passing by the borders of Reveldron. Selling and buying of slaves in Reveldron was deemed a crime grave enough to be killed for. And hence, it was hard for you to find slave trades in the shady alleyways of Reveldron. Thus, these kinds of illegal activities became almost extinct under the strict supervision of the royal garrison. Whatever kind of man Reuben may have been, but of one thing I was sure, he was one great monarch to his people of Reveldron.

"When I confronted her, she begged me to not divulge her crimes. She said that she had always loved me and would change her ways for me, that once she had everything in wraps and break off all of her connections to these felonies, she would come with me and be with me forever, and I, like a naive child, believed all of her lies and decided to close my eyes to all her wrongdoings." He snuffled his sobs as he spoke and I felt even guiltier than I already did, "I bought a house with my very first wages so that I could better provide for that woman, I planted her favourite flowers in the yard and decked her room with all the things she used to love, for I remembered everything she used to love. But soon I found all my hopes and expectations shatter into nothingness when she was caught red-handed in the act by one of my colleagues in those same streets of the red-light district."