To My Dearly Detested | ✎

13 | basking in your light

Adrien couldn't even describe how angry he was.

It wasn't often that his temper rose this high. He knew most people saw him as the cold and callous prince who had no interest in anyone's well-being but his own, but he never thought there was a valid reason behind why people thought this.

He'd been proven wrong—and practically slapped in the face—when Marinette's knight basically asked him how he'd not known of his own village's destruction until now.

Adrien wanted to blame his father, but the truth was the blame wasn't entirely his. Although Adrien hadn't meant to be purposely cruel, he'd stopped having an interest in the people's well-being after his mother passed away. He isolated himself and embraced callousness just like his father had.

But Adrien refused to believe that his father had been ignorant like him. His father was the king. His father had to know about the village's condition.

Adrien stormed into his father's throne room, the guards stepping to the side without protest to let him pass. Gabriel's head snapped up upon his son's arrival, his expression blank... until he realized it was his son who had entered the room.

"You!" He immediately rose to his feet, his expression clouded with shock and mostly anger. "Where have you been?!"

Adrien paused in the center of the room, his posture straight. He remained right where he stood and made no effort to advance any further. His father, reacting in anger and impatience, made his way down the steps from his throne.

"I was out." Adrien said dryly.

"'Out?!'" The king bellowed, his voice loud enough to shatter one of his many decorative vases as it mercilessly bounced off the walls. Even some of the guards standing off to the side covered their ears. Adrien didn't even flinch. "You have been missing! Your own knights could not even tell me where you were!"

Adrien scoffed underneath his breath. "I was perfectly fine—"

"You have quite the nerve to stand before me acting indifferent!" The king cut him off, his raging shouts slicing through their like knives as this father neared him closer and closer by the second. "Tell me where you have been, Adrien, or so help me—!"

"I was at the village." Adrien cut his father off, his eyes narrowed, as his father practically came nose-to-nose with him. "The village that might as well be in ruins because you have neglected it and its people."

Adrien hadn't expected much out of his father when it concerned a reaction to this news. The least he had expected was shock. But Gabriel showed nothing but anger. His eyes narrowed even further, his rage seeping out of ever pour, as he gritted his teeth and seethed, "You have no right to set foot in that village, let alone without me knowing about it."

Adrien scoffed at that and stepped away from his father to create a bit of space between them. "I have no right? I am the prince! I have every right to know what is going on there!"

He didn't expect the slap that came next. It happened so fast that Adrien wasn't even given the chance to process it coming. His father raised his hand and slapped Adrien across the cheek, the sound echoing throughout the room in the midst of deafening silence. Adrien stumbled back, a hand rising to his cheek, as he stared at his father in stunned silence.

To Adrien, the silence that followed felt like it stretched for hours. He was too stunned to even speak. He watched as his father used his other hand to rub the hand he'd hit him with as if the action had left him sore. Adrien could only blink back frustrated tears as he held his cheek. His father didn't even look perturbed, let alone remorseful for what he had just done.