Street Mouse [Yandere Archduke x Female Reader]

28. Resolved.

Frosino lay in his bed, gazing drearily at the ceiling of his bedroom. He had not bothered to get dressed and was clad only in the bedsheets as it was the hight of summer.

He had alerted the staff of the castle that he was feeling unwell, and that they should proceed with the day without him. It was not a complete lie, considering that his discovery of his growing feelings for Y/N left him feeling quite ill.

Why did I start loving her in this way? The Archduke thought despairingly. In the past, he had found it challenging to even care about people platonically, and he had never once considered loving someone romantically; he had always spent so much time within his own mind that very little of his attention could be spared for the real world.

But that all changed when Y/N had entered his life. She had made the real world far more wonderful than the intellectual but lonely life he had before. It was not a surprise that he quickly came to adore the youngest resident of Castle de Crivell. It was also not surprising that he was vulnerable to growing to found of the girl, considering that she was the first person that he deeply cared for.

As his love for Y/N morphed from strictly parental into a more romantic lense he could not help the revolution that consumed him. This was the girl he had watched grow from a shy little sprout into a charming flower bud. He had raised her as his daughter, and loved her as his own, and now he was falling in love with her.

He rolled out of the bed and pulled on a bathrobe as he walked over to the washbasin on top of the chest of drawers. He splashed some of the cold water on his face in hopes of clearing his head, and ridding himself of the undesirable emotions. When that did not work, he wiped his face with a towel, and looked up to meet his reflection in the mirror atop the dresser.

As he gazed at his reflection in the darkened room, he could not help but think that the ghoulish apparition staring back at him from the glass resembled perfectly the vile heart beating in his chest that held the love for the girl who was scarcely more than a child.

His long hair cascaded over his shoulders and a few of the raven strands hung in front of his face, a fine glimmer of sweat shown on his sickly pale skin, and he had dark circles under his eyes from the lack of sleep he had the previous night.

He had been awake for hours, tossing and turning, consumed with guilt for his emotions. He would reach the edge of sleep then he would remember how much he had enjoyed the feeling of having Y/N's from held in between his arms in the library and the addicting scent of her perfume. As soon as these thoughts crossed his mind, his eyes would immediately snap open, and the cycle would continue.

Frosino's heart started pounding as he revisited the memory of what had happened. With trembling hands, he reached out to touch his reflection, hoping that this was nothing more than a nightmare. He willed himself to wake up, and return to the normal life at Castle de Crivell, where the thought of loving his ward would be nothing more than a memory from a nightmare.

Unfortunately, this was no dream, and  Frosino had to came to terms with the fact that life would never go back to the way it was before. Visions of all of his sweetest memories flashed before his eyes:

The first day Y/N was in the castle, Tola was chasing her, and the poor girl had been so scared that she had clutched onto Frosino tightly, the time that Frosino and Y/N had tried to set Tola and Alfonse up, and the day Y/N had agreed to stay at the castle was the happiest in his life.

But, with his new unhealthy feelings for her, he started to think that the girl would have been better off far away from him, but even then, the Archduke wouldn't have let her go. Tears streamed from his eyes at the thought of being parted from the girl who had brought a real purpose into his life, but he had no choice.

No matter how painful it would be for him, Frosino was willing to do anything to protect Y/N, even from himself. Not bothering to don anything other than the bathrobe, Frosino walked out of the bedroom.

. . .

Y/N sat in the kitchen as she took a break from helping Tola cook. Tola had suggested that the girl rest after she had tried to boil potatoes without any water in the pot.

Y/N, picked up the apple that she had grabbed from the pantry and was about to take a bite out of it when she hesitated, the strange affliction she had been suffering from had not gone away, and she was starting to get worried. "Tola, I think I'm getting sick."

"Oh, really littlen, ya tell me what's trublin' ya and ay'll mix ya up a cure right quick," Tola replied as she set the knife she had been using to chop vegetables down, and came over by Y/N.

"Well," the H/C girl began uncertainty. "I get this weird feeling in my stomach, and I feel short of breath, my face heats up, and my heart starts pounding in my chest. Tola, what's wrong with me?"

Avoiding the girl's question entirely, the housekeeper asked, "how often do these things happen?"

"Oh, whenever I think about Frosino I suppose," Y/N answered, looking confused. "I really like spending time with him, he is just so kind and fair, and-"

Y/N's rambling was interrupted by the sound of a dull smack echoing through the sunny kitchen. Tears of pain and confusion welled in her E/C eyes as she raised a hand to the stinging cheek that Tola had just struck.

"Ay don't ever want to hear such words outta yar mouth again littlen," Tola barked. Her blue eyes held a look so cold that they looked like shards of ice.

Y/N felt a chill run down her spine from Tola's new aggressive actions as her eyes continued to water. She watched as Tola stalked around the kitchen. She grabbed the apple that Y/N was going to eat and cleaved it in half.

"Luckily for ya, ay know how to make a cure for what ya got," Tola muttered as she held the apple halves in her large hands and cleaned out the centers. Once she finished she placed a single apple pip back inside of the hollow. Suddenly, she lunged forward, and pricked Y/N's finger.

Ignoring Y/N's whimpers of pain, Tola gripped firmly to her wrist, and held the cut over the hollow it the apple, allowing several drops of blood to fall into it. "Trust me, child, it will hurt ya far more if these feelings of yars are to remain," Tola sneered.

Not bothering to tend to the girl's cut, she quickly scooped up the apple and tied it back together with a piece of twine. She muttered a few words under her breath before tossing the apple into the fireplace. The flames engulfed the apple greedily, and soon there was nothing left.

Tola turned to look back at Y/N, and with the kind look returned to her face she said: "ya best go to bed early, ya'll feel better tomorrow."

Not needing to be told twice, Y/N scurried off to her room. She was very overwhelmed by everything that Tola had done and a good night's sleep sounded very appealing.

. . .

Frosino stood just inside the doorway of Ilidoro's room. Ilidoro waited in silence, unsure of why Frosino had turned up in his room with a face dark as death itself.

"You should be packed and ready to depart on a long trip in two months," Frosino stated in a dull voice, void of emotion.

"And why is that," Ilidoro asked, very unsettled by the change in his cousin's demeanor.

Frosino took a minute to respond. When he finally did answer it was in a very robotic way: "Because I am taking a diplomatic trip to the empire beyond the sea, and wish you to accompany me there."

A/N

Tola is doing some witchcraft up in here, and Frosino is trying to run away from his problems.

I hope you all are enjoying the story so far, and,

Until next time I'll see you on the other side

~J. C. Coltt.~