45: His stolen happiness - Leopold’s POV (part 2)

His stolen happiness - Leopold’s POV (part 2)

Healers who inherited the rare blood were said to have walked the continent before the time of the first empire.2

They influenced the nature around them in different ways, but the height of that influence was translated into the creation of mana stones in the legendary mines of what came to be known later as Lanark.

The people of magic were driven out of their homes by the war between shapeshifters and men, they chose the deserts located in the middle of the continent, their sworn protectors ready to change their location once it becomes known. 

Those were the bitter words Grace poured out one night when she was bandaging him tenderly. What could have possibly changed her mind about those who have wronged her? He was about to scream the question when he saw her door opening, his entire body froze when she came out.

She was the same person, but she could not have been more different.

Her brilliant red hair looked coarser, and her ivory face flushed, but there was no justification in her eyes for it. Those told a tale of their own, he had not seen her for months, yet the mature glint inside of them seemed decades old.

Mesmerized by the slight difference in her face, he only understood what had really changed about her when his eyes followed her delicate hand as she placed it on her swollen abdominal part.

His foot took an instinctive step back, he could not decide what was worse; for the child growing inside of her to be somebody else's, or his own. 

The ghost of that night haunted him still, he could not bring himself to wish it had not happened, even when her guards prevented her from seeing him the day after. For that shock awakened him.

Grace's love was worth far more than a candle in a tent, she deserved much more than a man who chased death for a touch of her hand. He collected his dreams and left for Kolhis, vowing to return a loving husband who satisfies his longing for her at night and works for her comfort during the day.

How he wished he could have seen the imminent thunderbolt that struck him. But how could he have anticipated that the treasure hiding in the desert would become known to those far worse than him for her?

He ran like the wind back to the desert upon hearing the biggest news of the season, Kaiser de Lanark was to wed a mysterious rose he found in Latora's desert, the royal family called her Grace, the Desert Princess.

"Am I interrupting you?"

Her sharp tone brought him back to his senses, his eyes glided down to her swollen part. 

"Is it mine?"

The pain that flashed behind her olive green eyes was a punch in his guts. He swallowed back the rising bile as he waited for her answer.

"...It is mine, Leopold," 

Her evasiveness that had not gone through a change was oddly welcomed. Only then did he realize that he could not handle her answer no matter what it was.

"…I wish I had gone blind before seeing you like this,"

The corners of her lips went down, "What brings you back then?"

Her cold and distant attitude provoked him. His child or not, he was not about to give her up so easily. 

"I am your first, you said you loved me!"

"…You went on your own accord, I fail to understand what it is that you want from me after all this time," 

He flinched back when she talked to him as if he had become a stranger.

"It is true! I left this desert to find something else to do with my life…How could you have moved on with somebody else this soon… With him of all people!"

She blinked a few times, "I am yet to meet my betrothed, but I do not know what it is that you condemn about him, he is quite a reputable person,"

She is yet to meet him...I am the father...

"Did you honestly believe a man like Kaiser de Lanark would take a pregnant woman for his wife?" He barked.

That can only happen if the King came to know of Grace's abilities. But Leopold would not sit back and let them imprison her in the land he despised so. The Lanark of her ancestors was nothing like the Lanark of today, a place where women were at their best when they served as masterpieces in the overly-sized houses of their Lords.

He could not imagine her there, not Grace who roamed the desert like the spirit of the wind, boundless, free to be her beautiful wild self without restrictions or fears.

"...Go back where you came from, Leopold. Forget all about me, I will give birth to this child and raise him, he will want for nothing in Lanark. Unless you want to raise him yourself..."

Outraged by both possibilities that did not include a mutual future combining them together, he snapped.

"I hate it! This pregnancy that took you away from me! I want nothing to do with it…" He looked down at the swelling with resentful eyes, "You think I can love the thing that separated us let alone raise it?"

Grace saw Leopold with new eyes finding the comparison between the man she thought she knew and the one she was yet to meet inescapable, the words she heard Leopold saying and the ones she read in the Archduke's concise return to her letter were worlds apart: A child of my betrothed is a child of mine.

For the first time since her father committed her to this arrangement, she looked forward to meeting Kaiser de Lanark. Shen nodded once to herself, it was her time to fold the past, leave, and never look back this time.

"I bid you farewell, Leopold. If my child or I did not make it, do not visit our graves,"

The dull ache of watching her disappear back into her guarded house was surpassed by the crippling pain of not having anything to offer her or the child she carried. That helplessness alone knocked him out into an old, shameful silence.

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