Chapter 30: The Secret Wish

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"I told you what would happen with those traps!" Adrien scolds me for the hundredth time as he frantically paces up and down my bedroom

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"I told you what would happen with those traps!" Adrien scolds me for the hundredth time as he frantically paces up and down my bedroom. He waves his hands in the air like a hysterical mother and the humourous scene helps distract me from the dull throb in my lower leg.

The second I got back from the castle Adrien was waiting for me in the stables, frantically pacing back and forth while muttering a string of phrases I couldn't make out but had the sense they were expressions of worry all directed toward me.

When he saw my pale face and the bandage wrapped tightly around my leg that was still spotted with bloodstains he rushed toward me and practically grabbed me off Dante. I tried to tell him I was fine, that the wound had been looked at and I'd been given a medicinal herb for the pain, but he didn't want to listen and he practically carried me up to my room and plopped me down on my bed. Pretty much the second my body hit the soft and bouncy mattress he tried to pry at the bandage. Honestly, at that moment he was worse than a mother.

It took a good few protests on my end and maybe even a harsh slap to the shoulders and face, but he finally gave up his relentless pursuit to examine my wound and decided to instead frantically pace back and forth while scolding me.

"Yeah, you did," I sigh. I allow my arms to give in so that my back flops against the mattress and my head lands just a few centimeters away from the comfort of my pillow.

"But, does anybody listen to me? Has anybody ever told me that I'm right? No! Has anyone ever taken what I said to heart and actually followed my advice? Once again, no! And do you know why that is?" he asks me.

I raise my head so that I'm looking at him dead in his raging brown eyes, his face ranging from concern to fear to anger and then back to concern all at the same time.

"No, Adrien, I don't know why," I respond as politely as I can. I wanted to be sarcastic in my answer but that would just be, as Miss Potts calls it, utterly disgusting.

"Because, apparently I don't know what I'm talking about. People think I'm some sort of... sort of... imbecile," he says, his voice cracking as he does.

"You're not an imbecile, Adrien. You just have skills in... other places," I say in an attempt to make him feel better. But judging by the way his shoulders are still slumped and his face still droops, it didn't work.

Sighing, he slumps onto the bed beside me. "That's not what my father says," he mumbles under his breath.

This isn't the first time he'd shone his father in a bad light, and I honestly can't blame him. It seems that Pierre's love for all people of the village never extended to his child. He also seemed to think that because a door is closed the world will never hear the horrid words he spits at Adrien day in and day out for even the smallest, and seemingly unimportant, infringes.

I've tried comforting him by telling him stories about my mom and how no matter what I did I was always a massive disappointment to her. Some days it helped, while others it felt as if my words were falling on deaf ears or a soul too damaged to be repaired.

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