Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 91: Flower Power

Xaphile clenched his fists.

"Sorry, but I can assure you that I'll question you every single day until I'm certain you won't harm anyone I care about," he retorted, watching with apprehension as his uncle paused and slowly turned to look at him with a calculating squint. "Sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?"

"Caring for humans is a mistake," Vordt snipped. "You would do well to distance yourself from them."

"Excuse me?" Xaphile scoffed, unexpectedly finding his temper ignited by the hypocrisy. "Who the hell are you to give me advice on what is or isn't a mistake when you flat out told me to my face that my own fucking existence was a mistake?!"

"The King of Calcoon."

Xaphile scoffed.

"King or not," he muttered, "you have no right to tell me who I should or shouldn't care about after what you said to me. You wanted to kill me because you thought I didn't deserve to live!"

"Indeed I did," his uncle said simply, holding the flower out to him with a glare. "Whether that statement is true or false will be decided momentarily. And I can assure you, if this test I've prepared fails... your little human friends will be picking up the pieces of your corpse within the hour."

Xaphile narrowed his eyes, blood boiling for a few seconds, then he took a deep breath to calm himself down and slowly let it out.

For nearly a minute and a half, Vordt held the flower out to him, eyes locked on the petals, but after a time, confusion took over his features and Xaphile followed his gaze, looking at the plant with furrowed brows.

At a first glance, it looked like little more than a thin blue bulge of petal material, but the shape vaguely reminded him of Ella's favorite flower, Virginia Bluebells. 

He was hit with a sudden flashback of the time that he had surprised her on her doorstep with a giant bouquet of them. There had been no special reason, no event that had warranted the action... only that he had been thinking about her, and he'd wanted to make her smile.

And boy, she had definitely smiled.

She'd taken one look at that bouquet and had thrown her arms around him.

The memory instilled a deep ache within his breast.

The happiness he'd experienced the previous day vanished as a wave of depression washed over him, but just as he was about to lower his eyes, the flower twitched and Vordt's face contorted with a look of intense disbelief.

His stunned expression only deepened when the plant began to move. Xaphile warily watched, eyes widening a bit, as the flower's bell slowly unfurled. In an almost delicate manner, it opened up until it lay flat, a white sun with a pink center and gorgeous blue that hid beneath.

It pointed straight at him, and he cringed away from it. 

Plants that bloomed too quickly in the hands of someone like Vordt could never mean anything good for those he aimed them at.

"I don't believe it," Vordt hissed, mouth twitching. "It trusts you."

Xaphile swallowed, not really sure what to make of that.