Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 177: Unexpected Attack

Xaphile grit his teeth and didn't look back, holding his head high.

"She has committed nothing worthy of being considered treason," he said loudly and clearly, so everyone watching this could hear him. "On what grounds do you have any right, at all, to storm in here like you own this village and demand to take the countess into custody?"

"And who might you be?" the soldier sneered, staring down into his hood. "A street urchin?"

"Actually," Xaphile hissed, baring his fangs; and with a great tug, he jerked his hood off, revealing his sharp horns and long ears. The man balked, eyes growing wide, face paling, "I'm the elder prince of the Nimikan Forests, Xaphile Heseroph, son of Olagrell Heseroph."

Ralof seemed speechless.

Xaphile was mildly encouraged to see that the man was actually intimidated.

Perhaps he did hold some political value after all.

"Forgive me, honored one," he said in a slow, blank tone, eyes wide, "but we have come here on the orders of our king, and we really must have---"

"No," Xaphile growled, clenching his fists. "Leave Nimika and return to King Osric."

"I'm afraid that the code of the country allows us to remain under guest's rights since we've come here with none other than our lordship's son, Prince Roland Votrin himself," the soldier said flatly, his displeasure clearly visible. "For the time being, we are welcome here."

"How marvelous," Xaphile said bluntly, then cocked his head. "I revoke those rights now. Leave."

His words prompted a roar of outrage from the soldiers behind the lieutenant, but he didn't even flinch in the face of the outpouring of wild anger.

"You have shown us the betrayal in your heart," Ralof said with a sneer. "The unfriendly treatment towards the prince himself and disrespecting royal guests of the neighboring province---"

"Unfriendly treatment?" Xaphile barked, incensed. "Bullshit! This is the least you people deserve after what you did to the faeries of these woods and the people living in this town! I won't allow anyone who supports that psychopath to set foot here! Get lost!"

"How DARE you?!" the man roared, face turning red. "You shall not insult the king of this land, even you do dare to break the code of guest's rights--"

"Oh, my apologies," Xaphile mockingly gasped. "Does me insulting the man who butchers children in front of their parents upset you? I take it you're one of the many who supports the slaughter, abuse. and rape of little kids, then?"

"H-how dare yo--"

"Because it's still happening," Xaphile loudly interrupted. "I dare because its the truth. You don't like it? Talk to the man I was just 'insulting' then."

Ralof's grey eyes were narrowed and his face was so red with anger that he looked close to blowing a blood vessel.

"You're treading on thin ice, boy."

"Oh?" Xaphile asked, raising an eyebrow. "Then shall I fetch us all a mug of herbal tea? Yeah, maybe a soothing pot of tea is just what we need to calm our tempers."

"Calm our tempers? You're trying to break a political oath!"

"I made no such oath," Xaphile snapped, face contorting with malice, "and regardless of whatever political oaths may have been made in the past, it no longer matters because King Osric has broken the Treaty of the Four. Everything he put in place concerning Aerika is void."