A/N: I own the plot. Enjoy!
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Marquis Thomas Dare came back home from a long meeting with some business people.
His butler bowed. "The young lady is here and is waiting for you in your study."
Marquis Dare paused as he was taking off his coat. Why was his daughter in his study? If she wanted to meet with him, then she could wait in the parlor.
He headed to his study. It was dimly lit with a small fire in the fireplace. Rachel was sitting in his chair behind his desk.
Marquis Dare frowned. It was hard to see his daughter's expression in the dim lighting.
"Rachel, my daughter. Why are you in my study without my permission? You know I don't like it when other people enter without me saying so. I'm very tired tonight, so I don't have time for your childish games."
Marquis Dare went to a side cupboard and began taking out a bottle of bourbon after lighting a few candles. Rachel didn't say anything, her green eyes dark.
"Rachel? Why are you still here? Didn't I say that-"
Rachel abruptly threw a stack of papers on the desk. Marquis Dare's temper flared up. Now his daughter was throwing a temper tantrum?
"Why don't you read this and see what good things you have been doing, Father?"
"What?" Marquis Dare paused.
He picked up the nearest document and began reading.
Rachel watched as her father suddenly paled.
"T-this, this is-"
"Didn't I tell you last time, Father, that your last assassination attempt wasn't going to work? I warned you, Father."
In those documents listed Marquis Thomas Dare's crimes, ranging from attempting to kill the queen on her wedding day, taking in bribery from other officials, and the latest crime, bribing a woman with similar looks to the Eldoris queen to plant infertility drugs and to seduce the king.
"I was the one who killed the assassin that night of the wedding, if you were wondering," Rachel said, coldly.
All his life's work to raise his daughter as queen was crumbling before his very eyes. His wife had long passed away, so the marquis thought that to protect his daughter, he would raise her to the highest position in Eldoris. Where had he gone wrong?
"Y-you traitorous-!" Marquis Dare could only yell. "How could you!"
Didn't his daughter want to be queen, too? Marquis Dare knew that she loved that damned king!
"Why are you always rebelling against me when I'm doing this for your own good?"
"My own good?" Rachel scoffed. "You've never viewed me as your daughter, just a tool for you to use to gain more power. The only traitor here to Eldoris is you, Father. Mother would have been devastated to see what you've become."
There was sadness and fatigue in her voice.
"Your mother would have agreed!" He hissed.
Rachel just stared at him before bringing out another document with the king's seal in red wax.
Marquis Dare unfolded the document and felt like a sword was stabbing him.
"No...you can't do this. He can't do this! You have to stop this!"
His title was being taken away. Marquis Dare was now demoted to that of a commoner. Everything he had worked for to keep the Dare name in the ranks of high nobility was vanishing into dust.
Rachel tapped her fingers on the table. "I did everything I could to keep you alive. You can stay and live in the mansion, but you won't be able to run the business or manage the household. Otherwise, you can get out of here with the clothes on your back. But even to me, you deserve to be locked up for the rest of your life."
On accounts that the marquis was her father, Percy had given her a choice. She took it. It was part of her innate selfishness as a human to keep her father alive. He was the only blood relative alive she had in the world. The marquis title and half of the lands were absorbed, but she would be given a viscountess title, a two rank demotion. This was truly a slap on the wrist compared to the damage her father had done.
Rachel sighed. It was also her punishment for not being able to control her father's evil deeds. She had looked the other way when he initially sent the first assassin and not reported him, hoping that she could talk some sense into him. Now that she was a viscountess and in charge of her family lands, she had to split her time between running her family's lands and at the Eldoris palaces. It was Percy telling her to stay away.
Perhaps it was the best so she didn't have to be there to constantly see the love of her life with someone else. Some time and distance would help.
But her father was clearly not willing to give in so easily. Thomas Dare roared in fury and raised his hand. Rachel was faster. What could the marquis do against a skilled swordsman who had trained for years?
She caught her father's wrist and held it firmly.
"I am your daughter, Father," she said. Her voice cracked.
"Not anymore. You are no longer a child of mine." Thomas Dare said, his voice heavy.
Rachel's green eyes were watery. Her father's words stung. Then she took a deep breath, steadying her voice.
"Very well. Someone come. Mr. Dare is to stay in his quarters until I say he can be released."
She watched her father's back as he left the study that was now hers. Rachel laughed bitterly. The road had come to this.
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Percy leaned against the back of the chair, sipping a glass of wine. The door opened and his knights brought several bound men and women in ropes.
"Your mansion is quite beautiful, Count Methe. A new wing added to the mansion, and luxurious jewel studded statues in the gardens. Not to mention, what a delightful wine you have here. Imported from Kiran, I see."
Percy swirled the red wine in the glass. The alcohol was quite strong.
The count shuddered. In his mansion were stocked barrels and barrels of this wine. Importing wine was not an issue. However, the count had done this all illegally, avoiding the tariffs that had already been lowered when Percy married Princess Annabeth.
"I wonder where you get all that courage to circumvent paying taxes." Percy said, dryly.
Fools, he thought. Just because he had been busy with the wedding and now the Festival of Bounty didn't mean he couldn't pay attention to the matters of his country. The drought was just a reason for the king to personally come out and punish the little rodents that dared to take nibbles of the prize they didn't deserve.
This particular count had not only had the crime of tax evasion on his maggoty head, but he also hosted illegal gambling and human trafficking rings. The commoners were also unfairly taxed, while the count sent barely anything to the royal palaces as part of his annual tax payments. One of the worst crimes was that the count had gambled his blood-born legal daughter away to settle a debt while his mistresses and illegitimate children planned to sink their claws on the inheritance and title.
Percy swept his eyes over the two mistresses and their two sons and one daughter. Each illegitimate son had a reputation of being wastrels who gambled and harassed the commoners in their land. He had heard that they had made a fuss of not being invited to the king's wedding. Two sons who only knew how to rely on their mothers' favor with a man and strive for their own greatness. In fact, Percy had heard one of the sons had dared to touch his legitimate sister.
"Not to mention importing some secret medicine. Did you find it fun to dishonor this king?"
The count shuddered and gasped. How had the king discovered this?
Percy let the corner of his lips raise just a little higher. He had noticed a few days ago that the tea leaves used for his tea seemed to have a strange tint to their taste, certainly a sign that it had been tampered with. It was fortunate that his palate could be quite discernible at times like these.
His men had found that while the medicine in the tea leaves was not deadly, the medicine would have rendered him infertile. A few more investigations and the medicine was traced to this count's illegal transactions.
Perhaps, the dowager queen had planned the long game, thinking that because he would not have any children, the throne would be passed onto Triton.
Disgusting, the whole lot. The more he sat here, the more he wanted to return back to Eldoris Palace to his queen.
Percy dropped the wine glass he was holding, letting the glass shatter on the floor. The wine spilled out like a puddle of blood. One of the mistresses couldn't take it anymore and fainted.
"P-please spare us," the count blubbered.
He was the type of person who bullied the weak but feared the strong. He had been the second son of the previous count. His eldest brother had died of disease, but his father had favored the third son as the successor. Then both his younger brother and his father caught the same mysterious illness and passed away.
This was during King Poseidon's time and had not been investigated thoroughly. But Percy had come to settle old debts.
"Spare you? Didn't your daughter beg you the same way that you're begging now?" Percy said ruthlessly. "Did you ever give your brothers or father the same opportunity to ask for mercy?"
The count paled. A stream of rank liquid was leaking out from his pants.
"Come now, count. Why no words? I haven't even cut off your tongue yet."
Percy stood up and walked around the count, listing his crimes one by one. The room was silent except for the king's voice.
"Tell me, why should I spare you?"
Count Methe whimpered. His eyes landed on his pretty daughter born from his second mistress.
"I-I can give you my daughter!" He blurted out.
His daughter was terrified, eyes wide and teary. Hearing this, his second mistress who had woken up from fainting, fell unconscious again.
Percy growled. He had been using his powers constantly to alleviate the drought, and the backlash was building up in his body. Had he been his former ancestor, his grandfather would have taken the young daughter being offered and spent himself in her body to relieve the backlash.
It all disgusted Percy.
"Do you think I'm a piece of filth like you?" Percy growled. "You disgust me. Take care of them," he instructed his knights. "And find out who their...special clients are."
When the king left, Count Methe saw two pairs of feet approach him.
"Wife...," he muttered.
His legal wife and the daughter he had sold to pay off his debts gazed down at him with venom in their eyes. The countess reached out and slapped her husband.
"This is for neglecting my son. And this!" Slap! "This is for selling my daughter!" The countess was a crying wreck when she was finished. "My son...return my son to me!"
The count's eldest and only legitimate son had not learned to be a hooligan due to his mother's efforts. But the illegitimate sons were much more favored than the eldest son was and had caused his death.
"It was you who told the king." Count Methe said, the realization dawned on him. "How dare you, you bitch!"
The countess laughed, an almost insane tone to her bitter laughter. She had long heard those kinds of curse words throughout her marriage.
Her daughter, quiet but seething with rage, held up her mother. She had survived her situation. Looking down at her father, no, he was just the sperm donor. Count Methe's daughter would now be the sole heir to the count's title and whatever remained of the lands after the king separated out the embezzlement and illegal funds.
"To protect my children, I would do everything." The countess said, fiercely.
The knights pressed the count and his errant sons down, forcing them to drink a special concoction of tea made from the same secret infertility medicine that had been served to the king. Count Methe's bloodline would end there, save for his daughter's branch.
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Triton sipped his tea as his mother fussed over him. He kept a neutral smile on his lips as she brushed his hair.
"You've grown so skinny, Triton. Have some more sandwiches," the dowager queen persuaded.
"Thank you, mother." He accepted the finger sandwich and nibbled on it obediently despite the cloying taste of strawberry jam.
Amphitrite stroked her son's hair absentmindedly. "Mother was so worried about your health. I know you're sad about the...departure of that maid, but it was for the best. You know that everything I do is for you, right, Triton?"
Triton lowered his eyes. He had taken a large bite of the sandwich and thus didn't reply.
"In fact, I had some new maids brought in. They're all from good noble families, and you can choose your personal maid from any of them."
The new maids were all from families that either supported the dowager queen's family or had tried to secretly offer their daughters to the king and had failed. Triton didn't even bother looking at those young women. He knew that they hoped to bear his child. His mother also hoped that he would have a healthy child as his heir since his own body was so weak. Suddenly, Triton felt sick to his stomach.
"Mother, I'm going to rest now."
Amphitrite waved her hands. "Yes, go. Rest as often as you need, my dear. Mother will take care of everything."
Triton headed back to his room, the horde of six maids trailing behind him. They tried to help him take off his outside clothes and into his inside ones.
"Enough." Triton said, nonchalantly batting away a hand that had dared to venture lower than it should. "You are all dismissed."
Triton dropped his smile as soon as his mother and his maids were out of sight.
Did his mother think that a human being was replaceable? If that was the case, wouldn't her own son be replaceable?
He didn't feel like a human. Only a tool locked up in this gilded cage.
Nothing was worse than being the burden of someone else's unwanted and unnecessary sacrifice.
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A/N: Some subtle clues dropped here in this chapter. I completely forgot when I wrote this chapter. And now that I'm rereading it, I'm like, oh yeah, that's when I first mention this clue... Anyways, I'm just waiting for winter break to start so I have the time to write more chapters T.T This second arc isn't going to finish itself. Hopefully then, I can update more often during winter break, but I'll probably do it randomly lol. For now, I am dying from finals. And how is 2022 in less than 3 weeks? Where the heck did my 2021 and 2020 go?
As always, see you all next week!