Talk between Mother and Daughter

(3rd Person POV)

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A couple of days passed after Jeremy had been beaten up by Aston.

Lant Agriche was furious when he heard of how Jeremy tried to attack the crown prince. All of Lant's efforts would have gone down the drain if Aston had tried to push the charges for this grave offense onto them.

He would have got a legitimate reason to reduce all the Agriche's influence into dust. No other family would try to go against the crown prince's orders, not even the ones in the faction against the Imperial Family.

To pacify the crown prince, Lant ordered his soldiers to chain Jeremy and throw him in the dungeons. Only minimal First Aid was given to Jeremy to treat his internal injuries.

Lant, himself kneeled to the crown prince to ask for forgiveness for his foolish son.

Lant signed some more documents giving the ownership of some of the trade routes to the Agriche Territory to Aston.

All in all, what Jeremy did only affected his own family. Jeremy's immaturity in the matter of handling his emotions well and not being able to look at situations rationally led to the patriarch putting more pressure on Roxana to sire Aston's child as soon as possible.

Your father asking you to mate with your fiancé every time you meet with him was enough to make anyone cranky.

It was moreso for Roxana who was reaching her limit of patience after the Jeremy fiasco, she knew Jeremy harbored some feelings for her but it was surprisingly more than she could have imagined. She might have a smudge of sympathy for Jeremy if he didn't possess a psychotic personality.

Roxana didn't manage to make Jeremy good-natured, she only managed to make him good-natured towards her. He was still an out-of-control hound who could bite anyone.

Today, Roxana was visiting her mother, Sierra. It had been some time since both of them had even conversed a word, and even that was when Sierra mistook Aston for her dead child, Ashil.

Roxana stood in front of the door of her mother's room and took a deep breath to calm herself. She thought that she had calmed herself on the matter of her mother and decided to remove Sierra from her heart but the conflicting emotions in her said otherwise.

However, this was not the time to ponder on this topic, and the hazed look in Roxana's eyes cleared as she entered Sierra's room with a smile.

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(Roxana's POV)

As soon as I entered the room, I saw my mother sitting on the bed, reading a book.

It looked oddly similar to how Aston used to read the book when he was on the bed. Their postures, their relaxed expression, and the way they were immersed in the text were the same.

Maybe the reason Aston looked emotional when he met my mother was that my mother had a resemblance to Aston's mother?

I don't know much about Aston's mother as it had been well over a decade since the Empress died due to an unfortunate accident in the royal castle.

Hearing the sound of the door closing, my mother looked towards the entrance of the room, and looking at me, my mother's face burst into pure happiness.

Ugh...

Why is she looking at me like that...

Just why.

Why does she look so happy as I entered the room...?

Sierra said in a delighted tone, "Ana! How much have I missed you! You must have been very busy as you couldn't come to visit me the past couple of weeks."

She got up from her bed and rushed to my side. She gently cupped my cheeks and looked at my face.

I knew that she wanted to kiss me on the forehead, and I wanted to decline, but the hopeful countenance on my mother's visage forced me to.

Doing these small actions with my mother was the cause of the guilt in my heart. That's why I wanted to sever our relationship but I had returned as I couldn't make peace with this decision.

As my mother's lips pressed against my forehead, I felt nostalgic warmth.

It reminded me of my childhood before my brother was killed, the bliss I felt in my mother's arms as if nothing would be able to hurt me, that fleeting happiness.

After that skinship, mother and I sat on the comfortable couch.

Sierra asked me, "So, tell me how are you doing, Ana? I want to talk lots with you as it has been so much time since we had a heart-to-heart talk."

"I have been fine, mother. Just fulfilling the duties Patriarch had asked me to."

Hearing the word 'Patriarch', my mother's hand shook as her face paled slightly. It seems she still had the ingrained fear of Lant Agriche.

I held her hands and squeezed them tightly to calm her down. And she managed to stop trembling soon.

Looking at her pitiful state like this, I bit my lips in rage.

My mother never deserved something like this, she never deserved to be tormented like this.

I was barely able to calm myself down by imagining the process of torturing that man. How I would be ripping his skin to reveal his nerve endings and then inflicting pain on him through that.

(A/N - Juujika no Ronin Moment)

I said to her, "Mother, you should also tell me how you have been doing."

Like a small child, my mother's eyes lit up as she started rambling off in excitement.

"Ana, it's good that you asked. I spent lots of my free time with Maria and it was quite fun! The tea parties with her were enjoyable..."

Maria, huh? As soon as I heard her name, the memory of Maria flirting with Aston came to my mind. And I felt unusually displeased.

Why do I feel displeased all of a sudden...

Must be because she is Dion's mother. There is no way I would like her as she is the same as that psychotic bastard.

Yeah, that must have been the reason.

..."Ana!"

My trail of thought was broken as my mother called me.

My mother said, "Ana, why don't you ask Ashil to come here? I want to talk to him."

...

The What?

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(End of the Chapter)

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