The Mad Princess and the Dying Prince novel Chapter 101

Lucia closed the distance between them, stopping mere inches from Lord Alistair Beaumont.

Having her face so suddenly near caused a strange tightness in Alistair's chest. He stepped back on instinct.

"Are you going to strike me, too?"

Recalling how she had slapped Aurelia, he realized the girl just might dare to raise a hand against him. A spark of resentment flared toward his parents—why hadn't they beaten some discipline into this wretched girl when she lived in the country?

Lucia simply stared at him, finding his presence rather strange.

While her sight was naturally clouded when it came to divining her own fate or the fates of her blood kin, the aura surrounding Alistair was shrouded in an entirely different kind of mist—it did not look like the bond of a true blood relative.

With Lady Beaumont, she could tell at a single glance that they shared no blood.

But Alistair... Lucia felt there was a profound mystery clinging to him.

Perhaps it was because her spirit had not yet fully tethered to this mortal vessel. She had died a violent death, her magic entirely drained, and was only reborn by clinging to the life-giving Purple Aura of Prince Jareth. She was nowhere near her peak strength.

Once her power returned, she would have to look much closer at exactly what Alistair Beaumont truly was.

"What sort of shock did you suffer at the royal court, my lord?" she asked, casting him a mocking sideways glance.

A grown man, terrified of a young girl's slap?

Flushed with humiliation, Alistair cursed his own cowardly retreat. "Look at yourself! What kind of state are you in?"

"What state? The state of someone abused in a remote village for ten years. Look closely. These are the sins of House Beaumont."

Lucia spread her thin arms, inviting him to witness her frail frame.

When washing herself the past few days, she had discovered a myriad of scars, both old and new.

"You—"

Alistair roared. "You refuse to even call me your father, yet you act as though you hold the moral high ground!"

It only just dawned on him that she had been calling him 'my lord' this entire time, without once addressing him as her father.

"I already told you that you are unworthy of the title."

Lucia cared nothing for the societal demands of filial piety or reputation. If she refused to call him father, it wasn't as if The Laws of Valerius would drag her to the executioner's block.

She was not a man striving for a knighthood or a seat on the royal council.

Furthermore, she had already been granted a royal betrothal, so they could not even use the threat of an arranged marriage against her. That was a distinct advantage.

Otherwise, if Alistair and Lady Beaumont tried to use their parental authority to marry her off, she would have had to waste her energy breaking the match. It would have been terribly bothersome.