To Love, Once Again

Chapter 66

"What about Leo? I'm worried about him." Sera asks. If there were people after them, they would target their son too.

"I found Dorne with him.. he shouldn't be here, Lucien." Sera pauses in putting on a simple linen shift, something durable but light.

"Dorne's bait." Helping her pull the clothes over her head, Lucien tells Sera in a low voice.

"I've set a detail of soldiers to watch over our son and the cottage. As long as Leo stays inside, he should be safe." Lucien takes in a breath, stooping to put his lips right next to Sera's ear as he whispers.

"Right now, there's a very dangerous game going on in the castle. There's someone else behind Dorne, somebody that's trying to take away my authority as King. And I suspect they're the ones influencing the nobles"

Sera eyes widen as things start to make sense. All the pieces were falling into place now that Lucien was diverging from the original plan. But the larger question still remained. Who was trying to kill them?

"The Elder will go stay in the cottage with him. There's no safer place for him to be than with the magician. When the cottage was built, I had him ward the cottage against intruders with malicious intent. No one can go near the gardens of the cottage if they harbored ill will towards our son. "

"But I found the cottage easily?" Sera cocks her head, unsure what Lucien meant.

Lifting his hand, Lucien places Sera's smaller hand on his open palm.
"Do you feel it?" He asks.
"No?" Sera's brows furrow. Was she supposed to feel something? There was the warmth of Lucien's dry palm, the callused bumps and rough surface.
"I'm releasing some of my mana. A slight amount." Lucien grasps Sera's hands in his.
Their fingers interlace with each other as Lucien presses a kiss to the back of Sera's hand. "But you can't feel it, can you?"
Shaking her head, Sera replies. "No."
"Others would feel a low vibration with the amount I'm releasing, or see a color atop my palm if they're more talented in magic."
Lucien continues his patient explanation:

"A Summoned One has no mana signature. It's easier for you to bypass the wards. For others, the flower garden will turn into a maze" That was an ingenious invention of the Elder's. Lucien had only asked for him to set a barrier around the cottage, but the Elder had taken it as a challenge and designed the whole groundwork beneath the foundations of the cottage, laying a magic circle beneath it. 

Without the magic wooden tags that worked like keys to allow entry, most people even with good intentions tended to get lost within the layers of various flowers.

Ah. Sera had almost forgotten. It had faded to the fringes of her memory, didn't make sense to her why people with magic would summon someone with no magic to their lands. But Summoning someone wasn't for their magic. Lucien had told her so in the beginning, when they were still at odds for each other. It was for morale, he said. For the hope they could bring to the people by 'fulfilling the prophecy'. Her job was to sit tight and look pretty.

The bath had done good for the wound in Lucien's leg and the cuts on his arms and chest. Sera used her doctor's kit to sew them up, bandaging them tight enough to not come apart with strenuous movement.

Together, they dress for the reckoning. Lucien, in his full armor, red hair styled out of his face, and Sera in a simple, but beautiful chocolate brown dress, tight sleeves and no corset, covered up in a cloak.

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The Throne Room was located on the ground floor deeper in recesses of the center of the castle, down a long hallway that began from the entrance in the courtyard.

"Sera. "

Sera looks up at Lucien, who keeps walking forward with his eyes straight ahead, the lamplight reflected in his blue eyes.