Filed to story: Loving You In My Final Days
She looked at Princess Mira with millions of questions in her eyes. She knew that Alex was targeting the princess but what could her daughter have done to earn this treatment?
“Alex, wait please. What do you mean -“
Before the queen could complete her statement, Alex already walked past her towards Princess Mira. However, before he could reach the princess, the king finally moved and stood between Alex and his daughter.
“Alexander…” King Livius pulled Princess Mira behind him and stood before Alex, his expression now looking very grave.
“King Livius, step aside. This has nothing to do with you,” Alex uttered as his eyes blazed coldly at the man.
The queen was about to approach them again because she was afraid that a fight might explode between the two but the King stopped her with his next words.
“Leah, stop! Do not interfere anymore,” the king said without averting his gaze away from Alex. Vigilance and intense alertness were flooding in his eyes.
“Move, King Livius.” Alexander’s patience had long reached its limit and the warning in his voice this time was tinged with the highest form of danger.
“Alexander, you think my daughter is the one behind that girl’s disappearance, right? Let me handle her so stay put,” the King calmly said. Gone was the man who let out that loud, thundering sound earlier as he became incredibly calm and careful.
The king could not let Alexander start a fight in this place with all his family here. He knew that if a fight broke out, that would be disastrous. This problem needed to be solved as fast as possible. They needed to find that girl very quickly or Alex might really do something even worse than what he imagined.
Without waiting for Alex’s reaction, the king turned towards the princess, grabbed her by the shoulders and he cornered her by the wall.
“Mira, where is she?” the king immediately asked the girl.
He looked at the girl’s expression and he knew right then why Alex had targeted her. Mira may have hid her intentions very well and managed to fool everyone with the innocent and noble look on her face but there was no way she could fool him nor Alex. Her words and expressions were enough for him to deduce that she was hiding something so of course, Alex would pick up immediately on that. He knew that Alex wasn’t wrong and that this daughter of his had something to do with the girl’s disappearance. There was also one more incriminating thing that he knew about this daughter of his and that was the fact that Mira had been in love with Alex for a very long time.
Even though the princess wasn’t the only one who may have wanted to be with Alex, this daughter of his was the only one who would be foolish enough to do something like this right under Alex’s nose! She was the only one who would act rashly like this, not thinking about the consequences of her actions. There was no one he could suspect but her.
The King’s jaws clenched hard as he glared at his foolish daughter. “Mira, if you still want to live, spit it out,” he threatened. “Now!” he demanded but the girl just shook her head.
“I don’t know anything! Father, please believe me! I was with Mother the entire time, how could I kidnap someone?” the princess started tearing up.
“That’s right, Livius, Alex. Mira was with me the entire time. Stop suspecting her like that!” The queen stepped in.
“Father, what evidence do you have to suspect that I am the one behind this? Please, I never did anything wrong! I don’t know what you are talking about!”
“Livius, listen to your daughter. She’s telling the truth,” Queen Leah urged her husband but the man was unswerving in his certainty about Alex’s accusation. He hated to be like this towards his daughter but he knew Alex well and he had never been wrong about things like this.
Ignoring his wife’s plea, the King returned his gaze to his daughter.
“Mira, I’m only going to ask you one last time. Where is the girl?! This is your last chance to save yourself. If you cross Alexander, you will regret it,” the king said in a stern and threatening tone. He was extremely worried for his daughter but he needed to let her know the gravity of the situation because he knew what Alex was capable of.
“Father, how could you not believe your own daughter?” she uttered in disbelief.
“Because I know that Alex is right,” was all he replied.
The girl gritted her teeth and shook her head, denying her involvement in any of this. The queen forced her way between them and held her daughter.
“Stop this now, Livius! I am not going to let you treat my daughter like this!” The queen was now angry but more than that, she was extremely worried. They were becoming so emotional that they didn’t notice Alex’s disappearance.
“Enough with this nonsense!” Alex’s words boomed in the great hall as he walked back inside. He was dragging a dead soldier’s body with his hand and when he reached the trio, he dropped it on the floor, right before the princess.
An hour ago, while everyone was searching the palace, the first thing Alex fixed his eyes on were the royal guards. He knew that if he wanted to get any clues, he must investigate every single one of them. These royal guards were the only ones who were able to move around the palace freely without question and without garnering much attention. The people who were behind Abigail’s disappearance would almost certainly use the soldiers to do the dirty job or at least be in league with a few of them to be able to escape unnoticed.
During the search, Alex’s keen senses noticed a faint scent from one of the soldiers which was unusual. When Abigail was with Alex, he noticed that the girl wasn’t fond of perfume so he couldn’t tell if the scent he smelled was from Abigail. However, the scent was feminine and that scent was enough of a clue for Alex to interrogate that soldier because it was strange for any soldier to have a scent like that.
Alex immediately took the soldier aside to ask him a few questions. Alex was expecting him to tell tales such as he had a secret meeting with his lover or some such thing but before Alex could even say a word, the soldier killed himself by biting and swallowing a poison pill. This act was one of the things that the kingdom had kept in place from the ancient times to prevent them from spilling any secrets or classified information about the royal family if they were suddenly captured and tortured.
So, the fact that the soldier did this the moment he was about to question him was enough answer for Alex. This kind of loyalty would only be reserved for the members of the royal family. These royal guards had absolute loyalty to their masters, so if one did this kind of thing, Alex was certain that the one he was working with was a member of the royal family. These soldiers wouldn’t willingly die just for anyone.
“Princess… This is the soldier you worked with, right? Now don’t waste any more of my time or else…” Alexander left the sentence hanging because his intentions were very clear as his gaze locked onto the princess’s eyes. Princess Mira knew that he was very serious. She knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, like he did to her guard.
The princess’ lips began to tremble in fear. She knew that Alexander wasn’t someone she could mess with. In fact, nobody would dare to mess with him, not even her father, who was King of this kingdom. However, she never thought that that woman would bring out this kind of reaction out of Alex.
She thought that her plan was flawless and that nobody would be able to get any evidence incriminating her, even if they suspected her. Unfortunately, she didn’t count on Alex’s reaction. This was far more extreme than what she had seen before that even her parents couldn’t do anything. Fear ran through her entire body and she knew what she had to do.
Before she knew it, she fell down on the floor as she clung to her mother as if her strength suddenly left her. Her reaction made everyone finally understand that she indeed knew something even if she may not be the mastermind of the whole thing.
“She… she’s in the underground dungeon,” she finally whispered.
Everyone was utterly shocked. Alex’s eyes darkened as if the faint light of life in them had entirely disappeared.
Everyone knew that that dungeon was the most dangerous place in the palace. In ancient times, the dungeon was where they left the traitors and enemies to let them rot inside. The dark dungeon was a large maze filled with many traps that would cut and or maim or wound at every turn and this was a place where no one ever escaped from. Worse yet, many rodents and poisonous insects also made their home in the darkness as they waited for their next meal. It was created to torture anyone who entered it before eventually dying at a dead end, because there was no way out.
