Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife
Chapter 178: The Gift

Chapter 178: The Gift

When he was done helping her into the bra, Ave thanked him and then fell silent. She was at a loss for words after what had happened. What was she supposed to do or say? The last time this had happened, he had distracted her from dwelling on it, but this time, it seemed she had nothing to distract her mind from dwelling on the embarrassment that came afterwards.

But before she could think of words to say after he was done, she suddenly felt him pull her under the water and then back up again. She gasped in shock as she hadn’t expected that.

"Lucian! What was that for?!" she cried out as she glared at him, but he clicked his tongue in amusement. "It’s our last dip into the water. Let’s go and dry up on the swing before we leave. It’s getting dark," he told her as he left the water, his drawers already sticking to his strong thighs and water dripping off his hair and sliding down his powerful chest.

He reached out his hand to help her, and Ave took it without a word. He swiftly pulled her out of the water and led her to the swing. But as soon as she left the presence of the water, a breeze blew over her, making goosebumps rise on her skin as the cold seeped into her bones. She shivered slightly and hugged her arms around herself.

As if noticing she was cold, he sat her down on the swing and then walked away before she could ask where he was going.

Parting her lips with the intention to call his name as he’d disappeared into the darkness, she saw him coming back with a few logs of wood and put them down before the swing. With a snap of his fingers, the wood began to burn brightly, the warmth of the fire reaching her and warming her cold body. She let out an involuntary sigh of relief and contentment.

"Warm enough?" he asked, and when she nodded with a grateful smile, he came to sit beside her on the swing. They sat side by side on it with their shoulders grazing.

The sun had dipped behind the horizon, but because of the burning fire, the place was illuminated with golden flames, the sounds of the logs burning and sparking into coals filling the silence that had fallen between them. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence but rather a comfortable one that made her want to rest her head on his broad shoulder and close her eyes, but she pushed that urge away and broke the silence.

"How did you discover this place?" she asked curiously as her eyes remained on the burning wood. She heard a smile in his voice as he replied in a quiet, deep voice.

"It was a long time ago when Zane and I were still young lads wandering and sneaking about outside the palace premises. We came upon this place by mistake one evening. It was such a lovely place that we decided to make it even lovelier by turning it into what it is now to surprise my mother on her birthday," he told her, the smile in his voice fading into a grim and unpleasant tone she noticed as he continued.

"She was going through a lot then in the palace, and the Emperor had forbidden anyone from mentioning anything about her in his presence, so we wanted to cheer her up by bringing her here after we made the swing and built the pond..." he said, his voice trailing off. Ave turned her head to the side, surprised that they had been the ones to make such a big, beautiful pond. Then she noticed how his eyes had turned grave and distant, as if he was reminiscing about that day.

"How many days did it take you to build the pond?" she questioned curiously as her eyes remained on the bitter lines forming between his fine brows. She wanted to reach out and smooth the frown away but she kept her hands where they were on her lap and instead asked him that question.

His frown momentarily fell away as he answered her question, "Two days. We were so determined to finish it before her birthday to surprise her, we came here every day and even planted some roses at the sides..." His eyes shifted to a side where Ave noticed there were no plants, just a large rock, which she couldn’t see well because of the darkness. She hadn’t seen any plants when they came here, thus she wondered if they had died.

"Did she like it when you brought her here?" she asked, but she noticed how her question seemed to make his face harden like steel and his demeanor take a fifty-degree change. When he spoke, there was no emotion in his voice nor was there any feeling.

"She never got to see it. She died two days before her birthday."

Ave’s breath faltered as she heard his words. She felt an ache in her heart for him as she couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like. She had lost her own mother before knowing her, but yet sometimes she still felt the emptiness in her heart and missed her terribly. She couldn’t imagine how he would feel when he’d known his mother and she had loved him. He must be in so much pain, not to mention he had brought her here, to a place he had made for her, but she’d never gotten to see it.

However, his face showed no emotions. Every emotion had drained from his eyes, leaving only an empty, distant stare—a look as if he’d locked every feeling away, buried too deep for anyone to reach.

Every word he didn’t say felt louder than the ones he might have spoken. And when she saw his clenched fists on his lap, she wordlessly reached out and placed her hand against it. He flinched as if not expecting her to touch him and turned to look at her.

Ave smiled as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze, "Tell me about her, I mean, your mother," she said quietly.

Wordlessly, Lucian unclenched his fists and interlocked their fingers with his eyes locking onto hers. "She was the kindest person I have ever known in all of my life. She had beautiful brown eyes and black hair," he told her with a silent longing in his voice. "I... loved her more than anything in this world. But I failed to protect her like she had protected me all those years. I couldn’t even give her a proper burial. I failed her as a son..." His voice shook slightly, but his expression didn’t reveal anything, though Ave could tell he was holding back a lot of emotions and wished he would let them out.

Moving closer to him, she hooked her arm around his and hugged it to herself before she leaned her head on his shoulder. "It’s fine to feel bad about what happened to her Lucian, but it is totally wrong to blame yourself for it," she told him as she rubbed his muscular arm in reassurance. There were times she also blamed herself for her mother’s death, and she was familiar with the feeling he must be going through.

She heard him let out a dark chuckle before he said, "I blame myself because it was indeed my fault. People began to hate her when she gave birth to me, a cursed prince. They called her names and made her life so miserable she couldn’t set foot outside her quarters. Did you know that after she died with a bitter smile on her face, I couldn’t be there for her? I couldn’t even bury her body in a respectable state. I was locked away in a dungeon for ten days, and by the time I returned to her, her body was decaying and...rotting away because no one had done anything about burying her, not the Emperor, who had ordered my arrest because I wanted to give her a proper burial and not his consort. They denied her a burial space at the royal cemetery!" he whispered-yelled as he shut his eyes as if the thought of it alone still ate at his very soul.

His fingers clenched around hers with a strength Ave thought might break her fingers, but she didn’t pull away; she allowed him to vent his frustration at the injustice done to his mother.

"You have no idea what it felt like to carry her rotting body that day. The smell was nothing compared to the anger and rage coursing through me. I wanted to burn all of them, all the royals. She was my life, but they took her away from me, and I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless," he gritted out fiercely. Ave sat there with him, listening silently. It was better to let him get everything out rather than keep it buried within.

"A lovely woman such as her didn’t deserve that. Zane and I made a grave for her away from the palace. We brought her here and buried her right there..." He opened his eyes and stared brokenly at the stone his eyes had been on for a while, and Ave looked towards it in surprise.

He stood up from the swing, bringing her up with him as their hands were still linked together. She wordlessly allowed him to lead her closer to the stone, where she noticed the headstone for the first time with the name Lyria Hawthorne Pendragon carved onto it when the lights of the burning woods illuminated it.

Dried leaves had fallen over the grave and covered it, so Ave hadn’t noticed when they first arrived that there was a grave here until now. She couldn’t imagine how a young Lucian would have carried his mother all the way here. It was disheartening to even think about the fact that she had been left on her deathbed for ten days after she passed away. It was a very inhuman behavior of the royals.

They weren’t only cruel to Lucian, but they had gone as far as to break him since he was young. No wonder he had so much hate for the royals, no wonder he wanted to kill them all. Her heart ached for him, and her throat burned with emotions she couldn’t pinpoint at the thought of all the things he must have endured.

Crouching down before the grave, she used her hands to move the dried leaves away from it, but Lucian hurriedly reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Don’t use your hands; something might be hiding under those dried leaves," he whispered softly as he used his own hand to move them away himself. It seemed he feared something might bite her in the darkness, and that brought another bolt of emotions to Ave as she allowed her tears to fall.

She looked down at the grave of the woman he said was the most important woman in his life. "We didn’t bring flowers for her," she broke out into a sob. "You should have told me earlier...I would have bought flowers from the market when we were coming. It’s my first time visiting her, and I didn’t bring anything..." She cried out into her palms. It was so sad and depressing to imagine everything he had suffered that she couldn’t help her tears.

She felt Lucian’s gaze on her from the side, but she didn’t care and sobbed for him and grieved for his mother, whom she had never met before. He watched her silently before he pulled her into his embrace and hugged her to his chest. "Why are you crying, Aveline?" he questioned quietly.

"We didn’t bring flowers..." she said through her sobs, as if that was enough reason to be crying. And for the first time after Lucian had started to tell her about his mother, his lips pulled into a reluctant smile. "Why didn’t you tell me earlier? It’s not nice to visit without bringing anything..." she cried out loudly, and Lucian tightened his hold around her body.

"Mother will be happy just by your presence. She doesn’t need a gift, Aveline," he whispered as he pressed his lips on her damp hair. "I have something for you," he told her as he gently moved back and then held out a purple bracelet in his hand, which made the teary Ave frown as she glanced down at his palm where he held the bracelet, then at his face.

Wordlessly, he took her hand where she had been cut on the wrist when they did that strange tradition thing in the town. He traced his fingers against the cut before he slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. "It used to belong to my mother, the most important woman in my life, but now I want it to belong to you, Aveline."

Puzzlingly, she stared at the purple pearl bracelet that now rested around her wrist and then back at him. "Why would you give me such an important thing? I don’t deserve it..." she muttered.

"Yes, you deserve it. You are now the most important woman of my life, Aveline. And I think my mother would like you to have this. I want you to keep it as a token of my wedding gift to you." He informed her as he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. "You became my wedded wife today, and I didn’t give you anything."

Ave was too stunned to move or say anything at first. She blinked once and then twice before she chuckled, "I’m sorry, what did you just say?" she asked to confirm if she’d heard him properly or perhaps she had misheard what she thought she heard.

Lucian glanced into her eyes as he spoke, "Today in that clearing where we cut our wrists and bound them together, and then we took our vows and bowed to the west, it was a wedding ritual. You became my wife then," he told her and watched as her eyes widened in disbelief.

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A/N.

The code to redeem for this month.

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