To His Hell and Back-Chapter 179: Kill a Dragon for Mom, Would You?

Cassius was in a whole brighter mood. He had never had a time when he truly believe someone would be on his side. But now he does so how could he not be happy?

The next few hours, they had shared a few more stories about their own pasts. As Arabella wanted to hear about his time in the war, Cassius had told her everything that had happened. He had told her about the human boy who he once trusted only to stab him on his back. He had told her about his dreams and nightmares during the war.

He had told her about his mother. He also told her how when he was young his mother had believed in an oracle that he was far too weak and would one day be killed.

The person who had told the oracle had been correct. Only once as he had told her that one day the King would turn his back on her despite all the things she had done for her.

At first upon hearing that the Queen, his mother became enraged, and had punished the fortuneteller. How could she trust him after all?

She was the one who had made her husband the king!

He wouldn’t dare to turn her kindness back with such hateful betrayal.

But the fortuneteller had been correct by a lick of luck.

The Queen who was emotionally tortured then had an epiphany, believing the fortuneteller’s words like it was a worshipping spell.

Worried that Cassius would be as weak as the fortuneteller had said, his mother was driven into insanity while trying to find ways to strengthen him. It had started with herbs, acupunctures, and then it turned into him drinking weird poisonous potions that she had been convinced would strengthen him.

Eventually he was poisoned and his mother who saw him turn ill from the poison became even more insane.

The once cold and calculating queen became more emotional, more crazed. Not wanting Cassius, the son she had bore lose the crown because of a human, she had made sure that no matter what nothing could kill him.

Even her.

Thus his mother did everything he could.

He started being fed poison. All the poison in this world until none worked anymore.

Cassius managed to become immune to poison at the age of ten and that wasn’t through hardwork. It was by sacrifices.

Hearing that, Arabella winced, wondering how a young Cassius would threw up blood from poison only to be fed another. In the past she had accidentally eaten a poisonous mushroom in the forest so she knew how painful it was.

So she could imagine a small boy with bright red eyes throwing blood over and over again in the dining room. He perhaps had cried his mother for help but she would simply watch him bleeding out with a determined look, almost cold and biting until he realized that his mother, the only one on his side would not stop the suffering he had felt.

"Eat this."

"Mother..."

"Eat Cassius."

"It’s poisonous."

"It is. But this will make you stronger."

"But it hurts."

"Death is far more painful. I will increase the dosage if you don’t drink this one. I’ll only ask one more. Eat Cas."

Arabella shuddered at how real the imagination run down her mind as Cassius repeated the words his mother often told him when he was plated poison in front of him. She could see it— see him, not as the maddened prince who had haunted court halls like a shadow with a crown, but as a child: pale, trembling, blood staining his lips like wine, sitting at a grand table far too long for his size. His mother at the head of it, regal and unblinking, a goblet in her hand and madness behind her eyes.

"She wanted me to be unkillable," he said, a sharp smile touching his lips, but she could tell its bitterness hidden under that smile. Cassius perhaps didn’t even know what hurt is. He must have told every ache he felt in his heart as another disappointment and that made her felt sorrowful. "And in some ways, she succeeded. I was never sick again. Never weakened. I could drink from the same goblet that killed a grown man and not blink."

"You survived," she said, her voice low. "Not because of what she did. But despite it."

A mother. A father.

Why couldn’t adult be adults?

What’s left from those adults are just broken children. Like her or him.

Cassius’s jaw tightened. "You sound like the one servant whose head was decapitated after burying my bird that my mother had made me to kill."

Arabella blinked. "She made you—?"

"She said I was getting too sentimental," he said flatly. "That I would never survive court politics if I couldn’t slit the throat of something I loved."

Arabella felt something inside her splinter. "That’s not strength, Cassius. That’s cruelty."

"It’s royalty," he said.

Now she understood why Queen Morgana would taunt her, saying that all his bird pets would be killed by his hands eventually.

But rumours are rumours in this castle ground. It could be as true as the sun but it could be as fake as the empty graves.

"Then one day my mother stopped putting poison to my food. She was... smiling," Cassius who recalled it twitched his eyebrows, appearing confused even though this had happened far in the past. "She wasn’t a woman who would smile even in the portrait of her weddings. I can’t believe that she was happy but she even told that day I don’t have to take my lessons. I don’t have to continue my swordfight lessons, and even told me I could pick up a new bird."

Arabella felt a grim prologue to a bad end.

Sure enough she was correct.

"I didn’t agree on the bird part but I was happy as I passed the day doing nothing. So I was even more willing to come with her when she told me that she was about to make me stronger," Cassius muttered as his fingers began to crack as his fists clenched. "So both of us went into a cave. A cave that they said to be where dragons were once killed by humans, a sign of power to her. She was happy when she showed me the cave. She told me how she had always wish to have a son who could end a dragon."

"But that is her wish," she muttered, "You’re her son but you’re not made to follow her wish."

He looked to her and she could see his silence that sounded as though he had always thought the same but didn’t say it aloud because in the end of the day the Queen is still his mother.

"She was the one who had given birth to me. So I had always thought I need to repay her kindness no matter what. That’s why I told her," he smiled as he continued, bitter and angry, "That I’ll kill a dragon for her. But there was no dragon."

Cassius recalled his mother cupping his cheeks.

"Then I’ll call something even stronger for you to defeat, she said to me," Cassius repeated the words that appeared to him in his nightmares. "I’ll call a demon for you to defeat."