Herald of Steel

Chapter 834 Awakening (Part-2)

At Alexander's question regarding Lapitus, the robed girls, sensing the amicable atmosphere suddenly change, straightened their spines, and then after briefly exchanging looks with one another, the fairer Saima who was the more social of the two began the speech they had rehearsed, reciting in with great eloquence, 

"My lord, as you know we came here upon Mistress Gelene's order. She told us to get a man to talk about a dress by getting him drunk and playing as his wife." The girl provided much context, before continuing, 

"This we did."

"Yesterday, after the party, when we went to that man's room, first of all, we fed him a special drink we had prepared before."

"It was not harmful or anything. Even some of the patrons in our establishment like to use it."

"Because it makes them feel very high and sometimes even hallucinate, making them see things like rainbows and flying horses."

And simply hearing that description, Alexander's lips subconsciously twitched, for a very particular word came to his mind- Roofies.

The effects sounded eerily similar to that infamous 'date rape' drug and his spine tingled at learning how easy it was for these harmless looking girls to slip something in without raising any suspicion. 

'I really need to be more careful,' He reminded himself once again. 

While unperturbed by his thoughts, Saima continued, 

"Once the man was drunk enough, he began to show him the special dress we were wearing underneath our usual dress, and given our makeup and wife, his clouded mind began to gradually mistake us for his wife."

"It did not matter to him that there were two of us. He seemed to think there was only one but he was seeing two due to being too drunk."

"He even said that 'Felicia' looked different while looking at Zara, hehe."

Saima giggled sweetly while referring to her partner's much darker complexion, and then quickly continued, 

"Then the first thing he said when he saw us was, 'You are wearing that dress again'."

And the instant Alexander heard this he felt disappointed, for this clearly meant that the man had seen it before.

But that did not mean Lady Felicia was clean, so he let the narration continue, 

"After that, we asked him some follow up questions, but he did not seem interested in answering, but instead began to rabble on about something strange. About someone named Zulkain and that they should not let Lord Pasha know what she did."

And this reveal certainly got Alexander very excited as he knew that name.

"What more did he say about that maid?" He could not help but ask for he felt he had finally found a lead.

"I'm sorry, my lord," But much to his disappointment, the fair girl was unable to answer him, as she shook her head, "Although we tried to get him to talk, he was too drunk and his speech was slurred for us to understand. We only picked up words like… 'few years'... 'hide' and 'dress'."

"It made no sense to us, so we moved on to the act itself."

"And as we serviced him, we asked him various small questions, and we found that the man and the lady we were pretending to be rarely had sex. And she certainly did not do the things we were doing."

And learning of this, Alexander did not actually find it too strange, as many couples of this time saw sex as only a way to procreate. 

Lady Felicia even stuck him as a half prude who seemed to have little experience servicing men.

So this actually confirmed Lady Felicia's 'once or twice' number.

Thus for a second Alexander did consider that Lapitus actually bought that dress to spice up his bedroom.

But for the moment Alexander put those considerations on pause and returned his attention to Saima's recount, who was still continuing, 

"We slowly started doing the act, and as we showed off our dress we asked him many more small questions, with the most important one being if he remembered buying this dress for his wife?"

"And strangely he seemed at first confused by that question."

"His exact words were, 'Didn't you say it was a gift from the Pasha?" 

Saima looked a bit curiously at Alexander as she said this, as those words did not quite make sense to her.

But naturally, it made no sense to Alexander either.

So he simply signaled the girl to continue, as he assumed that Lapitus was probably wasted by that point and did not know what he was talking about.

And finally, the girl got to the meaty part, as she revealed, "But the man truly opened up once we finished the play, and were lying next to him."

"By that point, he was very tired and in his half stupor, he seemed to truly believe we were his wife."

"And then he talking by himself."

"He first about a man named Petrino. How sorry he was that he could not protect her from him."

"And then….."

It was here the fair girl at last retold the entire conversion that had happened between Petrino and Lapitus on that fateful day, something that the latter had hidden from Lady Felicia all this time, but revealed in his drunk state as he was swimming in his afterglow.

Those two girls had really wrung him dry and in this blissful, relaxed state, Lapitus finally let his guard down and poured out all the bitterness he had hidden within him, revealing a weak side of him he had never dared to show.

It was from these girl's mouth that Alexander learned of that famous rape about 10 years ago, how Lord Ponticus helped suppress it, how Lapitus was forced to accept it for his family's sake, how powerless and angry the man had felt, how sorry he was for that, how Lapitus had rebelled in part because of that, how he had cornered Petrino that day, what Petrino had said about having an affair with Lady Felicia for a decade, how he said it was him that gave them all the gifts, how that man claimed Fabiyana was his daughter and lastly how Lapitus did not believe anything of it.

It was here that Alexander finally got to learn everything.

And unlike the lovestruck fool Lapitus, he could easily who was speaking the truth and who was lying here.

He was now ninety nine, if not one hundred percent sure that what Petrino had said was true.

Alexander's memory was still enough to recall this recently learned name to be Lord Ponticus's eldest son, and at last, it clicked in him.

That man's identity made him the most perfect fit in the gap that was in Alexander's puzzle

At long last he was finally able to complete that picture around Lady Felicia that had been hounding him so long.

And as he formed it, Alexander finally began to wake up to how he had been played like a fiddle. 

Lapitus was no scheming monster who tortured his wife, Lord Ponticus was no loving father who smothered his daughter with gifts, and she was no innocent bystander at the mercy of the whims of fate.

She was the spider at the center of it all, weaving webs and puppeteering them as she pleased.

'Almost everything that bitch said to me was a lie,' And this realization made Alexander's eyes which were already smoldering now begin to burn with extreme fury. 

And he must have had a very scary face, as seeing it the two girls quickly finished talking, and then generously bunched up together, pressing their legs together to appear as small as possible, afraid that Alexander might lash out at them.

And it was not as an irrational fear as one might assume.

For although it was not very common, still the number of instances where a king or noble had the messenger shot for simply delivering him bad news was probably enough to fill not just a book but a shelf in a library.

Hence after finishing their recount, both the girls lowered their heads and tried to appear diminutive, to not antagonize Alexander.

And even Gelene stayed quiet, giving Alexander the time to work out the things on his own.

This silence lasted a long time as Alexander finally straightened out and re evaluated many of the assumptions he had about that scheming woman, about Lapitus, and even Fabiyana.

He also understood why Gelene thought it would be better for him to listen to what the girls said for himself.

Because although Alexander never made it apparent, even now he took everything Gelene said with a grain of salt.

And the ebony lady knew it, hence this was her way of both saving Alexander all the mental hassle and also subtly complaining to him.

And it was only after he had corrected a lot of his assumptions in his head that Alexander finally broke the silence, turning to first thank the girls, 

"Okay! Thank you for your hard work. Both of you did very well. Rest assured Gelene will give both of you an appropriate gift soon."

And when, almost immediately after his mind fell into thinking about how to capture than spider and break her bones one by one, as his eyes glowed menacingly.

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