Chapter 258: Punishment

After watching Seren's peacefully sleeping figure for a couple more minutes, Drayce felt reassured to leave her bedchamber. As he left, barely concealed rage could be seen on his handsome face.

Very soon, his knights conducted the orders given by him and three men could be found kneeling in front of Drayce while he sat on a cushioned wooden chair. His red eyes carried a murderous gaze as he looked down on their pitiful forms.

"Y-Your Majesty, please forgive this ignorant foolish subject of yours!. It was truly not intentional!" one of the three men pleaded. He was the same person who had welcomed the King and Queen of Megaris at the opera house and had arranged everything for them.

Drayce did not say a word, yet his cold glare and dark expression alone made a sobbing mess of the three.

Jasper, who was standing next to him, spoke in a stern voice, "Anything that involves harming our King and Queen, even if it's unintentional, is considered a crime against the crown."

The man from the opera house didn't dare raise his head to look at anyone. He felt his body shivering from having King Drayce, the devil himself, sitting in front of him. Everyone knew the King of Megaris was a cruel person by nature. If someone were to offend him or commit a heavy crime like treason? The punishment was surely an inhumane one, the kind where death would count as a sweet release. He had already started to see his future where he would be skinned alive and left starving here in the underground dungeon, and when he was on the cusp of life and death, his dying body would be thrown in the cage of wild wolves where those beasts would shred his body into the pieces, not even leaving bones behind.

"Y-Y-Your Majesty, p-please allow this fool to explain what happened," the man finally managed to say when he gathered enough courage. His voice was shaking so much, he had to try twice for his words to sound comprehensible.

In response, he got nothing but silence from his king.

After what felt like torture, he finally heard the noble standing beside the king say, "Whatever you say, think of it as your last words. Don't think you will be spared."

The man swallowed his cry, trying his best to compose himself. Even if he would not be spared from death, at the very least, he had to make sure his family as well as the other people from the opera house would not be implicated.

"Y-Your Majesty, that kind of juice is served to all the esteemed guests, be they nobles or royals, who visit the opera house at night time. It is famous among couples and has become a specialty service of our trade as everyone demands it. I thought Your Majesty must know about it too. It was not out of bad intentions. It's been served to all the royal and noble guests for a long time," the man explained to the best of his abilities.

"How negligent!" Jasper raised his voice, making the three men tremble in fear. "Do you think your ignorance would excuse your mistake? Shouldn't you be more thoughtful while serving anything to the king and the queen, the rulers of our great kingdom? The fact that they graced your establishment with their presence is already an honor that could go down for several generations! How dare you compare our king and queen to their subjects and decide to give it to them without telling them what it is?!"

"We are wrong! Apologies, Your Majesty! We deserve to get punished!" said the man as he was sure there was no use in denying the wrongdoing though it was without bad intentions.

Jasper looked at Drayce, who had remained silent the whole time, letting the man beg uninterrupted. However, no matter how calm he appeared to be, his eyes showed he was angry, and this anger wouldn't go away anytime soon.

In fact, the crime was indeed not serious, as even someone like Jasper had heard that kind of juice was indeed offered in that kind of place as part of the trade. Though the servers from the opera house were negligent in not informing them of the spiked drink, the knights were also to be partially blamed for not checking this sort of detail. Drayce was not a ruthless tyrant who would normally punish someone severely for a mistake like this. But this time, the matter blew up because the one affected was Queen Seren, and Jasper was sure these three men would not go unscathed.

Heavy silence enveloped the room as everyone waited for Drayce to decide on their punishment.

"Send them as soldiers on the Thevailes border and instruct the general in charge to put them in the frontlines. Let them know the responsibilities of protecting the kingdom," Drayce instructed. "They will not be allowed to return to the capital unless they earn sufficient military merits, or they come back as corpses."

Though he was angry because of what happened with Seren, he was also a king and could not kill those who had commited unintentional crimes which didn't cause any real harm. At the same time, he couldn't let them go unpunished for their irresponsible service towards the royalty.

The three commoners who had never even held a sword in hand could only sit there helplessly. No one would dare oppose their king's decision. It could be said that they were given a second chance at life since their king did not kill them with his own hands or pass the order to kill them directly. If they somehow managed to survive the battlefield in the future, they would be allowed to return to Blackhelm.

"Thank you for your benevolence, Your Majesty!"

"We will serve the army well!"

Punishing them could no longer calm Drayce. He stood up and departed from the dungeon, leaving everything to Jasper and Slayer who were aware of how angry Drayce was. Both young men were equally surprised and relieved that his devil didn't show and kill those three men right there and then.

When Drayce returned to Seren's bedchamber, he looked at the sleeping face of his wife and his anger faded the longer he stared. He got on the bed and scooped her into his embrace. Only then could he be at peace and sleep with a calm mind.

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