╔═══ Author's note ════╗
Shackled stages:
1st stage: the eyes turn golden. The wish is still in progress. The person still keeps their core, but their wish strongly influences them, so they may seem like a different person.
2nd stage: the eyes return to normal. The wish is complete. The person's identity is fully stolen.
I think I'll start adding these notes to make things clearer, instead of only relying on Lucian's guesses and observations. What do you think?
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Lucian didn't dare make a move, replaying the memory of Edmund's eyes turning back to blue, not letting himself forget what would happen if he ever allowed his wish to be granted.
He had asked Mathieu for more details about himself in the prophecy, and since he was a second male lead, his "screen time" was plentiful.
The prophecy only mentioned the color of Lucian's hair, not his eyes.
He thought that was strange, because his eyes were the first thing people usually noticed.
Did his eye color in the prophecy change back to normal like Edmund's?
He wasn't sure how he could still keep his personality. The wish must have conditioned him to stay the same. After all, the little wife was supposed to accept him, not some other man.
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The silence stretched between Lucian's group and the revolutionary group.
His men found it a bit odd. Their boss would usually put on a friendly act to win strangers over.
He didn't even greet them, and the other group didn't seem to have any intention of doing the same.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Togo didn't seem to recognize its mistress either, from the looks of it. It stayed inside the cage, quiet.
Celine always let her pets roam freely, never putting them in cages. Unlike Lucian's father, who kept his mother inside the bedroom.
It's not that Celine didn't want to, Lucian knew. It's because the scale of her cage was so big that he could run around the whole world and never feel trapped.
Her influence was like a giant web, so subtle and invisible, yet so powerful that people would get caught up in it before they even realized it.
She was the spider, and people were the flies.
A new idea for Little Wife's collection popped up in Lucian's mind, a great way to distract himself: Spider silk wraps.
Celine couldn't cultivate her body like men, so an armor made out of ghostweave spider's silk could be a great protection for her skin.
It was the most durable and tough material he had ever come across, able to withstand sword strikes and arrows, and still stay intact. Still under research, and not ready for production yet.
Lucian occupied himself with the thought of developing her armor, so history couldn't repeat itself.
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His men's lips twitched, seeing their Boss poke the bird inside the cage with his finger, as if the animal was suddenly more interesting than anything else.
The revolutionary group turned their heads toward their leader with the same thoughts.
The leader grabbed the axe on her belt and began to flip it in her hand, as if she was thinking of the best way to use it.
Lucian stopped bullying Togo, swallowing nervously.
The silence didn't get awkward at any point, but rather, it was filled with a tension that nobody dared to break.
'I should take a bath,' Lucian broke the silence with his steps, suddenly conscious of the smell of sweat and dirt on his skin.
What the fuck, was what all his people thought, watching their Boss walk away from the spot he had been standing on for hours, only to avoid the group of people he was supposed to meet and make a deal with.
An axe flew past Lucian's head, burying itself inside one of the ferals' heads, killing his soldier on the spot, "..."
His men took a step back when the feral's body fell to the ground, lifeless.
"You crazy-"
"Retreat!" Lucian shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Boss, what's going on?" Roland asked, "There's ten of them and hundreds of us!"
"Are you disobeying my direct order?!"
Roland shut his mouth. They scrambled to get away, not waiting to find out the reason behind their boss's frantic orders. They could see that he was not joking.
Lucian remained alone with the corpse of the feral on his side.
The leader also sent her people away.
She dismounted from the horse, walking slowly toward the axe. She pulled it out of the feral's head, and then proceeded to clean the blade with the feral's clothes.
"Don't kill my people," Lucian said softly, "I'll hate you forever if you kill one more of them."
"I already hate you forever. What are you going to do? Break another promise?"
Lucian was silent, her words stabbing him over and over. She no longer cared about his approval of her actions.
"It took me two months to collect them," he continued.
"That's a lot of time wasted."
She dismissed his hard work and dedication as if he had been playing around. She didn't care how much effort it cost him, or how much blood, sweat, and tears it took to get what he had.
So where did the guilt toward this cruel woman come from?
"What are you trying to achieve here? You know what will happen when you harm my people," Lucian wanted to shake her until she admitted that he wasn't the one at fault here.
She was the crazy one, not him. She was the one who should be punished, not him.
Lower her worth to raise his own, that's what he had always been doing, wasn't it? That's what made him feel better about himself, knowing he had the upper hand and could end it whenever he wanted.
She had always been ruthless; she just held back because she loved him. A part of his mind defended her, blaming himself for leading her on and then letting her down.
Who should feel betrayed here?
"War is not a kids' game. People will die no matter how much you scream for their mercy," she said, not wanting to hear any excuses or explanations from his thick skull. "Doomstone City doesn't welcome the likes of you."
She turned around after she had failed to punish him for real. A poor attempt at putting the blame on him, something that could have worked if she had been more forceful.
"Come here," Lucian made his way towards her as she kicked the corpse in another poor attempt to punish him.
She just wanted to be loved and was afraid of being despised by him, but she was ready to stay true to her principles.
"If you missed me so much you had to kill my soldier to get my attention, then come here and say so."
She took another step away from him, but he closed the distance between them with his longer strides.
He no longer had the energy to pretend to be the bigger man, the kinder man, the better man. The man who was worth her time, attention, and affection.
When in reality, he was only worth her rage and hatred.
He was not a hero who could sacrifice his own happiness to keep her alive and safe.
He was just a fool in love, who would rather have her ruined and by his side, than happy and away.
Lucian didn't know what he was hoping for either.
Becoming her enemy would ruin everything they had built together, and she was ready for this to happen.
She was ready to hate him, blame him, so she could be free from her feelings towards him.
He was going to be skinned alive, and then his skin would be made into a rug, and she would sit on it, and eat on it, and drink on it, a foot rug would be his final form.
That's what she was trying to convince herself.
Turn her love to hatred so she could survive without him.
Like hell he would allow that.
If she doubted his love, then what about he suffocate her with it until she couldn't breathe, and her only option was to beg for air?
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╔═══ Author's note ════╗
My longest chapter so far!
Ruining Celine himself becomes Lucian's only option to avoid both disasters: turning Celine into his enemy and becoming fully shackled.
Lucian had always admired Celine for who she was, and it's going to hurt him like hell to see a powerful woman turn into someone like him because of his selfish actions.
His love for her was holding back his yanderish tendencies this whole time.
There was never malice behind his grooming and control; he genuinely tried to heal her and stop her from becoming someone she wasn't. A yandere.
He views it as a disease that turns people unreasonable.
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