Chapter 31: Trust
Lilian was sitting in her room with her eyes closed facing the door. If an outsider were to look at it it would seem like she was doing yoga or meditating sitting in an awkward position on the floor. What she was really doing was reaching out with her Mana to find what the seal that locked her in this room looked like.
This was no easy task, as world energy was hard enough to control inside ones body let alone having it branch out and search. Even though Lilian had a frightening control over her Mana it was still no easy feat.
She had to coax the energy for about 20 minutes before it even left her body, and then it would take 20 more to have it start searching, and then in about 10 minutes she would run out of energy and have recharge. Not to mention that she had to be constantly aware of people coming into her room so that she would not be found out.
But using this method she was able to draw about a tenth of the seal in 7 hours. Opening her eyes she stood up and opened her dresser drawer, searching around in it for a few moments she pulled out a rolled up parchment. Unraveling it she took out a pen and quickly drew what she had discovered in this run of examination.
Rolling the parchment back up she quickly stuffed it back into her drawer and closed it. Running back towards the window she sat down in a chair and picked up a book from her shelf. As soon as she opened the book the door to her room opened and Daniel walked in.
Lilian, seeing her father walk in immediately grabbed a book mark and closed her book. Standing up she quickly curtsied pulling her dress up slightly not daring to look him in the eyes.
"Father."
Lilian knew that if her father was visiting her there was two possible reasons, the first would be the more common one and that was she needed to be punished. If that were the case Daniel would come into the room and tell her so, although he never physically hurt Lilian he would make diabolical punishments for her. Once she went without food for 2 days, and then when she finally got her food it was bland and stale. Or similarly he once blocked her view from the window for a week and took away her books.
The only other reason for him to enter her room was when something big was happening, for example when he had hosted the promenade he had came into her room to tell her to be extra quiet and not make any trouble by trying her magic.
Either way neither was good news, so seeing her father enter the room she showed him the utmost respect and turned serious at what he had to say. Of course on the outside it just seemed that she was afraid of him punishing her for something she had forgotten. But internally he mind was spinning.
(Did he find out about me and Jack, did I mess up while scanning the seal and he noticed? In my pursuit of writing down the seal did I make a noise and cause his suspicion. Maybe I didn't make enough noise and caused him to be suspicious.)
Her thoughts were broken by the sound of Daniel clearing his throat, "Lilian later today there will be some highly talented mages coming in as guests. I do not want to hear a peep or have you produce the tiniest amount of magic. I do not want you be enslaved for the rest of your life, understand?"
Lilian outwardly did not show any difference in her state mind, simply nodding to her father and speaking calmly.
"I understand father."
Daniel nodded before taking a look around her room for a brief moment and then promptly leaving.
As soon as he had left Lilian released a breath that she hadn't noticed she'd been holding.
(*sigh* I guess I'll have to put examining the seal on hold for now.)
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It had been 3 days since Jack had come back to the temple of Mayaht and he was currently helping Lance reorganize the storage area after a wedding. The men were oddly quiet, after their conversation before Jack left, and then the events taking place afterwards kept their mouths shut.
Neither knew what to say to the other, and with Jack stretching himself a little bit to thin he was not quite his usual snarky self. But seeing the wedding and going back to a mostly blissful life within the church, Jack's mood was risen.
Putting away a box on a shelf Jack turned to Lance.
"You know the wedding was nice and all, but you should've seen your face throughout the entire thing. You were lucky that the bride and groom didn't look at you they might of thought you were there to kill them!"
Lance stayed silent for a moment before moving a box of his own up to a shelf.
"Yeah right, you would've been grumpy too if you knew that you'd have to clean the whole church up afterwards."
"But that's were you're wrong, I do have to."
Lance stopped and looked at Jack, "How the hell did you get assigned to clean up duty didn't you have it yesterday?"
"I promised Henry that I would switch a task with him before I left, and now that I'm back he decided that clean up for the wedding was the perfect opportunity to hold me to my word."
Lance simply smirked slightly, "Chump"
"Hey, your doing it too remember?"
"Yeah, Yeah." Lance rolled his eyes and finished up.
The two left the room and started walking up to the main area of the church to clean up from the ceremonies. As they arrived at the room they were greeted by the sight of rice and confetti all over the floor. Flower petals were strewn about and there was several layer of décor on the pillars and pews.
Seeing the mess that they had to deal with both men sighed before looking at each other. Jack simply shrugged at Lance and got to work. Lance shook his head and went to get a bin to put all the mess into.
As they cleaned for about an hour neither one of them said much, but it wasn't the oppressing silence that was between them from before. As Jack was busy shimmying up the pillars to take down the d��cor, Lance paused before deciding to speak.
"You know something about the Jack of Spades don't you?"
Jack who had just grabbed the highest bit of tinsel that was stuck on the pillar jumped off the pillar and landed gracefully on the back of two pews.
"Where'd this come from?"
"Well first you didn't tell anyone about what I told you in the storage, you even assured me. Then you happen to go on holiday and all hell breaks loose, it's just a bit too much to be a coincidence. I told you my secret I think it's only fair you tell me yours."
Jack looked at Lance for am second before turning back around and climbing the next pillar to remove the tinsel.
"You could say I am investigating the Jack of Spades, but that's all I can tell you for now."
Lance simply looked at the figure of Jack climbing before shaking his head and calling out.
"You do realize that we have a ladder, right?"
"Yeah but it's so far away and I can fairly easily get the tinsel down so there's no point."
Lance simply snorted and resumed sweeping up the floor. Jack hopped off the final pillar and turned to Lance motioning for him to toss him a broom. Obliging Lance tossed Jack one and kept sweeping. As Jack caught the broom he started sweeping and speaking at the same time.
"If the Hildegard's are giving you hell about the Jack of Spades, don't worry. With the killings going on I think everyone will have something greater to worry about."
Lance did not respond but paused slightly in his sweeping before continuing. The rest of the time spent cleaning up was filled with silence.
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Reginald was bored, although his mother let him go out of the house today Theresa was constantly worrying about him. Reginald was annoyed with her constant worried buzzing but he knew that it was probably necessary, as every time he climbed a flight of stairs he felt light headed and short of breath.
He was also sweating a bit much, for someone walking around in a late fall day. Arriving back at his house he thanked Theresa before going to the study with a fireplace. Sitting down in one of the plush red chairs facing the fire place he relaxed and closed his eye's breathing heavily.
After a while he heard the door open turning to look back he saw a tired looking Lizzie jump up onto the other chair.
"Isn't it your nap time Lizzie?"
"*Yawn* But I'm not sleepy" Lizzie said unpersuasively.
Reginald chuckled before getting up and carrying Lizzie towards her room.
"C'mon Lizzie lets get you up to your room, you need to sleep to grow up beautiful like your mother and aunts."
"But I'm bored uncle Reggie, no one was able to play with me today, and gramps was doing something weird in his office."
Reginald paused on the stairs, one to catch his breath, and two to ask a question.
"What exactly do you mean by strange?"
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