About a year and a half ago, Porgreen's royal castle.
A man with a good and healthy appearance, looking to be in his forties, drank wine at a table in the castle's living room.
There were guards in the room, but they were not Cassidy's royal guard led by Theodore, but guards from the family of that forty-year-old man.
There was also a maid serving the man. Whenever she came over to fill his glass with wine, he would run his hand on her ass, making the poor girl uncomfortable.
"More wine." The man spoke in a serious tone. He has been clearly stressed out and worried by the last few days as the situation for the family was very bad.
"Yes, my king." The maid replied respectfully. Still, the man couldn't help but feel strange; after all, he was just the Queen's husband and not truly a King.
After drinking a few more glasses of wine, the man received a message from one of his loyal soldiers. Someone wanted to make a proposal for him in a public area less than a mile from the castle.
He wouldn't leave his castle for no reason, but the mysterious person sent him a fantastic gold ring with a rare stone, and he knew that the only thing keeping his status as king is his wealth, even as false as his status is. So he went meet the mysterious person.
Arriving at a public courtyard that is full of people even at night, the man and his soldiers encountered a group of mercenaries.
When the man saw the person who called him for this mysterious meeting, he couldn't help but be worried even though he had an army of guards with him.
The leader of the group of mercenaries is an extremely beautiful woman, and her beauty could even be compared to that of the man's wife. Still, she is even more dangerous than beautiful.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})"Red Lady." The man whispered the woman's name in a way that didn't seem like a greeting.
"Bowen." Scarlett, known to everyone as Red Lady, spoke the man's name with an evident mocking tone.
"You should call me King." Bowen made an upset expression.
Scarlett laughed. "King? Everyone knows that the Queen beats you with her bare hands every time you try to enter her bedroom. Then she puts you to sleep in the servants quarters."
Bowen made an even more furious expression, not because everyone in Portgreen commented on those rumors, but because they were true.
"Did you call me here just to offend me?" Bowen asked.
Scarlett shook her head. "No, I would not spend my precious time to offend someone like you. I came here to make you a proposal that I am sure you will like."
Bowen was surprised when Scarlett went straight to the point, saying that she would pay him a lot of money and even give him more soldiers to him to leave Portgreen.
The situation between mercenaries, the recently created Guild, and Portgreen's royalty was terrible. Bowen knew that even with all the power of the royal family, they could not fight the mercenaries and adventurers together, after all, their groups grew bigger every day.
The so-called revolt against the monarchy was becoming more and more powerful, and Bowen was really thinking about fleeing the city with his loyal soldiers.
Bowen understood that Scarlett wanted to make Cassidy even weaker by removing him and his soldiers, who made up almost half of the royal forces, from her side.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"}) He only managed to marry Cassidy because she needed help from his family after her father died with most of Portgreen's forces in the great battle, but their marriage only got worse every day, so he had no love for her.
Still, he loved his daughter, and so he asked Scarlett for one day to organize his soldiers and convince his daughter to run away with him.
Scarlett agreed. She made a plan with Bowen on where she would create a riot the next day, drawing the attention of Cassidy and the main royal forces as Bowen and his troops fled the city.
Bowen went back to the castle and prepared everything to flee. On the next day, when Cassidy went to solve the riot, he tried to convince Mia to run away with him.
But he couldn't even speak to her for a few minutes before Mia kicked him out of her bedroom. She never saw him as a father since he was never affectionate with her and her mother.
Well, in fact, Bowen always tried to be closer to Mia, but since his relationship with Cassidy was not good and Mia was always very close to her mother, there was no way Bowen could get Mia's affection.
The final point was when he was trying to run away and abandoning her mother even though he took advantage of her to become King. At that moment, Mia stopped being neutral towards her father and started to hate him.
Bowen thought about forcing Mia to run away with him, but it didn't make sense to make her hate him even more. He always blamed Cassidy for his daughter not loving him, but he could always have new daughters who would love him after starting his life in a new place.
And so, Bowen fled the city with his troops. Mia sent a messenger to warn her mother about that, but Cassidy didn't want to chase Bowen or anything like that.
Cassidy knew that as the mercenary groups and the Guild grew stronger, the weaker she became, and more people would abandon her.
The mercenaries and the Guild undermined all of Cassidy's power by convincing her soldiers to join them with proposals to gain a lot of wealth and have the freedom to choose their own ways.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})The ideas of the mercenary groups and the Guild were to base the gains on individual power; that means the most powerful people would gain more by working harder.
So they became very popular. People were tired and having to share their achievements by Cassidy's methods that aimed to protect the whole people and did not focus on specific groups of more powerful people.
Scarlett and Olivia's plans soon caused Cassidy to be forced to stay in her castle as the revolt was already at its peak.
But, Cassidy still had one last plan. She thought that if she killed the leaders of the revolt in individual combat, she could prove her power and start to turn the public opinion in her favor again.
But Scarlett managed to convince Theodore, the leader of Cassidy's royal guards, to betray her.
Theodore has always been in love with Cassidy, but she never showed any sign of accepting him. When Bowen left the city, Theodore thought he was going to have his chance, but Cassidy made it clear that there would never be anything between them.
It was not gold that Scarlett offered Theodore, but Cassidy. She said she would give him a poison that would immobilize Cassidy and take away her memory, so he could escape Portgreen with her and start a new life.
Theodore was so in love and furious that Cassidy continued to reject him that he believed Scarlett's plan. Before Cassidy could fight Ivan, he shot her in the back with a poisoned bolt.
The plan was simple; he should take Cassidy's body and run. He even had a remedy that would heal her pain and scar.
But in addition to the poison being fatal and not taking away Cassidy's memory, Astrid surprised everyone by getting away with Cassidy and Mia.
That night was certainly hell for Cassidy, Mia, and Astrid. While Mia had to mature and find strength in her pain to flee in the shadows with her wounded Mother, Astrid needed to stay behind and would have been killed by mercenaries if Olivia didn't feel pity for her.
After Mia and Cassidy disappeared, everyone concluded that soon the Queen would be dead from the manticore poison, and the spoiled princess would not survive for long without her royal lifestyle.
Although Scarlett and Ivan had stopped looking for Cassidy's body, Theodore was depressed. Everything he did was to get Cassidy's love, but he was manipulated, tricked, and lost his beautiful Queen forever.
Theodore left the city on a ship that arrived in Raco. There he met Bowen, and together they drank and talked about their love and hate relation with Cassidy.
They both loved her, they both tried to be by her side, and they both blew it in the end. Theodore and Bowen now had only painful memories.
But instead of just thinking about the past, they chose to start new lives, and Raco was a great place for new opportunities.
Bowen had a great fortune adding up to the things he stole from the castle when he left Portgreen, his personal wealth, and the treasures he gained from Scarlett, so he invested in the commerce, especially Emmanuel's black market.
Theodore had no wealth, but he had the experience and strength of an incredible warrior, after all, he was Cassidy's main knight.
Then he started to work with the mercenaries, mainly in cooperation with Bowen and Emmanuel.
Now they are very rich and influential. Bowen is Emmanuel's main associate in the black market, mainly the slave trade, while Theodore led the Black Flag mercenary group, defending the island of Raco.
But, like painful memories that sometimes appear in their nightmares, Bowen and Theodore again heard the name that made their bodies tremble.
The line "Cassidy is alive" just wasn't more shocking than "she is married to the devil."
"What do you mean by he's the devil?" Bowen asked Theodore's servant.
The mercenary who was reporting what he heard from the mercenaries who came from Portgreen replied. "He has frightening black horns and fights alongside a big tigress, who bites off heads as if she is eating cookies."
"Horns? So he's a demi-human?" Theodore asked.
The mercenary shrugged. "I don't know. No one knows what kind of demi-human he is. That's why everyone said that he is the devil. I heard that he tortured Black Hand in the middle of the battlefield while kissing the princess."
"The princess?! Who are you talking about?!!" Bowen couldn't help but exclaim.
Some things were a secret for the group of mercenaries and to many of the other people in Raco so that mercenary knew that Mia is Bowen's daughter.
The man tried to speak as respectfully as he could. "Sir... The princess Mia is also the King's wife."
Bowen felt a pain in his chest when he thought of his cute and beautiful daughter in the arms of the man being called a devil.
He sat on the chair again. "But... how did Cassidy allow this? I couldn't even have concubines, and I wasn't even her real husband... How can this man be not only her husband but also her daughter's?"
Theodore was also very upset. If he could have Cassidy for himself, he would never look at other women. "Does he have more wives?"
The mercenary nodded. "He really is amazing. I heard that he made Red Lady and Olivia his wives as well as many others of Portgreen's most amazing women."
"Many? Do you know how many exactly?" Theodore asked.
The mercenary could not hide the admiration in his eyes when talking about Lucien. "Boss, apparently, there are very many. I heard that even his six hundred soldiers in black armor are all his women, exactly all of them."
"No way!" Theodore and Bowen exclaimed together.
