Libertha saw herself at the edge of a cliff given her current situation. And as the acrid smell of the sweat mixed with the suppressed fear from the crowd began to dampen her nose, she recalled one last person that had the power to help her.
He was the mastermind of this all,so if she would be able to strike a deal with him, he would free her child and have her labour for him forever instead.
She stared at the wizard who stood in front of the boiling cauldron as steam exited from it. He still hadn't lowered her son into it and didn't look as if he would be doing so anytime soon.
He still stood quietly observing and reeling in the people's ostracization of her. If only she had executed him then when she had the chance. If only the king hadn't pardoned him.
There would be no excuse to the fact that he must have convinced the king to do this. To have his revenge on her for his fellow witches and wizards she had executed in their connections to demons.
She turned behind her in the direction the king and his assembly of women occupied.
"Father, please" she muttered to him, making sure that he could read her lips even though her voice may not be loud enough like she wanted it to.
"Father?" The soldier by her side retorted fearfully while shaking, shifting his gaze from Libertha to the King who had stood up from his throne and wondering what relationship the two of them might possess for her to refer him as that.
While the King made his walk towards where she stood, Libertha could not shift her gaze from him.
She wondered what she might have done to him to warrant such treatments from him.
Since birth,he had always treated her as if she was the cause of the consequence of his greed.
And his wife the queen, who was her birth mother had never for once defended or fought for her only child. She was still hurting from the King's betrayal,but was that justification for the years it had gone on? For more than twenty three years? She had abandoned and discarded her,just the way her husband did to her as well.
And Joxxx had been the man who was charged with raising her but to what end when he had raised her as a puppet for the King.
"How dare this dog call me her father?!" The King hollered at her immediately he came before her, landing a thunderous slap down her cheeks for what he felt was an insult to his person, her calling him father. A flicker of fear coursing through his veins before they had been overtaken by his rage.
"Why father? Does it hurt your pride whenever you recall you have a child you can never erase?" A smirk appeared on her face as she gushed his reaction.
Anger sprout on his face the moment he heard her say that and she thought that perhaps if she were to expose her origins,then the people wouldn't be so against her anymore. As their doubts about her would be clarified by then.
The king's rage boiled over and his fingers twitched at his sides, but she could see from his eyes—those cold and calculating eyes—and it was the fact that they betrayed something deeper than fury. It was fear.
Libertha's smirk widened. He knows the truth. And he knows she knew it too.
The crowd murmured, shifting uncomfortably. The soldier beside her still trembled while his grip tightened on his sword. The King had called her a dog moments ago, but now? He hesitated. He just stood as if time stood still.
"Tell them, Father," she taunted tilting her head. "Tell them why, after all these years, you have no heir. Why the gods refuse you another child."
The king's jaw clenched. His nostrils flared. The wizard who was still standing beside the boiling cauldron with the wrapped child in his arms did not move. He only watched, eyes glimmering with something unreadable.
"Should I tell them the truth father? Do you want me to do you the honour of that?" Libertha asked once again while staring deeply into he King's eyes.
He didn't shift his gaze from her for even a moment. If she's could kill, then she would have been dead from his minutes ago.
"Don't you think your people deserve to know how you got your kingdom? Don't they deserve to know that I am your child with your queen?" Libertha's eyes screamed at him.
The crowd gasped and leaned closer to hear what it was that she wanted to expose.
" His daughter?" Began the murmurs.
There was no way she could be his daughter. She was even larger and taller than he was.
And unlike her parents who had smaller bodies, she appeared bigger than they were. Even in their morphology. While the King had a stunted nose that stopped growing at his nose bridge, causing a big gap to be in between his forehead and nose, Libertha had hers beginning from her forehead and this has added more robustness to her cheeks and face.
The Queen's beauty was nothing to compare to hers too. So there was no way that she could be the Kings daughter when she looked nothing like the both of them.
"Aren't you going to do anything to save your only child mother?" Libertha turned behind her and screamed at the queen.
She avoided her gaze, facing the side before she turned to look at her, but by then, Libertha was no longer staring at her nor asking her to save her child.
"What could she do?" She questioned herself.
It wasn't as if she had enough powers to do anything.
Even a decade ago, she couldn't do anything nor question the King's decisions she she found out, why did the product now believe that she would be able to do anything?
The King stared at Libertha and a smirk appeared on his lips. Slowly, it turned into a mocking smile.
"Did you honestly believe that you would be able to turn my Queen against me with your demonic powers?" He questioned. His voice didn't betray any mockery in it for how the Queen had turned her gaze away from her.
Libertha felt disappointed. She felt anger and rage boiling but still managed to control her emotions.
It wasn't her fault she was born. It wasn't her fault she was this way. It wasn't her fault her father made those decisions years ago, so why were they both taking it out on her?
She bowed her head before the King in total surrender.
"I won't tell anyone that you are my father and that the Queen is my mother. I will mention nothing about your deal with the demon years ago. Please let my son go. You can do whatever you want with me. But please... Please, please, release my son to Joxxx to raise him please" she swallowed her pride and pleaded for one last time.
She raised her head after haven completed her sentence and stared at the Wizard's direction.
He was still holding her baby and waiting for her King's orders. Her thoughts were a juggle against hope, anticipating unwaveringly for the King to ask him to release her son like she had pleaded and for her body to be thrown into the boiling couldrum instead.
A flashback of memories flashed through the King's eyes.
"I will give you power and more lands and kingdom than what you believed you would ever be able to conquer. From the red sea to the Green sea of the Antircts, to the greatest brown waters that connects the earth. I has control over all these and will give you whichever it is that you want". A man had met up with him once and told him.
That night, he had been drinking himself to stupor. His generals had all come in the day time with their bad news of how he was loosing the war.
They had even made sacrilegious statements when they asked him to dress up and leave the kingdom to join them in the battlefield, to give his soldiers the morale and courage to approach their enemies head on, they had said.
But he knew that they were mocking him.. Since he became King, he had never joined them in battles. He waited back at the castle with his multiple female workers who pleasured him however his heart desired, and then his men always returned with songs of Victory.
But this was a first, and his generals had had the impetus of asking him to join them in the battlefield, belittling and insulting his leadership.
So that night, he has doused himself in wine. He was already loosing the war. Already loosing his stronghold of his kingdom. Going to the battlefield would be nothing as he couldn't even fight.
Then when all his hope seemed to be lost, a handsome man, a beautiful man. He still can't describe him. But he recalled that he possessed an unrivaled beauty in all women he had seen despite how many kingdoms he had conquered till date.
Men, great men, warlords and emperor's alike would give anything to have him if he had not mentioned that he was a man, and he was not excluded.