'Ugh! That was Gerald's voice.' Lucien thought as soon as he got sober enough. 'I don't have any idea how I'd deal with him.'
"Get up, Lucien," Gerald ordered.
Lucien, who was faking sleep to get some time to think, opened his eyes.
He found himself lying in a bed that was not his, in a quarter that wasn't his either.
As ordered, even though he was feeling weak, he stood up in front of Gerald as instructed.
"Explain yourself." There was an instinctive fear inside Lucien's body that tensed him whenever he heard his father's voice.
He almost couldn't even speak.
Almost.
"I awakened, Father." He answered, not explaining further, since he didn't even know where to start.
"Where did you learn about the Ingestion method of awakening?" Gerald inquired.
Lucien knew that he would be barraged with questions right now, which he was mostly prepared for.
Mostly.
"When I woke up in that abandoned building in Astreon, my memories were hazy and scattered. The method of awakening, like this and other relevant information, was already embedded in my brain."
He slowly looked at himself, his hands, and felt his body. "The sentient artifact with whom I awakened was also with me when I woke up." He answered, just as he had practiced with Arthur.
"Do you really have no recollection of anything that happened to you that day in Astreon?" Gerald asked, making sure he left nothing behind.
Lucien shook his head in denial, adamant on playing along with his script.
Gerald's eyes narrowed, pondering over this case for a bit, while Lucien just stood there silently.
It was very suspicious that not just Lucien was kidnapped right in the Moonlight Palace, but even after they found him, the palace wasn't able to dig out any information on that.
Even though it happened in their capital, the place where they ruled with an iron fist.
"How did you sneak into the spirit core without me noticing?" Gerald moved on to another question, pushing the matter aside to later investigate thoroughly.
Lucien shrugged, feigning ignorance."I don't know. When I took out the spirit core, nobody sensed it. Not even Oliver, or any other Paragon, in their castle.
"So, I reckoned it'd be the same here as well. I was right."
It was true.
Somehow, not even Gerald noticed him sneaking an entire spirit core right in front of him.
Either the spirit was very strong and specialized in stealth, or a world-class engineer helped him build contraptions to mask the energy in the core.
The biggest suspect here was Arthur Albrecht of Solstice, since he was informed that Arthur had given Lucien a chocolate box.
But not only did Oliver check everything about the chocolates right after, but he also made sure that not a single chocolate inside was misplaced.
Either it was in someone's belly, or the box itself.
Nothing was missing from inside.
And on top of all that, they didn't have any solid proof against him to do much to him.
"Did you not know about the danger it possessed?" Gerald's brows knitted, internally blaming himself for all the troubles he had been through, suppressing everything, and calming Maria down.
"You could've died." Lucien felt that this was more of a statement than concern or anger.
A bunch of traumatic memories came pouring inside him, stunning Lucien momentarily.
Every single trial he went through could've easily killed him.
He truly did underestimate this, just because he had been through this in his last life.
He gulped as Maria's face came to his mind, hitting him with extreme guilt.
He wasn't alone in this life. He had people who cared about him.
He couldn't be as reckless as before.
"...I did. I was aware of its potential dangers, but I underestimated them." He genuinely was sorry for this behavior.
Gerald was about to continue this, but Lucien wasn't finished.
"But I was also aware of the benefits it has." His eyes had a certain light that took Gerald back for a moment. "I took a risk because I had to achieve something."
Gerald was surprised. He didn't think that Lucien would speak like this in front of him. The same Lucien who trembled in his mere presence.
"Achieve what?" Gerald asked, but he received no answer.
Another surprise.
Since when was his second son this fearless?
He wasn't particularly close with Lucien because of how protective Maria was, but he still knew enough about him.
"I see." Gerald didn't probe further, moving towards the next question. "What happened when you were inside the mind realm?"
Lucien hesitated.
He couldn't tell him the truth. He simply wasn't ready yet.
"I… fought an amorphous spirit which changed its form every time it lost. And every time it lost, it came back for another round, stronger than the last time." He started making up a believable story from his other experiences.
"I nearly died in the last round." This wasn't a complete lie.
He just didn't mention that he nearly died every single round.
Ever since Gerald started this interrogation, not once did his eyes leave Lucien.
He could tell that Lucien was lying left and right, but he had no way of probing into him without forcing him, which in turn might worsen his already bad relationship with his family.
It would ruin his plan to reconcile after 'that' happened.
"When you were awakening, mirrors appeared all around you, and when you finally did awaken, your entire quarter vanished. Do you have any idea about that?" Gerald probed the question that he was most interested in.
It was in Gerald's nature to challenge the unknown. He really liked that exhilarating feeling when he won against them.
"All I know is that my powers are related to mirrors, since ingestion also transfers knowledge about powers."Lucien feigned ignorance.
Another lie.
Gerald could tell that he was not disclosing the entire information again.
Lucien definitely knew some things.
"Why pull such a stunt in front of me?" It was finally time for the biggest question.
His voice was the usual cold, but the danger he sensed from him was several times worse than normal.
"I don't have an answer for you." Lucien didn't tell him for one simple reason.
He believed Gerald already knew the answer.
"So it was a protest against the engagement? Against me using you as a pawn to strengthen the bonds between the two nations?"
Bullseye
The silence between them was thick.
"You've changed," Gerald said, his tone unreadable and complex.
Lucien stayed silent on this.
"But…" He suddenly stood up from his chair, his mighty aura suddenly pressing down on Lucien hard.
"You do not defy a King without any repercussions."