Family Business 35

Family Business
Chapter 35

-VB-

Lux bounced her baby boy on her knees, and he cooed and giggled.

She felt her lips tug up into a smile involuntarily.

Today would be the last day that she would be with her son before she went to join her brother. Marris had received an order from the king to help out a previously undermanned and underfunded international organization to fight against the source of the new trouble haunting their kingdom.

She really wished this would be the end of it.

He spent as much time as he could with her, Sona, Delilah, and their children, but between his responsibility as a noble, as the landowner of Jorasmang City and the duchy, and the only trusted magician running the nation’s only magical institution, Marris really did not have a lot of time on hand.

She also knew that stress was getting to him. It was hard to see for most, and only Sona and she saw it. Some of that had to do with how sex wasn’t even on his mind half of the time, sex itself was shorter, he slept longer, and possessed less energy in all things he did.

Letting him go alone at this point would be renegading on her duties as both the duchess of Jorasmang and the head wife to her brother.

It helped that she could defend herself better than most of his trained acolytes could.

Really, she could. She’s been practicing a lot. In fact, the “adept” that Marris assigned to her as her teacher spent more of their time learning from her than the other way around.

She cooed as Darren giggled as she grabbed her son’s cheeks and gave a squeeze.

She would hate having to spend time away from Darren, but she needed to. Sona was here and could take care of her son, but who would take care of Marris when he needed care?

-VB-

Marris looked surprised when he saw her at the head of the magician platoon at the gates of Demacia.

“Lux? What are you doing here?” he asked her. He didn’t sound alarmed.

In fact, he sounded as tired as he did recently.

“I’m here to help, of course,” she huffed as she twirled her staff. It was a gift he made for her a year ago, but one that had been largely forgotten between the then-seemingly unending sex and changing destinies. “If I don’t, then who will?”

He sighed reluctantly as his shoulders drooped. Good. That was a sign of him giving i-.

“Only if you can take down my quicksilver guardian.”

She stiffened.

His quicksilver guardian was something that people feared. Its featureless form and unrelenting assault feared many people, including Marris’s own acolytes who had to spar the thing sometimes to prove to their master that they were capable of defending themselves.

If he was bringing it out to test her, then he was being serious.

Instead of taking up a stance right then and there, she jumped back thrice to create distance. She noted how he looked approving of her action.

This was also when some of the passing civilians stopped to watch the spectacle.

Then he pulled out that glass vial of his and released the monster.

Almost soundlessly, it slithered out of its confines and pooled down onto the ground before rising up.

Was it her or did it look bigger than what she thought and remembered?

“Go.”

Quicksilver guardian shot forward, but she was faster.

She fired off a restraining spell, and it struck the magical construct. Immediately, walls of light sprung up around it, and it slammed into the walls of light hard enough to shake the ground. Unwilling to admire her own work while she was being tested, Lux fired off another spell, this time to slow it down should it break the restraining spell, and readied her big one.

She drew in mana from within herself and from without. She started floating while her staff began to spin.

And then -!

“HA!”

A iridescent beam of light burst forth from her staff and slammed into the mercury construct.

It blew apart.

She landed back down on the ground, sweating just lightly from anticipation.

When nothing else happened, she turned back to look at Marris, and he looked pleasantly surprised.

“Well done,” he clapped for her.

She beamed at him.

“Alright, then you’ll join me as part of my personal squad,” he told her and then looked back to the rest of the platoon. “The rest of you will divide yourselves into pre-designated squads. The platoon leader will be Adept Liviana, and I will be your commander. You will not take any orders that does not come from me with the mana frequency or code. If either the king or the crown prince commands you, then you will confirm that they are indeed the king or the crown prince before following their orders. Is that understood?”

““Yes, milord!””

“Good. I already have agents out and about trying to pinpoint the cause of the Harrowing while working with the Sentinel Order. Our job is to secure the city from internal and external threats. For now, we will retire to my manor and rest. Good job making good time on getting here.”