Gunmage
Chapter 91: Mirelle

Chapter 91: Chapter 91: Mirelle

M-Mother..."

Lirienne stammered, her voice sightly above a whisper. Their mother’s wide eyes darted between the two figures standing before her.

"Why are the both of y—"

She was abruptly cut off as Mirelle swiveled toward her, sharp and sudden, like a predator scenting prey. Her finger shot forward, pointing into the room beyond the half-open door.

"Who is that?"

Her voice was steady, but her eyes burned with something unnatural, something fevered and all-consuming.

It was the look of someone staring at a puzzle that shouldn’t exist, something outside the natural order.

"Oh no, you don’t."

Isolde’s grip on her second daughter’s wrist was ironclad, yanking her back with a force that was anything but refined.

The struggle that followed was graceless, entirely unbecoming of nobility. An entanglement of limbs and frayed patience colliding with reckless curiosity.

Good thing no servants were nearby.

The door slammed shut with a resounding finality. Isolde turned the key in the lock and pocketed it.

"But—But—"

"Mirelle, be very careful. Life isn’t a novel."

Isolde’s voice was sharp, her usual poised authority strained at the edges.

"I don’t want to see you or anyone else near him. Do I make myself clear?"

"Uh, yes"

Lirienne murmured, confusion clouding her delicate features. Mirelle, on the other hand, frowned. For the first time in a long while.

"Hmm."

She snorted before turning on her heel, storming off with a huff.

Isolde exhaled sharply before straightening her dress, fingers smoothing out invisible wrinkles.

"What are you still doing here?"

Lirienne lowered her head and scurried away without another word.

—

Lugh didn’t understand what had just happened.

One moment, the door had been thrown open, and his sisters were arguing with their mother.

The next, Isolde was dragging Mirelle out, her steps sharp, her grip firm. And then silence.

The room settled again, save for the dust still swirling lazily in the air.

With a slow, deliberate motion, he turned back to his book. The pages felt strange beneath his fingers, the words shifting subtly when he wasn’t looking at them directly. He did not react. This was normal.

—

In the study, Isolde sat rigid, her fingers drumming against the polished wood of her desk. A frown etched deep lines into her otherwise pristine features.

"Cynthia."

The name was barely spoken before a presence materialized at the doorway. A maid stood there, silent as the dead. Her posture immaculate.

"Yes, Madame?"

"Tighten the security around Lugh’s room."

"Consider it done."

The maid’s voice was perfectly polite, perfectly measured. It held no warmth, no variance. She might as well have been a mannequin made out of flesh.

Isolde was used to it.

"And keep an eye on Mirelle."

"Consider it done."

The response was identical, intoned with the same eerie precision.

"You can leave now."

"Yes, Madame."

Then, she was gone.

Isolde leaned back in her chair, but relaxation never came. Mirelle was a headache, an unbroken creature clawing against the iron constraints of control.

Isolde was not a lenient mother. She could not afford to be. The manor bent to her will, every piece of it placed exactly where she deemed fit.

Except Mirelle.

Mirelle, the errant variable.

Her changes had begun over a year ago, when the news arrived. When the letter came, sealed with the insignia of war, informing them that Isolde’s husband would not be returning.

A month later, Lugh had vanished into the night. Mirelle had been seventeen then.

Mirelle.

Isolde sighed again.

—

The manor lay in eerie stillness, its breath held tight beneath the shroud of night. The hour read 2:35.

Perfect.

Mirelle moved with silent precision, slipping out of her nightgown and into something dark, something free.

Her fingers danced over the handles of her drawers before drawing out a single, seemingly unremarkable object.

A hairbrush.

She turned to the window. After a quiet murmur, she leapt.

Three stories down, she landed softly on the manicured grass.

Her brush ran through her wind-tousled hair, slow and methodical, as she moved toward the back rooms where the guards patrolled.

Crouching, she slipped through the shadows. Her steps made no sound. Not muffled, not light, but utterly absent, as though the world itself refused to acknowledge her presence.

Reaching the window she sought, she picked up a rock and, with deliberate force, shattered the lock.

Silence.

The guards heard nothing. The night remained serene.

She slipped inside, her movements practiced, her breath steady. The room had changed. Sheets were neatly laid and books methodically arranged.

But the bed was empty.

"Where the hel—where is he?"

She turned, only to find herself staring into a glowing red orb, unblinking, unrelenting. It was where a chair used to be. No, it was the chair. No, it was neither. It was Lugh.

A suffocating sense of wrongness pressed against her lungs.

The darkness around him wasn’t merely the absence of light, it swallowed and devoured, refusing to be perceived.

She staggered back, nearly toppling a shelf.

"L-Lugh?"

Her voice was breathless, but exhilaration glinted in her eyes. Before she could say anything else—

"You can use magic?"

His voice bounced against the walls of the room. It was not a question, not entirely. More like an observation.

Her pulse spiked.

"H-how did you know?"

No response.

A wild smile broke across her lips.

"Do you want to know why I can use magic?"

Still, silence.

But she continued, undeterred.

"Because the story about humans being incapable of magic is a lie fed to the masses."

The atmosphere shifted

"Do you want to know more?"

She moved to the curtains, throwing them open, allowing the moonlight to carve silvered lines through the room’s oppressive dark.

"Come closer so I can get a good look at your face. Then, I’ll answer any question you have."

A long pause was followed by the sounds of movement.

Lugh rose. The light cascaded over his features, illuminating flaxen hair and casting alien shadows where they should not exist.

Mirelle stared, enraptured. Seconds turned to minutes.

Then, she spoke.

"As expected. You’ve become as beautiful as me. Hahahaha! If this isn’t fate, then I don’t know what is!"

The word hung in the air.

"Fate?"

It did not belong to him alone. The room whispered it back.

Oblivious, she pressed on.

"Yes! Our meeting is fate!"

"But we’ve met before."

"But you weren’t beautiful then."

Something about this girl felt off.

There was an eagerness in her stance, a feverish light in her eyes that made her seem like a person long since untethered from reason.

"You can ask your question now"

She stated, her voice carrying an anticipation, as though she already knew what he would ask.

Xhi’s voice echoed within him.

Observe the humans.

That was what he would do.

His mouth opened, his voice hollow.

"What is love?"

Mirelle blinked. Her lips parted slightly, stunned.

"Huh?"

"What is love?"

He repeated, unblinking, his glowing red gaze fixed on her.

She had expected him to ask about her magic, about the impossible truth she had just laid bare.

But love? What did love have to do with any of this? Not that she was complaining. If anything, the question delighted her.

She stepped forward, her fingers tracing the air as if composing a melody, twirling in the shallow moonlight that spilled from the window.

Her voice was hushed and dreamy, a rhythm of someone who had spent too long drowning in the words of romance novels and mistaking them for reality.

"When you love someone, you can’t stop thinking about them. Every waking moment belongs to them, and every second apart is agony.

It consumes you whole, a hunger, a sickness, a fire in your veins that never cools.

You need them—so much that the thought of losing them is unbearable, so much that you’d do anything, anything, to keep them close.

Even if it means breaking them. Even if it means breaking yourself."

Her eyes gleamed, and she exhaled as though intoxicated by her own words.

Lugh frowned. That didn’t fit what he had in mind. It sounded... wrong.

Just then—

Something deep beneath them stirred.

Then the ground trembled, a low, low roar shaking the very bones of the manor.