My Disfigured Duke Husband Helps Me Plot My Revenge
Chapter 314: Pick Up the Pieces

Chapter 314: Pick Up the Pieces

Leonor didn’t care any longer that her husband told her he would seek her out first once he could receive letters again. She was going to send a letter whether he liked it or not.

Eve took to the sky in the middle of the night since Leonor couldn’t sleep after the dragon was grounded for good. Even though it was advised they sleep in safe area underground, the skies felt safe.

Eve couldn’t get killed by anything, Leonor still didn’t want to see her familiar suffer. She watched from the opening of the tunnel as her familiar flew away. The guard who went with her was politely standing further away so she could have a moment to herself.

As Leonor was walked back to her room, she still didn’t like to think that she killed a dragon. Thinking of it as only grounded and not dead made it so much easier for her to accept.

Since then, she had seen the beast a few times. When it wasn’t threatening to blow down Coeurvalle with a flame or thrash its surroundings to rubble, she realized there was something beautiful about the iridescent scales that crawled up its body and long neck. Even the circular scale next to its mouth looked like the inside of an abalone shell.

Outside of the mages seeking the mana core inside of it and the experiments that they could do with its scales, bones, and flesh, there wasn’t much that could be done to the dragon. They needed to dismember it and put it elsewhere so that the palace and surrounding areas could start to repair themselves.

The following morning, in an act that hadn’t been seen since the night he killed his own father, Stephano beheaded the beast and skewered it on the palace’s main gate. While he couldn’t claim the defeat on his own, it was a showing that nothing could defeat Castille. He had mages and soldiers that would protect the kingdom’s legacy until the end of time.

From that point forward, the cleanup began.

During King Stephano II’s reign there was an alarming feeling of divide amongst the subjects of Castille. The divide between the rich and the commoner grew. Greed ran rampant but no one could fight it. When the war with the monsters began in Letum, the poor were sent and used as meat shields while the rich remained in the comfort of their homes.

It was the final nail of the coffin of the kingdom and not something Stephano III could solve on his own. He could have never predicted such a tragedy would be what reset the trust in the people. The people feeling abandoned by their leadership heard the rumors of Duchess de Montclair and King Stephano on the front lines facing the dragon on their own.

For the first time in decades, there was a sense of unification as people started lending each other a hand to fix up the city they called home. Regardless of social background, there was a concentrated effort that Leonor felt proud to be a part of.

A few days after the attack, she received a letter from Montclair. While Gideon and Beth were with her, everyone else in their estate seemed to be doing okay. There was a fire that ripped through a bit of the forest on the outskirts of northern Montclair, but it stopped at a cliff’s edge where there was little vegetation. The duchess felt relieved.

One of the things hanging over her head became much lighter.

Yet there was still a constant itching of where her husband was. Eve hadn’t come back with anything because she couldn’t find him without exhausting her mana—something she had been trying to avoid since she found out the news of sharing her body with another and how far she pushed it suffocating the dragon.

Instead of sitting around and waiting, Leonor decided productivity was the answer for her worries. She took to restoring the Mage’s Quarter, hoping that whenever Quinn returned, he would have something to come back to.

Unfortunately, the complicated organization that had gone on in his study was something she couldn’t replicate, but she oversaw the plans of getting everything back together considering his space was in the half of the building reduced to rubble. She thought he would like what they came up with to make up for it.

Not only did the event unify Castille, it also made the general person realize how vital of a role mages played in society.

Despite the Royal Advisor’s efforts to see what happened to the dragon to make it ground itself at the palace and realizing there were injuries the beast suffered from, the final blow to the beast was done through magic. That was all that mattered to them.

As Leonor went through piles of books, trying to salvage the ones she knew Quinn likely found dear, the King who had been too busy to make an appearance at the palace appeared before her wearing royal garb that made her realize he was certainly out in the city.

His desire to socialize had likely been snuffed out completely.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, trying to keep from sounding nosy but not being able to help it.

"I went to the Queen’s Palace first where I assumed the duchess would be resting because of her current condition."

Leonor glanced around. No one was around but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to check.

Stephano went to great lengths to try telling everyone that she was with child, but she was firm on keeping it a secret. It felt wrong that others would know about it before the father of the child.

"I’m not feeling tired," she insisted. "If I were, then I would rest, but I want to give a hand where I can. Without a classroom there’s nowhere for me to teach. Without a lab, the students can’t experiment."

Stephano sighed.

"You do everything you can to avoid doing what I beg of you," he said. "Perhaps one day I’ll get down on my knees in front of you and beg you to just sit around for a while."

"If it doesn’t work for my husband, why would it work for you?" she asked, cracking a smirk.

Stephano then groaned, realizing he wasn’t going to make any progress with such a woman. Rather than complain, he would lend a hand as well. He decided to remove the fur lined cloak he had been adorned with before leaving that morning. It was starting to get warm outside.

The strange winter they had where war loomed constantly then a dragon decided to even the playing field for seemingly everyone was finally coming to an end. He hadn’t heard a single thing from what was left of Eirenguard. He hoped that when they decided to come into contact with him again it was relenting that going to war was a stupid idea in the first place.

The two of them only left the Mage’s Quarter when the sun was starting to set. They ate a quick dinner with one another before dragging themselves to their respective corners of the palace.

For a week they slept in the tunnels but since everything seemed to be stable and there were no signs of dragons out of Letum, they could at least try to return to their lives as they once knew them.

Leonor’s dreams were starting to get more vivid and it made sleep come and go.

As she woke up sweating from a terrifying dream about being chased, she heard a disturbance from down the hallway of the Queen’s bedroom and pulled on a robe to investigate it for herself.