Everyone witnessed the tall royal looking man wearing black clothes with the delicate embroidery of gold and red threads, which signature the royalty of Megaris. His face with well carved sharp features looked cold; his red eyes darted in front, not sparing a glance to anyone. Half of his elbow-length jet black hair was secured at the back of his head with the gold accessory. His one hand rested at the sword hung to the left side of his waist as he walked towards the throne to greet the King of Abetha. Though he was calm, one could see the dark and intimidating aura he carried to make everyone vary of him.
Arlan walked with him to greet the King of Abetha. These were the two royals from other Kingdoms who played an important part in rescuing the Crown Prince of Abetha, and by now, everyone had heard and understood what they were capable of.
They stopped at a certain distance away from the throne. Drayce greeted King Armen with a slight nod while Arlan bowed, "Your Majesty!"
King Armen accepted their greetings, "The Royal Court of Abetha welcomes King Drayce and Crown Prince Arlan."
"We look forward to how the Royal Court Of Abetha works," Arlan said.
"I believe it wouldn't disappoint Price Arlan and King Drayce," said King Armen.
Drayce nodded lightly and turned to look at Prince Cian, who stood in front of the group of ten men, kneeling on the floor in the center of Royal court.
The two royals greeted each other with a slight nod. Drayce looked at those ten men as he stepped towards them and stood beside Cian. Arlan chose to be a bystander, more like he was ready to get some entertainment with morons trying to fool his smart friends.
"My sensitive ears just caught that someone had blessed this Royal Court of Abetha by mentioning the name of King of Megaris." Drayce's voice was cold and dominating as he glared at those injured and so-called fake victims.
When Drayce entered the royal court and greeted King Armen, these men recognized him immediately and lowered their heads to hide themselves. They were not aware that the red-eyed man they had mentioned in their defense statement would turn out to be the King of Megaris Kingdom. Neither the minister Warin had informed them.
Drayce was already intimidating and scary enough as they remembered him from the day when he beheaded their friend without hesitating for even a moment as if it was nothing for him. Now, getting to know who he was for real and remembering the rumors of his cruelty and being the son of the devil, they were sure they had dug their graves.
The minister Warin bowed to Drayce and spoke, "Glad to have you here, Your Majesty! Accept the greetings from Head of the Department of Human welfare, Minister Odo Warin."
Drayce didn't react except for looking at the minister calmly.
Minister Warin continued, "There is an incident that concerns Your Majesty's presence, and we all wish to know the truth."
The minister waited for Drayce to ask what kind of the truth, but Drayce was just standing looking at him unaffectedly.
"Well, let me explain the entire incident," said the minister, feeling not so confident under that intimidating gaze from the pair of red eyes.
"A few days back, The Third Princess Seren and Your Majesty, King Of Megaris have caused harm to innocent people in the marketplace." He said and pointed towards those kneeling injured men, "There are the victims here, and they seek for justice."
"Victims?" Drayce let out a deep sigh, and he took a step closer to those men, "We love playing victims, don't we?"
Subconsciously those men shrank back. Drayce smirked and looked at Minister Warin, "Care to explain how these people turned into victims instead of assailants."
It startled the minister. Instead of asking what incident, Drayce had directly accused those victims as assailants.
Minister Warin explained, "According to their statement, they had come across The Third Princess, Princess Seren, and tried to help her, but she got angry and put them all on fire with her powers. Later one red-eyed man dragged her with him. Not knowing the true identity of a maiden, they thought she was a Witch and tried to catch her, but then the same red-eyed man stopped them and even beheaded their subordinate."
Minister Warin waited for Drayce to react, but he was still the same as Minister Warin's explanation meant nothing to him.
"And we all know, only King of Megaris, King Drayce, is blessed to have red eyes. Being a king, only he can dare to drag away the princess or rather try to protect her after what commotion she had created by hurting the innocent people."
"Innocent people?" That is what Drayce said and disregarded what Minister Warin had said till now.
It was frustrating for the minister how this young king acted like his accusing words fell on deaf ears and held no value. He couldn't stop himself and asked that he should not. "Is there something going on between King Drayce and Princess Seren?"
Drayce again ignored the minister, stepped towards those men, "You get one more chance, to tell the truth," and pulled his sword out of his scabbard.
Still, there was no reply from those men who didn't expect this King to act recklessly in the Royal Court of their Kingdom.
Thud!
Ahh!
The next moment the sword pierced through one man's palm, whose hands rested on the ground to keep bowing down.
The man whined in pain. He was the same man who first caught Seren and had his dirty intentions towards her.
"Reminded me of those pair of filthy hands that touched The Third Princess," Drayce commented coldly as if he wished to chop those hands, but it was not the right time to do so. To prove Seren innocent, hearing the truth from those men was necessary, and for that, keeping them alive was important, or he would have killed them the moment he saw them.
"Is this enough, or should I refresh all of your memories by beheading someone among you again?" Drayce asked.
Darus count signaled Minister Warin to take control before the King Of Megaris would ruin their plan.
"Your majesty, King Drayce, though we are grateful for your help in rescuing our Crown Prince, it doesn't give you authority to harm the innocent people of this kingdom and that too in their Royal Court. It's a disrespect to our Kingdom and its people." He then looked at King Armen, "Your Majesty."
King Armen nodded lightly to his minister's pleading and spoke, "King Drayce, I believe your actions will lead us to know the entire truth."
This shocked Minister Warin and his alleys. The king of Abetha himself approved the outsider to commit violence in his Royal court.
Drayce pulled the sword out of that man's palm and commented, replying to King Armen, "Seems like the truth will be buried with the few more deaths here."
Just as Drayce raised his sword again, those men felt scared to their bones and looked at Drayce, who glared at him. He looked like a devil who was just waiting to use his sword on them.
"Y-your Majesty, forgive us," said the same hurt man, and everyone followed him.
"Truth!" Drayce said in his commanding voice, which was enough to make them open their mouths.
The hurt man, who was the first one to spot Seren before that incident, spoke up, "I saw a noblewoman in brothel area and thought to have some fun with her…" the man stopped as he trembled, knowing what he said will lead him to brutal death and started to pleading to king Armen. "Your Majesty, forgive us. We were at fault."
Cian stepped forward, intending to kill them, but just then, he heard his father, "We all wish to know what happened that day, so continue."
The man shook his head as he started crying, "Forgive us, Your Majesty."
"Let me enlighten everyone about what happened that day," Drayce spoke, and everyone turned alert to hear it.
"One imprisoned Princess was out in the unknown world who had lost her way only to stumble upon the filthy creatures who had bad intentions towards her. When she rejected their advances, they tried to molest her in front of everyone, which turned her angry. She had no other option but to use her powers to protect herself." Drayce stopped and then looked at the man, "Am I right?"
The man and his subordinates nodded with their heads lowered.
Cian came forward, "When you try to capture her, you knew who she was."
The man and others with him nodded as they said in unison as they cried, "Forgive us, Your Highness. We were just scared of the witch and wanted to get rid of her for this Kingdom's sake."
Cian was not just angry but also frustrated with how they called his sister witch again and again. Not just these people but the entire kingdom thought of her the same, and there was no way to change their thinking. Even if he killed these men here, it wouldn't change anything for Seren.
Just then, Minister Warin spoke again, "Your Majesty, though these people are at fault, we can't ignore the fact that the person from the other Kingdom had hurt our people. It's not acceptable." Minister Warin knew he had lost, but he couldn't let go of this brazen young king so easily.
"King Drayce was trying to protect The Third Princess," Cian countered the minister.
"Being outsider, he should have waited for royal guards instead of mercilessly killing our people. He has no relationship with our kingdom other than just being a guest. Is this how we are protecting the human rights of our people."
"Human rights?" Drayce repeated. "Seems like these rights are limited only to filthy men but not to the women of this kingdom."
"We Protect everyone's rights here, but we don't allow outsiders to hurt our people," Minister Warin replied.
"Outsider!" Drayce repeated and glared at the minister, "If not outsider, was I allowed to punish them?"
"Yes," The minister agreed and nodded, "Prince Cian can punish them but not King Drayce."
The next moment Drayce's sword, which didn't return to his scabbard yet, beheaded the man whose hand he had already hurt by piercing the sword.
The uproar could be seen in the entire Royal Court as everyone looked at Drayce in disbelief. Minister Warin was the most shocked person.
Arlan smiled while Cain was glad to see it. King Armen didn't react as he was just calm.
The next moment, everyone heard something more shocking than Drayce beheading that man.
"The one who dares even to lay an eye on the Queen of Megaris, deserves to die."