Calhoun stared up at the woman that was yelling at him nonstop. He signalled for her to keep shut since the child was asleep. Diana was oblivious to his signs as she kept yelling at him.
"Shut the fuck up, woman!" Calhoun yelled. Diana went silent instantly. "Can you not see that the child is asleep?"
Diana glanced at Coco. She returned her gaze to Calhoun. Her eyes darted around and landed on the clock that was on the wall behind Calhoun. It was almost three am. Why did it seem like time was going too quickly?
Calhoun stared at the paper in her hand and he had no expressions. "What is in your hand?"
"Oh, this? It's just some scrap I found in your drawing room." Diana said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Calhoun chuckled. "Drawing room? I don't draw."
"Oh of course." Diana rolled her eyes. "You don't draw and all these drawings happened to appear in the room beside your chamber."
"That room did not belong to me," Calhoun confessed.
"But you always stopped people from entering there." Thomas reasoned.
Calhoun glanced at him. "How can you tell that I forbade people from entering there, Thomas? I mean, you only started living in this castle eight months after Diana went missing. Only because you spent that long in the dungeon."
Diana turned to stare at Thomas. "What? Did you live in the dungeon? Why?"
Thomas kept quiet. He did not think that Calhoun would embarrass him so easily before Diana. He kept his gaze down, it reminded him of the ugly past he had tried to avoid.
"Go on, Thomas. Answer her." Calhoun said.
Thomas refused to look up at her. "After you disappeared, I went into hiding. When I was found, I was taken to the king's dungeon since I could not provide information as to where you were."
"Why would you be locked up when you did not see me before I left?" Diana demanded.
Thomas looked up at her. "I knew when you left, Diana. Remember the stranger who stopped you that night?"
Diana was confused. She remembered the night she had run away, a man clad in a black cloak stopped her and asked her why she was running away.
"I am trying to escape my beast of a lord."
"The king?"
"How... How can you tell?"
"Because we all know how cruel Calhoun is."
She stared and then she nodded. "I need to leave, I don't want him to find me."
"Go to Fraco." He said.
"Huh? Where?"
"Fraco. It's a distant country. The farthest the train can take you. That place is unbearable by wolves and you can hide there."
"How do I get there?"
"Take the last train. Drop wherever it drops you."
"Okay, thank you very much, sir." She bowed. "May I know your name?"
"Pierce."
"Thank you-"
"Pierci? You are Pierci? Thomas how... Oh my God!" Diana gasped.
"So you did know where she left off. Tell me, why did you decide to endure eight months in the dungeon rather than tell where she was?" Calhoun asked nonchalantly.
He sighed. "I felt bad. The last man who dealt with me said something that hurt me. He mentioned the fact that her mother would be full of regrets for leaving her in my care."
"I realized how bad I had been to her and I wanted to make things right. I had to support her to leave because it was the only way for either of you to understand what you felt for each other."
"You allowed me to go through hell just because you wanted to be a changed man?" Calhoun asked, surprised.
"Can you believe it?" Thomas chuckled sadly. "Diana is the only treasure I have in this life. I realized that if I treated her right, she would bring so many things, things which I have gambled for years just to acquire."
Calhoun scoffed. "You think? You jeopardize her future."
"I assumed you would treat her better than I would. When you told me you wanted her, I assumed she had caught your fancy. Despite knowing you were cursed -"
"Despite knowing I am cursed-?"
"Was." Diana corrected. "The curse has been broken."
"Does it matter?" Calhoun demanded. "Thomas thinks otherwise."
"It doesn't matter what Thomas thinks," Diana muttered, bringing her arms down to her waist. She sighed deeply.
"You weren't supposed to know this," Thomas said.
"Know what?" Calhoun and Diana asked simultaneously.
"Look, whoever owned that art room drew pictures of Diana's mother. Not just the mother, but the entire family." Thomas explained.
Calhoun scowled. He stood up from the chair where he sat. Slowly, he walked into the bedroom and laid Coco carefully on the bed. He tucked the little boy properly and then came back out to meet them.
"Show me." He said. Diana turned to Thomas and he gestured out the door. Calhoun walked out first, followed by Thomas. Diana walked out last. Calhoun opened the door to the room beside his chamber and he came in contact with all the paintings before him.
"These have been here?" He asked. "Hm, I would have sworn that I never saw them."
"They used to be covered with cloth. I was the one who opened them." Thomas confessed.
Calhoun glanced at him. "you seem to have a lot of confessions to make of late."
Thomas sighed. "The day I overheard Simon and his daughter quarrel, I had to check in on you since Felix and the others refused to tell me what had happened."
"He and George were just leaving when I was approaching so I had to hide somewhere they would have never guessed, that was this room."
"The day I fell ill?" Calhoun asked.
"The poison case my king. It wasn't the day per se. I think the following day it happened. I was so surprised by the amount of dust that had settled on the paintings but when I opened them, they were good as new, unaffected by the accumulated dust."
Calhoun nodded. "So you say these are portraits of Diana's mother? Hmm, I can see it. She does resemble her so much."
Diana found a painting of her true family, with her mother and father. She peeked in closer at the picture. The smile on her mother's face was too bright and she had her other hand placed carefully on her stomach.
"Thomas... Was she ever pregnant?" Diana whispered.
Thomas didn't reply immediately, he waited a while before he answered her. "She was. The child died."
"For you or Dad?" Diana asked, staring up at him. Her eyes had welled up with tears.
Thomas sighed. "I guess the truth is inevitable. Look, Diana, I didn't mean to take your family away from you. Your mother, she was the most beautiful woman in the town and everyone loved her so much, including me. I just could not take my eyes off her. When it happened, she felt so terrible."
"When what happened?" Calhoun asked, unemotional.
Diana glared at him and he shrugged. He wanted to know what they were talking about, if he was going to marry Diana at least he had to know.
"The child she was with, it belonged to me. Your father found out after she miscarried the child. She told him that it was for the best since it didn't belong to him. He was heartbroken since he had grown to love the child. Also, he couldn't believe that she would do such a thing to him."
"Let me get this straight." Diana interrupted, shaking her head. "You slept with my mother while she was still married to my father? I knew there was a reason why she would choose you out of all the other unmarried wolves in Wisteria."
Calhoun chuckled. "This is getting interesting. Go on, Thomas. Enlighten us the more."
"Well, I'm sorry about this. I only thought to send you off to Calhoun just so that you would have a better life ahead -"
"You mean to say that you planned the entire thing?" Calhoun demanded. "The ball, the meeting, everything?"
"Well, I won't say that I planned the entire thing. I planned the meeting, but not with you." Thomas said. "I planned for her to meet someone rich, who could take care of her-"
"And settle all your gambling bills," Diana added.
Thomas chuckled. "Yeah, yeah. And settle my gambling bills."
"So when you figured out she had incurred my effect, what was your first reaction?" Calhoun asked, drawing Diana close to his side. Diana was sceptical about his action. She was still mad at him for forgetting about Jet right after waking up, despite the fact that she sacrificed a lot for him.
"My first reaction was to hide her. But then I remembered that it was you and there is no hiding from you. So I had to find a means to get her to you." Thomas said. "I had to lie to her that you were going to marry her."
"You intentionally sold me," Diana stated.
"Come on, D. You have charms, I trusted that you could charm him!"
She rolled her eyes. "Cal, who owned this art room?"
"I have no idea." He answered firmly. He had a tone that showed his finality and Diana scowled. She shook his arm off her and walked out of the room to his chamber.
Calhoun stared at Thomas in mild confusion. "What happened just now?"
"Oh, I can't say. My king, I understand what you have gone through but you should understand that Diana has been hurt a lot and it's because of how you treated her." Thomas said.
"You should try to pacify her. If she loves you, she would do so much for you and you would enjoy being around her."
"Will it be the same as a mother?" Calhoun asked. "She would have her attention divided."
"Naturally. But at least you would be certain that I'll be there to take Coco and the rest of the kids away while you can enjoy your wife."
"Is this a hint to wife her too?" Calhoun asked.
Thomas smiled and shrugged. "Suit yourself, my king. After all, I'm just a servant."
Calhoun hummed and left. "It's almost dawn and I think I still need to sleep. Good night, Thomas."
Thomas watched him leave and he covered the paintings back and left the room. He walked past Calhoun's chamber and he heard muffled voices, he smiled as he walked by.
Diana was about to carry Coco to return to her room when Calhoun walked in.
"You know when a woman wears a man's nightwear, it's only because she wants to stay in the same bed with him." Calhoun pointed out. "The night is cold and sleeping alone will be so troublesome, stay."
"Night? This is past four am." Diana stated.
"You had in mind to sleep, didn't you? You can just stay here with me." Calhoun suggested. "I miss the feeling of having you in my arms."
"I'm not mating with you, Calhoun," Diana exclaimed.
"I wasn't asking, Diana." Calhoun returned.
"Then what do you want?" She asked.
"I want you to stay here tonight. With me and our son. Let's sleep as a family."
"What if I don't want that?"
"I will keep begging until you want it," Calhoun said.
Diana scoffed. "And if I don't like it? You promised to not do anything I didn't like."
"We can try it out for tonight and if you don't like it, I will allow you to sleep in a separate room," Calhoun said.
"What separate room?" Diana asked.
"You'd sleep in my bed and I'll sleep in the outer chamber. Isn't that wonderful?"
"Fool." Diana cursed. She left the boy in the bed and got in under the blanket, on the left side of the boy.
Calhoun smiled. If she would call him a fool for every night she slept in his bed, he would happily be a fool for her.