The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Serena stood inside the dark underground training room. Faded chalk lines dotted the cold stone floor. So she dug into her leather pouch and pulled out a fresh stick.

She dropped to her knees to trace right over the old magic circles. She did her best to keep the geometric shapes accurate while focused on drawing for a few minutes. She finished and sat down right in the dead center.

She pulled out the folded paper Adrian gave her a few months ago. It was the one with the exact words needed to connect with demons, angels, and dragons. She looked at it and read the dragon chant out loud.

But nothing happened.

So she read it again. And then again.

She sat there in the cold room and recited the chant almost ten times, only to get nothing. A heavy sigh escaped her lips and she tossed the paper onto the floor before pulling out the other two sheets holding the angel and demon chants. But before trying them she folded the dragon paper back up and tucked it away.

She tried reading the other two next. Still nothing.

Her shoulders dropped as she let out a soft sigh, ”Why isn’t this working? Why isn’t it working now when it worked fine before?”

She looked straight up at the dark ceiling. Anger boiled right in the center of her chest.

”You said you would help me last time! Why aren’t you talking to me?” She yelled, acting like the dragon could actually hear her.

And she snatched the dragon paper back up and read it one more time. This time she felt a shift so she opened her eyes. She looked around and saw that she was still sitting inside the training room. But she knew the connection had formed because the air felt a little different.

”Is that you, miss dragon?” Serena asked the empty air.

A deep voice echoed right inside her skull. ”It is me.” the voice said. ”I saw no reason to reply.”

Serena scowled. ”What do you mean by that?”

The dragon went silent.

”Can you help me?” Serena pleaded. ”Can you help me fix Adrian? Just help him heal up. I just want him to stop being sick. I can’t stand seeing him in this condition.”

The dragon stayed quiet for a few seconds. Serena almost gave up and assumed that the connection had been cut, but then the voice spoke in her head again.

”He will be alright. You should worry about yourself.” the dragon told her. ”With the speed of your current method, you will never be able to reach great heights. It is a slow, flawed process. Only by using my specific method will you be able to achieve something great.”

Serena just listened, knowing very well that this method was something that was extremely hard for her to use.

”Adrian never knew about this method.” the dragon continued. ”I just gave him the seed. My intention was for you to teach him this method later on. Or for him to learn about it naturally by interacting with you. But little did I expect he would go through something like this.”

The voice turned cold.

”You have already lost your advantage.” the dragon scolded her. ”He already holds the key to awakening on his own. You do not have the same initiative anymore, and I am disappointed by your lack of action.”

Serena didn’t need the dragon telling her that. She was disappointed in herself too.

”But to answer your question, Adrian will be fine,” the dragon said. ”He will just need a little bit of time to recover. Just tell him this one thing.... Just because you cannot use your mana veins, doesn’t mean you cannot use mana.”

The pressure vanished before she could even ask what that meant.

She sucked in a massive breath of relief.

Adrian would be fine. And that was the only thing she actually cared about hearing. But once that initial relief faded, a bitter pang of sadness hit her. She felt useless knowing the dragon found her disappointing too.

So she shook her head to clear her thoughts. She pushed herself up off the cold floor, dusted off her skirt, and walked straight out of the training room to head upstairs.

They moved him out of the master bedroom. He was in one of the larger guest rooms now.

She pushed the door open. Aria was sitting right next to the bed holding a wooden bowl, slowly spooning some porridge into Adrian’s mouth while Claire sat up in her own bed over in the corner, quietly eating a bowl of the exact same porridge.

Serena stepped right up to the edge of the mattress. She stared down at the little girl’s tired, guilty face.

”It is not your fault, Aria...” Serena said softly.

Aria stopped moving the spoon.

”And you are a child,” Serena continued as she crouched down to meet the girl’s eyes. ”You are barely six years old right now.... and you are allowed to make mistakes. You shouldn’t blame yourself for this.”

Aria just stared at the bowl.

”I am pretty sure Adrian wouldn’t want you blaming yourself either,” Serena told her. ”You must learn from your mistakes instead. I am not saying what you did out there was correct. In fact, what you did was very wrong. You should have listened to hi, and stayed safe at the wall.”

Serena reached out and snatched the wooden bowl right out of Aria’s grip.

”But what is done is done,” she told the kid. ”There is zero point regretting things now because we cannot magically fix the past. So let’s just help him recover.”

She scooped up a bit of porridge and fed it to Adrian.

Aria nodded and leaned all the way forward and rested her forehead right against his arm.

”How long is it going to take him?” Aria whispered into the blankets.

Serena looked down at Aria and a sad, tired look crossed her own face. She turned her head and looked over at Claire. The injured knight was already watching the three of them from her bed in the corner.

Serena let out a long sigh and turned back to Adrian’s bruised face. ”I really do not know when he will wake up,” Serena admitted quietly. ”All I know is that he will be fine.”

Just a second after she said those words.

Adrian’s index finger twitched.