Chapter 177: Mother and Daughter (2)

Lucia lifted the soup in front of her and took a small, deliberate sip.

She parted her pale pink lips to accept the silver spoon, her tongue gently rolling over the warm, rich liquid. Her throat moved subtly with the swallow, the graceful line of her neck fully visible, without making a single awkward sound.

Helena didn’t rush her. She simply turned her head, her gray eyes seeming to pierce through the night outside the window, gazing into some distant moment in time.

Lucia set down the spoon softly. The porcelain and silver touched without a sound—flawless and impeccable.

“You must be joking. After all, the Zelion Royal Academy uniform hasn’t changed since the school was founded, so of course it’s the same. There’s only one person who could have designed it.”

Hearing this, Helena withdrew her gaze. She didn’t look at Lucia’s face, but instead appraised Lucia’s meticulously chosen outfit with a smile.

The pure white dress, shorter in front and longer in back. The white lace thigh-high stockings wrapped around her calves. And the white high heels dangling precariously on her toes.

“But Zelion Royal Academy doesn’t have rules about stockings or shoes, does it? There must have been a reason I was so startled back then.” Helena leaned across the table, her voice turning slightly sticky.

She tilted forward, crossing over the narrow dining table, and looked at Lucia’s thighs where the white lace stockings left indentations in her soft flesh. The elastic bands of the lace socks, compressed by her seated posture, sank deeply into the plump skin of the girl’s thighs. Tender flesh stubbornly bulged through the mesh openings, forming a series of constricting marks that tightened the throat. The restrained plumpness possessed a beauty unique to adolescent girls.

Helena rested her chin lightly on her hand, the finger with the ring tapping against her cheek, her gaze hazy. Even in this informal setting, even though this wasn’t the palace, she hadn’t petulantly taken off the ring.

“Because you were wearing the same white stockings and brown loafers I did back then. So when you appeared at the place where I used to walk to school, I froze. I thought some spell had triggered, sending me back in time to see my younger self.”

“Is that so…”

Lucia felt the skin on her thighs burning from the scrutiny. She instinctively wanted to pull her skirt down to cover them, but her pride as an imperial princess made her endure it. Instead, she pressed her legs together even tighter under the table, the stockings rubbing against each other more firmly to relieve her agitation.

Lucia hadn’t deliberately imitated her style. She knew Helena had attended Zelion Royal Academy in the past, but Lucia didn’t care about her mother’s fashion choices. What daughter bothers to remember what stockings and shoes her mother wore with her school uniform when she was young? At least Lucia had no interest…

Even if she got along well with Helena, she still had no interest. She would wear whatever she wanted. Honestly… how conceited.

It was just that this silver hair and gray eyes, inherited from Helena, looked better when paired with pure white. And as for why she didn’t choose white Mary Janes? Lucia simply thought white Mary Janes were ugly. Black was too traditional, so she picked brown. Surely they couldn’t have the same taste on this point too…?

Lucia didn’t want to hear Helena bring this up. She had no interest in Helena’s fashion sense. But it seemed… ever since Lucia could remember, Helena almost always wore all white. As a child, on the day they met at the academy, and tonight at dinner—all the same.

Helena’s academy days…

Back then, there were about ten candidate saintesses. Helena was not only the newcomer but also had no presence and no backing. Though her family ran a merchant guild, it could only ensure she wouldn’t be bullied through donations and favors.

At that time, the relationship between the Amber Empire and the Holy Kingdom was far worse than it is now. At least now, the Holy Kingdom is still a vassal state of the Amber Empire. Though they’re secretly competing again, at least their public relationship is decent. The small chapel in the academy now—Helena had it built when she returned to her alma mater after that perfect fairy tale came to an end. Back then, no one objected. Everyone believed that from then on, a new chapter would begin, and everyone would face the future with hope and confidence.

Those days were far from harmonious. Both openly and covertly, all kinds of schemes were carried out without disguise, and the atmosphere was explosive. Yet Helena back then was stubborn.

The relationship between the Amber Empire and the Holy Kingdom had deteriorated to the point where even ordinary people selling vegetables on the street knew war was imminent. Some commoners with no power or influence even began to consider leaving, worried about the tense atmosphere.

But she was like a little white flower, blissfully unaware of it all. Wearing those same white stockings that Lucia now wore, she had waltzed into Zelion Royal Academy without any defenses. Like the heroine of a story, she believed people could understand each other. She thought, since both sides had people struggling to live, or even unable to live at all, why waste energy fighting each other?

With such naive thoughts, she had come alone to live in the Amber Empire’s capital.

In the early days at the academy, everyone treated her like a hot potato. Her situation wasn’t much better than Mahina’s current one—even worse. In such a tense atmosphere, suddenly a candidate saintess arrived from the southern Holy Kingdom. Any student would suspect she was a spy sent by the Holy Kingdom.

The churches in the capital also didn’t understand Helena’s purpose. They thought she had come from the Holy Kingdom to help them fight against the Empire. Though she did help, it was mainly to assist ordinary people. Only when ordinary people’s interests were harmed would Helena intervene.

Gradually, Helena became unpopular on both sides. The academy students feared her, and the church people couldn’t understand her.

It was on that boring Sunday, outside the dilapidated slums church dyed red by the setting sun, that the disheveled saintess, sweating profusely, bumped into Ian, who looked bored and had sneaked out of the imperial palace. At that moment, the gears of fate began to turn.

And Lucia… she just went to school as required. When she reached the right age, she naturally enrolled. She didn’t have any grand ambitions like Helena. After all… since she was a child, those two conflicting magical forces within her body, like countless invisible needles, churned day and night in her marrow.

The dull ache seeping from her bones, the occasional twitching of her nerve endings, tormented her to the point of madness. The pain pierced her core, the irritation drove her crazy. It felt like her whole body was in agony, unbearable pain.

When she couldn’t even live comfortably herself, why should she care about others?