Ch. 7

"Kammi said that she heard voices in your room last night. Twice."

Lucy stood in front of the desk in what was supposed to be her office, while Luclin sat in her chair, with the desk acting as a buffer zone between the two of them. Kammi had indeed tattled on her, and this morning she was facing the consequences of that. Fortunately, when the two of them had barged into her room last night, they'd been too late to see anything more than her standing in front of an open window in her pajamas. Still, it was quite clear to them that something was up, and they'd taken no chances. Guards had been deployed around the estate, she'd been forced to sleep in a guest room, and DeBondersmit himself had been sent to follow any tracks that he could find in the snow beneath her bedroom window, but he had yet to return with any results.

"If you come clean now, I promise that the repercussions will be far less severe than what you'll get should you force me to find out on my own."

Lucy chose not to even dignify his threat with an answer, and instead continued to stare calmly ahead, looking past him and out the window. After nearly two hours of being browbeaten by Luclin in the office this morning, not to mention that time that he'd spent freaking out on her the night before, she'd had enough of it.

"Are you prepared for the party? Only four more days," Lucy commented, blatantly trying to change the subject. She smirked as he glared at her furiously; his knuckles turned white as he gripped the edges of the desk.

"If you don't answer me properly, I swear I'll…I'll," Luclin began to threaten her, but seemed to be at a loss for words. Instead of continuing his sentence with how he planned on making her life a living hell, he put his head down, and began to take deep breaths.

'Doesn't function well when angered to the point of stress,' Lucy noted gleefully to herself. 'That might be a good weakness to keep in mind.'

After a few minutes, Luclin looked up from the desk, a small smile on his face. His eyes, however, remained hard, and his nails still dug into the wood of the desk.

"Lucy, dear, I'm only angry at you because I'm worried," he cooed. "If something were to happen that could potentially endanger your relationship with Prince Sawalu, I don't know what I would do! We both know how important it is that this wedding goes off without a hitch."

"I'm not so sure about that," Lucy nearly giggled, her eyes lighting up in joy at the fact that their roles had been reversed; now she was the one doing the tormenting, rather than being the victim of it.

"What do you mean," her prey asked slowly, enunciating every syllable carefully.

"I mean that I'm canceling the wedding."

Venom seemed to drip from the business man's mouth as he breathed out the words "No, you aren't."

Lucy shrugged. "Too late for that. I've already contacted Sawalu via la'cryma crystal, and informed the chubby little pervert that I simply don't see him playing an important role in my future. By the way," she continued, removing the bulky ring from her finger, "would you mind mailing this back to him for me?"

Ignoring her outstretched hand, Luclin stormed past her, his long pony tail streaming out behind him as he marched out the door. A moment later, a servant shut the door, leaving her all alone in an empty room. Dropping the ring onto the desk, she collapsed into her chair.

"That was unbelievable," she whispered to herself. Who could've ever known how exhilarating it felt to stand up to such an asshole, and to actually win in a battle of wills? She couldn't describe how it felt, at least not with any words short of 'pure satisfaction' or maybe 'heavenly bliss'.

And to think that if not for a little visit from Natsu (and maybe a little help from Loki, the back part of her brain added), she never would have been able to gather up the courage to do such a thing.

'Don't worry, Natsu,' Lucy thought to herself with a smile. 'I'll be back home before you even have the chance to miss me.'

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Luclin was seething, livid, infuriated; all of the words that could describe outrage and then some. Pacing angrily between a mirror and a wall in his own private residence, located conveniently close to the main mansion of the Heartphilia estate, he attempted to calm himself through working out his tension and rage. When this led to him planting his fist into a mirror, he found that his anger did dissipate somewhat, but that this happened mostly because it was replaced with pain.

"Master Luclin," Kammi cried out in horror, picking up his hand. "This needs to be bandaged, and quickly, but all of the glass needs to be taken out of your hand first!"

Luclin ignored the red head and the pain he felt as she plucked tiny slivers of glass out of his injured hand. "Has DeBondersmit returned yet," he asked another servant, who had been standing by the door.

"Not yet, sir. I do believe, though, that the reason his search is taking so long is because he found something."

"And what is it that you believe he found?"

"Footprints in the snow not too far off from the mansion," the servant replied. "He told one of the gardeners that he planned on following the footprints as far as he could, and that gardener passed the message on to me."

"I want the both of you to leave me," the young business man ordered. "No one else is to enter this room until DeBondersmit returns, understood?"

"Yes, sir," the servant answered affirmatively, exiting the room.

"When I said that I wanted the both of you to leave, I included you in that sentence, Kammi," Luclin growled at the maid who was now bandaging his injured hand. "Get out."

"Yes, Master" Kammi squeaked, curtsying furiously before rushing out the door.

Luclin sighed as he sat down at his desk, head in his hands. How dare that insolent little girl ruin his plans?! He'd put hours into their preparations, devoting so much time to negotiating out plans with the board of trustees and important shareholders, winning over Prince Sawalu with his promise of Lucy's heart, and now what had that all come to? 'Absolutely nothing! All my work wasted,' he thought as he slammed his good hand down on his desk's wooden frame.

'I need to work out some damage control,' he muttered to himself, placing his head on the desk. 'Maybe I can contact Sawalu and tell him that Lucy has just temporarily gotten cold feet? No, knowing her she told him off in some way that's completely irreversible.'

Luclin was still resting his head on the cold desk when DeBondersmit walked into the room, wearing a heavy winter coat and snow boots.

"I take it that you've found something," Luclin said to the older man, looking up at him but not lifting his head.

"Yes. As expected, I found some tracks in the snow, not far from the girl's window."

"Then Kammi wasn't over reacting; Lucy honestly did have some sort of illicit meeting in her room. How far were you able to follow the tracks?"

"It was for just a little under half a mile before I lost them. It was quite odd, though; the snow beneath the girl's room was undisturbed, and the tracks started nearly twenty feet away from the house. I was lucky that I even spotted them."

"Magic," Luclin muttered softly. In a louder voice he told his assistant "I bet that one of Lucy's old friends from Fairy Tail was visiting her; it might also explain how she suddenly found the courage…no, the gall to stand up to me, and to break off her engagement."

"Can the engagement be patched up," DeBondersmit asked, then looked downcast as Luclin shook his head in a negative answer. "Damn those indecorous ruffians!"

"We'll need to find another way to expand the railway into the south," Luclin commented without commitment, as if the issue no longer held his interest fully. "But what's more important is teaching Lucy her lesson, and using her in some way that's advantageous to us. I won't let her get away with what she's done."

"I think that I have come up with quite an interesting idea, Adal," DeBondersmit announced suddenly, his eyes glimmering with a barely contained excitement. "What if we could reign in Lucy and cement our control over the business, all in one shot?"

"It would be a plan to die for," Luclin answered, an evil light glowing in his eyes.

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Lucy felt as if she were in heaven that night. For the first time in over two weeks, she was wearing normal clothing, clothing that didn't restrict her movements or weigh several pounds on its own. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, without any pins or heavy duty spray restraining it. And, best of all, she hadn't seen Luclin since he'd stormed out of her office that morning. Life was good.

Right then she was standing in the mansion's ballroom with Supetto, making all of the last minute preparations for the party that she would be throwing. Decorations were being strung up wherever they possibly could be, and certain areas had been designated for the ice sculptures that Grey would be creating. The gardeners had been conscripted into setting up tables in a circle around the dance floor, with the largest one being the buffet table on which all of the food would sit. All of the curtains had been removed from the multistory window at one end of the room, and the moonlight which filtered in created a spectacular display when it struck the crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the room. Over all, the impression given off upon walking into the ballroom was one of gorgeous splendor.

"What do you think, stick with the small round tables, or switch to rectangular or square shaped ones," Lucy asked Supetto, eyeing the room.

"The round ones look lovely, especially with the way in which you've mixed up the tablecloth colors on every other table."

"Yeah…I know that the icy blue cloth looks great, but do you think that the white it too plain?"

"No, it's fine," Supetto answered, distractedly staring out the window.

Lucy gave the elderly woman a worried glance. That was the third time that she'd asked her that question, and only the second time that she'd answered it. Something seemed to be bugging her, and Lucy didn't really want to pry into it, but she couldn't help but think that she might be partially involved in the woman's suffering. When she'd told her of how she'd broken off her engagement with Prince Sawalu (and of the way in which she'd ever so tactfully explained how he had a snowball's chance in hell of ever getting his hands on her), she could've sworn that the old lady had almost fainted from shock, and, possibly, a slight bit of disappointment. 'Did she really want to see me get married that badly,' Lucy paused to wonder.

Feeling that she had no other choice, she gently asked the woman what was wrong.

"Why, nothing, of course," Supetto answered in a voice that Lucy assumed was meant to be soothing, but sounded more panicked than anything else. "Why would you ask such a thing?"

"You just seem so distracted…are you sure that you're okay?"

"I'm fine, really," the maid replied with a gentle smile. "But it's getting late, so I believe that I'll be retiring for the night. Do you have any plans for tomorrow that I should know of?"

"Well, no, not for tomorrow," Lucy began. "But I was thinking that after the party maybe I'd take a trip to Magnolia, just for a day or two. I've spent so much time planning this bash, and just figure that a mini-vacation away from everything would be nice."

"That will not be happening," a dark voice drawled into her ear, making her jump in surprise. Turning around, she saw that Luclin was standing behind her, and that he was holding a large bag in his hands.

"Planning a little getaway, hmmm? Or maybe an escape from your duties as the sole heir of the Heartphilia conglomerate," the man asked in a sinister voice, dumping the bag on the floor. "That's an awfully large bag of clothing for a mere two day trip."

"A girl needs her accessories," Lucy countered defensively. "And what the hell do you think you're doing, going through my stuff?!"

"I'm making sure that you don't do anything foolish, my dear. After all, if any of your antics were to affect the company, I would be the one to suffer."

"Is that so," Lucy asked him haughtily. "Maybe I'll just do something stupid on purpose, then, and we'll see what happens."

The look on Luclin's face suddenly changed, from unparalleled anger to sadistic amusement; Lucy couldn't help taking a step back from him, as if repulsed by a powerful dark aura. She tried to muster up all of the courage that she could find, but with one glance into the steely eyes of the man before her she found herself robbed of all the confidence and hope she'd previously felt.

"I'm afraid that your little bit of fun time is over, Miss Lucy, and that I'll be taking back my control. My powers were, after all, set in the will, and you have no right to remove them," Luclin sneered, moving closer to Lucy as she attempted to edge away. "And now that you've gone and destroyed any chance that you had with Suwalu, who likely would have treated you at least somewhat decently, I'm going to have to resort to giving you away to someone less humane."

"And who would that be," Lucy asked, attempting to pull her shattered façade of courage back together.

"Me."

"You can't be serious," Lucy scoffed. "I'd never accept a proposal from you."

"This isn't a proposal," Luclin countered. "If it was, you'd have a choice.

With a clap of his hands, he signaled that the discussion was over. Almost instantly, two of the gardeners that had been arranging tables around the room rushed over to his side.

"Take the girl to her room," Luclin ordered imperiously. "She's to be kept there, no matter what, until the party. The two of you will guard her door in shifts, and should you become suspicious for any reason, you have my full permission to burst in and see what she's up to."

The two gardeners nodded, grabbing Lucy by her arms.

"You can't do this to me," she screamed desperately as they began to drag her away, while all of the other employees simply stared. No one made any move to help her.

"Supetto, please do something! Anything," she pleaded; the frail old woman simply sniffled and looked down at the ground, helpless. As she was pulled into the hallway and the doors began to shut behind her, the last sight she glimpsed of the room was of Luclin: cold, arrogant, and triumphant.

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The next morning, the sole daughter and heir of the Heartphilia family saw that the man who doubled as both her 'guardian' and tormentor hadn't been kidding in anything that he'd said the night before. Guards stood sentry outside her door, making her a prisoner in her own room. Her food was delivered to her via a silver tray, and when she complained about not being able to eat without a table, Kammi simply smirked and knocked everything off of her desk before setting the tray on it. By mid-afternoon, a small velvety box had been thrown at her by one of her guards; opening it, she found an ornately jeweled engagement ring. She'd thrown it out the window two or three times, only to find it thrown back at her a second later by the guards posted outside; apparently someone had taken into consideration the fact that her room was only on the second floor, and that an escape by jumping out the window wasn't all that implausible for her.

There was no one for her to talk to, at least not anyone who would really listen to her and converse back actively. Everyone seemed to have either been swayed or forced into the palm of Luclin's hand, and wouldn't even dignify her complaints or whines with an answer. The only thing that even came close to it was Kammi's jealousy; it was so obvious that Lucy almost considered trying the engagement ring on right in front of her, just for fun.

At least she could say that she wasn't completely and totally bored, since Gwen was supplying her with books from the library, and she'd been given several sheets of paper, of which she was currently using one sheet to list all of the possible insults she could throw at Luclin the next time she saw him. She'd just about finished filling out the backside of the first sheet of paper, and was about to move onto a second page, when Supetto stepped into her room.

"Lucy, I know that you have books and stuff in here, but do you need anything else right now?"

"Freedom. Fresh Air. Maybe a dull spoon to scoop out Luclin's intestines with," Lucy replied sarcastically, not bothering to look up from her writing.

"Is it really that bad in here," Supetto asked her quietly.

Finally feeling that she might have the chance to participate in an actual conversation, Lucy swiveled around in her chair, and looked Supetto in the eye. "It's not that it's so bad in here," she explained, gesturing around at her room. "It's the situation that I'm in. Doesn't it bother anyone, the fact that I'd rather die than marry my asshole 'fiancé'? And why isn't anyone willing to help me? The stuff he's pulling, like locking me up against my will, has to be illegal!"

"Everyone cares, dear," Supetto exclaimed, looking mortified. "It's just that there's nothing we can do." Turning her back to the girl, she asked "If none of this had ever happened, meaning this whole thing with Luclin, would you really have left and never come back?"

"Of course not," Lucy replied, trying to roll her chair over to a location from which she could see her favorite maid's face. "I definitely wouldn't be living here 24/7, like I'm stuck doing now, but I'd come back occasionally, even if it were just to visit everyone."

When Supetto finally turned around to look at her, she was shocked to see tears in the old woman's eyes. Not only that, she noted to herself, but her hands were shaking nonstop, and her face was pinched, as if she was holding back sobs.

"I'll be right back," Supetto cried as she ran out of the room, leaving Lucy confused.

'Now that I think of it, her behavior's been really odd lately,' Lucy thought to herself. 'Actually, she's been like this since I arrived; what is it that she's hiding from me?'

Just as the blonde mage was beginning to wonder if Supetto was really coming back, she heard arguing outside of her door, which finally opened after nearly a minute. A harassed looking Supetto entered, a large book clutched tightly within her fragile hands.

"Everything that you need to know is in this book," she whispered to Lucy. "I'm so sorry that I kept it from you… I just thought that if you knew the truth, you'd leave again, and I'd never see you." As tears began to roll down her cheeks, the old woman excused herself and ran out of the room once more, slamming the door behind her.

Lucy stared down at the book that now lay in her arms. 'Basic Stellar Summoning', the title read, it's gold lettering contrasting starkly with the deep navy blue that it was printed on. She'd spent so much time reading this as a child, all so that she could make her father happy. 'I poured years of effort into this and other books,' she thought to herself, 'but he was never satisfied with my progress, no matter how well I did.'

Opening the book, she was shocked to find that the middle pages had been hollowed out, and that a large envelope lay folded up inside of it. The envelope, she noted as she gave it a cursory glance, had her family seal on it, but the seal had been broken; clearly someone else had gone through the envelope before her. Pulling out several pieces of paper, she found herself stifling a small cry. Before her lay several illegible documents, chalk full of technical and legal terms. Within that confusing mass, though, two things stood out; a letter in her father's handwriting, and a piece of paper that was labeled as his final will and testament. This will, however, was completely different from the will that Mr. Fritz and Luclin had ever so gleefully shoved down her throat.

'Just what is going on in this place?!'

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This latest update took longer than usual to finish, but that's more because I've been lazy lately than for any other reason. My enthusiasm for this fic has been waning a bit, but that can be blamed on my becoming re-obsessed with the Legend of Zelda series, and on the fact that I have a million other fanfic ideas that I'm really itching to get started on. Then there's my mom; she won't stop bugging me to write something that gets published and actually makes me some money. I've actually had to sit down and start writing out ideas, just to make her stop complaining. She loves to read books, but doesn't care for fanfiction.

I'd never give up on this fanfic, though, especially not since I've come this far with it. I refuse to write a single full chapter for anything else (spontaneous one-shots not included) until I've finished this story. I do, however, have entire notebooks pages filled with new ideas, including one for my next Fairy Tail fic.