She instantly shut up and lowered her gaze, doing her best to hold back the tears.
“I don’t know what the matter is but that was wrong. Do you think we should go ch-” When Kamila turned to Lith, she found herself talking to empty air.
“I said look at me when I’m talking to you, you ungrateful runt!” The man yelled in the kid’s face who instead kept her eyes low. “I said look at-”
The man had already raised his hand again when a whisper from behind covered him in a cold sweat.
“I am looking.” Lith said, standing right behind the man and locking his wrist in an iron grip. “And I don’t like what I see.”
Before becoming a father, it would take a young boy or two brothers being victims of abuse to trigger Lith. Now, however, any little girl would do as well.
“What’s the matter here?” Lith asked.
“Nothing, Magus Verhen, I was just-”
“I’m not talking to you.” A bright violet light blazed from his eyes and drained whatever vitality the man had left, bringing him to his knees.
“Dad!” The little girl found her voice back and ran to his side. “Please, don’t hurt my Dad. It’s my fault. I made him angry.”
Hearing the same words that once Lith/Derek had told himself turned the violet light blue but he took a deep breath and wished it was just a misunderstanding.
“I see.” Lith nodded, patting the girl’s back and giving her a full check-up with Invigoration.
He found several old and new bruises under her baggy clothes and even a few now-mended broken bones.
“Are you hurting your daughter?” Lith straightened up the man with the same ease the man had earlier done with the girl, dusting off his clothes with a touch that held no kindness.
“No, I was just disciplining her.” The man half stuttered and half spoke, feeling something wrong in the blue flames coming from the Magus’ eyes. “You are a father yourself. You know how kids can be.”
That was his last mistake.
With Elysia on Lith’s chest, drawing a comparison between them broke the dam of Lith’s willpower for good.
Black veins appeared all over his face as his mouth turned into a lipless maw and his hair burst into a blazing crown.
“What did you say?” The blackness spread along his body until tongues of blue fire came out of his hands.
A small roar came from the baby carrier where a spitting, scaled-down version of the angry mage tried to rip at the man’s chest with her flaming claws.
“What did you say?” Lith repeated to the man who was now even more scared than his own daughter as he felt death staring at him in the eyes.
“Lith Tiamat Verhen!” A voice making her way through the crowd snapped him out of his frenzy before he snapped the man’s neck. “Don’t you see you’re terrorizing that poor girl?”
Only then did Lith lowered his gaze, noticing that the kid was clinging to her father’s leg, more scared of the mage than of her long-time tormentor.
‘I get you are angry, but I’m not going to let you turn our daughter into a murderer. Look what you are doing to her!’ Kamila quickly cast a mind link to not divulge private matters to strangers.
Lith could see his fury reflected in Elysia, twisting her as much as it did him.
‘Also, no matter how bad he is, you can’t kill a man in front of his daughter. You’ll scar her for life.’
‘You are right, thanks Kami.’ Contrary to before, it took Lith a single deep breath to pull himself together and one thought to return both himself and Elysia to their original appearances.
He drew and accumulated the blue flames in his right hand before snuffing them out by clenching his fist. They now obeyed his will, but only as long as he didn’t let the fury that had generated them control him first.
“Da! Da! Da!” Elysia yelled refusing to let her small flaming blue crown go.
“Bad! Bad Elysia!” Kamila put her finger in front of the baby’s nose.
“Ba?”
“Yes, bad. Don’t do it.” Her voice became softer but still held a hint of rebuke.
“Ba.” Elysia threw a final angry glare at the man, pulling at Lith at Lith’s shirt. “Da.”
Then she fell asleep, tired from the strain that particular form inflicted on her young body.
“Da indeed.” Lith said it like a death threat but his eyes were clear now and his face smiling. “I apologize for my rude behavior, young lady.”
Lith gave the girl a deep and flowery bow with his robe.
“You have my word that everything is fine and that I’m not mad at you. Please, accept this as proof of my goodwill.” Lith used a touch of Invigoration to heal her every wound and then gave her a steaming cream puff.
Her face lit up with joy while holding the sweet but she didn’t dare take a bit before looking at her father to receive his approval first.
“It’s fine. You can eat it.” The man said with an awkward smile as he could still feel the Magus’ eyes weighing on him.
“Thank you, sir Magus.” The girl ate with a joy and a hunger that drove a stake through Kamila’s heart.
“Da.” She echoed with a stone-cold voice while looking at Lith before pulling the girl aside, offering her more cream puffs and some hot chocolate to drink.
Kamila still carried around one bakery worth of sweets on herself, just to be safe.
“Now, this can end in two ways.” Lith said. “You can give me your word that you’ll never ever touch your daughter, wife, and your other children, if you have any. Do that and I’ll pretend nothing ever happened.”
“I promise.” The man nodded like a frenzied parrot. “I swear upon my soul. I’m a changed man now. I finally understand the error of my ways. I’ll never touch my children again.”
At that point, the plural was just the metal band around the coffin.
“Excellent.” Lith smiled, his eyes calm and his voice reassuring. “Then you are free to go. Treat your family to something good. You need to celebrate the happy moments of your life.”
He handed the man a small purse filled with copper coins that the man gratefully accepted, giving Lith bows so deep that his head almost touched the ground. He waited for his daughter to be done eating before walking back home together.
“Thank the gods, at least I got something good out of this mess.” The man said with a whisper, making sure that the crazy Magus was too far away to overhear. “Yet this is all your fault, Lyra. You humiliated me in public.
“The moment we get home I’m going to teach you a lesson.”
“Varegrave.” Lith called while standing still.
“Yes, My Liege?” The kneeling form of the former colonel of the army rose from Lith’s shadow.
“Would I ever ask you to kill a father?”
“No. Not after you became one yourself. You know its burden and the misery that such a thing would leave in its wake.” Varegrave replied.
