Lady Crotioule locked her daughter in her room and forbid her from attending school or stepping out of the house.
"Mother! Open the door!" Madella banged on the door.
"Until you tell us who this boy is, you will remain here." She replied coldly, locking the door.
"So that you can execute him? Fuck no!"
"Then we'll find you another suitor. And you have no fucking say!" She walked away from the door behind which Madella desperately called out to her; her mother would stop at nothing to find out who her lover was. Hurriedly and furiously, she made her way downstairs and locked eyes with Cherie. "Tell me. I demand you tell me!" She stomped her high heel.
"I don't know anything about this…" Cherie looked to the ground guiltily.
"I should've known a slut like you would've encouraged this behavior of my daughter!"
"I'm sorry, what!? I'm a slut!? Just because I actually loved someone instead of getting into a fake relationship like you!?" Cherie stood and protested.
"It is not fake," Lady Crotioule replied, gritting her teeth.
"Then why don't you ever kiss him? Why don't you ever hold his hand? Why don't you ever say anything sweet to him? Why is there no affection for my brother in you!?"
"I did not marry him for his looks. I did not marry him because he was my 'soulmate'. I married him because it benefitted our families. I only want what's best for Madella."
"You only want what's best for you! That's why you had me married to that husk! Bitch!" Cherie added that last word with emphasis and spite.
Madella slumped down against her door, crying and feeling for comfort in her star necklace as she listened to the conversation.
"I'm sorry." Maro's voice came from the window.
Her gaze glanced at him before falling to the ground. "Go away." She curled up into a ball.
"I'm sorry. I really am. But I think I can talk your mom into… Us." He insisted.
"She won't agree." Madella frustratedly responded.
"Please. Just let me try. Once." He insisted, caressing her cheek but ultimately being pushed away by her.
"Go away… Please…" She begged.
Hurt but sympathetically he nodded and climbed out of her window to melancholically meet Ralph and Gab below. Madella returned to sobbing by her door.
"I will have Jurie sent away," Lady Crotioule said to Cherie, suddenly silencing her with shock.
Cherie walked to her and grabbed onto her shoulders, her eyes wide and full of dread, "No…" She was stunned, "Don't do this." She said shakily.
"A workhouse seems fitting. But then again, I have a lot of friends who would offer quite a lot of money for a blonde little girl." At those words, Cherie summoned forth a Strength Magic spell and hurled herself onto Lady Crotioule, bringing her to the ground and pinning her.
"Don't you dare hurt my daughter!" She roared. Her 11-year-old daughter Jurie Diana Tessia, who was the result of a love affair before Cherie's marriage, had been living in a luxury private orphanage in the city. Cherie had never been allowed to visit Jurie but often sent her spaghetti and meatballs that she made with Madella.
Lady Crotioule was pompously shocked, "Get off of me," She ordered.
Quaking from anger, Cherie stood and glared at her.
"I will not hurt your daughter. Just tell me who this boy is." She demanded.
Madella sat downstairs, playing a sorrowful freestyle tune on her grand piano. Her stomach rumbled frequently since she hadn't eaten anything but small snacks. Her mother walked past, attempting to compliment her skillfulness and suggesting she play something more joyful, but Madella ignored her very existence.
"A peasant boy, huh?" She said, knowing that Madella would turn with anger, "You couldn't pick someone of our class?"
"H-How can you think like that? You're such an ignorant-"
"It doesn't matter. He's being executed today." Those words stabbed Madella through the heart, "During which, you will marry Rulo – he's one of young Richard's cousins. I picked out a nice wedding dress for-"
Madella, outraged, sprinted for the door, but Lady Crotioule had stationed apprentice knights outside to keep her inside.
"The marriage will take place here. At home. Where you belong," She said.
"No! Please!" Madella began crying, "Don't do this… Don't kill him!" Madella, using Strength Magic, broke out of the apprentice knights' grip and ran for the gates. "MARO!" She screamed, looking back and panicking when the knights caught up to her; they violently dragged her back into the house.
Her cry wasn't heard by Maro, but there were two who had heard it. Ralph and Gab lay belly-down on the grass near the gates of Madella's mansion, tearing up from the overwhelming events that were taking place.
They waited until night when they thought Madella would be by herself in her room. But when they attempted to scale up to her window, Dre hurled an Earth Chain at them from her room; it wrapped around their necks and he pulled them toward him.
"No!" Madella lurched into him, driving him shoulder-first into the wall, and kept his mouth shut so he couldn't call their mother. Her face distorted with a mixture of horrible dread and desperation, "Please! Dre!" She begged.
He overpowered her and pushed her away, she stumbled and fell against her bed.
"Madella. They are below us." He said, feigning a cold tone.
"Just because they're poor?" She stared into her brother's eyes, looking for a shred of affection, but all she found was fear.
"Mother will disown me… If I help you, she'll disown me." He gritted his teeth, "You think I don't understand how you feel?" Tears formed in his eyes as he remembered his lover from his time in the Greyforge Academy.
"Maro's gonna die…" Ralph said helplessly with his cheek against the ground.
"Let me go." Madella begged, "I've never felt like this about anyone. He makes me laugh. He makes me happy. He comforts me whenever mother and father piss me off and he always insists that he talks to them and gets permission for our marriage… He doesn't care about class. He doesn't care about status. All he wants is me. So, I don't care either! Because all I want is him! I love him. I love him so much!" She quietly laughed sweetly when she remembered Maro's charming and goofy grin, "Please let me go."
Her brother fell silent, his eyes welling with salty water.
"Then go." Those words accompanied by his releasing the Earth Chains lifted a broken smile onto Madella's smile. Then she hugged her brother. She'd forgotten the last time she'd hugged any of her family apart from Cherie, but it felt nice as he returned it with unmasked affection. "Fucking go already," He said, trying to sound angry.
"Thank you…" She grabbed Ralph and Gab and stepped onto the windowsill.
"Wait-" They felt their stomachs drop and screamed as she jumped out with incredible force. Five knights on horseback had heard their screams and came running toward them as they landed; Ralph and Gab rolled not to break any bones.
"Quick!" Madella sprinted and they followed, but the knights were much faster. They would've caught up had it not been for five chains of earth wrapping around their necks and pulling them off their horses.
"…Go…" Dre watched with a smile as his younger sister scaled the wall that surrounded their mansion and hurried toward her love barefoot.
"What the hell happened!?" James Crotioule burst into the room with his wife, Androo, and Bik.
"Where's Madella!?" Lady Crotioule demanded.
"Who knows?" Dre didn't look at them, he just stared coolly out of the window. Madella was halfway to the city, running ahead of Ralph and Gab who were about to pass out from exhaustion.
Maro stood on a large wood platform surrounded by a massive crowd in the city square. The crowd was silent; the only noise came from his parents, two regular citizens, who screamed and fought against the knights that held them at the back of the crowd.
"Mother! Father!" Maro called out, the rope around his neck straining his voice and the wood compartment ready to fall from beneath his feet. "Sorry." He smiled, surprising the executioner that would pull the lever to make him suffocate.
However, his smile dissolved and he stared out into the distance, down the empty streets beyond the crowd. Madella. Her black hair flailing back as she ran. Sweat dripping down her exhausted yet still beautiful face. And those kind, droopy eyes that made him fall for her.
"MARO!" She yelled, getting the attention of the crowd.
The executioner, in a panic, pulled the lever, but it was too late. Ralph and Gab, whom had been overshadowed by Madella to Maro, grabbed her by arms and flinged her into the air with strength that they'd never shown before.
Time slowed down as she flew through the air toward him. The platform beneath him began to give out and the rope tightened around his neck. His life had come to an end, or so he thought.
She'd reached him.
Madella wasn't a talented mage. Her mana had run out, so she couldn't do anything but place her everything into holding Maro up.
"Madella…" Maro said, shocked, "Why are you here..."
"Why do you think?" She smiled, shaking from the effort that it took to keep him from falling and suffocating, "Because I love you." She took a deep breath before yelling to the crowds, "LISTEN! I DON'T CARE IF I'M A NOBLE. I LOVE THIS MAN. AND NOTHING CAN KEEP US APART. BECAUSE EVERYTHING WORKS OUT WHEN IT COMES TO LOVE!!" She grinned as she cried, feeling her grip loosen and her muscles lose strength.
Maro was stunned. "I'm sorry, Madella… I guess I lied." He said, smiling.
Her arms loosened.
The thoughts collapsed from her head along with the rope. Maro accepted his fate, hoping to meet Luneia soon and be taken to the Moon. But instead of his neck suddenly being strangled, he continued falling and hit his jaw on wood.
Confused, he opened his eyes to see a pregnant woman with blonde hair standing above holding a knife.
Tears streamed down Madella's face. "Aunt Cherie," She cried.
"I'm sorry… I told her. I told your mother about him." Cherie cried guiltily, "She threatened to take Jurie away."
"Cherie!" Mr. Crotioule called out, he'd gotten there with the rest of Madella's family.
"Madella, take Jurie with you and get out of here." Cherie helped Maro up and pushed them off the gallows, away from the family who was accompanied by a group of knights.
"Thank you," Maro kissed Cherie on the cheek and took the weeping Madella's hand, running down the street with her. The knights flew over the crowd atop their pegasuses and approached them.
"We'll handle them!" Ralph and Gab jumped in the knights' way.
"No!" Maro stopped and turned, "Come with us!" The knights trampled on Ralph and Gab, not killing them, and headed straight for Maro.
The next few moments would go by excruciatingly slow. She watched Maro give her an agonizing smile of acceptance before he pushed her forward, taking the full Pegasus' weight onto his body. The side of his ribs cracked audibly before his body, like paper, folded violently onto the ground.
"NO! STOP!" Madella screamed, nearly breaking her vocal cords as the knight jumped off his pegasus and approached with his sword drawn.
"Ralph, Gab," Maro called and nodded at his two friends who grabbed Madella and began running.
"NOO!" Madella flailed.
"Madella! Listen to me!" Maro began as the knight approached, "Nothing can stop my love for you! Even the deepest valleys can't keep me from you! I will walk over them on a tightrope! Even the tallest mountains can't keep me from you! I will climb it if it takes a million years! Even the moons can't keep me from you! For I will prove to them one thing! THAT I LOVE YOU, MADELLA!" He roared, throwing sweat, spit, and blood into the air, as the knight flung his sword down.
"I LOVE YOU TOO! MAROOO!" Madella, whose eyes were being covered by the horrified Ralph and Gab, screamed back, her voice breaking completely at the end of it.
"Nice." He grinned. The last thing his head would do before it was cut off.
The knights attempted to pursue Madella down the streets. But something stood in their way. Something that invoked a feeling in Cherie that she remembered all too well. A welling of darkness, spherical, and purely made of something indescribably black appeared in the middle of the street.
"It's you…" Cherie, crying, smiled. From the darkness emerged a figure, moving so fast that it was just a pitch-black blur.
In just two seconds, the eight Master Knights that pursued Madella and Maro's friends had been enveloped in a sea of blue and purple flames. One of the knights seemed to have gotten away; under that helmet was the face of a man who'd dropped all of his 'honor' and only focused on running from the abomination behind him.
Again, with unholy speed, the black blur came out of the flames and vanished along with the knight's head. An enormous gust of wind mixed with red vapor ensued after it, traveling down the street.
"Go! Madella!" Cherie jumped with joy despite the fact that she'd be executed for her actions; she celebrated that she was right. All these years, she'd been ridiculed for holding such intense faith in a fairy tale.
"Let's go!" Ralph grabbed Madella's hand and ran right into the twisting alleyways and half-streets of the city.
"Was that…" An apprentice knight fell to his knees back at the gallows, feeling with his fingers the ashes of the Captain Knights that had been carried by the wind to his cheek. "A demon?"
"No… Worse." His accomplice began, "Do you believe in Fairy Tales, Logus?"