I Became the Villainess, But My Beast Husbands Can Hear My Mind?!

The argument in the palace hall ended exactly the way Azul feared it would. The King of Aquilian ordered him confined to his room until the day they were supposed to leave the kingdom.

Unfortunately, being locked up did nothing to calm him down. If anything, it only made him angrier.

So there he was, sitting alone in his room and aggressively carving words into a stone tablet.

Yes, a stone tablet.

Surprisingly, the underwater kingdoms were far more advanced than most land beast tribes. They had developed their own alphabet long ago, which explained why Azul had learned new letters so quickly when Aelin taught him.

”Azul.” Mera entered the room without knocking.

Well, it wasn’t as though there was a door. The rooms were separated by curtains of seaweed decorated with colorful shells. It looked beautiful, but it wasn’t exactly difficult to sneak through.

If several guards hadn’t been standing outside, Azul probably would have escaped already.

”You should take this situation more seriously,” Mera said. ”This isn’t some kind of game.”

Azul ignored him and continued carving into the stone, looking very much like a high school girl furiously writing in her diary.

”Father only wants what’s best for you,” Mera continued. ”For all of us.”

This time, Azul finally stopped what he was doing and turned toward his brother. ”But not for him!” he snapped. ”Not for Mother!” The words came out louder than he intended.

Mera let out a heavy sigh before swimming closer. He looked his younger brother in the eyes and said, ”Listen, Azul. We don’t have much time left to argue. I don’t want to leave our parents either, but you know that... as long as one of us survives, even if it’s only a single person, our kingdom will always have a chance to stand again.”

He placed both hands on Azul’s shoulders. ”But you’re our greatest hope, Azul.”

His voice grew softer. ”You’re the one person we truly believe will survive until the very end.”

The older Azul frowned. He looked genuinely confused by those words and the younger Azul felt the same way.

”Why would you say that?” he asked. ”I’m not any more special than you or our other brothers and sisters.”

”I was a late bloomer,” the older Azul whispered beside Roxanna. ””At that time, I was the only one without any noticeable abilities. I couldn’t even control water properly.”

Some people had even started gossiping that the youngest prince was a defective descendant and that perhaps he hadn’t inherited the royal family’s gifts at all, yet none of those rumors ever changed how his family treated him.

While others doubted him, his parents and siblings always looked at him as if he were something precious.

For years, Azul had assumed they were simply trying to protect his feelings, but now, standing on the edge of losing everything, he was beginning to realize that they had truly believed those words.

”You’ll understand once your true potential awakens,” Mera said patiently. ”You are our greatest pride and joy. The only son who inherited abilities from both our Father and Mother.”

The frown on Azul’s face deepened. ”I... I don’t understand, Mera. If this is a joke, it isn’t funny at all.”

”I’m not joking, brother.” Mera smiled faintly. ”Why do you think you have so many siblings?”

Azul was completely caught off guard by the question. After all, he had absolutely no interest in discussing his parents’ private life.

”They were searching for an answer that could prevent our destruction,” Mera said before Azul could voice the thoughts in his head.

The atmosphere around them suddenly grew heavier, even Azul straightened his back and no longer thought his brother was joking.

”How...?”

”Mother is an incredibly powerful mermaid,” Mera interrupted gently. ”She can heal others with her tears.”

Azul nodded. That much was common knowledge.

”But that’s not her only gift.” Mera looked him directly in the eyes. ”She can see the future. The healing ability is known to everyone, but her ability to see the future has always been kept secret.”

Azul’s mouth slowly fell open. For several seconds, he couldn’t say a single word.

He felt confused, shocked, and somehow, deeply unsettled because if his mother could truly see the future, then what exactly had she seen?

”That... that makes sense,” Azul murmured beside Roxanna.

He covered half of his face with one hand. His eyes shook slightly as old memories surfaced in his mind. ”No wonder...” His voice grew quieter. ”No wonder my mother always seemed so cold in my memories.”

”Cold?” Roxanna asked. ”She didn’t seem cold toward your father earlier.”

Azul slowly shook his head. ”No... she’s never like that with Father.” A bitter smile appeared on his face. ”But with us... with her children... she hardly spoke to us.”

He lowered his gaze. ”Some of my siblings even only got to talk to her once or twice a year.”

Roxanna blinked in surprise because that sounded less like a mother and more like a distant relative.

For the beginning, Azul hadn’t wanted to believe those memories. He had convinced himself that he was missing something, thinking that maybe there was a reason behind it or maybe he simply hadn’t understood her.

But now, after hearing Mera’s words and putting them together with everything he remembered, he realized that his memories had been accurate all along.

His mother had probably chosen not to speak too much to her children or become too attached to them because she knew that one day, she would lose them in a tragedy far worse than anyone could imagine.

When that terrible day came, perhaps keeping a little distance was the only way she knew how to protect her own heart or maybe... she had simply been preparing herself for a goodbye she had seen long before anyone else.

”But that’s really unfair to you and your siblings,” Roxanna spoke up at last. ”She may have known what was going to happen in the future, but none of you knew it. The only thing you could think was probably why your mother acted as if you weren’t her own flesh and blood.”