Chapter 537 - Mulciber Citadel Ⅱ (2/2)
”Why didn't you leave him, then mother!” Peregrine finally asked the question he had had his whole entire life and had not dared to ask until now. ”You should have left with brother and I!”
”I could not,” Meredith sadly shook her head. ”Father, your grandfather genuinely thought the best of your father, and had written an anti-divorce clause into the betrothal contract. I did not know that at that time, and had I known, I would have not signed the marriage contract.”
”Mother must you continue to wait until father finally beats you to death!” Peregrine whispered in disbelief. ”Please mother leave with me! I have money and I work at Gringotts now. I can take care of us both!”
Meredith blinks back the tears in her eyes as she touches the face of her firstborn. ”He will have you killed by per-per, Gringotts or not,” Meredith matter-of factly replied in a heartbreaking tone of voice. ”And that is the only reason I have yet to slit my own throat, my per-per.”
”Mother, please!” Peregrine begged again in a futile effort to further convince her. ”I don't wish to see you dead!”
”Oh, my per-per,” Meredith said with a jaded expression. ”I am already dead. I am nothing but a bag of bones just waiting to die.”
Peregrine opens his mouth to protest, but Meredith puts her finger to his lip to stop him from speaking. ”Shh, my per-per, I know that which I speak of. There is hardly anything left of me, and I am far too old, and set in my ways to start anew.”
Slipping out of the bed, Meredith barefoot walks across the carpeted floor towards her vanity desk. Pulling off a key on a thin silver chain off her neck, she quickly opens a locked bottom drawer and removes a small locked box. Carefully holding the small box in hand, she places it in her son's lap.
”What is it?” Peregrine asked as he stared at the chest now on his lap.
Taking her son's hand, Meredith wraps his fingers around box and says, ”Open it.”
With a skeptical expression, Peregrine does as he is told. His eyes widen in surprise at seeing a simple golden key to a Gringotts's vault. Glancing up at his mother with eyes full of questions, he asks, ”Why are you giving this to me, mother? Father removed my access to any of the Mulciber family vaults at Gringotts.”
”I know,” Meredith answered, with a tiny triumphant smile that made her seem filled with life for just the briefest of moments, before that cruelly faded away.
”It is the key to my private vault before I was married. Your father is not aware of it nor does he have any access to it as this was my personal vault before our marriage,” Meredith further explained. ”I was going to give it you once you grew older, but with your scholarship to that muggle university, I thought best not to. But now with your new job at Gringotts's, I know that you will have further use for it then I.”
”Thank you, mother,” Peregrine croaked as he carefully put the small box away in his pocket.
”Now you must go, my per-per” Meredith steadfastly declared almost looking like the woman from Peregrine's childhood, before life had violently extinguished that vibrant light in her eyes. ”Your father and brother will soon return, and I do not wish you be hurt, my son. And knowing them they will only use us against each other. You must not let them. Promise me that, my per-per. Promise me that you will never return!”
Peregrine opens his mouth to protest, before painfully closing his eyes, before opening his eyes with a determined expression. ”I am not a child any longer mother, and I will not cower in fear mother,” Peregrine resolutely answered to his mother's great despair. ”And though I will leave for this evening, I will return to see you again, mother.”
Meredith soundlessly opens her mouth with despair and a trace of pride, before laughing a bit mockingly to herself. ”Well, I suppose that you had to inherit something out of your father as well. That stubborn streak of his like a bloody Hippograff.”
”I suppose so,” Peregrine grimly said, before adding, ”but I prefer to think it is courage, mother. And to be precise inherited from you.”
Meredith shakes her head and says, ”That is a terrible lie, per-per even for you.”
Not wanting to further debate on the subject, Peregrine squeezes his mother's hand and says, ”Take care mother, and I will return to visit you, soon.”
Meredith merely sighs and squeezes her son's hands before he pulls away and departs. Clenching her hand together, she intently listens until at last she hears nothing. He was gone and safe, but for how long? She could only pray that he did not return, but she had a feeling that he would. And when that day came, she did not know what she would do. But this time, she would not fail him.