It took her a few seconds to register what had just happened.
Pain flashed across her nerves as she felt an intense burning sensation on the flesh of her cheek and a blunt pain on the bone of her jaw.
One moment, she was standing.
The very next moment, she found herself on the extravagant carpet of the living room.
Her eyes flew wide open with horror and terror as she realized what had happened rapidly, understanding that her father had hit her harder than he ever had.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME?" He bellowed at her with extraordinary wrath in his voice.
His eyes were bloodshot with rage.
His expression was menacingly intense, crumpled with pure rage.
"YOU WON'T TELL ME?!" he roared at her. "You dare defy my words?! You dare?!"
She stumbled as she got up with fear in her eyes.
"AFTER EVERYTHING WE HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" he roared, storming forth. "AFTER EVERYTHING, YOU DARE TO DEFY ME WITH SUCH DISRESPECT?!"
The air boiled with danger.
The atmosphere grew electric with peril as she backed away with clear fear in her eyes, afraid of what was about to ensue.
"YOU DARE TELL ME TO MY FACE THAT YOU WON'T?" He surged forth, cornering her at the edge of their living room.
In a moment of almost maddened anger, his hands flew forward, grasping at her small neck and throat as he squeezed with all the power he could muster, threatening to crush her throat.
"Ack…!" Melia choked as she struggled, thrashing about as she struggled to get his hands off of her neck, thrashing about wildly as she began panicking.
In that moment, a single thought flew through her head.
'I'm going to die.'
The thought sent her into a wild struggle as she lashed out, fighting as hard as she could as her fight or flight instincts kicked in, leading to her hitting and kicking her father to get him to let go.
Even Melia's mother flinched with fear amid her expression of anger against her child, wishing she could intervene, yet too cowardly to do so.
The air in the living room grew intense with danger and peril as her father gritted his teeth, his expression growing an intense, maddened red with the sheer amount of anger coursing through his mind.
"WHAT DID SHE TELL YOU?!" He roared at his daughter. "YOU WILL TELL ME OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL CRUSH YOUR THROAT!"
Melia's face grew a sickly pale as she felt the pressure on her neck increasing.
"TELL ME!" He roared.
"She…" the choking girl barely managed to squeeze out amid his thick hands and fingers curling around her neck. "She told me… to give her information."
His eyes darkened, swimming around in thought as he dropped her daughter.
THUD
She collapsed to the ground, gasping for air with desperation as tears spilled from her eyes.
And yet, her father couldn't even be bothered.
"That witch…" he growled with rage as his eyes swam around. "She tried to get information from my own daughter…"
His body quivered with anger and rage. "I-I'll-I…"
He was so angry that his speech slurred.
"I'll kill her!" he cursed with venomous hatred in his eyes.
He took several deep breaths over a minute as he tried to calm down.
"…Wait a minute." His tone was chilling. "If she truly believes that my daughter can give her some useful information, then…"
An eerie smile emerged on his face.
"I can use that against her."
He turned to his daughter with cold fury.
"You dared to defy me…" his voice quivered with anger. "You dare to defy me, your father?"
His expression crumpled with menacing intensity.
"You need to be re-disciplined, but…" his voice smoldered. "That can wait after you feed the Headmistress false information."
He didn't expect the opportunity to sabotage the Headmistress to present itself to him, but he was not one to not exploit it.
"What did you tell her?"
Melia flinched. "…I told her I didn't know anything. Afterwards, she told me to meet her in her office at the same time."
A gruesome grin appeared on his face.
"Good. I will give you a file to memorize," he told his daughter with a cruel expression "I expect you to memorize it. When the Headmistress tries to poke into you tomorrow, I want you to very reluctantly and resistantly relay some of that to her, got it?"
She nodded, still coughing as her hand rested on her neck, nursing the bruised skin.
Tears spilled from her eyes in copious amounts as a little trickle of blood of leaked from the edge of her mouth.
Her eyes were puffy and red, entirely bloodshot.
The bruise on her cheek had already darkened to become a distinct mark on her face.
Her breathing was ragged and messy as she recovered from the brief but intense decoration she suffered at hands of her father.
He snorted with contempt.
"Never defy me ever again…" he growled at her with anger.
He walked over to her, bending as he glared deep into her eyes.
"I did not raise you for almost eighteen years just for you to disrespect me when I asked you a simple question," he snarled with a nasty voice. "When you've completed the task that I've given you, I expect you to come home so that you can be disciplined. Remember…"
He growled at her. "…Family comes first. That is the way of the Nelnmonts."
"…Yes, Father."
Her tone quivered.
Her eyes were dead.
And yet, just the faintest hints of relief emerged within her.
Within her heart.
She had done it.
The story that she had come up with the Headmistress was meant to essentially guarantee her return to the Elendir Institute of Magic the next day.
It was a needed insurance to ensure that she actually managed to get out of the house alive lest she be kept for 're-disciplining' for acting out, which was needed because of what the Headmistress had told her about the abuse needing to be very prominent for it to register without any question upon the purposefully weakened charm placed inside her by the Headmistress.
Even as she lay on the ground with tears escaping her eyes and blood escaping the side of her mouth, a broken, yet relieved smile emerged on her face for just the briefest of moments.
"Have her fixed up and sent back immediately," he told his wife, departing from the living room. "I will need to write up a variety of plausible and even likely false facts that will sabotage the Headmistress and send it to your magiphone, Melia. If nothing, just observing her reactions to the information will tell me a lot. Ah…"
He paused, turning back to Melia.
"How did it go with Cæ?"
She hobbled to her feet, gazing at her father with lost eyes.
"…I think we have grown closer."
Strangely enough, that was the truth.
Her father gazed at her with a peering gaze for several seconds before nodding with approval.
"Good girl."
His praise sent chills across her skin.
"Foolish girl…" her mother gazed at her with a strange mix of anger and sorrow, as two healing apprentice mages quickly entered the room, swiftly tending to Melia without hesitation and without so much as a change in their expression, healing the bruises on her face and neck and the wound inside her mouth.
Melia remained frozen where she was as they healed her wounds.
Her gaze and attention were lost.
Even as the pain faded away, she found it difficult to feel much better.
The sheer shock of what she had gone through left her in a state of shock.
For a moment there, she truly felt in the depths of her heart that she was going to die.
She could still fear the remnants of the remaining fear in her heart that left her frozen with bone-chilling terror.
It didn't matter if she was a mageling who was theoretically stronger than her father; she still felt a horror unlike anything she had ever felt before in her entire life. She had intended to provoke her father, knowing that he would completely lose his temper at disobedience, which he interpreted as a personal affront to him.
She couldn't have even dreamed that he would come this close to killing her.
What would have happened if she hadn't managed to squeeze a response in time?
Would he have killed her then and there?
According to the Headmistress, she was a very important asset to her parents, especially her father, and yet, she felt he would have choked the life out of her had she not answered his question.
It sent shivers down her spine to realize just how much danger she had been in her entire life, being raised by a madman psychopath who was willing to choke the life out of his hands for 'disrespecting' him was truly terrifying.
She had been living with an absolutely horrifying human being her entire life and was closer to danger than she had ever realized. It was chilling to know that every time she had ever felt safe in her life, it was perhaps just an illusion.
The very thought of it inspired raw terror in the depths of her heart.
He felt her heart racing with fear.
She felt her breathing growing ragged.
The very thoughts and memories of what just happened sent her into a fight-or-flight mode.
It left a mark on her mind.
It left a mark on her soul.
"I'm leaving."
She got up, walking away briskly.
"Wait."
She froze where she stood.
"…Remember that you are a Nelnmont," her mother insisted with a serious voice.
The air grew tense.
"Do not forget your duty to this family after everything we have done for you."
The atmosphere grew electric.
"Yes, mother…" she turned to give her mother one last deep look. "I won't ever forget those words."
"Good," her mother huffed. "Now go and return to the Elendir Institute of Magic."
She didn't need to be told twice.
She resisted the urge to simply run away, instead limiting herself to a very brisk walk out the front door of the large Nelnmont Mansion, walking past the rich and lavish gardens, and returning to the car that was waiting for her.
CLACK
She quickly closed the door.
"Quick!" she almost pleaded to her driver. "Back to the Elendir Institute of Magic as soon as possible!"
"Er, yes, Young Miss, as you wish."
VRMMM…!
The car revved up, heading straight to the Elendir Institute of Magic at a high pace.
She gazed out of the window, letting the bright warmth of the afternoon Sun rest on her face.
It didn't soothe the worries she experienced.
She felt an extraordinarily intense fear that her father would realize what she had done and call her back.
She felt a deep paranoia that her driver would get a call telling him to turn around and bring her back.
Perhaps he would send mages to get it done.
She even began getting more irrational fears, like perhaps her father had rigged the car with explosives and would make it explode.
Or perhaps they would get stuck in a traffic jam, and that would delay her return to the Elendir Institute of Magic.
And yet, none of them happened.
Despite her greatest paranoia, the car pulled up to the Elendir Institute of Magic, much to her greatest relief.
CLACK
She almost lunged out of the car even before it could stop.
"Let me in!" she almost screamed at the guards at the security check-in, throwing her student ID at them and quickly passing through their security systems.
Tears began streaming down her face as she ran towards Headmistress Lenolia's office.
"I'm free…!" she sobbed. "I'm finally free!"