Jamal POV
It was intriguing, wasn’t it? That Jamal would dare to fight me. I had not really thought about it until this moment. Why was it that he had developed so much confidence to go head to head against me? of course, dragon blood. Dragons were proud creatures. They prided themselves for being big, brave, strong, and cunning. But in truth they were neither of these things. They were just egotistical, full of themselves, and boastful. I don’t know if I would be saying these words if Xander had not been the way he was. Perhaps I would be praising Dragons for being calm and comported. It goes to show just how much a part could make you infer the whole.
I was currently sited at the bar of the hotel. I had taken just a few shots and could barely feel the sting of the alcohol. Human wine truly was weak. I had promised myself not to get drunk as I was raising children. It would be a terrible thing for a child to see his or her father drunk. I had two. To be fair, I was not worried about Autumn. He probably would just give out some logical reason as to why he would not drink and stick heavily to that reason until he was stricken with age and ready to die. But as for Summer, she was easily swayed and was of high curiosity which did nothing good to help her partially gullible nature. This means that all it took was a few persuasion and Summer would be losing her senses and attempting to find it again at the bottom of a bottle.
I ordered for whiskey and took the bottle in hand. Asides from a fight which I don’t really like to get into anymore, I had been rejected by Methis. I had won her over, I knew I had. I could have sworn that she was considering coming back to me. But that son of a bitch Xander just had to come in the way.
The fight was not something I looked back on trying to replay it in my head in order to find weak points in my fighting and analysing what I should have done differently to ensure a quick victory. No. I did not do all of that. I was beyond it all. That was for young folks with no experience to do. Folks like Xander. That was for them to use to learn the art. But as for me, once a fight was over, it was over. Both mentally and physically. There was no need to recap. It was onto the next one. That was an attitude I picked up from the war I had waged against the Dark Witch. So many fighting that there were just too many things to look back on. At the end, you looked back on none of them.
But I did not fancy a fight anymore. I had had my fair share of them. I had killed a lot and watched a lot die. Honestly, I did not know which one was the hardest to do. It depended on the context at the end of the day and the circumstances surrounding each scenario.
“Are you sure you can pay for all of that?” a voice spoke to me.
I looked up to come face to face with the bartender. “Do you doubt me? Or do you simply just mean to insult me?” I said without any restrain on my path. I reconsidered my words immediately and set them straight. “Sorry. I mean, yes. I can pay for them. I am capable enough.”
The bartender wrinkles his brows and force a smile. He was evidently confused at what I was on about. Maybe the human wine was indeed working on me after all. I needed to comport myself. I had made enough scenery for one lifetime on this human soil. I was not ready to make another scene in this bar. Best control yourself, Jamal.
I looked around my table and noticed I had emptied the whiskey bottle. So what was what the bartender was asking about. He was just doing his job, I guess.
After a little time of sitting and doing nothing. I stood up from my seat and made my way towards my room where Autumn and Summer had been tucked in safely in bed.
“What about payment, Sir?” the bartender asked from behind.
“Ehh…” I stuttered absentmindedly. I looked around and back to the bartender. I had not carried cash down here and I did not have any cards on me.
Luckily, the bartender took the initiative to ask. “Do you lodge here?”
I nodded.
He pulled out a napkin and took out a pen from his pocket. “Here. give me your room number. It would be deducted alongside the bills for tonight.”
“Yes. Brilliant idea. Thank you so much.” I tried to be extra nice just to hide the fact that I might be drunk. I had not drunk anything since the night of that large feast to commemorate the birth of Summer and Autumn so it had been approximately four years since I last drank. I had quite forgotten what it was like to be drunk but I was expecting a tipsy head and a tingling fingers but as none of them came and still feeling like I was not in complete control of my thoughts, I could not particularly tell if I was sober or intoxicated.
I reached my room and slid the door open. Right in front of me was Autumn with a rubric’s cube in his hand.
“Why are you waiting up for me?” I asked.
“I am not waiting up for you,” Autumn replied.
“Really? Why then do you still have the cube in your hand even though you’ve solved it?”
Autumn looked at the cube and blushed. Even though he was smart and cunning, he still was a kid and they all were the same just with a little differences for personality sake.
“Where had you been?” he asked.
“Do you always do this?” I asked, ignoring the question he had asked me.
“Do what?”
“Get out of bed even though you have been tucked in.”
“Well, sometimes.”
I believed he did it more often than sometimes. But how was I to prove him wrong now? The palace was a large place so he had many spots to conveniently hide in without any of the guards or the maids noticing his disappearance. It wasn’t like I constantly checked on him to see if he had disappeared or not.
“What do you think is Xanders motivation to go after your mum?” I asked him, going straight to the point.