by James, Lylah
We were to be married in four months. The dreams of us being together, having kids and growing old together… they were all just that – a dream.
Nothing more, because reality was more brutal.
It wasn’t fair.
Our future had shattered. Now, there was just a grave. A stone that bore her name and her cold bones beneath the same dirt I was kneeling on, my fingers digging into it – as if I could reach deeper inside and gather her into my arms. One last time.
To brush my fingers over her face, one last time.
To feel her lips on my own, one last time.
To stare into her pretty grey eyes, one last time.
To feel her… one last time.
The numbness of her loss had passed. When the pain finally hit me, the reality of this finally crashing through me – the agony had me doubling over, my body racking with wretched sobs.
I roared, my own pain muffled by the storm raging above me, until my throat became parched. Until there was nothing but raw emptiness nibbling at my skin, digging itself under my flesh and burrowing into my chest. Like a disease.
Sick and deadly.
I grieved her.
For three years.
I mourned her.
For three very long years.
I carried my pain, turning my grief into an armor of rage.
She killed my heart.
She deceived my love.
She turned us into a tragic tale.
It was so unfair…
That I still cared for Julianna. Because I was so goddamn weak for her. On my knees, bleeding for her.
How was it possible to love and hate a person with the same passion?
Our story was tarnished with lies, deceit and death. And I didn’t know how to rewrite our story without the tragedy we had already gone through.
When the sun rose, the light shining through her curtains, I pulled my hand away from hers. Julianna slept on, her face serene under the morning light. My body was treacherous, because the moment my eyes slid over her pink lips, the urge to kiss her – to feel her lips on my own after three years – gnawed at me.
It was in that moment that I realized just how weak I was for Julianna Spencer.
I stood up, pushing the chair away. My gaze roamed her sleeping body, lingering over her face. Tattooing the sight of her into my brain. Scars and all.
My chest tightened, but I forced myself to take a step back. To walk away.
Because where there was no trust… there was no love.
And I didn’t know if I would ever love her again, without loathing her to the same degree.
Julianna
Day five and Killian’s absence still gnawed at my insides like an untreated wound, festering pus. It had been five days since I woke up from my seizure. I vaguely remembered Killian staying by my side through the night. Even though I had been drowsy and sleepy, I did wake up a few times in the middle of the night.
And Killian was always there, holding my hand.
But when I regained full consciousness in the morning, he was gone.
And I haven’t seen him since then.
He was still here, in the castle, that I knew. Mirai told me so.
The night of the masquerade ball, most of the guests had left the island. The morning after, I heard that our fathers and the rest of the guests left. So, Isle Rosa-Maria went back to its lonely state once again.
I expected Killian to leave too, especially after knowing my truth. A pang of distress spread through my body at just the mere thought of Killian leaving and never coming back.
He had all the reasons to leave now, to end this ruse. This was what I wanted, anyway. For him to leave. For him to finally walk away from this farce of a marriage and to move on.
But now that it has happened, the despair and agony was almost too much to bear.
Was this what heartbreak felt like?
The kind that kills you from the inside, wrenches your heart from your body and leaves it bleeding at your feet.
The kind that feels like a slow, torturous death.
Because that was exactly what it felt like to watch Killian walk away.
I thought the guilt over my sister’s death was a heavy burden, but God – Killian’s absence in the last five days had left an aching hole in my chest. The sorrow of his loss burrowed itself so deep inside me, I didn’t know how to separate that feeling from my other emotions.
I almost wanted him to barge into my room, to scream at me for all the unfairness. To hate me for my lies. I waited for five days, my eyes on the door, hoping he’d walk through them.
I would bear the brunt of his anger and frustration.
It was my fault, anyway… that we were in this situation.
So I wouldn’t blame him.
Because I’d rather his rage than his silence.
Our love was cursed, to be told like a tragic tale of two lovers never coming together as one. Our story was one of melancholy and self-destruction. Sweet poison, with no real antidote.
How do I fix this?
The pressure in my chest grew heavy and I fisted the blankets, while I forced myself to remember to breathe. My eyes darted around the room, before landing on the stack of unopened letters on my nightstand.
While I haven’t left my room since that night, trying to regain my strength after my epileptic seizure, I had one constant companion. Mirai came to my room every morning, so we’d eat breakfast together and she’d talk non-stop. Telling me about her day, gossiping about the maids and basically recounting anything about everyone who lived in the castle. Past and present.
Mirai was also my unofficial spy. She stalked my husband around the castle, but Killian had also confined himself to his room. He only left for each meal and that was it. There was nothing much for Mirai to report back. But at least I knew he was still here, on the island.
So close, yet so far.
The stack of letters left on my nightstand, was by Mirai. She said she found these in a chest in Arabella’s room. They were from the Marquees of Wingintam – Elias, but though they were old and looked quite rumpled, they were unopened. Mirai left these letters two days ago, but for some reason… I didn’t feel the need to open them.
I had been so lost in Arabella’s sad love story that I had forgotten how tragic my own was. It’d be easy to blame it on this cursed castle, but the real reason was my own lies and deception.
There was force pressing down on my body, feeding my exhaustion. After fighting it for so many days, I surrendered.
I no longer had the strength to keep fighting, because I found comfort in the coldness of an empty void. Numbness was better than feeling too much.
I remembered the storm inside of me, the swirl of emotions. How I’d look in the mirror, and every time I saw my reflection, I didn’t know who was staring back.
My guilt rattled its chain of regret within me. The shackles around my ankles dragged me under their weight. My need for atonement no longer stirred within the ruins of my broken soul.
My repentance had come to an end.
For I found salvation. Or I thought I did.
My salvation was only a pretty illusion.
Because now that I had truly lost Killian, I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I didn’t know what my purpose was anymore.
What to live for?
How to feel…
I just… didn’t know.
Lost in the sea of confusion, I surrendered to the numbness nibbling at my flesh.
There was a silence in my soul that I had never felt before. It wasn’t peaceful. It was eerie and… unsettling. Like the silence didn’t belong there.
I felt the chill in my veins, coldness bringing all the nerves of my brain to a standstill. It was like a never-ending dark void that consumes everything, so I was left feeling nothing. Total emptiness. There was nothing to abate my hollow soul that creeped in the shadows, away from any other human contact because the barrenness was so consuming, I couldn�
��t bear to pretend that everything was okay.
Because nothing was going to be okay again.
The ghost of my sister still haunted me.
I forced Killian to hate me.
I pushed Mirai and Emily away, closing the door in their face more times than I could count. They tried to reach out for me, but they didn’t know that I was poison.
That I could burn them. That I only ruined lives. And I would destroy theirs too, because I was only capable of that.
And now, I was alone. Again.
Alone with the ghosts of these castle whispering in my ears. Alone with my own empty thoughts.
My bare feet padded against the wet grass, taking me away.
Mindless.
To be anywhere other than within the cursed walls of this castle.
To be away… from Killian’s silence.
To be free of such torment.
I belatedly realized that I was in the stables when the neigh of a horse drifted into my ears. My gaze darted around the stalls, searching for my mare.
But I was searching for naught – Ragna wasn’t here. A pang of anguish slithered through me. The back of my eyes burned, but the tears didn’t fall. They never did anymore.
Cerberus stomped his hooves, bringing my attention to him. I reached over, petting his muzzle. “Do you miss her?” I said to the black stallion. He released a loud, wet breath in response.
“Yeah, me too.” I rubbed my hand over his side. His black coat was warm and smooth under my fingertips. Comforting. “How do you think she’s doing? Do you think she misses us too?”
Cerberus, who was usually grumpy, silently stared at me. As if he understood what I was saying and he was trying to communicate with me.
So I told him a secret.
“Sometimes I feel like running away. To go somewhere so far away, to cease to exist,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “To shut down my emotions and all that guilt.”
I ran my fingers through his silk mane. “Do you want to run away?”
The moment I said those words, something shifted inside me. An intense need for… something unknown. I didn’t know exactly when it happened or why I did it, but somehow, Cerberus trotted free from his stall, his big body moving in a curious circle around me.
I reached out a hand and he bumped his forehead into my palm. “Do you ever just want to be free, Cerberus?”
He let out a soft snort in response. I climbed onto a stack of hay, so that I was more eye-level to the stallion, since he was such a tall horse. With shaky hands, I grabbed onto Cerberus and swung up onto his back. I settled against him, without a saddle. Without a rein. There was nothing between us, just me and him.
My fingers curled into his black mane, feeling his strength underneath my body and on the tip of my fingers. He tossed his head up once, trotting around in a small circle.
I clenched my thighs. “Take me away from here,” I breathed.
As if Cerberus could understand me, his body shifted under me and then we broke into a gallop. The trees whizzed by as dirt was kicked up behind us. The pounding of Cerberus’s hooves echoed through my ears, thumping with the same heavy beat as my heart.
I leaned forward and the stallion ran faster. I tipped to the left, my body unstable on Cerberus without the saddle, but I didn’t let go. I urged him to run even faster and he did.
Away from the castle…
And deeper into the woods.
The whispers in my head fell quiet. The ghosts couldn’t follow me here and my demons were forced to surrender to Cerberus’s wilderness.
My existence became one with the black stallion. His hooves thundered against the dirt and my heart raced, beating to Cerberus’s wild tempo.
There was no fear.
No guilt.
No burden.
Only the cool wind in my hair, the warmness of Cerberus, and it felt like nothing I’ve ever felt. He took me away, from my sins and the pretty illusion that was my salvation.
The thunder rolled and the sky opened up, raging. The rain pelted down on us, violent and brutal. The rain soaked through my white dress and my teeth shattered, the cold seeping through my bones. But I didn’t care.
I flattened myself on the horse’s back, clenching his sides with my thighs.
Cerberus raced faster and it was then that I realized…
Feeling numb and empty wasn’t really being empty on the inside. Humans are so used to chasing happiness and we like it, the pleasing and soft weight of it that envelops us. Happiness cocoons us within its warmth. Because it’s so familiar, we never notice the weight of it until it’s gone. When happiness is replaced with something else, it gives us the illusion that the comforting weight is gone. So now… we’re weightless. Empty.
But I was never really empty... I was just full of all the wrong things.
And I had forced myself to be numb. To not feel how wrong I felt inside.
That was until now, on the back of Cerberus as he ran free and wild…
I finally tasted freedom.
And it was pure ecstasy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Killian
Her fingers wielded the strings like a lover’s caress, her bow striking each chord with a sweet madness. Her grey eyes never wavered from mine and it killed me.
Julianna played the cello with such melancholy, each note hitting a different tune until she created a song of mad, ugly love – so beautiful and sweet, yet brutal and pained.
Two lost lovers colliding together, with tainted memories and too much bitterness.
It was cruel and haunting. So fucking beautiful…
My fingers clenched around my whiskey glass at the memory.
Julianna was no longer a ghost from my past, but yet… she haunted me, day and night.
It had been a week since the night her truth came out and I still didn’t have the energy to look into the face of betrayal. To know that while she was the woman I mourned, she was also the reason behind my half-dead heart.
How could I be happy that she was alive and breathing and forget the last three years of suffering and pure torment as I grieved her supposed death?
It was a bitter pill to swallow and I didn’t know how to move on from that. From such cruel deception. Julianna got what she wanted, anyway.
She wanted me to leave, I did.
She wanted me to hate her – I did, with such brutal passion.
Julianna thought that by ruining her own life, her own love story, she was somehow repenting for her sins. It would somehow alleviate the guilt over her sister’s death.
I guessed it was survivor’s guilt.
Self-loathing.
Self-destruction.
Self-condemnation.
Her reasonings, though, was severely flawed.
It didn’t matter anymore. It was already too late. Julianna and I lost three years and we’d never get a chance to live those years again.
While time was somehow infinite, we were just mere humans. We couldn’t go back in time, to change the past, to relive a moment…
What had been lost in the past, it was gone. Our love story was just that. Lost in the past.
A loud thunder crashed through the sky again. It had been raining heavily for the last two hours, proof of an incoming storm. Rain pelted loudly on my foggy windows and lightning struck through the heavy, dark clouds. After checking the weather forecast two days ago, Samuel had told me that a storm was coming.
I figured it was finally here.
I should have checked on Cerberus this morning. While he was a stubborn and fearless horse – grumpier than most stallions – he sure didn’t like storms. He must have felt it coming. His senses were very acute.
But being in the presence of Cerberus reminded me too much of Ragna. A vivid image of Julianna crying and begging for me not to take away her mare flashed through my exhausted brain. Guilt gnawed at me, but I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the memory away.
Julianna wanted to hurt… she had b
een desperate to atone for her sins. Well, I made it real fucking easy for her.
Throwing the rest of the whiskey down my throat, I slammed the empty glass onto the coffee table. I had to stop thinking about my wife.
Her grey eyes.
Her full lips that begged to be kissed.
Had to stop thinking about how much I wanted to suck and bite on her delicate jaw and her slender throat, to leave my marks… and to paint her pale skin with my bruises.
Had to stop wanting her – needing her.
My dick throbbed at the thought and I shifted on the chair. Goddamn it.
Dead or alive, Julianna was fucking with my head.
I clenched my fists and leaned my head back against the chair, gazing at the ceiling. She had way too much control over me and that was the problem.
Love made me weak.
Weak for her.
I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, I woke up to fists pounding on my door. Frantically. “The door is open. Come in,” I answered, groggily. It had to be Samuel. He was the only one allowed in my room anyway.
While I was on the island, Samuel kept me up-to-date on the things from the outside world. My father’s health and our business, to name a few.
My assistant sent me a detailed email every day, while Samuel gave me a rundown of things. But he had already done so for today, this morning while I was having breakfast.
So, what was so urgent now?
My door crashed open and I jerked forward in my chair. “What the fu–”
It wasn’t Samuel, alright.
It was Mirai, Emily’s granddaughter. She barged into my room, chest heaving, and her eyes panicked.
“Julianna,” she gasped.
My body tensed at her name. “What?”
Mirai swallowed, her shaky hands fluttering to her chest. The poor girl looked absolutely frantic and my gut churned. “What’s wrong? What happened to Julianna?” I surged forward, pushing the chair away to stand up. I towered over the girl. “Did she have another seizure? I made sure to relocate Rani two rooms down from hers. I told you that last week.”
Rani was the general physician who was ever present on Isle Rosa-Maria. But she lived on the opposite side of the castle, too far away from Julianna – if ever there was an emergency. After her seizure last week, I had made sure to place Rani closer to her.