"I’ll just have to make it impossible for you to ignore."
She said and stopped right in front of me. She reached her hand out and grabbed my chin, her grip firm, almost bruising.
"Wha... What are you..." I was going to protest, to push her away again, but she placed a finger in front of my mouth with her other hand.
"Shhh."
"Don’t speak," she whispered. She tilted my face left and right, examining me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
"You don’t even look that good. And yet I..." She let go of my chin abruptly and sat on the bed in front of me, her legs swinging at the side. She stared at the floor, her chest heaving slightly.
"I... don’t know why I am drawn to you... like this," she said, her voice dropping to a low, jagged murmur. Then she slowly turned her head to look at me. "Maybe I’ll understand... once there’s no distance left between us."
Someone please hit me. Just hit me.
My mind was screaming. This was going south faster than a falling star. She leaned in again, her hand cupping my cheek, her thumb tracing my lower lip.
"I won’t ask for much. Let’s just kiss for once. Maybe after that, I will know what exactly is happening to me."
She moved her lips forward, her eyelids fluttering shut.
"Wait. Wait. Wait!"
I grabbed her shoulders, locking my arms to keep the distance. My heart was pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. She opened her eyes, looking at me with a dazed, almost hungry expression.
"Let’s wait for a moment. Shall we?" I said, my voice strained.
How could her mood swing this violently? One second she’s crying over my "illusion," the next she’s trying to cross a line that can never be uncrossed.
"Look, Elena. I think you are mistaking your emotions," I spoke as calmly as I could, though my pulse was betraying me. "These types of things are the ones you do with someone you love. Like a woman. Not a sister."
Her expression shifted, the predatory focus softening into a deep, painful confusion. "That is what I am confused about. I am not feeling sisterly love for you. It’s something... far greater. It is just making me so miserable."
’Shit.’
That confirmed my worst doubts. The resonance, the awakening, the way Rio had changed—it hadn’t just affected me. It had done something to the "shape" of the bond she felt.
"Elena," I began, my mind racing for a way out. "You’re exhausted. You’ve had a mental breakdown, you’ve burnt down half a garden, and you haven’t slept. Your brain is firing wrong signals. You don’t want this. You’re just looking for an anchor because your world feels unstable."
She looked at my hands on her shoulders, then back into my eyes.
"Is that what you think?" she asked, her voice dangerously quiet. She didn’t pull away. Instead, she leaned into my grip, her weight pressing against my palms. "That I’m just tired? Rio, I’ve gone weeks without sleep while training. I know the difference between exhaustion and... this hunger."
She reached up, her cool fingers wrapping around my wrists.
"If it’s a mistake, then let me make it. I’d rather know for sure than spend another minute feeling like my heart is being shredded from the inside out."
She wasn’t listening to logic anymore. I had to do something.
However, before I could do anything, she effortlessly pried my hands from her shoulders. Her strength was overwhelming and she continued to lean in closer.
’No!’
I screamed inwardly, my back hitting the headboard. There was nowhere left to run. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable. ’If this stabilizes her... if this keeps things from breaking further... then fine.’
I held my breath, waiting for the soft touch of her lips, the final seal on a bond that was twisting into something unrecognizable.
But the impact never came.
Instead of a kiss, the heavy pressure of her presence suddenly lifted. I felt the mattress shift as she bolted upright.
I waited a few seconds, heart hammering against my ribs, and when nothing happened, I cautiously opened my eyes.
Elena wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was standing by the bed, her hand already hovering over the hilt of the sword she had leaned against the nightstand. Her eyebrows were furrowed in a sharp, lethal V-shape, her predatory focus returning in an instant.
Instinctively, I followed her gaze toward the large arched window of my room.
The moon was high, casting long, silver streaks across the floor, but something was disrupting the light. A small, fluid shadow was creeping over the windowsill.
’What is that?’
I wondered.
The shadow didn’t have a solid form. It looked like spilled ink crawling across the stone, but as it reached the patch of moonlight on the rug, it began to rise, coiling upward like a snake.
"Stay back, Rio," Elena commanded, her voice now cold and professional, the emotional turmoil of the last ten minutes buried under layers of combat instinct. She stepped between me and the window, a faint crimson glow beginning to flicker around her fingertips.
The shadow solidified into the shape of a human figure, wearing a tattered cloak that seemed to be woven from the darkness itself.
"The garden was quite a show," the figure spoke, her voice a hollow, melodic chime that sent a shiver down my spine. "Prince Rio—"
The man’s voice caught in his throat as his eyes landed on Elena, who was standing inches from my bed. "WHAT???"
The intruder’s face was covered, with only his wide, panicked eyes visible beneath his hood. "P-princess E-elena? Why... why are you in the Prince’s room at this hour?"
His gaze darted between Elena’s disheveled appearance—her torn tunic and blood-stained shoulders—and me, sitting disoriented on the bed. A flicker of realization, or perhaps a much darker assumption, crossed his eyes.
Without a second thought, the man began to dissolve into darkness again, his body blurring into a pool of ink to escape back through the window. But he wasn’t fast enough.
Elena didn’t even draw the blade; she simply snatched the sheathed sword from the nightstand and threw it like a spear, the entire length of the weapon burning with a violent, pressurized red mana.
THWACK!
The sword hit his shoulder with the force of a battering ram, pinning him to the wall before he could fully de-materialize.
"Guh!"
A spray of blood erupted from his mouth, staining his dark mask as he slumped against the masonry, held aloft only by the sword wedged deep into his flesh and the wall behind him.
"You dare interrupt me?" Elena’s voice was a low, terrifying growl.