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Despite the elemental differences and the murky waters at our necks, she pulls me in until our foreheads click. It hurts, yet the pain makes me want to hug her if I wasn’t gripping my neck.
“Be fierce, my little sis. Prove to those merciless fae that we’re allowed to exist. To live and love. Not everyone will give us their loyalty, but that only makes the connections that do survive even more worthy of preserving,” she whispers. “May you survive dancing with Vipers and Shadows, Ophelia, and let them be the first to watch you burn their assumptions to a crisp.”
Farwell, Odessa. Until I can see you again…wait for me. They’ll feel my burn.
24
A TRIAL OF ILLUSIONS AND TRUTH
~OPHELIA~
The sound of me coughing my lungs out finally reaches my ringing ears.
“Ophelia!” Multiple people are calling out my name in relief, but I’m just trying not to slip into unconsciousness with how my world is spinning wildly. The frigid sensation running through me may be the reason why I’m shivering like a leaf while fighting for every breath that fights to fill my lungs with air.
I’m alive? I’m breathing… here… from the white room.
For a moment, all I can think about is Odessa and how she’s trapped in that square space with no one to talk to.
Just white walls, embracing you as the time ticks away. No movement. No interaction. A solitary confinement she didn’t choose to endure.
All because the man she thought loved her betrayed her for the sake of a royal position. The mere idea makes me want to look at every ancient book and scripture to find a way to revive his ass.
Just so I can kill him again.
“Ophelia.”
Even my teeth are chattering, which I can only assume is the noise that’s added to the ongoing ringing in my ears. It’s like they’re recovering from being clogged for who knows how long, but that becomes insignificant when I register who said my name.
Asher? No… Ash?
I don’t know why it nags at me, especially when I’m just trying to breathe and not freeze myself to death, but the odd tone in my Silly Dalmatian’s voice is enough to get me using every bit of strength to open my eyes.
Despite my urgency, it takes a lot longer for me to open my eyes. When I do, my vision is so blurry, I’m not sure I’ll be able to decipher who’s peering down at me. At first glance, I can tell the person holding me in their arms doesn’t look like Ash.
Their hair is a sort of silver mix with purple, the combination reminding me of Asher’s eyes when he inches closer to unlocking Ash, but when I look into this man’s eyes, they’re different as well.
Frightening at first glance.
One eye is pitch black, while the other is pure white. Despite the obsolete shades, the rings of his pupils are a color that is distinguishable enough against both backdrops.
The person’s lips are a dark red, almost as if they bit them for so long, they were on the verge of bursting out and bleeding continuously. Their flesh is pale, a sickly white that only makes seeing the magnitude of lines and incantations across their flesh.
Even with my blurry vision, I can’t ignore the red marks that I can only assume are wounds or healing scars versus the black incantations that looked as though they were drilled into this being’s flesh and not accepted by choice.
The sight reminds me of something I’d once talked about with Father.
About the lengths families and hierarchies would go to ensure their child could never perish in any challenge or appointed trial. It was a sickening conversation, yet it was something done to children or young teens to give them the highest shot at surviving N.M.U.
Despite the experimental madness involved, it still couldn’t guarantee their survival at the university, especially when no one could really tell what hidden agendas and trials were conducted and never reached the surface outside of the golden gates and brewing shadows of the university.
That didn’t mean they wouldn’t take their chances.
“Hideous, huh?” The odd depth in this person’s voice is foreign to me, but my gut tells me otherwise.
It screams for me to focus harder to unravel who’s beneath this layer of uncertainty.
Squinting my eyes, it takes everything to give my eyes a tiny spark of magic to make my vision clear. It takes a few failed attempts, but when that flicker of energy ignites through my pupils, I can finally get an accurate view of who is holding me.
