Chapter 848: The Woman I Am (Ch.849)
A deserted hallway, doors made of polished wood and a familiar feeling of suffocation welcod them into the Eclipse Palace.
Neveah didn’t know what ho was, or what it felt like, but it wasn’t this. If ho felt this way, why would anyone build their life around it? Why would anyone desire to return to it?
The look in Alessio’s eyes were unreadable as he laid her down on the bed in her room... their room, the room he claid they had once shared, but had left to give her the privacy she needed in this uncertain ti.
It was supposed to be a space she’d lived in, and loved in for years already. A space she had given herself to this man over and over again, and craved for him, held him when the sun was too shy to grace the skies with its light.
Her heart should have rembered his love. Her body should have rembered his touch... this damned room should have been a place of comfort,
Yet the mont they crossed the threshold, that feeling of suffocation returned in double fold.
If this despair was all her mories hid, why did she feel like she had lost sothing...too precious for words? Too cherished that she could hardly breathe? Why did her heart hurt so terribly, she had to keep from ripping it out of her own chest just to find so reprieve?
If this beautiful space was truly hers, why was it that she could only truly breathe on the other side of those doors? If this man belonged to her, why did it feel like anything but?
"Are you hurt?" Alessio’s voice fed the knot of displeasure in the pit of her stomach.
He stroked her hair gently, leaning in and she flinched on instinct.
He slled of death... death, blood and a host of other unpleasant things. And by association, she did too.
The stench of him lingered on her skin, every spot he had touched, every strand of hair he stroked.
"Veah..." He exhaled heavily, "How long must I wait?"
His eyes sought hers as they always did, forest green that glead with emotions she had been made to believe she was responsible for,
But she didn’t feel so responsible. She didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to be the woman he gazed at with such tender loving, the woman he touched with such heartwarming care, the woman whose every word he hung tightly on, whose smile lit up his eyes.
She didn’t want to be his woman, she realised. The re thought of it horrified her to the core.
But if she wasn’t Alessio’s woman, whose was she? And what was she to make of the child she carried? An undeniable evidence that she indeed...had been with this man?
Nothing made sense. It hadn’t before and it still didn’t now.
Neveah turned away from him, her gaze fixed on the walls. Even the pastel colors all around her felt wrong... unfamiliar. Like a beautifully wrapped gift addressed to the wrong na.
Like she lived a cri she was sure to be damned for. A sin she could never make up for. But she already was...damned.
Nothing could feel worse than this hollowing ache. Not death. Not damnation.
"Veah..." He tried, "Look at ."
She didn’t. She already knew what she would see. A lie.
The reality she was terrified to confront. That all she had was him, and if he was a lie, then she had... nothing.
No identity. Nothing to hold onto or return to.
"I’m sorry, beloved." Alessio’s tone was heavy, "I thought you were gone and I...lost it."
"I didn’t want to harm them... I just..." He trailed off, exhaling shakily.
Neveah t his gaze, her eyes searched his... seeking, hoping. For sothing to hold onto, anything that would justify the past month,
Anything that would make her reality solid enough that she could commit herself to protecting it, even if it ant letting go of the unanswered questions.
But she knew it at first glimpse. "You did."
Alessio winced visibly. Like her words physically hurt him.
"You did an to harm them. You did an to kill them. And you enjoyed every bloody second of it..." She trailed off, smirking slightly. "So much so you didn’t bother to clean up, before touching
with those bloodstained hands..."
She tilted her head slightly. "But as it turns out, I am a woman unfazed by blood, or death..." She scoffed,
"A woman who finds the stench of them familiar... isn’t it a curious thing?"
"Veah, I love you." He said after a short mont of silence. His eyes shone with sincerity and she didn’t need to look too far to find it this ti.
"I know." She whispered,
She did know it. It was perhaps the only truth she was certain of.
"I can’t breathe... can’t live without you." He confessed, his tone barely audible. "I’ll give anything, everything...my life, my throne, whatever you ask of , as long as I have you."
"I know." Her voice cracked.
"So why won’t you trust ?" He asked in despair.
She hesitated for a mont. "Because you don’t."
She glanced up at him. "Because you don’t trust in my love for you, Alessio. Because you’re anxious and uncertain at every mont. Because you keep trying to prove a point."
"Because you’ve put your life and your palace on a standstill to watch over . Because every mont I’m out of your sight, the first thing you assu is
leaving you...like you already know even when I haven’t yet decided, that that is what I truly desire." She paused, drawing a sharp breath.
"That shows , that you know better than I do...if truly or not, I did love you,"
"I may not know who I was...but I know who I am. And my love, could not be such a fickle thing..." She shook her head slightly,
"And if I’m wrong about this one thing, then I fear I lost not just my past to that blizzard, but my future as well."
Alessio frowned slightly, "What would you have
do? To prove myself to you?"
Neveah’s eyes moved to the partly opened window, a wistful feeling churning within her.
"Wait... until I’ve decided to love you..."
"Or kill you." She turned to et his gaze, her eyes emotionless.
"This is the woman I am, Alessio."
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