"What a pitiful soul," the mysterious voice echoed with a touch of sympathy. "Look at you. You’ve endured so much suffering, yet no one has ever bothered to take notice, have they?"
"Who?!" She snapped her head up and looked around, yet there was nary a person inside the room aside from herself. Clutching her head, she demanded, her voice tinged with hysteria, "Who are you? Why am I hearing your voice in my mind? Show yourself!"
"Who am I, you ask..." the voice chuckled softly, yet sohow it managed to send a wave of icy chills running down her spine. "My identity is not important. What matters the most is... we’re the sa. We have both been abandoned by those we held dear. It’s because we’re too similar that I am drawn to you. So tell ," it continued. "Do you wish to seek revenge on those who have wronged you? Do you want to make them suffer as much as you have?"
Her imdiate response was to shake her head. "N-No!" She denied vehently. "I didn’t... I never wish any harm to co upon them! I just... I just..." her voice faltered in the end.
"Foolish!" The voice sneered, its laughter dripping with malice. "It has gotten to this point, yet you still can’t see your situation clearly? Allow to show you the truth."
In a blink of an eye, her surroundings plunged into darkness and when she regained her senses again, she realized with a start that she was no longer in her room!
She was standing in an extrely familiar room which she recognized to be her husband’s private chamber, and her heart pounded with dread as she beheld the devastating sight before her – her husband and stepsister entwined intimately on the bed.
W–Why was she here?!
Panic surged through her and she subconsciously wanted to run away, but her body remained frozen, locked in place as though bound by invisible chains. She realized with a sinking feeling that she had beco so kind of transparent entity since the two other people remained oblivious to her presence. Let alone move, she couldn’t even speak or shut her eyes, and thus she was forced to watch Caen, her husband... her once loyal and devoted husband, embracing another woman who wasn’t her.
"Your Majesty~" Her stepsister purred, nestling against Caen’s chest with a coquettish flutter of her lashes. "Are you certain you want to keep this up? Not that I mind, of course. Being with you is all I’ve ever dread of. But my sister..."
"Enough about her," Caen interrupted with a heavy sigh, his voice laden with frustration. "Being with her is exhausting. I’ve had enough."
Tears blurred her vision before cascading down her cheeks. This was the first ti she had ever witnessed such an annoyed and irritated expression on her husband’s face who had always been nothing but gentle and caring to her.
Exhausting? He said that being with her was... exhausting? Was it what he had been thinking of beneath the genteel façade he always showed her?
Lost in her turmoil, she barely registered the shift in her surroundings until a familiar voice broke through her despair. "Ah, don’t cry! Why are you crying again?"
Blinking away her tears, she found that she was no longer in the palace, but in an old and humble room that reminded her of her life before she ascended to royalty. Before her was none other than her beloved friend she had not seen for so ti, Lumina, offering comfort to a distraught girl she did not recognize.
Lumina hugged her, gently wiped her tears away and sang softly until the girl’s sobs subsided. "Lumina..." she choked out between hiccups. "I have no one else but you. You will always be by my side... won’t you?"
"Of course!" Lumina replied in a heartbeat. "Don’t worry, I will always stay by your side!"
Watching from the sidelines, tears continued to trail their path down her cheeks. Bitter laughter bubbled out of her throat, yet due to the constraints around her body, she couldn’t let it out and could only swallow it back to her throat, just as she always had. She wanted to cry, she wanted to wail out loud, to scream her anguish into oblivion, yet once again she was forced to bear everything in silence.
Lu, do you rember? Once, you have also given such a promise.
You promised that you will always stay by my side. Is it so easy for you to utter these words? Did ’always’ an nothing to you at all?
Or perhaps... she was the biggest fool all along, to believe in their sweet yet empty promises.
Even then, she still...
With much difficulty, she managed to free her arm and reached out toward the radiant light in front of her. Even after witnessing it all, even after the betrayals, she still... couldn’t bear to lose them.
Don’t go! She scread silently inside her mind. Please... don’t abandon !
But alas, she discovered with dismay that her surroundings were receding rapidly, tugging her back into the darkness. With a gasp, she awoke to find herself back in the familiar walls of her room. "I... I don’t want to cause them harm..." she sobbed, her face buried into her hands. "All I want is for them to stay, but... is that too much to ask?"
For a prolonged mont, the mysterious voice remained silent before finally responding, "...As you wish."
From that day onward, however, bizarre deaths began to plague the palace, starting from her stepsister and stepmother, then extending to the ministers who had been eagerly trying to make their daughters into the King’s concubines.
At the sa ti, she couldn’t help but notice a subtle change in her husband’s deanor. Gone were his loving and affectionate gestures, and their relationship gradually strained further and further. It might have sothing to do with the fact that she had witnessed that agonizing scene, making her unable to look at him in the sa way again.
But then, all of it ca to the breaking point when the King turned his suspicious gaze upon her. The day it happened, a somber gloom shrouded the sky of the palace as he confronted her with a look she had never seen before.
"Tell ..." he demanded, his voice tinged with accusation, "do you have anything to do with their deaths?"
"No!" She denied, hurt that her husband doubted her enough to question her about it. "I don’t know anything about it! Why... why are you looking at like that? Do you think I’m capable of committing such heinous acts?!"
"You..." Caen hesitated as though wanting to say sothing more, but in the end he held himself back and rely released a heavy sigh. "You have changed," was all he uttered before leaving.
That sentence was akin to a bolt of lightning striking her right atop her head, igniting a storm of anger, disbelief and incredulity within her. Changed...? Between them, who was the one who had changed the most?! What right did he have to accuse her of such?!
The sa unsettling shift also happened to Lumina. With each encounter, her once radiant smiles grew scarce, replaced by expressions of apprehension, confusion and a hint of fear. Until one day, Lumina said, "S–Sothing is wrong with you... you’re scaring ."
Everything was futile. The more she tried to make them stay, the further they drifted away from her. Exhausted and disheartened by their avoidance, the void within her heart expanded until it consud her. Eventually, she forgot the reason why she tried so hard in the first place. Was there any aning to her efforts, when they were set on abandoning her?
"I give up," she whispered to the voice inside her mind, a bleak smile tugging on her lips.
Happiness ever after did not exist. The true love she fought so hard to earn was nothing but darkness, bitterness and pain. If this was the price of love, she wished she had never learned of these feelings to begin with.
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