Chapter 95: 95-Panic attack
Aenyra stormed into her chambers and started organising her clothes in colors, texture, and pairing them with the right overcoats and shoes.
Her tossed the contents of her luggage on the bed and moved one by one through the mess. Her mind was racing in chaotic waves.
The promise she made her mother had hit a roadblock. The tri-soul bond can’t activate without the three beasts, and their auras were so off that getting on the same story, let alone the sane page, seemed impossible.
"With Sseraphis’ memory block, he doesn’t trust anyone to convince him to do anything. And brother Aelthie is not in proper health to help... and Nythe, he can’t carry the load alone," she complained. "Is it possible to redeem myself before the truth comes our?" She wondered, folding the clothes a little too hard that they wrinkled.
She had compromised on her principles to save a life, and the guilt of her deed was eating her up. She needed someone to confide in.
Normally, Sseraphis would’ve been the perfect beast for her to rant to and knowing him, he would’ve comforted her and found a way to break the news to her family in a way that left her without blame even if it meant taking the blame on himself.
Hot tears welled up in her eyes. Her chest felt tight. She had never longed for her brother-in-law and best friend as she did in that moment.
She clenched her hand into a fist and used the sharp folded edge of her thumb to rub her chest to free the tension. The longer she pressed, the more difficult it was to breathe.
The first time, she badly needs Sseraphis to be there for her emotionally, and he’s unavailable. Even though the male was sleeping in the next room, he might as well have been in the ends of the earth because the one who’d return had forgotten her place in his life.
Aenyra took deep breaths, her tears falling without restraint. She held down the desire to scream at the top of her voice, to let it out, and regain her ability to breathe properly.
She dropped her hand. The treatment wasn’t working, and her tears blurred her visage. The corner of her mouth twitched.
With each breath, the walls around her seemed to be getting closer and closer. She had pushed her luck, and now it felt she ran out of it, and the consequences of her actions were catching up to her before she even got to meet her elders.
She dropped the dress in her hand to the floor and paced back and forth. Her fingers trembled.
Her heart was beating so fast it was close to exploding to pieces. Her face was wet with the endless flow of hot tears trailing down her cheeks.
Her teeth clattered as her lips turned pale and shivered. The longer she walked, the harder it was to catch her breath and get settled. Her panic escalated.
’Mother will be so disappointed,’ she thought. ’She sent me here to assist the mission, and I have gone rogue and attached a phoenix to me.’
A bitter taste appeared in the corners of her mouth. It was as though she could taste the disappointment in her mother’s eyes when she came to learn that she, Aenyra Zhen, was bound to Sheana Vaelthorne.
"Aenyra, can we talk..." Sheana froze at the shocking sight of the mess in the room. With her knowledge of the icy and put-together dragoness, it was a sign that things weren’t alright with her.
Hearing the voice of the beast behind her panic, her heart squeezed so hard the pain travelled to every inch of her body. Aenyra shot a pained gaze at the seductress and said nothing.
She had no words to exchange with the female. There were no explanations about the choice she made, no blame as that choice was hers, and no one forced her to make it.
It was too late to change what had been done, especially since the bonding ceremony, though rushed, was conducted by Fairy Zarathia, whose powers are a thousand years old.
When Nytherael, Aeltharion, and Sseraphis were bound by strings of present time and couldn’t get divorced, who was she to challenge a bond set in stone by a beast as powerful as an ancient nine-tailed fox.
Those thoughts ran wild in her mind, and it made her ache worse. She bit her lip, and more tears flowed out.
Princess Sheana rushed forward, worried. "What happened?" She asked and attempted to embrace Aenyra. However, the dragoness avoided her touch by moving away. "Have I done something to offend you?" She asked, her resistance hitting a nerve.
Aenyra turned away. Her back to Sheana as she stared at one spot on the wall and kept breathing hard. Trying to regulate the air, getting in and out of her lungs to calm her nerves.
"Aenyra..." she shoved down the horrible feeling and approached with caution. "Have you ever seen a pink sky?"
Aenyra’s eyes narrowed, her brows furrowed together hard. ’A pink sky?’ That sounded like nonsense. She glanced at Sheana over her shoulder, and the seriousness in Sheana’s eyes made her wonder if there was such a place that had pink sky.
"I saw it once. It was the most beautiful sky I had ever seen. Have you seen it?"
Aenyra thought back to everything she’d read about the beast world. There was no single trace of a pink sky in the storage in her head, so she forced herself to shake her head.
Sheana smiled. "You are missing out a lot," she said. "It’s one of the wonders of my hometown, and I must tell you that it is the most eye-catching thing you’ll ever see."
"Tell me about it," Aenyra requested. She sat down on the bed, and her hands started subconsciously folding clothes again.
Sheana nodded and proceeded to explain. "The pink sky comes once every fifty years, and luckily for me, I got to see it," she said, inventing the story as she went.
"How come I have never heard of such a sky. Surely, it would be recorded for tourists or adventurers to be aware and look forward to it, right?" She questioned, her movements with sorting her dresses swift and on point even though Sheana had her full attention.
"You would think so, but this is just one of those tales of clans that remain undocumented."
"That sounds cool. Are stars visible in such a sky?"
Princess Sheana blinked. She hadn’t expected follow-up questions, but she quickly composed herself and nodded. "Of course, and I can’t begin to tell you how gorgeous they look," she looked away and twirled the edges of her hair between her fingers.
"You could show me," Aenyra suggested.
Princess Sheana went still on the spot. Show her? How? She had made up the story on the spot to distract Aenyra’s mind from whatever was causing her panic to help her calm down.
Her brain cells had failed to come up with anything more realistic, so she opted for a made-up tale.
"So, I see you packing. Are you headed somewhere?" She changed the subject.
Aenyra glanced down at the clothes on the bed and at her calm, nearly composed self and realized the trick Sheana played on her.
"We aren’t close enough for you to inquire about my personal plans, are we?" She fired back, drawing a line between them.
Sheana shot her a gaze full of disbelief. "Are you serious?"
"Since when have you known me to be a comedian?"
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