Chapter 191: The Weight Of An Empty Heart
[Music Recommendation: Jordan Critz - Îles]
.
One of the spacious chambers of the palace was shrouded in darkness, with thick curtains drawn to block out any trace of sunlight. But even if the room had been brightly lit, it wouldn’t have made a difference to the lone figure sitting at the edge of the bed. His sturdy body was hunched forward, as though he had given up on everything in life. His lonely eyes were fixed on the floor....empty, hollow, and utterly devoid of a soul.
He had remained in the same position since the moment he entered the room.....still, rigid, unmoving. Though his body was frozen, there was a violent unrest churning inside him. It felt as though every last glimmer of light within him had been swallowed by the encroaching darkness, a darkness that grew stronger with every passing second.
His mind held no thoughts. Every attempt at memory, every little bit of awareness, was consumed the instant it surfaced, devoured by the black void suffocating him from within. It was as if he were being eaten alive from the inside.
And yet...there were those faint golden eyes.
They appeared in his mind every now and then, flickering like a distant star struggling to pierce through a storm. He would instinctively reach for them....cling to them, but they were always swallowed whole before he could hold on.
His trembling hands had stilled some time ago. But the moment those golden eyes flickered again, his fingers would begin to shake, as if that tiny speck of himself buried deep within was trying desperately to fight against the dark serpent coiling around his soul.
Even so, he felt nothing. He saw nothing but endless darkness.
No thoughts remained....not even the question of why he was here in the first place.
Soon, a feather-light touch brushed against his hand. It pulled his attention despite the void clouding his mind. He turned slowly, uncertain why, yet just moving on instinct.
And as he did, a thread of golden dust coiled delicately around his fingers, as if reaching for him. As it wrapped around his hand, a soft whisper drifted through the suffocating darkness:
"Come..."
Before he could even process what he had seen, the golden dust vanished, and his silent heart lurched violently in protest.
A strained, soundless groan escaped him as he dropped to his knees, clutching his chest with trembling hands while a fierce, tearing pain spread through him. Warm liquid surged up his throat from deep within, and he coughed out a splatter of dark, corrupted blood onto the cold floor.
His features twisted again as the ordeal took hold. Root-like black veins crawled beneath his skin, spreading around his eyes. His fangs elongated, grinding together as he clenched his jaw, enduring yet another brutal cycle of agony.
For a fleeting moment, he saw them....those golden eyes flickering in his mind.
And then the darkness swallowed him whole.
Again.
In that lonely, suffocating room, Ivan endured in silence.
No footsteps came.
No voice called his name.
No one knew.
No one came to save him.
....
On the other side of the castle, Evelyn stood by the window, her deep blue eyes fixed on the vast palace grounds and the thick green wilderness beyond. Her gaze was empty.....so empty it felt as though she were staring straight through the world itself.
The sight of lush green tugged at a contrasting memory. The vast, endless ocean she had stared at from Dracoria Palace. Even though her stay there had been brief, she now missed it painfully...because he had been with her.
At every step, in every moment, Ivan had been her indestructible shield. With him around, no one had ever been able to lay a finger on her.
Suddenly his face flashed across her mind: his chiselled jaw, the elegant line of his sharp nose, his well-defined brows...and those molten red eyes that always looked at her so intensely...so deeply...so tenderly.
Before she knew it, her vision blurred, and fat tears slid silently down her cheeks once more.
She then remembered his lifeless blackened eyes...that empty, hollow look when he stared at her...and those faintly trembling hands.
A strangled sob escaped her lips before she could stop it.
She raised her own trembling hand to cover her mouth as more sobs broke free. Soft at first, then more uncontrollable and heart-wrenching. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she sank to the floor, her entire body shaking as she cried her heart out for the man she was so deeply, irrevocably in love with.
The pain tearing through her chest was indescribable....far greater than anything she had ever endured before. Not when she had drowned and water filled her lungs until she thought they would burst. Not when her mother had died and her father shunned her, refusing to give her food for days. Not when Queen Elara had whipped her for every tiny mistake that displeased her. Not even when she had been forced into an impossibly tight corset, pressing against the burning, tender scars on her back just to prolong her torment.
None of it compares to this.
Nothing had ever hurt like this.
It felt as though her heart was being torn straight out of her chest...yet she was being forced to remain alive to feel every agonising second of it. She missed him so terribly....his warm embrace, his tender kisses, his heated touch...and most of all, the way he looked at her with those molten red eyes, so gentle and fierce at the same time.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, crying until her chest ached and her throat burned. Eventually, the sobs faded, not because the pain lessened, but because she had become completely numb.
She stayed curled on the cold floor, unmoving, until her blurred gaze fell onto the thick golden bracelet on her wrist, the ruby at its centre glinting faintly.
She stared at it, and her thoughts drifted back to a couple of hours ago...
"So...what do you say, Queen Viva? Do you accept my conditions?"
Viva regarded her with her conniving pale green eyes before finally replying, "I will accept your conditions only if you accept mine in return. After all, it is only fair that you agree to my terms as well, if we want this arrangement to work."
Eve continued to stare at her with an unreadable expression. "And what would those be?"
Viva’s lips curved into a cunning smile. "Firstly, I will release your friends and Prince Ivan, but...only tomorrow, after the ball is over. I do not want any commotion caused by them before the event concludes."
Eve’s brows pulled together, and she opened her mouth to protest, but Viva cut her off.
"This much, I have full authority over, Princess Evelyn. They attacked my son, the crown prince of this kingdom. So I will release them only after the event, and you will accept this."
Eve glared at her sharply. "And why should I believe anything you say, when by then... you will already have what you want?"
"That can be solved. I’ll write an official letter, sign it, and give it to you so that you can show it to the guards and have them released once the ball is over."
Eve’s eyes filled with barely restrained rage. She didn’t believe a single word spilling from this wicked witch’s mouth. But she needed to hear the rest of her demands, so she asked coldly, "Anything else?"
Viva’s lips stretched in triumph. She opened a drawer, rummaging through it until she pulled out a thick golden bracelet with a ruby embedded at its centre. She placed it deliberately on the table before Evelyn.
Eve narrowed her eyes at the object, and Viva spoke smoothly, "You’ll have to wear this bracelet until the ball is over."
"And why should I?" Eve asked, her voice sharp and disdainful, as if she were questioning the queen’s intelligence for even suggesting it.
"This is merely for security purposes," Viva replied with a saccharine smile. "It’s a restraint bracelet; it suppresses the wearer’s powers. Since you threatened to destroy my kingdom not too long ago, this is simply a precaution. How can I trust you won’t make the same threat again?"
She met Eve’s gaze challengingly, her own eyes narrowing.
Eve stared at the queen for a long moment, and as she did, she could clearly see how frightened Viva truly was beneath all that forced confidence. The queen’s mask was cracking, and Eve could see it now.
Her gaze dropped to the bracelet. Her lips curled into a faint, almost mocking smile as she picked it up, examining it in her hand.
Then she looked back at the queen and said calmly, "First, you will draft and seal the letter with the royal seal in front of me. Only then will I wear this."
The queen held her gaze for a second before letting out a dramatic sigh. "Very well."
She did exactly as Evelyn demanded, writing a formal order for the release of all her friends currently imprisoned in the dungeon and stating that none of them would face charges for what happened. Then Viva sealed it with the royal insignia.
