I had been so lost in Arabella’s sad love story that I had forgotten how tragic my own was. It’d be easy to blame it on this cursed castle, but the real reason was my own lies and deception.
There was force pressing down on my body, feeding my exhaustion. After fighting it for so many days, I surrendered.
I no longer had the strength to keep fighting, because I found comfort in the coldness of an empty void. Numbness was better than feeling too much.
I remembered the storm inside of me, the swirl of emotions. How I’d look in the mirror, and every time I saw my reflection, I didn’t know who was staring back.
My guilt rattled its chain of regret within me. The shackles around my ankles dragged me under their weight. My need for atonement no longer stirred within the ruins of my broken soul.
My repentance had come to an end.
For I found salvation. Or I thought I did.
My salvation was only a pretty illusion.
Because now that I had truly lost Killian, I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I didn’t know what my purpose was anymore.
What to live for?
How to feel…
I just… didn’t know.
Lost in the sea of confusion, I surrendered to the numbness nibbling at my flesh.
There was a silence in my soul that I had never felt before. It wasn’t peaceful. It was eerie and… unsettling. Like the silence didn’t belong there.
I felt the chill in my veins, coldness bringing all the nerves of my brain to a standstill. It was like a never-ending dark void that consumes everything, so I was left feeling nothing. Total emptiness. There was nothing to abate my hollow soul that creeped in the shadows, away from any other human contact because the barrenness was so consuming, I couldn’t bear to pretend that everything was okay.
Because nothing was going to be okay again.
The ghost of my sister still haunted me.
I forced Killian to hate me.
I pushed Mirai and Emily away, closing the door in their face more times than I could count. They tried to reach out for me, but they didn’t know that I was poison.
That I could burn them. That I only ruined lives. And I would destroy theirs too, because I was only capable of that.
And now, I was alone. Again.
Alone with the ghosts of these castle whispering in my ears. Alone with my own empty thoughts.
My bare feet padded against the wet grass, taking me away.
Mindless.
To be anywhere other than within the cursed walls of this castle.
To be away… from Killian’s silence.
To be free of such torment.
I belatedly realized that I was in the stables when the neigh of a horse drifted into my ears. My gaze darted around the stalls, searching for my mare.
But I was searching for naught – Ragna wasn’t here. A pang of anguish slithered through me. The back of my eyes burned, but the tears didn’t fall. They never did anymore.
Cerberus stomped his hooves, bringing my attention to him. I reached over, petting his muzzle. “Do you miss her?” I said to the black stallion. He released a loud, wet breath in response.
“Yeah, me too.” I rubbed my hand over his side. His black coat was warm and smooth under my fingertips. Comforting. “How do you think she’s doing? Do you think she misses us too?”
Cerberus, who was usually grumpy, silently stared at me. As if he understood what I was saying and he was trying to communicate with me.
So I told him a secret.
“Sometimes I feel like running away. To go somewhere so far away, to cease to exist,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “To shut down my emotions and all that guilt.”
I ran my fingers through his silk mane. “Do you want to run away?”
The moment I said those words, something shifted inside me. An intense need for… something unknown. I didn’t know exactly when it happened or why I did it, but somehow, Cerberus trotted free from his stall, his big body moving in a curious circle around me.
I reached out a hand and he bumped his forehead into my palm. “Do you ever just want to be free, Cerberus?”
He let out a soft snort in response. I climbed onto a stack of hay, so that I was more eye-level to the stallion, since he was such a tall horse. With shaky hands, I grabbed onto Cerberus and swung up onto his back. I settled against him, without a saddle. Without a rein. There was nothing between us, just me and him.
My fingers curled into his black mane, feeling his strength underneath my body and on the tip of my fingers. He tossed his head up once, trotting around in a small circle.
I clenched my thighs. “Take me away from here,” I breathed.
As if Cerberus could understand me, his body shifted under me and then we broke into a gallop. The trees whizzed by as dirt was kicked up behind us. The pounding of Cerberus’s hooves echoed through my ears, thumping with the same heavy beat as my heart.