Chapter 115: Chapter 115

“Are you coming tonight?”

Danterion placed his arms around my waist as I tied the last few knots of my dress. He repeated his words when I did not speak.

“Are you coming again tonight, Fina?”

I did not answer because I didn’t know what to tell him. This was the third night that I had come here on my own and sought him. I had been feeling rather sad and empty lately, but Langrey came back in town today, and I agreed to meet him at the same, old place. True, I had been deliberating in my mind if today would be a good time to call everything off between us, but how could I possibly know how things will turn out? How would I know if I needed solace and comfort again after I break up with my childhood sweetheart and his own twin brother today?

I shook the thought away from my head. I am a bad, bad person, I know; I had been seeing Danterion for half a year now behind his brother’s back. Although Langrey and I had a long history together, things have stopped progressing between the two of us. He was always out and about, trying to quench his thirst for adventure, as he often told me, but I knew that whenever he’s out there, he wasn’t really hunting animals. He was hunting cursed ones like himself, and he was helping them to escape the kingdom.

I brushed some of the stray hair away from my face with my fingers. I looked back at the golden-haired girl whose green eyes shone beautifully in the midday sun. I know that I am a stunning reflection of loveliness; slaves and nobles alike had informed me so over the years as I grew up; and yet, it was only when I am with Langrion and Danterion that I could truly feel I am beautiful. I would always be thankful that they had never looked differently at me despite knowing the struggles and abuse that I went through growing up. Perhaps it was because we were all struggling together – the two of them in the hands of their abusive father, the former, and utterly insane King Sagrass, and I in the hands of my very own uncle, the current king, Caldwell the First. But it will all be over once one of them assumes the throne, and I become queen. The twins would be just rulers, and I would be a good queen. I would support them all the way.

There could only be one king though – and the problem lies in that. I must choose the right one if I were to become queen. Langrion had expressed his feelings for me when I was fifteen, but it wasn’t a year later when I accepted his heart. Back then, I couldn’t accept that anyone could ever love me after what uncle has done to me before. I was happy, gay, and lively on the outside. I would attend parties after parties every night, and I enjoyed the company and the attention that noble men from different ranks and houses had showered me; but inside, I felt empty. I felt like I was an impostor – creating the illusion that I was cheerful, pure, and innocent. I had lost all those things when the king had cajoled me to strip my clothes away for him at thirteen. I had lost those and even more...

Despite the fierce sunshine that shone that morning, the sky suddenly turned gray, and I found myself looking at a sudden downpour here at Lumbard’s winery as I waited for Langrion to appear.

It was on a similar day like this that I had finally confessed to Langrion why I cannot accept him; He had been patient with me, trying to understand why I wouldn’t agree to be his lover despite the deep bond that we shared. I knew that he thought all along it was because of his own deformity that I refused to become his girl, but it wasn’t. His cursed left eye, the one he hides away behind an awful mask, was an asset, as far as I was concerned. It was proof that he was a strong survivor in a world where cursed ones like him had been put to death because of a stupid decree brought about by the equally stupid and vile King Caldwell. Of course, Langrion had always looked at himself as inferior to everybody because of this.

On a day just like today, when rain fell generously on the sky, I cupped my hands on his face, and whispered this truth.

“Your scar makes you beautiful; your curse is breathtaking evidence that you have greater things ahead of you...”

I had meant every word I said. I had loved him deeply since the moment I met him. Like me, he was flawed; like me, he was also truly gorgeous.

“You are beautiful too, Fina; beautiful inside and out...”

I sobbed heaps and heaps of tears as he declared this. How can he say I am beautiful? He didn’t know how putrid I was on the inside; he did not know what I had done with the king; I was never going to be enough for him. I winced, and he held me in his arms, so strongly that my insides melted.

“What is it Edelfina? I know there is something that you are trying to hide from me – the reason why you can never accept my love. What is it? Please tell me...”

I pushed Langrion gently away as I looked back in his only visible ocean-blue eye. Can I really tell him the truth? Will it not change the way he looked at me now?

I shoved my face in his chest. I have to tell him, but I couldn’t bear the look in his eye, so I hid in his embrace as I spoke... And I told him.

There was a long pause after I said it, a painfully long pause. When I was convinced that he will soon throw me away, I unclasped my hands around him, but he pushed me back in his chest. He started to stroke the top of my head.

“You were just a little girl, Fina,” he began to say to me, “It was impossible for you to do anything. You were just a child, and he took advantage of you. He was the filthy one, not you; not ever.”

I was just a child!

A mere child!

I was not filthy... It was him...

I cried. I cried even harder knowing that I had finally spoken of a secret that made me feel so rotten inside. I cried because I heard the words I tried to say to myself from someone dear and utterly beautiful. I cried because he had seen who I really was, and he did not shun away from me; instead, he had understood the scars that had made me who I was now.

Now, I feel wretched... I am contemplating of breaking up with the first man who had accepted me, and I was leaving him for his brother...

His brother – Prince Danterion Alexy Romualdi – was Langrion’s proud, dazzling, but equally damaged counterpart. He always had a disdain for the weak; he used to love his brother to death, but now he loathed him when he found out the truth that he had been the cause of their mother’s deformity. He eventually descended into madness, regressing back and forth to his nine year old self. He had become a tyrant like his father to others and even to Langrion, who simply and meekly accepted that he should be punished for their mother’s eventual death.

However, to me, Danterion had always been soft, kind, and protective. On the days that Langrion was amiss, he would stay by my side, soothing my scars; and so it was inevitable that I fell in love with him, too inevitable perhaps. He was as magnetic as his brother and even more so because he wanted to rule as a king while Langrion abhorred the throne.

“Be my queen, Fina,” he said to me one night. He whispered it with passion in my ears. He kissed me in a way that Langrion never did. He kissed me as if I was the only girl worthy to rule by his side in the entire world. This had me curious: would he still kiss me like this again if he knew what I hid?

And so I told him; I began to tell him my secret too, expecting nothing. He and I were both committing an unforgivable sin in bed; I couldn’t possibly descend any lower now in his eyes.

Instead of rebuking me or calling me a whore, he tilted my face and whispered softly, “your past does not define who you are. When I look at you, I don’t see a broken person, Fina. I see an angel.”

He then kissed me again with more passion, with more love. He and Langrion were really blood brothers; they could forgive and accept someone like me just like that.

Now, I stood in this crossroad, unable to move past one way or another. Must I choose the one I had loved first or the one whose love burned in my heart longer?

My reveries were broken as Langrion entered the winery. He was grinning ear to ear. I felt more mortified with myself, but I smiled at him.

As the night progressed, my inner shame deepened as he pulled out a ring from his cloak and hugged me.

“Dearest Edelfina, you are the only one I have loved, and you will be the only one I shall love in all the world. Will you accept this ring and be my wife?”

It was the signet ring that his mother had given him before she took her own life. It had meant the world to Langrion. I could not be so wretched as to tear his world apart like this.

“Of course, Langrey! Of course, I will be your wife!”

He slipped the ring on my finger, and he kissed me. His tongue was moving inside my lips, but I was too stunned, too angry with myself to reciprocate his advances. I just opened my mouth and let him kiss me as much as he pleased.

Like the gentleman that he was, Langrion walked me back to the mansion that I call home that night, and he kissed my hand. He said he wanted to wed me at the altar first before spending the night with me. I feel more wretched now as I spoke to him.

“Langrey, can we keep our engagement a secret until I say so? I need some more time to tell my aunts and uncles about it.” I trembled internally as I said it. Will he buy my stupid pretense?

Langrion’s eyebrows shot up in the air, and I can see a slight trace of disappointment in his face. Nevertheless, he nodded his head and agreed.

“Anything that you wish, my love.”

He kissed me again and embraced me before he left. I stood at the cold and looked at the carriage that was bearing him away.

It was cold; too cold. I slipped in an extra shawl before I headed back to the place where I know I could find heat.

“Hmm, you came,” a familiar voice said to me. Danterion was already asleep when I slipped in his bed chamber, unnoticed. I wrapped my cold arms around his body, and I immediately felt warm.

“Did you finally do it?... Did you break up with my brother?” he said. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. I am a truly evil person.

We simply lay there for a long time; he, stroking my head and twirling some of my curls in his hand, and I, caressing the bare skin of his chest.

“You know you must eventually break one of our hearts... right?’ he began to say.

“I know... But not tonight,” I told him. I moved closer towards his face, and I began to kiss him fervently.

Little did I know that Langrey had been watching us.

I am truly an evil, evil person.