Page 49 of The Time Of Queens

Or what was worse…

What if she was already gone?

“Faster, Samson! YAHHH!” I shouted, almost tempted to take to the skies and get there quicker, as the fear in me continued to grow. Until I saw the lights of my home and was counting down the seconds… until I could dismount my horse and run inside.

“Brother?!” Sophia said, the haunted look in her eyes not one I wasted time questioning. Instead, I found myself demanding,

“Where is she?!” Yet I didn’t wait for a reply. Not as I started running through my house until I was faced with the staircase. I took three steps at a time, ignoring the hurried steps of my sister as she followed.

“Dominic, wait!” I didn’t listen, and my feet took me straight to her door. The hole in it was still not yet fixed, and it was a good job too for I would use it once more to gain entry if I found it locked.

However, this was not to be the case. For I turned the handle, pushed open the door, and was met by my biggest fear on the way back here.

“I tried to tell you,”my sister said solemnly after catching up with me.

“Where is she?!”I demanded in a dark tone, turning from the empty room. Which was when I finally understood that sadness in my sister’s eyes, as she told me…

“She’s gone.”

19

PAST ON REPEAT

KEIRA

Iwas back to that day.

The day Draven rejected me.

Rejected my love for him. I would never forget it. Never forget a pain like it. It had been different than the day I had been led to believe that he had died. Different to the day I discovered he had lied. Different to all the days after that. After all the hurt had turned to simply feeling numb. As if my heart’s only job was to keep me alive and to do so, without feeling. All the pain that Draven had put me through under the name of Fate…but nothing had been quite like that day.

The day he put on the mask of indifference and played a part, just like he had chosen to do now. I knew it the second I had walked into his room, the feeling of it, unwelcoming and tense. As if this was some chore he needed to get over with quickly.

Because at the first hint of his Chosen One being discovered, he had readily cast me aside in favour of something better. Of course, it was irrational, seeing as I was that something better. But he didn’t know that. What Draven was doing now was picking Fate over his heart. He wasn’t picking me because he fellin love with me, but he was choosing an Electus he knew nothing about.

I often feared, in the beginning, about Draven being with me just because the Fates had declared it so. That I could have been anyone. A girl that looked and acted like Aurora. A spoilt bitch, demanding he spend his fortunes on me. A nasty piece of work that spoke to others as though all were beneath me.

I could have been the worst.

Would he have still loved me?

Because the Fates told him so.

The disappointment I felt in him in that moment was what crushed me more than his rejection. The moment he had told me that it was I that had to leave. It was like I had been transported right back to that day on the balcony. Right after that bitch Layla had tried to kill me. Right after Draven had saved me and I had seen his true self on that rooftop. After that, something had switched in Draven, and I had never truly discovered what it was. The most he would say was that he’d had a dream. A terrible dream that clung to him and made him believe that I would never accept him.

I hadn’t pressed for any more details. But I saw what I had seen in him that day. But unlike then, it wasn’t because of any dream that he cast me aside. No, it was the chance at something better. Of course, at the time, I hadn’t understood it like I did now. My fragile mind tried to make sense of it.

But then he started to repeat my past by speaking of my ‘inappropriate feelings’ for him and about a fiancé that would never arrive. However, this time, in his mind, she wasn’t fake, as there was no Celina on his arm to be presented to me. There was, however, the idea of a very real girl who had kissed him and ran. A kiss being enough to throw everything he felt for me aside.

I had never been more disappointed in him.

The rest had been a blur, my denial for accepting his money, the insult of ‘compensation’, it had all twisted in my gut like poison churning and eating away at me from the inside. I had begged him not to say another word. I had just wanted to leave this place and never return. His important business taking him away was just another bitter pill that he forced me to swallow.

Of course, as I knew it would, my telling him that I wanted nothing from him was to be ignored. Which was why I wanted the last word said to him to be my parting gift. As I knew he would be left here with nothing, and it was his belief and trust in that Fate that would be his downfall.

“No one decides my fate. Goodbye, my Lord, I wish you all the happiness this world has to offer you,”I had told him. His look of shock penetrated the mask of indifference just before I turned and didn’t look back, no longer strong enough to hold back my tears. The sound of him calling my name meant nothing to me. For all I wanted now was for him to leave so as I may do the same.

My tears, however, fell as I slammed my door and slid down the length of it until I was on the floor. Then I buried my head in my arms, held onto my knees, and cried more than I had in a very long time. Because it didn’t matter what I knew to be true. That I was still his Electus. Something he may one day discover before I had chance to go back and eradicate this timeline.

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