Chapter 104: Then tell me.

Diana was sitting with her knees bent up and tucked under her chin on her bed, eyes fixed blankly ahead.

He’s left. He’s just gone. Days have passed, and no one seems to know where he is, but they all keep asking me if I know, as if I would know anything, as if he would tell me anything anymore.

She placed both of her hands firmly against her eyes.

What if something happened to him. What if the person who damaged the stage, the one who thrust a sword through the man’s back and believed that it was him, what if that person has found him too. What if he’s—

No. Not that. Don’t.

He always comes back. Every single time that I have run away, hidden, he has found me, so why can’t he find me this time, why can’t I find him? Why does it seem that he isn’t trying—

She raked her fingernails harshly down her arms without realizing what she was doing.

Just say something. Anything. Tell me that he’s alive. Tell me this is yet another rumor, yet another lie. Tell me that he’ll come back and everything will go back to being how—

A knock on her door.

She looked up, sharp inhalation sticking in her throat.

Please, please let it be him.

...

Vivi’s eyes opened, the image of her being struck on the neck coming into focus before she could remember anything else. She blinked away the lingering daze, propping herself up on the sofa with a straight back and looking around the room. "Where is that man? Felix. Did he go?"

"Are you feeling any better now?"

Her eyes shot towards the hallway. Felix entered carrying two wooden bowls full of steaming food and made his way to sit next to her, offering her one.

"Drink this. You’ll feel more settled."

She accepted the bowl and looked down into it, small green bits of herbs floating in the soup. "Why are you still here?"

"To make sure you don’t try that stunt with the knife again." Felix lifted a spoonful from his own bowl and blew across it gently before eating. "Sorry, by the way. For knocking you out."

"What do you even want from me?" Vivi spoke softly, staring at the bowl in her hands.

"For you to let it out." Felix kept his gaze steady on her. "Whatever happened years ago in the capital, it doesn’t have to be the one thing your whole life keeps circling back to."

"You don’t know anything." She spoke under her breath, hunching slightly.

"Then tell me."

"I loved him." Vivi’s voice came out fragile, barely holding together. "Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just wanted to believe I did. I was like any other girl in the capital back then. I used to watch him train, swinging that wooden sword for hours on end. I knew he was Diana’s personal knight. I just wanted to talk to him, that’s all it started as. He was strong. Brave. There was this one time he stopped a pair of horses from going wild in the street, right in front of everyone."

Her fingers tightened slightly around the bowl. "I wanted to thank him. But I was just some girl. I was scared out of my mind. The others kept pushing me, telling me to go for it, that nothing bad would happen, that he’d never reject me in front of everyone. So I did it. I proposed to him. Right there, in front of the whole crowd. I felt confident, right up until the moment he said nothing back. He just turned and walked away."

She let out a shaky breath. "Honestly, I think some part of me already knew that was coming. It didn’t even hurt that much, at first."

She pulled the bowl tighter against her chest. "But everyone saw it happen. Everyone laughed. I told myself it would pass, that people would forget within a week. It never did. Wherever I went after that, nobody saw Marin anymore. They only saw the girl who got rejected by Hakimi Morrow, right in front of half the capital."

Her jaw quivered. "I hated it. Hated every single day of it. I was naive, I know that now. That day with the horses, I only found out much later that he wasn’t even saving me. Diana was standing right beside me the whole time. I never noticed. Took me years to admit it was my own fault for believing what everyone else told me to believe."

Her fingers finally released the bowl, tears falling freely from her face now. "But why me? There were other girls who tried the same thing, got the exact same answer, and nobody remembered their names a week later. Why did it stick to me? It became my entire identity before I even realized it was happening."

"And so, I left the capital. I changed my name. Everything that I possibly could about myself, I changed. I actually thought for years that I had put it behind me, that I had gotten over him. But then last year, I had to move out here to Fillipo, and before long I discovered that Hakimi had moved here as well."

She shook her head slowly. "I kept telling myself things had changed. I saw him around the town a few times; he always had Diana by his side. No one talked to me for the first few weeks, no one knew me as that girl."

She paused for a breath. "One person did. I didn’t even know him. He told me that he recognized my face right away. I told him he was wrong, that I wasn’t her. He only laughed."

"Even after all these years, I’m still paying for something I never even meant to happen." Her voice broke into a sob. "I never spoke to Hakimi again after that day. He never noticed me, not once, not before, not since. He probably doesn’t even know I exist, has no idea what I went through because of him. And yet people still call me by that name like it’s the only thing I’ve ever been."

She looked up, tears streaming down her face. "Why did it have to be me? He should have to carry some of this too. So I hired people. I paid them to ruin his name, the same way mine got ruined."