Page 14 of Equilibrium
“Storm,” I started again, trying to make my voice sound stronger, but to no avail. It hurt like a bitch, and I fucking needed some water.
“No, Ophelia,” Atlas spoke instead. “Let him be. Creed shouldn’t have done this.”
But he didn’t know. He didn’t fucking know, and I wouldn’t let him die for this.
“Storm, please.” I lifted my head, and as if something broke through to him, Storm pushed him away. Nathan, or well, Creed looked pissed, but he knew better than to provoke him now.
“I didn’t kill her, Nathan. I found her there, but I didn’t kill her. I’m going to find who it was, but it wasn’t me. I loved her more than I love myself.”
He kept glancing between me and Storm, but before I could utter another word, he rushed outside, leaving everything I had to say unspoken.
“Fuck.” Storm dropped on his knees in front of me, the glistening skin of his naked chest right in front of my face. Man, my ovaries just about wanted to explode seeing him partially dressed. But then I remembered where he was and what he was doing, and all the dirty little thoughts I had about him and his body flew out the window, leaving the empty feeling behind. He wasn’t here to save me or to help me fix things. He was just another person that thought locking me up would be the way to go.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
I couldn’t even protest as he picked me up like a rag doll and carried me upstairs to the same room I woke up in.
“Whose room is this?” I asked as we entered. Those green eyes flickered over my face as the smirk descended on his lips.
“Mine.”
And the way he said it, I had a feeling he was talking about more than just the room.
I wasn’t a happy person.
I wasn’t sad either, but I wasn’t happy. I was simply... nothing. Numbness, darkness, those I was familiar with.
The absence of emotions made me strong. It was what helped me escape that hell all those years ago. This emptiness in my head, the cold flowing through my veins, it shaped me into the person I was today.
When love and warmth are taken away from you, stolen and never given back, you quickly learn to hide everything you feel.
And with time, even what you used to feel gets drowned in the infinite darkness you were slowly getting enveloped in. My heart wouldn’t have gotten me out of the hell they threw me into—my head did that.
But something changed four years ago. It changed when the bluest pair of eyes met mine, and an unfamiliar feeling arose in my chest.
Possessiveness.
I wanted her to look at me and only me. I wanted to hold her, hide her, have her all to myself. That connection I felt, for the longest time I thought I’d imagined it. It wasn’t possible to feel like that for a person I’d just met.
It wasn’t love. It was as far away from love as it could get, or well, at least what I thought love was. No, this was understanding. The haunted look in her eyes, I saw it every day in the mirror. I felt it with each breath I took. This burden you carry. The burden of everything they did to you and everything you did to other people. Even when you don’t feel remorse, the pieces of your soul still get chipped away with every bloody trail you leave behind.
And I’ve left plenty of them. She did too.
But I didn’t know that the girl I met back then could be my damnation. I didn’t know that I would need to betray her before I even had her.
She didn’t know that the hope she had on that day would be useless, because the situation I would throw us into years later, wasn’t going to be a pretty one. When I made the deal, I only got her name.
Ophelia Aster.
A daughter of a man who didn’t just deserve to die. Oh no. Nikolai Aster deserved to be burned alive for everything he’d done. I didn’t know her name, but the girl I met was Persephone for me. She was my queen, my salvation. My desire and need.
And I fucked up before we could even start.
When I saw her in that church, when I realized who she was, my heart almost jumped out of my chest. And then I realized who she was with when she never showed up even though she promised she would. Maybe if she did, we could’ve avoided all of this. Maybe I wouldn’t end up fucking this thing up before it even began.
I’d been looking for her, going back to that place every single year, but she was never there. I sometimes thought that she was a ghost, a figment of my imagination. Just something my mind and my heart wanted but could never get.
But she was real. She was fucking real, and she was standing in front of me—a living and breathing person. The only problem was, I didn’t know if I wanted to strangle her or if I wanted to hug her and never let her go.
