Love Beyond the Ashes

Accepting Astel

Reine pov: Reine, whatever you do, don't kill my mother again and don't kill my uncle," Calli said.
Don't worry about that. I promise I won't cause any irreversible damage. I said

"That doesn't sound good..." Calli said, turning to Kiara, asking her to stop me.

"Calli, Reine needs to question Ollie now. If she doesn't, then we won't know anything about Temma," Kiara said.

"Maybe I should question her," Kobo said, but I cut her off.

"No, I have to do this," she growled, entering the room. The only person she allowed to follow was Anya.

"So Ollie, you were my enemy all along." I said, glaring at her, upset about how she had deceived me.

"Was this all a game for you? Did you really want to know about my crimson flower? Was this game all a ploy? " I asked.

"No it wasn't. I really did fall in love with you and I want to comfort you, but I can't stand what is happening to Astel." She said

I wiggled the button on his collar in front of her face, just taunting her, "I don't care about Astels' well being, right now I will end him!" That yell immediately silenced her.

Listen to me. If you talk now, Astel will leave here safe and sound, but if you don't...
I pressed the button slightly, as an example, and he fell limp.

"I'd say he can only take two or three more good shocks before he dies" I said

"Alright, I'll talk..." Ollie said quietly.

"Anya, help Ollie reattach herself." I said. She complied immediately, slowly gathering her pieces and putting them together.

"Ollie, I'm actually going to let you go. I can't be petty about the past anymore." I sighed.

"That means you are going to let Astel go too!" Ollie asked. I shook my head.

"He still needs to be questioned, but killing the brother of the girl I like doesn't sit right with me." I said

"Wait what?" She said I didn't elaborate further on that.

"Anya I think we can take the collar off now, I said Kiara knocked on the window to get my attention. She was listening in on what we were saying.

I let her into the room to hear what she was going to say.

"Reine, Mumei rigged that collar with an explosive that will explode if anyone but her tries to take it off... " She explained
"Wait, why the heck did she do that?" I asked.

"Just in case Astel tried to escape," she said.

This wasn't good. We couldn't take the collar off. This seemed inhumane at this point, but I guess it wasn't my place to complain about this since I had been using it to shock him out of anger despite the fact I told everyone I held no grudges.

Ollie was finally put back together again, so we began to think of ways we could possibly get the collar of Astel, but all the things we thought of ended with his head being blown off.

Mumei had thought of everything and since she was in a coma right now, we couldn't have her help us get the damn collar off.

"Whatever, I'm just going to set it off..." I growled about to try to yank it off, but I was stopped by Ollie.

"No killing, remember!" Ollie shouted.

"You're right I didn't make a promise, but I will keep my word and you won't kill anyone here, "I sighed."

I wanted to at least compromise with Ollie, meet her halfway since it wasn't fair what was happening, but this just showed me that freedom isn't something easily achieved, you have to work for it. Maybe it's fitting that Astel now has shackles around him.

Despite how much I like that idea, I couldn't go through with something like this. I would want to trap him on my own terms and give him a taste of his own medicine, all though all he did was separate me from my family and bring me there.

I didn't really have much to be mad about other than that, so he really didn't do anything wrong really, other than siding with Temma.

"The inogaration is on hold until we get this collar off," I groaned.

The only reason I came to this decision is because I genuinely think Astel knows nothing. He is just a pawn for Temma to get closer to Mumei so an assassin could kill her, but he didn't expect Zeta to be a traitor.

There is always the possibility Atsel runs as soon as we get the collar off. However, he wasn't in the condition to runaway forever. We would catch him at some point and then we would genuinely have to kill him for treason against us.

"Ollie, maybe we can cut it," I said, looking at Anya.

"Don't you dare, Reine!" Anya yelled, hiding behind Kiara.

She was just fixed, so she didn't want to be broken again, and Kaela probably wouldn't be happy if we already broke her again since she had just spent hours working on her, not to mention we hadn't paid them yet.

I know they said they'd do it for free, but that didn't feel right. They saved Anya's life technically and didn't ask for anything in return.

"So that's out of the question." I sighed.

"Maybe we could move Mumei like a puppet and have her release it that way!" Ollie shouted.

That wasn't a bad idea, so we tried it. The issue was Mumei wasn't able to move her fingers at the moment. Every part of her was shut down, so we couldn't use her to take it off.

"What a horrid time for this to happen..." Kobo sighed, biting her finger.

"Maybe I can burn it off!" Kira suggested

"Kiara burning an explosive is a horrible idea." I told her

She had forgotten it was explosive I don't blame her though. At this point, I genuinely thought about blowing him up. One way or the other, he is getting this collar off even if it kills him.