It's been four weeks, exactly a month, since Scarlett Solaris took to the throne and has been leading her nation, Goldaria. She and her friends still hurt from the traumatic mental wounds inflicted on them during their captivity weeks prior, but the...
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✰✦✰ Chapter Two ✰✦✰ " Luna "
I HAD TO remind myself not to burst into tears as I called Hejov's name. I wouldn't be made into a fool at my own mother's party (even if she liked to make me into one herself).
How did he believe he had the right to speak to Scarlett that way? Why did he think that it was okay to act so viciously about people that I'd come to care about in such a short amount of time? Was I mistaken or hadn't he been the one to end things with me?
This boy perplexed me to the point where I wondered if we'd ever been close in the first place, if I really knew him at all. There was no other way to put it, it felt like. He was the most aggravating, innocent and kindest man I'd ever met. He'd always been so gentle with me, like I might've been a fragile flower he didn't want to hurt. He held me close whenever I cried about what my sisters or mother said about me. He would kiss me and hug me and touch me everywhere until I felt like I was climbing stars.
And then the next day he would act as if we'd only ever glanced at each other as strangers in a crowded room. Not to mention the bitter cold words he spat in my direction when all I did was simply exist.
I didn't understand him and I doubted I ever would.
"Hejov!" I shouted.
He stopped in the middle of two trees, dropping his head. Thankfully we were out here alone but also close enough to have others hear us if we got in trouble. And somehow I always had that feeling—that eerie, sickening feeling that I was going to get into trouble with this boy.
"Don't just walk away," I demanded. "You don't get to do that. Not after that little stunt you just pulled."
Finally, he turned around and his deep blue eyes made me wish I could drown in the depths of them. "Stunt?" he repeated coldly. "Really, Luna? Don't act as if you don't know that I'm right."
"You can't just go around insulting my friends because you feel a little too heartbroken to even look me in the eye!"
His eyes flashed. "This isn't about you, Luna. You can't seriously be making this about you—again—"
"Am I wrong?" I said, raising my voice because it felt like that was the only way he'd hear me. "Am I so wrong to think that you're doing this because you're angry that I'm no longer crying rivers over you?"
His jaw ticked and he glanced into the distance, then met my eyes again. "I'm angry because you won't see that you've changed. You can't see that even a few weeks with those people have completely shifted your mindset. You don't even believe in arranged love anymore, Luna! What happened to you? Why are you so distant all of a sudden?"
His words struck me like a knife in the back. Surprising and a dozen times more painful because of who was holding the weapon.
He isn't right. Stop thinking he's right. He isn't. He's just hurting you. He's hurting you, he's hurting you—think of Sarinne's nasty words about him!
Yet he was. He was standing here and making assumptions about me that were true.
Those hours of torture back on the Golden Isle when Apheses and the Shielder were holding us prisoner were the most traumatic parts of my life. I tried my best not to think of it, too afraid and worried that I'd someday collapse from the fear that those memories caused to surface.
"I haven't changed," I said but I sounded too quiet for my liking. Like a weak, squeaky mouse desperately trying to stand up for herself. Damn me. I couldn't help it though—whenever I was frustrated or finding myself in a situation where I had to defend myself, I'd cry. Whether I liked it or not. It was something I couldn't control and had been trying to for the longest time. My excuse to new people I met, to people like Scarlett or Sarinne back then, was that I was a mermaid. We were sensitive, and whilst that was true, I was more sensitive than anyone. My tears would begin streaming down my face at any time and any place in front of the whole world, allowing them to believe that I was a pathetic little loser who constantly needed coddling.
But I couldn't control it. I swear I was trying to but it was beyond me.
"You haven't spoken to me since the night you ended things," My voice cracked. "How can you assume I've changed when we haven't seen each other in nearly two months?"
Hejov studied my face and claimed, "I can tell. The way you walk, act, talk, move—everything about you is different somehow, Lun."
A hammer dropped on my heart when he called me that. It was the simplest of nicknames but something about it took me right back to when we were at my mother's last birthday party—last year—and spent all evening together, chatting and laughing about the stupidest of things. Things that didn't even make sense. I wished we could return to that evening but I knew we never would. And I knew it was best that we didn't. That we didn't tie ourselves so close together so that I would be in risk of falling for him and getting hurt all over again when he didn't want me. When he was most likely the one to push me over the edge instead of rescuing me.
I wiped away a tear that shed. "Don't call me that. Please."
He sighed and dropped down on the log, running a hand along his face. "I don't know what to do, Luna. You've changed and I've changed and everything's—it's messy. I just want to know what happened to you? You can talk to me."
My lips were sealed. I couldn't speak—not a single word was uttered from me. I was simply unable to release any information to him that could result in him breaking me all over again.
Instead of rambling on about my issues to him, I shook my head and decided against having to unravel everything to someone who couldn't have cared less about me. "I'm fine. I don't know what you're talking about."
Hejov cursed under his breath and got to his feet again. "You know you can tell me the truth."
"That was the truth."
"No it wasn't. And you know it."
Helplessness clung to me like a pestering disease. "Hejov, can you just leave it alone? You were the one who broke my heart, not the other way 'round."
He scoffed and that alone made me feel small and easily breakable. Two things I'd constantly been described as to strangers by my own mother as a child.
"I get it, I hurt you, alright?" he said to me, eyes boring into mine like sharp daggers that had once been gentle roses. "And I understand your pain, I honestly and truthfully do, Luna, but you can't hold it against me forever, okay? You can't act like I ruined your life when it had never even properly started yet."
I swallowed approaching tears and prayed that I could be alone after this. Prayed that I would be allowed to be alone and sob in my bed forever. Because this was what true betrayal and hurt felt like. In this moment, Jacks's betrayal couldn't even compare to having my heart shattered in a million shards by a boy I'd met only a year ago. How lame did one have to be.
Hejov didn't even allow me to stick up for myself before walking past me—away from me—with nothing such as an apologetic glance.
