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 Fourteen ✰✦✰
" Scarlett "
I HADN'T RIDDEN a horse in a whole decade. I'd forgotten how therapeutic it was, feeling the cool breeze that brushed my brown hair from my cheeks and allowed a light blush to cover them instead, but my heart rate wouldn't steady.
As a child, I'd ridden my horse—Venus—all the time and let my little sisters join me as we trodded through the woods while the sun shone and the birds fluttered across the trees, chittering to one another as if they were speaking about us as we passed. I remembered loving to ride Venus whenever my parents reminded me of all the pressure that would fall onto me throughout the coming years, especially those in which I would begin my reign of the country. Or even whenever my sisters had irritated me so severely that my servants would advise me to take off instead of releasing my ill temper on them, even when that was all I wished to do.
Now I felt just as maddened. And with my own best friend too. Sarinne was stubborn and protective and willing to do whatever she needed in order to keep her loved ones safe, and whilst I completely sympathised with that, this time was an exception. I wanted to explain to her and the others why I'd let Jacks sleep in a normal bedchamber instead of a dingy dungeon all alone but they wouldn't hear me out or give me even a minute to explain myself. All they cared about was their opinions on the matter and right now, the only person I wasn't violently furious with was Luna.
And Jacks didn't help. I'd already tried to coax him the night prior to reveal his past to the others but he felt they wouldn't understand. They would view it as a sob story and nothing else—as an excuse to persuade me to allow him a warm bed for the night. It didn't make sense to me at all, for if I were him, I would have thrown my history in their faces.
I hadn't meant to get so emotional—it was just as mortifying for me as it probably was for everyone else, yet I couldn't help it. Whenever people didn't listen to me for more than once, my brain would assault me with memories of my childhood where my father spent more time abusing me than actually listening to what I had to say. The past haunted me day and night, therefore tossing me right back into it at breakfast this morning. It wasn't Sarinne or Miles' fault that I'd cried—that was something about me that wasn't changeable unfortunately—however, that didn't mean that they'd not hurt me.
Just listen to me. I'm trying. Please. I wanted to cry out.
The sun beamed through the trees and in such a strange way, I could almost hear the childish laughter sounding through the twigs and leaves that rustled with the memories of my leftover childhood. Running barefoot in the wind. Slipping on mud and landing on our bums whenever it rained. Mia warning Clara and I not to go too far and come back with as many butterflies as possible so we could give them names and build them homes of our own, unbeknownst to the fact that they didn't require ours.
