Crystal Kingdoms • Book 1 Of The Crystal Trilogy | ✔️

-| 21 / cherry |-

Cheryl way too shaken up to even function after seeing Daniel. She was surprised she actually managed to make it out of there without staying.

Daniel, on the other hand, had gotten his hopes up after seeing her and finding her note.

And then he remembered what he'd done- not to Cheryl, but it would annoy the hell out of her when she found out. If only he could contact his... associate. He'd call everything off.

But it was too risky. He didn't even know where that associate of his was. He just had to be patient. He had no other choice but that.

Lying on his bed that sleepless night and thinking of his wife, only made some old memories resurface... Memories that belonged to a much better past, when everything was still normal. A past before Alastor went berserk and started tearing families apart.

He remembered back when he first realised he had feelings for Cheryl. Alastor was the first person be talked to about it.

“She's pretty awesome, isn't she?”, he'd asked him one night when each of them was lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling.

“Who?”, his brother had furrowed his eyebrows.

“Cheryl.”, Daniel had smiled goofily.

“I guess so...”, Alastor had shrugged.

“Al, I think I'm in love...”, he'd confessed, but his brother didn't say anything after that.

If only he'd known back then... Maybe things would have gone differently.

Things started going bad when Cheryl's sister fell of her balcony, just a few days after Cheryl and Daniel became a couple. Beatrice never approved of their relationship but she was always too calculated to go ahead and accidentally fall of a balcony.

And then, about a couple years later, a count's daughter, Olivia, came along. She'd always been visiting at random times, but that one time she came in as a suitor for Alastor, since Daniel had already gotten engaged to Cheryl.

Olivia always had a soft spot for Alastor, but he wasn't that interested in her until they started hanging out some more. She was practically an angel and even Lux liked her.

Yeah, Lux was around for a longer time than one might expect. She and Cheryl had been at each other's throats since they were toddlers, thought it had not always been Lux's fault.

But that's not the point. Things started going terribly wrong when Daniel and Alastor were at their teen years.

Honestly? The only couple that never had relationship problems were Andy and Margaret.

°~*~°

Cheryl was thinking about Daniel again. She didn't like that.

Memories belonged to a past that seemed so long to her that it made her feel as if it had happened in another life.

“Come on! We're going to miss it!”, she'd told him once. They'd been climbing on the roof to see then sunrise; they'd stayed up all night for this.

“Slow down! I can't keep up with you!”, he'd panted. Daniel had been feeling exhausted because of that all-nighter they'd pulled.

“Dan, if you don't hurry up I'm going to make you regret it.”, she'd glared at him.

And after they'd watched it and Cheryl had rested her head on his shoulder, she'd asked him a question.