ADK IV: The Atlantean Queen (✔️)

Chapter 7

        Shocked, Minerva’s eyes were still fixed at the glossy glass which was now shattered into pieces, next to her bare feet. Red liquids were gradually flowing on the floor like dark blood crossing from every outline of engraved symbols upon it, as she began to fathom what just happened. Her red juice spilled, her hands were still shuddering and her heart beat wildly that she almost froze to the spot at where she was standing.  She inclined her head on the nearest door, thinking if there was someone out there who probably heard the loud noise that she’d made a while ago. Relief flooded her when after five long seconds of waiting, the door didn’t open.

        It was time to fall asleep but every time she tried, she just couldn’t. Her eyes kept staring at the blank ceiling painted with shady peach and black. Her weary thoughts wandered from afar, away from these waters of her city. Her heart was silently breaking and there was no one in this place that could put them together as it was like before. Her life was a mess. Her heart was aching. And her mind was never been this stressed.

            She bent down on her knees and started reaching for those tiny bits of glass, remotely cleaning the floor before someone might see it. She was in the kitchen at this late of hour. No one knew that she was in here. She shouldn’t be here in the first place. She didn’t care as much as they never cared for her at all.

            When she was just a princess, no Atlantean soul had this kind of concern for her, until she became a queen. Her heart ached at that forlorn thought of hers. They just loved her because she was their queen. They just made her a queen because they had no choice and she was in this kind of position that she never dreamt of.  It felt like she was trapped, a kind of lock that no matter how she tried to make an escape, there was no way out.

             Clenching her teeth, she accidentally cut herself.

              Her own blood was then mixed with the red juice that spilled out on the floor. It hurt a bit but this kind of hurting was nothing compared to Ayden’s execution and Edmund’s missing piece. It seemed like everything changed in just a matter of a short day. In every decision she made, she ended up hurting herself. 

             She stopped for a moment and gazed at a little glow coming out from the window. How she missed those times that she witnessed the magnificence of the moon and the warm radiance of the sun up in the sky. How she wanted to have another chance at gazing those stars like tiny diamonds scattered above, and how life was more thrilling than just merely sitting here and doing nothing.

            Yet above all, how could a man completely change her belief about love and how he made her heart pound so fast that it scared her more knowing how much she would be going to miss him. No. She was starting to miss him.

             She shook her head as she gently pressed her little cut, realizing that they weren’t made for each other. Their world differed, something that it just wouldn’t collide because she wished to. Such things didn’t exist in reality. Such feelings weren’t supposed to exist.

            But it did.

*******

             “Why are you here?” He asked her with a bit of disgust in his tone. And by seeing through his silver eyes, Minerva knew that he wasn’t happy with her presence. She looked down, couldn’t bear his intense and hurtful gaze anymore. “Are you satisfied with this, little sister?” she heard him loud enough to make her silent even more.

            Satisfaction.

             Was she satisfied from all of these when her heart was wordlessly aching? She wanted to tell him how much she missed him, but instead, she held her pride as a queen. For the sake of justice, she was stupid enough to see him like this.

             Was she satisfied?

            Because if she was, why did she caught herself standing in this place in the middle of the night?

             She hated this fact that after everything, she still cared. She saw how he spat some blood inside his dungeon which was made only for such creature like him. Since Atlanteans hated those Greek gods for centuries, they invented things just in case they would capture something like them in the future. No wondered why her father chained Ayden here when he was a kid with no reason.

             After their guards beat him like some worthless animal, she saw the bruises all over his body. His white shirt has been torn and had blood stains on it. She noticed that he wore something around his neck, a kind of jewel, powerful enough to control his Atlantean powers. They were controlling his powers not only those abilities he had as a Greek son of Hades, but also those powers he received as an Atlantean prince as well.

             “I said why are you here? Do you want to witness if I’m still breathing?” he asked again. “Or do you want to see me die in this very instant?”

              She was out of words as she watched Ayden’s body bound with huge chains and filled with fresh wounds from beatings. Unlike before, Minerva wasn’t here to help him but she was here to hurt him.

            Minerva squeezed her eyes, tightened her hold, and maybe this might be the most stupid question that she would ask from him, so she paused for a long second before she uttered those hopeless words.

        “Do you still love me, big brother?”