Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 27

Eve~

I watched as the bird flew about. Something in me ached at the sight. Freedom... It was near yet so far. I looked down at the new phone that I had been given. The numbers that I should have had were already added. My mother’s and my father’s. Yet, despite having been married off for days now, there had not been a single message, not a single call from them.

I swallowed thickly, emotion clogging my throat. I knew by now that whatever love they had ever felt for me was dead, but still, I craved the voice of someone familiar. I craved it like oxygen.

I swallowed what little was left of my non-existent pride and clicked the call icon. My heart thundered in my chest as the beeping started. I counted each beep until the tenth.

"I am not available at the moment, leave a message after the beep."

I cut the call, biting my lip hard. But it did not stop me from quivering as silent tears fell down my face. I hated myself for this pathetic weakness. But I had lost my strength a long time ago, and I had just been fooling myself.

A knock pulled me out of my reverie, and I quickly wiped my tears away. If the person wanted to enter, they could. I had no choices here.

"Come in," I said.

The door swung open, and a woman stepped in. Dressed in a white silk shirt and a pair of black trousers, a pair of glasses perched on her nose, and when her eyes fell on me, she waved a bit.

"Hello, princess," her voice was soft yet audible, and I found myself turning fully to her.

"Yes, how may I help you?" I asked.

She smiled. "I just want to talk," she replied. "Could you help me with that?"

I scrunched my brows, confused as I pointed at myself. "You want to talk to me?"

She nodded, her hands clasped together in front of her lap. "If you don’t mind."

I blinked. There was something disarming about her—the way she spoke, moved, and gestured. It seemed natural but practiced all at once. Her hazel eyes were soft, and when I saw her fangs, I was not immediately on high alert.

"I would not mind," I answered after a thoughtful moment.

"Thank you." She came to the bed and sat, patting a space on the bed. "You are not too uncomfortable. Come sit with me so we can talk."

I hesitated before I walked over and sat on the other side of the bed from where she sat.

"My name is Amelia," she said. "But friends call me Lia."

I nodded again, not meeting her eyes.

There was silence for a little while, as though she was waiting for something.

"What did you want to talk about?" I asked finally when I could no longer take the awkwardness.

"Anything," she replied. "But I am most interested in you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Tell me about yourself," she asked.

The question was strange from someone that I had never met before, but I found that the company made it easier to ignore the turmoil within me that was tearing me apart.

"I..." I stopped. Then I opened my mouth and tried again. "I am..." My mind went blank all of a sudden. I swallowed, my head aching. Who was I? After five years in captivity, everything had been stripped away. My identity, every shred of who I once was, gone. For five years of my life, I had been kept in a cage, pierced and prodded. I became a simple animal.

I wasn’t the person I used to be. That person was long gone, buried under years of captivity, pain, and betrayal.

So I said nothing. I couldn’t. It was better that way. Better to stay quiet and pretend I had answers, even when the truth was, I didn’t know who I was anymore.

Lia said nothing for a few minutes. "Let’s start with your favorite color."

I looked at her. She still had a pleasant expression on her face. She tilted her head at me, to show that she was all ears.

No colors came up in my mind. It was all black. I turned away from her and caught sight of the sky beyond the window, and a color popped up suddenly. Freedom.

"Blue," I replied.

"Like the open sky," she murmured. "Mine is green. Like my husband’s vegetable garden."

She was not just taking from me, she was giving as well. The feeling it evoked was daunting but pleasant. The corner of my lip twitched. "Green is pretty," I found myself saying.

"It is," she hummed. "What do you do in your free time?"