Candela

“Y–you…” Candela almost lost her own tongue upon hearing Lord Liam’s confession. “Y–you love me?” Finally, she threw the right question.

Lord Liam just smiled at her. He diverted his eyes from her to the windown beside him. Candela heard him sigh and somewhat… in some point, that makes her feel uneasiness. Not that she is uneasy because of his confession rather, she felt that heavy burden that Liam seems bearing in his chest.

“Do you think I’m just fooling around?” Liam asked her instead. She didn’t reply. She just remain silent as she continue to observe him.

“When Primo introduced you to me, I was smitten by the faerie beauty you possess. I encountered lots of woman having seductive beauty before but yours? Fuck! For the whole fact that you don’t wear any make up but still… your beauty can not be surpass by anyone. You have that kind of beauty that worth of praising. Worth of eyes. But of course, behind that beauty you have… you also has a badass personality. Can you imagine the effect you gave me when you first show that side of yours to me, Candela? You almost take my breath away without you knowing it. Then, right that moment… I thought you were a challenge given to me. But I was wrong. Big time! It was too late for me to realized that I was falling for you. I am falling for someone who is already owned by her mate.”

“I–I’m sorry…” That was the words that Candela can say.

“Sorry?” Liam chuckled before facing her almost teary eyes. “Hey! You don’t need to say sorry, Candela. You didn’t do anything bad. You aren’t in fault because I fell for you. Stop thinking that it was yours. It was mine,” he tried to comfort her by his words but still, it was useless.

Candela’s tear begun to roll down on her cheeks. That makes Liam go in panic. He immediately wiped her tears out of her cheeks but seems like her eyes doesn’t want to cooperate.

She didn’t want to cry to. But after hearing Lord Liam being miserably in love with her, she can’t stop her eyes from watering.

“I didn’t know that you are falling for me, L–liam…” her voice cracked.

“Fuck!” Liam cursed. “Shit! Stop crying Candela. Blade might kill me for making you cry. Please. Please. Stop crying,” he pleaded and she tried to refrain herself from crying again.

But still, her eyes wanted to cry her heart out.

What Lord Liam told her hits different inside her. She wasn’t like this before. Crying over simple matters. She… she really changed a lot. The Crimson Palace changed her a lot.

Candela was strong. She has the strong reign of power in stopping herself from crying. But just because she found out that someone love her a far, she breakdown in happiness.

Liam hits her soft spot. And right in front of the Lord is Candela, who once a strong and self-willed woman but now… is a soft and vulnerable crying lady.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

“Candela, have mercy on me. You, can’t love me back is already a pain in my heart. If Blade knew that I’ve made you cry, he will definitely skin me alive. He’ll going to be my death, Candela. Your husband will kill me.”

Candela’s hand automatically hit Liam’s chest. She looked at her as if it was a warning. “He isn’t my husband, idiot!”

“You two will come there. A husband and wife. So, why not making yourself comfortable on that way?”

“I don’t want him to be my husband now. He cheated on me. Why would I wanted him to be my husband when he already cheated on me even if we still didn’t go in a marriage?”

“Look, I told you. Talk to him first before jumping on a conclusion. You maybe mistaken all things,” Liam reasoned out.

“I didn’t mistook it. My eyes sees it correctly. I saw him, having an affair with that bitch!”

“Fine.” Liam finally surrendered. “We’re in the City by the way. Where do you want us to go first?”

Candela looked outside their car. And there, she saw the main entrance of the city. As their car passed by in the highway, the people’s numbers doubled and tripled. Crowds and a noisy life in the City welcomed them. But despite of hearing ear-splitting noise, Candela couldn’t help but to stretch a smile.

Liam seems noticed the excitement she felt as he asked her. “You once lived here, right?”

“Yeah,” she answered without looking at him. Her eyes were glued outside.

“How was you life here before?”

“Just what other people lives here. Chaotic yet simple.”

“Chaotic yet simple? Ironic.”

She faced him. “What I mean is… you see them? You see the pictures outside this car? In chaos. Noise and noise everywhere. When you look at South, it was noisy. When you look at North or even in East and West, everything surrounded by noisiness. Clamor there, clamor here. But despite of that, people here lives simple. Different from your livings inside those tall walls of the palace. There, you can even hear someone’s breath because of too much tranquility but here? Well, as you can see…”

“Is your family lives here?” Candela’s body went rigid. She can’t uttered back words suddenly.

“Did I mention wrong?” Liam asked again because of the sudden silence invaded in the car.

She shook her head. “There’s nothing. To answer your first question, my family wasn’t live here.”

“Then where? Do you came from the other land? West, No–”

“They were already dead,” Candela said flatly but still, there is a little bit hint of sadness and bitterness. But surprisingly, Candela couldn’t feel the hatred she used to felt whenever she remember that her parents were already dead.

“Sorry,” Liam apologizes.

She smiled, of course, a fake one. “You don’t have to. It wasn’t your fault why they weren’t here, alive.”

“Can I asked why they died?”

She stared at him. A kind of stare that wants to find something in his eyes but to no avail, she couldn’t find some. Maybe, Liam was really curious.

“I was still a kid. A innocent little girl to be exact when someone intruded in our peaceful house. My mother as well as my father got panic. I thought, everything will going to be alright as I waited for them to get me back from the cabinet where they put me. But upon wishing inside that everything will be okay, I saw them instead. Stabbing to death by someone. Then, when the intruder left, I came out from lurking. I hugged and cried on their lifess body. They were both soaking in their own blood.”

As if it was miracle that Candela didn’t cry while telling her parents’ death story. And to add on that, there is no pain, burden and hatred. She couldn’t find the pain and burden that once dwelled on her heart since she was a kid. Even the hatred she felt for Lord Magnus… she couldn’t find at least a bit amount of it.

“Was it hard for you to grew up without them on your side?”

She laughed, bitterly. “Who wants to live without a parents on their side given the fact that I am still a kid back then? Of course, it was hard. It was like a catastrophic storm for me. Losing my parents at the young age wasn’t easy. It teaches me different things. It makes my mind think in a matured way. Can you imagine that, a kid doing different jobs so that she could get rid of her aching stomach?”

It was hard. Difficulty there and difficulty everywhere. But with the help of Owen and his family, she is being save from that disastrous reality of life.