I leaned forward and the stallion ran faster. I tipped to the left, my body unstable on Cerberus without the saddle, but I didn’t let go. I urged him to run even faster and he did.
Away from the castle…
And deeper into the woods.
The whispers in my head fell quiet. The ghosts couldn’t follow me here and my demons were forced to surrender to Cerberus’s wilderness.
My existence became one with the black stallion. His hooves thundered against the dirt and my heart raced, beating to Cerberus’s wild tempo.
There was no fear.
No guilt.
No burden.
Only the cool wind in my hair, the warmness of Cerberus, and it felt like nothing I’ve ever felt. He took me away, from my sins and the pretty illusion that was my salvation.
The thunder rolled and the sky opened up, raging. The rain pelted down on us, violent and brutal. The rain soaked through my white dress and my teeth shattered, the cold seeping through my bones. But I didn’t care.
I flattened myself on the horse’s back, clenching his sides with my thighs.
Cerberus raced faster and it was then that I realized…
Feeling numb and empty wasn’t really being empty on the inside. Humans are so used to chasing happiness and we like it, the pleasing and soft weight of it that envelops us. Happiness cocoons us within its warmth. Because it’s so familiar, we never notice the weight of it until it’s gone. When happiness is replaced with something else, it gives us the illusion that the comforting weight is gone. So now… we’re weightless. Empty.
But I was never really empty... I was just full of all the wrong things.
And I had forced myself to be numb. To not feel how wrong I felt inside.
That was until now, on the back of Cerberus as he ran free and wild…
I finally tasted freedom.
And it was pure ecstasy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Killian
Her fingers wielded the strings like a lover’s caress, her bow striking each chord with a sweet madness. Her grey eyes never wavered from mine and it killed me.
Julianna played the cello with such melancholy, each note hitting a different tune until she created a song of mad, ugly love – so beautiful and sweet, yet brutal and pained.
Two lost lovers colliding together, with tainted memories and too much bitterness.
It was cruel and haunting. So fucking beautiful…
My fingers clenched around my whiskey glass at the memory.
Julianna was no longer a ghost from my past, but yet… she haunted me, day and night.
It had been a week since the night her truth came out and I still didn’t have the energy to look into the face of betrayal. To know that while she was the woman I mourned, she was also the reason behind my half-dead heart.
How could I be happy that she was alive and breathing and forget the last three years of suffering and pure torment as I grieved her supposed death?
It was a bitter pill to swallow and I didn’t know how to move on from that. From such cruel deception. Julianna got what she wanted, anyway.
She wanted me to leave, I did.
She wanted me to hate her – I did, with such brutal passion.
Julianna thought that by ruining her own life, her own love story, she was somehow repenting for her sins. It would somehow alleviate the guilt over her sister’s death.
I guessed it was survivor’s guilt.
Self-loathing.
Self-destruction.
Self-condemnation.
Her reasonings, though, was severely flawed.
It didn’t matter anymore. It was already too late. Julianna and I lost three years and we’d never get a chance to live those years again.
While time was somehow infinite, we were just mere humans. We couldn’t go back in time, to change the past, to relive a moment…
What had been lost in the past, it was gone. Our love story was just that. Lost in the past.
A loud thunder crashed through the sky again. It had been raining heavily for the last two hours, proof of an incoming storm. Rain pelted loudly on my foggy windows and lightning struck through the heavy, dark clouds. After checking the weather forecast two days ago, Samuel had told me that a storm was coming.
I figured it was finally here.
I should have checked on Cerberus this morning. While he was a stubborn and fearless horse – grumpier than most stallions – he sure didn’t like storms. He must have felt it coming. His senses were very acute.
But being in the presence of Cerberus reminded me too much of Ragna. A vivid image of Julianna crying and begging for me not to take away her mare flashed through my exhausted brain. Guilt gnawed at me, but I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the memory away.
Julianna wanted to hurt… she had been desperate to atone for her sins. Well, I made it real fucking easy for her.
Throwing the rest of the whiskey down my throat, I slammed the empty glass onto the coffee table. I had to stop thinking about my wife.