Olivia cried her heart out into the pillow as she laid on the hospital bed. "Olivia, you know getting rid of the dress isn't the end of the world for me." Loreley said as she rubbed her back, trying to console her. "No it's not okay! What are going to do now?! How are you going to get into-?!"
Olivia stopped talking and dropped her gaze. The look on Loreley's face caused another wave of remorse to wash over her. "Olivia, if I didn't have a back up plan what kind of future fashion designer would I be? I... honestly I do feel upset but it's not because we had to destroy the dress it's... we.... I couldn't let it exist because that monster would link it back to you right away. You were supposed to be here the whole night. If they find out you had the anklet removed and left, it could mean them revoking their decision to let you free."
Olivia raised her eyes and looked at Loreley's gently smile and tears roll down her face. "I can't let her hurt you too because of my mistakes. I can't let her win anymore, I need to protect you, Laila and the little ones who are going to call me auntie." Olivia wrapped her arms around her sister and hugged her tightly, letting her shoulder become drenched in Loreley's tears.
...
"How could this have happened?" A women shouted as she whipped a crystal shot glass towards the ground. "Master, I don't know, this was out of our scope -?!" A men started to say but was silenced when a paper weight went flying past his head and lodged itself into the wall. "Out of your scope?! Out of your scope Carl! Why do I keep you around! Please tell me!" She raged as she slammed the palms of her hands onto her desk and locks of her hair fell downwards, covering her face like a veil.
"Well..." He said as he took a step forward. "Well what?! You moron do you not know what a rhetorical question is?" She spat as she raised her head. Carl could see her murderous blue eyes peak through the gaps of her disheveled hair. He gulped and took two steps back. "I will tell you what you're good at Carl. You are good at hiding and running away, just like the cockroach you are! Everyone! Everyone from my hand picked team is dead except for you Carl, then we hire some half a**ed assassin team, just to have them botch the job! $50,000.00 gone because I listened to you! Then, oh! Oh, and then we finally finished training a small group to what? What?! F*ck up again! How can I trust you! How can I trust anyone again!"
Agni finally ranted out all her pent up anger and sat back down in her chair. "Master, I have booked you a flight, please consider leaving until this mess settles down." Agni brushed her hair back with her hands and composed herself. "No Carl, I won't be leaving. So what if the world knows my real name, we can actually use this to my advantage. Carl I want you to pull some strings with the media and try to get that idiotic brother of mine on my side. I need things ready for my PR department, those people are useless unless you spoon feed them an answer. I want a press conference arranged in 3 days, no make it two. Get a doctor who can be bought, I don't care how much it will cost to have them give some sort of amnesia recovery diagnosis and have them pull my medical records from the East."
"Master is this wise?" Carl asked as he started to wring his hands. "Are you questioning your master?" She said as her eyes turned icy and she started to slowly rise from her chair. "No master! I am just trying to follow your train of thought, so I can prepare counter measures accordingly." Carl said as he waved his hands defensively. Agni nodded her head and sat back down.
"I don't have a choice Carl, I need the world to pity me and not look further into my past. I can not have them unravel all my hard work." She said coolly. Carl let out a sigh of relief as Agni bent over and pulled open a drawer from her desk. She pulled out a bottle of malt whiskey and two crystal cups. She slowly poured a small amount of amber coloured liquid into each cup.
"Drink with me Carl." She said with a sly smile as she swirled the liquid in her own cup. Carl moved cautiously towards the drink and snatched up the cup. "They just made a little bump in my road, Eli's team is quite formidable but they will never be able to beat me." She said lazily and then downed her drink in one go. "Carl tell me, have you gotten confirmation that the sl*t's offspring is safely locked away in our play pen."
Carl choked on his drink. He suddenly became pale as he wiped away the splashes of whiskey that splattered on to his face. Agni started to drum her nails on her desk as she watched Carl. "Master is seems that Rider failed his mission..." Agni froze for a second then grabbed her empty cup and stared into it. Carl gulped. "It seems she was rescued and has been in her room the entire night. To make matters worse it seems that Loreley had stayed by her side the entire night."
This time Agni's aimed her cup perfect at Carl's face and she watched the crystal cup shatter as it impacted his face. "Useless."
.....
"Buddy, you need to focus." Marek said as he smacked Eli's shoulder. Eli looked up and gave him a sigh. Marek rubbed his face and tried to reason with his friend. "Look Eli, you know I love you like my own brother and God knows I would move mountains for you but this! This, I can't let this happen. I can't let you do something that you might regret because for one fleeting moment, for one single dance, you forgot about the one person who means the world to you."
Eli dropped his gaze to the black shoe in his hands. It was rather plain looking black shoe but when he saw the label he knew the appearance was nothing but to mask the extraordinary. It was a L*Duc* black, Y-strap shoe with a soft suede sole. The person who wore it had specifically wore it for comfort and dance. He needed to see her again, dance with her again, kiss her again and hope that the fire he felt in his heart was really only a fleeting moment.
He knew that Olivia was all he ever wanted. He was willing to kill and suffer for her but this mysterious butterfly princess was someone his heart could not easily forget. He carefully brought the shoe up to his lips and placed a gentle kiss on top of it. Marek ripped the shoe out of Eli's hand. "You can't do that! What if the reporters are still outstanding around watching!" Marek hissed as his brown eyes became wide with fear.
Eli tilted his head and looked at Marek lazily. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked around his surroundings. "Who would be watching? Everyone is pretty much gone." Marek groaned and sat down in one of the chairs. He looked at the time, 2:00 a.m. and he allowed his shoulders to sag. "Hinder-Rella's magic should have worn off after midnight."
Eli walked over to his friend and placed his free hand on his shoulder and took back the shoe. "Your acting like it's the end of the world." Marek looked up and grabbed the shoe out Eli's hand again. "You're too attached to a stupid shoe and I'm only thinking of your future." He said as he ran off with the shoe. Eli desperately chased after him but didn't catch him in time. He watched Marek whip the shoes into the dark forest as she slowed down his pace and stood behind him.
Eli became devastated but didn't move to go look for the shoe. He balled his fist and turned away. "You're right Marek... I'm sorry I acted like a fool." Marek moved behind Eli and placed an arm around his shoulders. "Let's get you home so you can rest up a bit. We made our move tonight and that witch will retaliate sooner rather than later." He said as he escorted Eli back to the hall. "Ya..." Was all Eli said as they walked back.
Eli took one last look back at the dark forest and secretly wished farewell to the butterfly princess he met. Calming his mind and setting his goal in sight.
....
Olivia watched the news and she couldn't help but smile to herself. Loreley squealed as she heard the commentaries from the news anchor. "The top questions for today flooding social media, our news forum and emails are, who is the designer of the remarkable dress of the butterfly princess and will this prince look for his princess and find love? This reporter thinks they will, especially with this candid picture of the two of them kissing. We sincerely wish the masked couple the best of luck."
Loreley looked at Olivia and gave her a wide grin. "I can't believe with even you disguised he figured out it was you." Olivia shook her head and gave her a bittersweet smile. "He had no idea it was me and I didn't know it was him until a whipped my shoe at him..." Loreley's jaw dropped. "So he got caught cheating on you... with you?!"
After a few moments of silence they both burst out into laughter. "Oh my... I can't even imagine how... hahaha.... the guilt... are you gonna... oh it hurts!" Loreley tried to say complete sentences in between her laughter and tears but found it rather hard. Olivia covered her eyes with one of her hands, as tears streamed down her face as she laughed. After the laughter died down Olivia kept her eyes covered but continued to cry.
"Hey, Olivia it's okay now. It's funny that he fell in love with you all over again, he didn't cheat on you or anything." Loreley said as she grabbed her free hand. Olivia shook her head. "He didn't know, how can his heart waiver even if I wore a disguise? What if it was someone else, what if next time it's not me but some other girl would he leave me... leave our children?" She said with a shaky voice.
Loreley moved up on the bed and wrapped her arms around her body. There was a knock on the door and a small crack was opened. Blair, Autumn and Laila peaked inside. When they saw Olivia slumped over crying they rushed in. "It's not what it looks like!" Blair shouted as she rubbed her back. "That's right it could have been the angle of the camera making it look like Eli kissed her!" Laila chimed in but her words caused Olivia's body to shake harder.
Autumn moved the others aside and made Olivia look her in the eyes. "So what if that scumbag cheated on you! You have some pretty outstanding women here that will not let you do this alone. These babies will have one strong momma and some pretty fabulous she-daddies, so dump that a**hole to the curb or beat the sh*t outta the sl*t! Choose and we will stick by you." Olivia gave her a bright smile and was about to say something when there was another knock on the door.
Blair moved faster then Autumn and lunged at Eli with her claws out. Marek stepped in between and caught her mid attack. "Why are here!" She hissed as Laila and Autumn moved in front of Olivia, blocking her from his sight. "Olivia I can't begin to apologize... I did something stupid and I want to beg your forgiveness. I want you to know that I... but last night I did... I..."
"Shut it scumbag!" Autumn yelled as she balled her fists and brought them up, readying herself for fight. "Now, now, enough is enough you guys. Go on now move to a corner, give them some space to let them talk it out!" Loreley said as she collected everyone and started to move them to a corner. "Shouldn't we be giving them some privacy?" Laila said as she was being pushed along. "What?! No way! I wanna see this play out!" Loreley said happily as she herded the girls and Marek towards the corner.
Eli took a step forward and tried his best to look Olivia in the eyes but moved his gave towards the muted TV. They were showing the couples dancing again. He instantly paled and Olivia moved her gaze towards the TV. "I didn't know you could dance so well..." She said quietly as she watched the TV screen. "We've danced together before, remember at your birthday party and the debutante." He said as he stepped a few more steps forward, trying to ignore the TV and keeping his gaze locked onto her instead.
"Just the waltz, nothing fancy or intimate. There have also been more opportunities for us to dance too but every time we get pulled away from each other... accidents, threats and River... are we even meant to be together anymore? Has your heart changed? Do you want to leave me and be done with all the stress, the anxiety and the constant warfare?" She said as she wrung the blanket over her legs.
Eli froze and dropped his gaze to the floor, he couldn't look at her anymore the guilt was horrifyingly overwhelming. He shut his eyes tight and thanked his friend for knocking some sense into him. For not letting him give into temptation and chase after something that very well might have not been really. "See you've thought about running away. You've probably thought about not wanting to be -?!" Olivia started but Eli brought up his gaze, he looked positively furious. Her words broke his guilt loop and brought forth something else entirely.
"Shut up! Don't you dare put idiotic words into my mouth! So I acted stupid, I have acted stupidly many times before, I probably will keep doing stupid things in the future!" Eli stomped forward closing the gap between them and grabbed Olivia's shoulders. The fire burning in his eyes made Olivia shiver involuntarily.
"You better be listening well Ms. Olivia Steel, there is only one person in this world that can make my heart ache, one person who could just give me one look and drive me crazy, only one G*d d*mn person who can make me more human! Believe it or not, everyone around me thought I would die alone, that I was some humanoid who could only feel something when I was absorbed by a book! I only have a handful of friends who know better and before I even knew it, I developed a crush and got lucky enough to have it turn into love! You are the only one for me! You will never be replaced, EVER!"
He pulled her close and placed a passionate kiss on her lips. Olivia tried to push away but Eli grabbed the back of her head and kept her in place. "What if you find someone better then me?" She said breathlessly when they finally parted. "Lock me up and kill the b*tch. I will do the same if you even glance at another guy with even a sliver of love. Your love is only meant for me, as mine is only meant for you." He said as he pulled her into an embrace.
Loreley started bouncing on the spot in delight, Laila and Blair started to choke up, Marek did a mini fist pump and Autumn just watched closely. "Please forgive me for everything." Eli pleaded as he tightened his embrace. "Only if you can forgive me." She said as she snuggled into his chest. "Always!" He said as he pulled her away and placed a hand onto her cheek. "You swear?" Olivia said as she batted her eyes. "I swear." Eli responded as his gaze turned incredibly loving.
"You know there is only one thing that could make things so much better." Olivia said as she placed her hand over top of Eli's and gave him a sweet smile. "Tell me I will do anything." Eli's words made Olivia's eyes sparkle with love and a bit of mischief. "I didn't mean to whip it at your face so can you give me back my shoe. I need to give it back to Loreley."