Maybe this was all a fever dream.
I keep telling myself that, clinging onto that string of denial like a desperate child. What else could it be? A hallucination? My stomach's unconscious protest to the day-old ramen I ate a few days ago? My own imagination working overtime just to spite the stressed recesses of my mind?
I try not to think about it too much. my throat was parched, my room uncharacteristically stuffy despite the snow lining my windowsill and my legs ached. I missed my mother's cooking and the warm meals we'd share over cold nights like this. I missed my father sneaking in fried chicken on the weekends, where we'd share it behind the balcony, well out of sight.
I cannot deny the glaring evidence though. No matter how deep my denial runs.
The scar on my hand was present - a thin line that stretched across my forearm. It had faded a bit but its cause was still fresh on my mind. The glint of a sword tearing through pale skin. Blood staining my skirt. The kind eyes of a woman bandaging it back up with clean gauze.
Nausea churns in my gut.
My hand reaches for my phone. The screen lights up, and I scan the cover in question, at the picture of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl curled in the arms of a man, his lips twisted into a dangerous smile. There was no love in her eyes, not with the strained glower she wears as her bloodstained fingers curl around his neck. it was debauchery personified, a dark romance that was gaining traction amongst readers roughly four years ago before the author mysteriously dropped her story.
'The Wolf Hungers in the Woods.'
Arcene Lefevre, a female lead much beloved for her fiery yet good-hearted personality. The child of Marquis Lefevre, a known practitioner of magic, she found herself entangled in the twisted web of the Second Prince, Raphael Bellerose whose obsessive affections undo everything she knew and loved.
It could hardly be called a romance - not when Raphael, despite being likable for his charisma and politeness, harbored a near-unhealthy love for the female lead. The massacre of a few stray ladies for badmouthing her sickly past was the start, followed by her own servants being picked off one by one when their concerns served to be an obstacle to his pursuit.
They weren't my concern though.
Solène Montagne, the daughter of Baron Montagne and the former lover of Raphael. She was the touted villainess of the story, a cold, reserved character with a messy past of her own. There was little denial that her father had an affair with a foreign witch, that her true name was Aruna, that her appearance spelled her heritage as a bastard child.
Yet her father still loved her. Perhaps, he was the only one to do so, since her mother's passing. The story spoke of him being ensnared by the witch's spell, and how she seduced him to give her a child. Solène's name was tarnished amidst the nobility and she bore claws and fangs to combat it.
Her pursuit of Raphael was never really explored as much, but I always caught the emptiness her words held when she spoke of him. Solène never seemed to harbor any love for Raphael, even as she chased after his proposal, after the title of his wife. it gave rise to the enmity between her and Arcene and finally spiraled to her end being foreshadowed in the last chapter.
Raphael had spoken of a poison. Solène was to have tea with him.
That was the last update.
It was frustrating, but as I skim through the novel again, I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into disbelief.
It wasn't a dream. It never was.
I really did journey into 'The Wolf Hungers in the Woods'.