Calliope could feel her heart loudly beating against her ribcage as she turned back to see the curtains catching fire. The fire was intensifying with each passing moment and she should leave the room to save her life.
No, she couldn't leave!
She couldn't leave until she found what she was looking for!
She had to search for that masterpiece of hers!
Yes, she was calling it a masterpiece because she knew that piece was different from everything she had ever created. She couldn't lose it!
If she lost that piece, she may never be able to recreate it. Moreover, she needed to complete it to find what exactly it was. No one would understand what that piece of art meant to her. It was her healing from the scars her father and her ex-husband had put her through. She needed to heal it to save herself because knights wouldn't come for her. They were perhaps not real at all!
Searching through the racks and almirahs, she united heavens and earth to find that missing piece and as if God finally heard her prayers, she found the half-painted canvas hidden behind the blank one. Liana might have placed it here while cleaning the room.
Tucking it closer to her stomach as if she was hiding treasure, she ran towards the opened window once again but it had started catching fire at this time.
"Jessica, protect all of them!" Calliope shouted at the girl who was screaming at her to stop being crazy. An ordinary person would never understand how the mind of an artist worked. Especially an eccentric one like Calli.
With this said, she ran back only to be enclosed in a room that was getting burned from all four sides. She saw curtains burning and its flamed shred falling on the ground. The carpet soon attracted the flames. The canvas combusted too, so did her palettes.
This one particular palette was very special to her. Amadeo had gifted her on her twenty-fifth birthday. He had worked hard to collect money to buy her this gift. She couldn't let it burn. Amadeo's hands had gotten scars while working only to get money to buy her a gift. She couldn't lose his hard-earned gift for her just like this!
As if she was possessed by a ghost, Calliope walked ahead to protect the palette from getting burned.
One side of the palette had burned and she used her hand to extinguish the flame. Thankfully, it worked and she saved the palette even at the cost of her own hands.
However, when she stood up to leave the room, she found the door entangled in huge red flames. The windows were burning too. The carpet on the floor too had caught an inextinguishable fire.
Everywhere was burning and she was caught in the middle. In the rush of adrenaline, she didn't feel the heat against her skin.
It was over for her. She realized at this moment.
Her eyes watered as smoke penetrated inside her eyes. She felt her skin burning and her stomach-churning. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe at all. She touched her throat to breathe and then broke into a fit of cough, suffocated but to no avail.
The smoke inside the room had made it hard for her to breathe at this time.
As she was about to fall on the burning ground, someone kicked the door open and dived into the room engulfed in flames only to scoop her falling body in his safe and strong arms.
"Call!" She heard an intense and anxious voice calling her. The voice belonged to a lover begging his beloved not to let him go. As an artist, she had a sudden urge to open her eyes and draw him on her blank canvas. She would love to see what a selfless lover looked and felt like. And what could be better than drawing one?
She hadn't used her pencils in years and today she had a dire urge to sketch this man with a godly voice.
If it was what death felt like, she never felt so good before.
All she could say was, her death was sweeter than her life.
She didn't want to hold on anymore…
Callum hurried to get the unconscious woman after making sure that she was breathing. Although she was breathing shallowly it was enough to keep her awake for now. Her skin was burned and looking at the number of wounds on her legs and neck, he felt as if someone had rubbed salt on his wounds.
Why was it that he was feeling more pain than her at this moment?
If he could, he would endure all the pain on her behalf!
"Get her in the ambulance!" Callum shouted as the medical staff appeared to take the injured one to the hospital. Someone took her body from his arms and he had never felt so empty before.
He wanted to go with her to the hospital but he knew that he couldn't because the media would hunt Calli if she was seen with him and he didn't want to increase more problems in her life than she already was facing.
So, after the ambulance took her to the hospital, he made a call. If he couldn't be present with her at this time, someone else would!
Someone he could trust with eyes closed!
When the woman he liked was in the hospital, he would have to play the role of the future prime minister! For the first time in his life, he wished that he wasn't a man with responsibility. He wished to be a simple man who could be with the woman he adored at the time of difficulty.
Nash was right. He shouldn't have let a woman control him so much!
Hell, if it was in his hands!
This woman owned him!
...
Author Note: Ah, I feel so bad for Callum at this moment! So, tell me what kind of reader are you? Did you come here after reading The Villain or you came for Callum and Calliope only?