'I cannot trust him.'
Alyssane absentmindedly braided a strand of her hair, as the rare heat of the sun seeped through the windows. She could not be sure what to believe in.
'You say I am innocent, so why are you keeping me here, Kazmun?'
'Why do you refuse to tell the truth?'
Everything that had happened in the last week swirled in her mind like an unceasing storm, making her feel more distant from the world she knew.
And in the center of it all was the confusing knight who held her captive.
The first time he found her, she shivered under the shadow of his furious gaze, and yet, when she felt shattering, alone, and hopeless, he was there―in an unsettling confusing way, but he was there.
But he was also hiding something, several things perhaps.
Markle's desperate cries were still fresh in her mind, Alyssane knew those sounds could not have come out from old injuries. He sounded as if he was being tortured beyond his limits in those moments.
Moreover, the knights have been cruel to many in the Pearl Manor as well. Too many things about them seemed wrong.
The more Alyssane thought about it, the harder it became to trust Kazmun, and slowly her mind wandered to those glimpses of a haunting future she had seen.
He kept her close, sewing threads through her limbs, controlling her in whatever way he pleased. 'I misunderstood his obsession for something else.' But all he wanted was power.
'I have tried to win his favor…I tried to escape my cruel fate from his hands, but what if that only made me a more fitting pawn?
'As long as you are useful.'
But what was the use of a pawn worth nothing, who could do nothing?
Alyssane quietly exhaled, her brows creased together as she noticed the shade of her eyes. It had become a darker grey―another mystery with seemingly no answer.
'Why are you here, Kazmun?'
'Who are you?'
.
.
Luke did not wake up even after two days.
He remained on his bed, half covered in bandages while the other half was marred with bruises still blue. The physician said he lost too much blood and fractured too many bones.
Some of his wounds festered.
Some refused to heal.
And all this while, Alyssane felt unable to ignore him, unable to leave his side. She shuddered even to think what could have happened to her if Luke wasn't there. But he was, he protected her as if she was someone―and it left her with an unceasing grief in her heart.
'Please don't die.'
Someone entered the room, bringing Alyssane out of her thoughts. It was a knight who had come once before, he stopped in front of the bed and asked in a monotonous voice, "How is he doing?"
Alyssane could only shake her head in response. She was doing all the physician had said, she changed the bandages, cleaned every wound, and fed him medicines, but Luke did not wake up.
The knight, Marvin, let out a strained sigh and told her, "Go and have some rest."
"I am fine," Alyssane said.
Marvin dragged a chair close to Luke's bed and sat down, he watched Luke with a distant gaze and said nothing. The silence felt numbingly heavy.
Alyssane asked after a while, "What about Markle?"
There had been no cries lately, and although Alyssane doubted Marvin would tell her because the knights had always been hostile, she could not help but wonder.
Marvin's brows creased together, he was stressed just thinking about that man, "Dead."
It came as a surprise when Marvin did not ignore her further questions. Although he remained distant and cold, he answered her.
The knights had sought Markle as part of Lord Chancellor's investigation. But they found him in a deranged state, brutally injured, and barely awake.
He seemed fine at first and told the knights a few things, but he could not remember how he was injured. The answer became apparent when he abruptly started injuring himself all while whispering for forgiveness.
Markle was tied up to keep himself out of harm's way, but he could not stop. On the night of his escape, he managed to do so by dislocating his bones and attacking the two knights guarded outside his room.
They died before anyone could reach them.
No one foresaw such a thing.
A man who feels no fear, no pain―a man with a twisted mind, who can truly go against him?
The air suddenly felt suffocating, all that Alyssane heard, all that was left for her to imagine, gnawed inside the pit of her stomach.
"Why would he do that?" she asked her voice nearly a whisper.
"It seems to be the Curse," Marvin quietly responded.
Alyssane felt her throat go dry.
She too was experiencing peculiar things, memories missing, and something was surely going wrong with her body to cause those frequent nosebleeds.
'What if I too end up like Markle?' The Curse was slower this time, more insidious, 'What if I already have…?'
The Lord Chancellor's death was too strange, and Kazmun's words about her innocence now felt even stranger.
'How can you be so sure?'
Alyssane kept her gaze lowered on her hands, at the unknown faint scar, as the suffocating grip of dread tightened further around her heart.