"I love you. I love you, Ace, can't you see?" A voice calls out but Ace's eyes are glued, darkness swimming behind his eyelids. Nonetheless, he knows, he knows who the voice belonged to.
Doesn't matter how hard he tries to force his eyes open, they won't. His head spins, sweat breaking out of every pore on his skin, stomach swirling in some sickening way.
"Don't do this to me. You love me! Don't do this. Don't! Please. No!"
The voice, it pierces through his ears, haunts him.
Choke him,
Break him.
It's dark, and he can't see.
Ace bolts right up from his bed with a loud gasp, chest contrasting, throat closing up. His eyes are rounder as he gape at his bedroom wall, yellow under the candlelight.
A trembling hand hurries through his long midnight black hair, silk robe clinging to his sweat-slicked body. Mouth part and gasping for air.
This is not happening, this ain't happening after all these years and all the horrible things Ace has been through.
No.
Those pale blue orbs hold a significant potency that always succeeds in drawing Ace closer, grabbing his attention. He could simply drown in the ocean of her eyes, head in cloud, body fluid, just by looking into her eyes.
Now as he watches her, he feels as if he's back in time with the love of his life, with his mate, with the one who holds his world in her dainty palms. Ace can almost feel the warmth in the beautiful stretch of her pink lips just as he could feel the warmth of her skin touching his in the portrait.
Once, she's been the air he breathes, the one he can't live without, and then he has taken her breath.
He still feels her gracious presence beside him in every beat of his heart, still clinging to the ghost of his soul without letting go, eating him wholly as the time goes by.
Ace's eyes fall shut, nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath. Even after almost half a decade, he misses the scent of jasmine just the same.
All the hurtful words of her crashes on him like a heavy wave to the shore, all the ways she wished him death before death itself could swallow her up wholly, scratching the surface of his brain in bringing back the final pictures.
The feeling still dug its claw deep into his chest, slashing through it over and over again, never giving it enough time to close, heal. His eyes cannot stay sealed for long, they beg to collapse into the blue of hers again. Heartstrings stinging to get some relief.
"You shouldn't be looking at her now that you decided to marry a princess."
Ace's head swirls back, eyes tumbling on his mother pushing past the door to his bedchamber. A wary breath of air stumbles out of his weighing chest.
"I never knew my son was going to take another wife." She says as she ambles toward him, the surprise in her voice evident just as the worry in her eyes that he can sense even from across the room.
Ace doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't think he's capable of loving again. How is he supposed to say that to her? The sentiments fill his chest, tighten up his face, uncertainty clogging his throat.
Johanna, his mother, stops a step before him, hand soaring up to his shoulder the moment her movement halts. "What do you have in your mind, my son?"
Ace's jaw clamps shut, mind reeling, "I don't know, mother. Would you believe me if I said it's empty? Because I'm not sure, there's too much and not enough at the same time." Words rush out of his mouth, vulnerability making him desperate, desperate to make a way out of this, out of the shit hole he had thrown himself into.
Ace doesn't really want to ruin some poor omega's life. But he's the same one who decided to do just that. He ain't a saint, yet he ain't a monster. But Ace's sure as hell will be one by committing to this sin.
Johanna's hands smooth up to his neck, cupping his face in her pliant hands. "My boy, I know how hard this is for you. The constant pressure from the councils and Congress, but I also wish to see you living a happy life. For that, you need a mate. You deserve a family as much as the throne needs an heir. I desire to see you smile at least once before I go for my final rest, otherwise, my spirit will never rest in peace."
Ace's eyes squint shut, forehead creasing. "You've been living like dead for all these years. It's time for you to find a person who can water your dying heart and bring you back to life. My Ace, I'm sure you're going to find the love you deserve in the person you had chosen blindly. My heart can sense that she will be good for you."
"We don't know." He whispers, head slumping in his mother's hold.
"Yeah, we don't but we could hope."
"We can only hope." He breaths.
Johanna is the one to pull back first, Ace is so shaken up that he can't even feel his legs. It's like he's floating in the air. Here in the arms of his mother, he can be weak, powerless, no one is going to see him unarmored. In her arms, being held close, he feels like just a child seeking solace.
"It's going to be fine. I promise." Johanna murmurs into his hair, hands running up and down his back. She presses her lips firmly on the crease between his brows. Her hands slid down his shoulders, closing around the bulge of his biceps, "Now, don't think too much. Just know that everything happens for a reason. Maybe this could be what the moon goddess has wanted for you all this time."
Moon goddess? Does she even exist? He wants to ask, because if she's there very much real like the tales and believers advocate her to be, why did she make him take the life of the one he had loved to his bones?
His mouth stays shut, tongue laying stiff inside his dry mouth. Sometimes, your mouth refuses to deliver what your mind wants to be out in the air. And it's fine, he doesn't want to burden his mother with his misery. She's doing so much for him already.
"I came to tell you to prepare for our journey to the Sevannah."
From there it's a full-on rush, a smudge of time, a span of vast lands until the goldness of Lievca's sand blurs into the greenness of the deep forests which ends in the snow covered land of Sevannah in the sunrise that marks the second day of their journey.
The soles of horses dug into the white frosts blanketing the ground, much like the frosty feathers that encircle Ace's heart to protect it from the scorching heat of self-loathing.
His eyes take in the high walls of Sevannah, white like the snow, touching the blue of the sky.
As they get more into the Palace ground, Ace's heart gives a quirk inside his chest, something akin to anticipation unfurling inside his knotted stomach. Maybe it's the uneasiness to meet the one he's going to mate for the second time for the very first time, but this time it's certain the one he mates with doesn't have to surrender to the untimely unfair death.
The big silver gates to the palace pull open, its creek alerting the quiet air. Ace sits majestically on his horse, body moving in every wobbly step his horse takes through the snow.
Ace's gaze looms over the silhouettes of people standing in the courtyard of the Palace, intaking a long, deep chill air of Sevannah.
The blurry shapes of the royal family become clearer and clearer as they get closer, all clad in different shades of bright colors, their fine silk glistening in the lazy rays of the late afternoon sun. But, a certain black one, standing behind the bodies present, wearing something that is so unusual for people to wear in a mate meeting like this, makes Ace's eyebrows crumble.
Ace could not tear his eyes away from the lady in black which taunts him from the back of his head in the desire to know their motive to do something so absurd in an event like this.
Though the moment his eyes zoom in on the pale blue orbs, Ace's heart stills, eyes rounding, mouth parting a hair's width.
Ace feels as if he's looking right into the eyes of his late wife which has the power to sweep him off his feet and it makes his blood run cold inside his veins.