Enthralled By You

23| Ill Intentions

Is it just a game all along?

My heart sunk thinking everything I had shared with Eris are all lies and ill intentions.

For those passed five years, being confined in the manor is a life living just between a thin line of fear and solace. It's a gilded cage that took my freedom and peace yet it provides comfort and splendid things that I never expected.

Under that lunatic man's demand, I was forced against my will but I'm too helpless to fight. Fighting against him was like foolishly throwing myself against a giant wall. Accepting my fate as I lay senseless in the dungeon, indeed life was cruel and unfair. My mind was filled with morbid thoughts, expecting that lunatic man doing all his worst.

But it never came.

It's been five years and here I am.

Safe and unscathed.

I'm a little proud of what I have become and had acquired compared from what I am before.

I learned to respect myself.

I learned to live life that I had taken for granted. I learn to protect myself and finally decided to fight for it till my last breath. I stopped wishing about death and being killed—and I stopped afflicting myself.

I learned a lot of interesting stuffs that helped me to go through. I started to give my trust and shared some little piece of my emotions and thoughts. And I already had a grasp how beneficial and wonderful it was to have someone I can trust.

Eris helped me to go through and contributed a lot through all those years. Her existence has been remarkable she made my life in gilded cage worth to live. She's an unexpected variable that brought color to my leaden life—that's what I thought...

But I have my doubts now.

As I always be, I always had this nagging fear that all those 'peaceful' days that I had was ephemeral. Like it's a transient moment of peace that will certainly lost when that lunatic man comes back.

Sort of making me feel at ease first then would probably snuff me in the end giving no chance to run. He provided me all basic necessities I can't refuse. Accepting all his favors, it really made me feel liable to pay for it in the future. Such thought has always make my skin crawl.

But what should I do?

He's too powerful even the Lord of Zadral didn't able to defy against him.

Assuming that Eris might be a tool watching my every move—everything is just a lie. Everything is just a sick game that I foolishly played all along.

Leaning my head in the headrest, my series of thoughts became too exhausting. Somehow I always expected worst things to happen, I shouldn't be bothered anymore. This is always been how my life path should be.

Seeing Eris gently stirred in her sleep, there's a huge part of me begging to give her a benefit of the doubt. There's still a string of hope that reminds me that somehow everything wasn't all sham but genuine care and sincerity.

Closing my eyes as well, I will try to settle my trust issues once we reached the manor. With my sister has gone missing, I don't want to add another burden believing Eris has broke my trust. Adding up all of these concerns, meeting that lunatic man again is another pressing matter I don't know how to deal with.

It wasn't that long after I close my eyes, the carriage temporarily stopped. Pulling the curtain to check outside, a sudden thought came up upon seeing the giant wall and formidable wrought iron gate of the manor. It reminds me of all those years trying to locate it but to no avail.