My Beloved, My Doom

3

Four Years Later

The kiss was the last moment between them. After that, everything vanished into thin air. Just like she used to say, it would happen, it happened. The moment of forgetting each other came but also brought havoc in her house. That day they were caught by the king’s royal sword of honour when they were sharing the heated moment. She could tell by his look that he resisted killing her. He was taking her up as a whore who wanted to lure the golden hen for her benefit. 

That day he took him away from her, forever. 

It was midnight when a door-shattering knock slammed on the main door of her house, disrupting her father’s sleep. He groaned thickly and flipped to the other side of his bed opposite to hers while she was jerked straight in her cracky hard-to-call bed. Her heart lurched in her mouth as her whole body quivered in terror. Her body threatened to collapse when someone knocked again, this time with double fervour. 

What if someone else also caught them like that and came to tell her father? The thought jammed her whole existence. She swallowed the lump of her throat and tossed the blanket over her body and wept while shaking like a leaf.  

The third time, Aldrich aggressively leapt out of the bed and stomped toward the door. He opened it to give a deserving earful but a sudden force thrashing at his chest made him fall back on the floor. He yelped with shock plastered on his face, his back hit the ground along his head, he hissed while rubbing the back of his head. He lifted his gaze to meet a tall silhouette towering over him that stepped inside his house. 

“Who the fuck are you and what do you doing here at this hour?” He called out as he tried to stand up but a man behind the silhouette shoved him and he fell again. Seconds later, an army of men trespassed the house. They had masks on so it was hard to tell whether they were thieves or guards for traitor inspection. 

The man who seemed like their head sized up the house with his hand on the holster all the while. He coldly glanced at Aldrich and rolled his eyes off him. “Do you live alone?” He asked, his voice deep, solemn and thick.  

The hair on his nape was erected just by his voice. Aldrich got intimidated more when he stepped closer to him, never leaving the holster that had a gun. He gulped thickly and eccentrically shook his head as nothing made to his mind other than this lie. “No…no…I live alone, I have no one to take care of me…please don’t rob my house,” He begged with his hands joined.

“Commander Zenner, hunt every corner of this shithole, I need her in front of me even if she’s hiding in hell,” He shouted the last words only for her to listen, his eyes never leaving the fallen man. Aldrich’s eyebrow arched as he tried to sink down his words. 

“W..who are y..you searching for?” He queried quiveringly. 

“Your fucking sister. Hand her to me and I will leave you alive, hide her and I’ll skin you both,” The head demanded. Aldrich felt more confused. 

“My sister…she…she doesn’t live here. She is married,” He told her truthfully. 

The head scoffed, “You married off that slut in a mere age and she is still whoring around,” Her sister was nearly his age and he was referring to her as ‘mere age’. He wasn’t getting it. Aldrich opened his mouth to explain further but just then, the commander’s voice filled the silence. 

“Your honour, we found her, she was hiding in the closet,” He explained in an assertive voice while dragging the fragile girl. He stopped and hatefully stared at Aldrich, his fist painfully seizing her elbow whereas she struggled to get away. Tears were streaming down her eyes as she sobbed incessantly. 

Aldrich, whose elbows supported his entire weight, tried to stand up, but one of the men seized him and made him kneel. He snuck a glance at Renai and then at the head before his head was thrust on the ground. Renai whimpered watching her father struck against the ground. She tried to run to save him.  

The sword of honour trudged closer to Renai, making her movements jam and held her chin between his thumb and finger in a vice-like grip. She hissed and jerked her head in response but his grip was stronger. 

“So, you are the one who likes shortcuts,” He sneered with his thumb brushing on her lips. She burst into sobs again, shaking her head. 

“Tsk…how innocent such people look, but they are only a source of dishonour, aren't they?” He quirked his eyebrow. She kept on shaking her head. 

“It’s not…no…it’s not what it…” Her hiccups arrested her tongue. 

“No? But weren’t you kissing him like you needed a ride on his impatient dick,” His left her chin with a jerk and clutched her jaw, making her look up in his bloodshot eyes. Renai whined and tightly shut her eyes to avoid looking at the devil-like man. 

“If I hadn’t called him, you would have given him the chance to fuck you so you could get pregnant with a royal child and blackmail them,” He growled in her face before striking across her cheek. Her head fell to the other side. The string rang in her ear for a good ten seconds. Her free hand went to the corner of her lips that was torn. 

“It was a perfect scheme to taint the sacred royalty, but guess what, people like me behead traitors for even having a thought like this. I skin backstabbers alive. And you don't know what would have I done to you if I could have." To least say, he would have stabbed her in different positions and hung her body for every commoner to witness.

"P..Please, no...no..please," She hiccupped. A purple blotch disfigured her eyes as he hit her.

"You dare to think about dirtying the sanctity of the royal harem, you whore!” He hit her again. 

This time letting her fall on the ground as he freed her jaw and elbow. Her head banged against the floor, her vision blurred without knowing if the tears were the reason or if she was blacking out. “Yet you tried to implement your plan, what should I do with you?” 

“I..I.. di..did not do..any..thing,” She weakly defended herself but only received a kick on her stomach as a reward for her bravery. Blood seeped out of her mouth, she was too frail to wipe it off. 

He crouched next to her body and fisted her hair to lift her up. She whined brokenly, trying to untangle his fingers. “Please, it hurts,” she sobbed helplessly. He gave her a tugging jerk, making her eyes land at him. 

“Have you ever fucked him?” He seethed. She shook her head. 

“No..no… we were friends,” she muffled. 

“Since when?” He wanted to punch her again. How dare she even think of befriending a royal member? “Are you meeting each other from the day he met you on the cliff?” He threw a counter explanation. She couldn’t hold back her tears and nodded her head simply. He hissed menacingly. He wished if the King had permitted him to kill her, this might have been her last moment. Damn the mercy he showed upon her because of his reputation among people. 

"If you had fucked if it would have been your father's last day," He spat and cracked his neck in frustration.

“Does your husband know this?” He gritted another question. Her thinking process was too haywire to make sense out of the question. 

“I don’t know,” She muffled under her breath, her eyes giving up. And when he was about to hit her again. A voice diverted the attention. 

“She is not married,” Aldrich restricted his hand in the air. The head released the grip on her hair, Renai sighed audibly, snivelling in the next moment. 

The head stumbled near Aldrich and seized his jaw, tugging his face upward to match his eyes. “What did you say?” 

“She is my daughter and she is not married,” He told her in his pleading voice that irked him. His nose scrunched, the fucker reeked of cigarettes and alcohol. Like father, like daughter. 

“And she is not a whore,” He defended her in a cracking tone. The head scoffed. 

“If not today, then one day she will become. Such street girls are born to be whores,” His words lacerated her heart in pieces. Tears were unstoppable, everything Zebian said to her was falling into the deepest pit of a black river inside her, which hid her untold dark secrets. 

Her heart always knew there was no them. They could never be together. Then why did she resist? She should have slapped him. Hell, she should have run away. 

“You need to send her away tomorrow if you want her to live,” Aldrich let out a shaky breath and glanced at her dying daughter. 

“Where will I send her?” He said.

“In the hell for all I care.” He spat out of rage in his face. Renai was hearing the conversation but she was too light-headed to make sense out of it. All she knew was that she was going to die. 

“You said you have a sister, where does she live?” He enquired. 

“She lives far away from her, Calmia,” The state was situated in another corner of the world. The head hummed while cooking a plan.

“Hmm, It will take her three days if she leaves now,” He spoke to himself and turned to the guard. 

“Arrange a carriage, she will leave in an hour,” He issued the command that panicked Aldrich. 

“What…what? But why so soon? I have not arranged anything, I..I need time,” He rattled out.

Renai was still laying on the floor like a corpse. She gulped a lump of her parched throat. She licked her lower lip in thirst and only got to taste her own blood. A tear left her eyes. Before she could close her eyes, she felt her body being dragged. Her breathing faltered when ice-bucket water splashed on her frame. 

Making her breath hitch in a second. “Get your senses straight, you are leaving,” her eyes partially opened, it took a second to stabilise her vision which set on the tormentor of her night. 

“W..water,” she pleaded in her mouth. The head read her lips. 

“You will get it once you reach Calmia, now get the fuck up and for God’s sake change your bloody clothes,” He threw a pair of dresses on her face. She sighed heavily and tried to get up. 

“And you, pack her things,” He dictated to Aldrich. Just as she took four steps toward the bathroom, she tripped and fell on the floor. 

Blacking out in a second.