A Mirror of Eden

Chapter Nine: When the Queen Strives for Her Reclamation

Sienna Kaitlyn Leone

One hundred and fifteen steps. Two minutes and forty three seconds.

That was how long it took for me to get from my room to Leonardo's room last night. Between each distinct step and prolonging lapse of time, I was questioning myself and what intentions I had in progressing deeper into the lions den that awaited me. However, unlike any other time my overthinking led me to flashing red stop signs, I progressed forward. I tuned out the overworking of my innermost thoughts and let my intuition lead the way because I trusted that part of myself more than anything. It had yet to steer me wrong, and I had to pray that this time would be no different.

I knew that I had turned him away earlier on the premise that too many factors at play in our lives were actively against us. Yet, after the debacle that was lunch, I had a bit of an epihphany as I walked the Venice streets alone and free to think clearly on my own accord. That epiphany was that no matter what, there would always be factors that sought to keep me from one Leonardo Sovrano, and no matter those factors were, if time had proven anything, we would find our way to each other: obstacles be damned.

I was tired of evading. I was tired of denying myself of the singular person that I wanted because of my dying need to be perfect and present for everybody else when nobody but him cared to ask me about the breadth of what it was my soul yearned for. Did I want to be a Capo? More than anything. I also needed the chance to be myself without the moniker hanging over my head in every aspect and relationship of my life. I deserved to have the one place where I could go and drop down every guard I had. I wanted to mirror my brother in that when he went home, there was somebody amazing waiting for him behind the door to love him and let him know that him without his blood-stained crown was more than enough. I wanted to have that one person who I could be egregiously selfish over and nobody would fault me for it: they'd understand because they would see how enraptured in it all I was and with rightful reason.

I wanted a great love of my own.

I needed Leonardo to be it: Had since the first time our lips, soft and at the time unsure, met with a smooth caress of forbidden ease. I'd started to commit to the idea that I could in fact have him more and more as the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes turned to the sweetest of hours.

The rush of the water over my body in the shower opened my mind under the fog of the steam that had built. The cleanse it provided my body of the sweat that had slated it was welcomed. Almost every crevice of me had an ache that I would allow to replicate excessively considering how it came about. As the water careened down over every curve and onto the slippery tile flooring, I found myself loosening up gravely with every sting of the hot droplets that ran profusely over me. There was a slight hum underneath my skin, my blood ensured as it danced, that came from the thought of the aches. That came from the mirage of images flashing the ways I'd been bent and kneaded to my lover's every desire at the peaking of my own.