Stone Cold

Chapter 49

Continuation of chapter 22 as Faith was leaving Ares to visit Ruth.

It's Ares' POV (written in third person.)

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

Her long inky tresses made her appear like a black blob moving around his room. The interior of the room and the shirt she had been dressed in didn’t help much in distinguishing her from the background either. She appeared to be one with them, a long lost piece finally reuniting with its puzzle to complete the picture. She looked like she belonged there, but he knew deep down in his heart that reality was a far cry from what his eyes were deceiving him to perceive.

She loathed him, loather his very existence, abhorred the mere idea of becoming his soulmate.

“You have no idea how much I abhorred the idea of being in the presence of a killer let alone sharing a bed with him yet I had to do it to get myself rid of a pathetic excuse of a predator and now what? I’m stuck with two of you.” 

Unknowingly, his hold on the book he had been reading preciously tightened, crinkling the crisp pages in the process.

“I need to meet someone in the town.”

His sensitive hearing picked a muffled voice coming from behind the door of the bathroom, followed closely by harsh brushing sounds.

“Who?”

No matter how much anger he kept suppressed inside of himself, the moment he heard her sweet voice or peered into those big pools of innocence, he couldn’t help the warmth slipping into his tone.

He was waiting for her to say something but it seemed like she had missed his question as only the sound of water droplets hitting the rough surface of marble reached his ears, causing him to let out a small sigh. He dropped his head back on the sofa cushion as the events of the night he wanted to forget desperately all came running to him.

“I lied to you because fate had played a cruel joke on me. I, who had nothing to do with my ancestors, was forced to get punished for their crimes. Do you want to know the truth? The truth is you had no idea about this soulmate shit until I stumbled upon your castle one day, bleeding.”

He flinched as he recalled her cruel words from that time.

Their first meeting for both of them had occurred on different days, in different timelines.

For him, it was centuries ago, in a darkened alley where a woman from suspicious origins had called out to him in a language much foreign to his ears.

For her, it was some months ago, in the basement of the very castle he was resting in.

He had no idea whether the timeline had changed after she turned him into stone or she was straight out lying as she had told him two very different versions of their story. He didn’t want to believe the last words they had shared on the night of her departure, when she had told him that he was never turned into stone in the future, but her actions hadn’t proved to be much convincing.

Now that he was out of the frame, he was able to look at the picture much more clearly.

She had turned Henry without his consent at the exact time Cyrus arrived into the town making availability of blood scarce in the area. In result, Ares was forced to starve as he couldn’t leave his human wife alone with a nightwalker trapped in his basement. The revolt, too, had occurred the night he was returning from the capital. Her secretive behavior, the deal with Ruth, Gabriel disappearing altogether from the scene, all these little events were pointing at the same theory— It had all been a façade from the start.