HIS PRINCESS | K.TH

Hearts Blossom

V

I wake to a glimmer of soft light and a sharp, wintry smell.

Wintry..?

My eyes are stiff. The smell gets sharper as I slowly come more to my senses— bittersweet, and it doesn't let me go back to sleep. It's almost annoying, how putrid it is.

Then I hear a low whisper.

"Wake up. It's just mint."

...Mint?

My eyes open. And I look up into Aeri, her gaze flat and dark as she stares back at me. The long locks of her sable hair brush against the line of my jaw.

My head is on her lap. And my voice sounds distant, sunk into deep water.

"How am...I alive?"

"Because of me." She snaps, voice hard on edge as she shows me a wintergreen, serrated leaf."You're damn lucky I knew what type of poison this was. Mint is the only thing that can draw it out."

She doesn't stop there.

"You're a fucking idiot." Aeri growls, her lips set in a scowl. "I had to run everywhere to find a place that sells this. And you got this from one of your fucking fights, didn't you? You never fu—"

I'd thought she had left me.

I burst into the brightest laugh.

I thought she had left me. The despair I'd felt then, when I'd seen her silhouette, is still so clear that I can almost taste it.

But she hadn't.

She'd brought me back from death.

Her lip twists.

"Did you just fucking laugh?"

She is so precious. I raise myself from her lap, completely ignoring the pain still blazing in my bandaged side as I sit up and pull her figure straight into my chest. My arms still know where to hold her, and she still fits so perfectly against me.

"No, Aeri."

"No." I laugh, burying my face into the crook of her neck. My dark locks fall over my eyes as I tilt my head towards the curve of her shoulder.

"No, I didn't."

"Fucking idiot." I hear her murmur against my chest. And I'm almost breathless from the ecstasy, as she stays still in my embrace. She doesn't hold me back, but I had never wished for anything more than for her just to stay.

I had never wished for anything more than that.

And as she curses at me again, I know.

I love her.

I love her, more than anything else I have ever loved in this world.

________________________________

AERI

I'm an idiot.

Why in the hell had I let him hold me like that?

The sheets crumple in my fisted fingers. I was back at my place, and it's still early morning. Right now V would be in a hospital bed, getting the remaining poison out of his body.

My fingers tighten harder.

I should've just left him there to die. Why had I done that? Why had I done the things that I'd did?