Seren sits next to me on the bed, enough space between us for me to notice, yet her tail stays close to mine. I take that as a comfort we both need. Something to keep us close during this impossible conversation. And I'm also grateful that she hasn't looked away from me while I try to find the words to confess. Or was it more of a confused statement than a confession? If I didn't know what I was feeling, and had yet to try to figure it out, how could I confess?
"If it isn't love that you feel for him, what is it? How can he have such a hold on you?" she asks. I just shrug. It's what I've been doing to answer most of her questions. I'm not trying to brush it off or avoid answering, it's just...I honestly don't have a clue.
"It can't just be the bond. That would explain his feelings for you, but it doesn't make sense on your part." Seren continues the endless circle of this topic. Half the time I'm not sure if she's really talking to me or just thinking aloud.
"If it was the bond, you and Estella would be going through the same thing Scorpius and I are."
Seren sighs, biting her thumb nail as she thinks. I know this is all for nothing. Right now she's in best friend mode. She's trying to distance herself from this emotionally, trying to protect her heart so she doesn't lash out at me again like she did before. I'm not sure what's worse. The more she pretends it's not happening, that she doesn't hate this situation as much as she does, the more I fear her heart will close off to me. Even looking at her now, her eyes flicking back and forth just like the thoughts in her head, she feels more distant than when we were worlds apart.
"Estella knows things would never end up like that between us."
I shrug for the millionth time. "Because they already have?" The hurt in my tone is clear, even as I try to say it without emotion. Seren's eyes harden for a split second before she rolls them, clearly over having to explain this.
"Don't do this." We're both frustrated and I'm not helping at all. I can't help how I feel. I can't stop the random pain in my chest that stings when I think of Seren's happiness with someone else, no matter how much safer she would be without me in her life.
"Can I ask you something?"
She turns to me, her grinding teeth stilling against her chewed nail. She's bitten it to the nub, something she hasn't done since we were young.
"Always."
"Where would we be if none of this happened?" I ask, watching her eyebrow muscles pull together from the question. I sigh. "What if I actually had killed Scorpius like I said I would? What if you never had the chance to get kidnapped that day? If I had come out from hiding like I did when I first saw you, when we went to that treehouse, and you heard that everything on my end went exactly how we promised, what would you have said to me?"
Her hand slowly falls to her lap, her eyes wide. With a trembling lip, she opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. I listen to her breath and watch her turn the questions around in her head. The real question, the one that I couldn't bring myself to ask, hangs over our heads. Seren doesn't need me to spell it out for her to understand what I need to know. If I kept my word, would she have kept hers? There didn't have to be the threat of love to make me wonder what if between Estella and Seren. My kidnapping had nothing to do with what was already happening before that. If anything, it just added to the stress of things.
Deep down, or maybe even somewhere on the surface, I don't know if I can trust Seren to tell me that things would've stayed the same. That despite what Demien put us through, she would still find it so easy to love me over everything and everyone else. Of course, this could be me just looking for a way to justify my torn feelings. And maybe that's what I want. Maybe I need the reassurance that the love that Seren and I always had for each other was inevitable. That no matter what choices we had made, the fights and people who tried to come between us, in every universe it would always be us.
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Broken Thread
Fantasy*Book Two* Lynx has been captured by Demien Crpyt, the ruler of Xoven and the one who needs her to answer all his burning questions. Her quest to save Seren, the love of her life, and Scorpius, the one who her soul is tied to, has failed. The only c...