All That Fell Down

4

"If you keep following me for one more minute, I swear, I will eat you alive," Cassandra glared at Trevor, the guard keeping her company for the past week, keeping her inside palace grounds.

"No need for that, darling." A confident voice boomed from behind.

The princess turned around to her father. The man with answers. Answers she needed. Desperately. She wished this wasn't another sweet lie.

The three of them left the palace garden and walked to a highly secure room hundreds of meters below earth.

---

"So, what are you saying?" Cassandra wasn't sure she wanted her father's answers anymore.

"I'm sorry, my love. I know you want to enjoy life, especially after..." her father faltered for a second before pulling himself together for his daughter and for his kingdom. "The streets are unsafe. I don't want you taken away from us any sooner than you have to be."

Tears she didn't know she was harbouring, streamed down Cassandra's cheeks. No more streetlights. No more noise of a bustling night. No more wolf mask. No more tan skin. No more green eyes.

She wanted a sweet lie so badly now. All she got was a terrible truth.

She couldn't control the stream down her cheeks as she locked herself willingly in her room.

She had everything.

She had nothing.

Her heart ached but it wasn't her disease. It was love. For a stranger she barely knew. For a stranger she half-heartedly parted ways with. For a stranger who wanted to be strangers even though her green eyes said anything but.

She cried harder that night.

As the sun shone through the Ventura Palace's windows the next morning, Cassandra wiped at her swollen eyes.

She had neither energy nor will to get up. It felt like the snap of a final straw. She wanted to just close her eyes and never wake up to this world where she lived but didn't live at all.

Bright light.

Morning birds.

Wolf mask.

Cassandra rubbed her eyes again. There it was. A wolf mask, hanging on the back of her door.

Her breath hitched. She bounced off of her bed and raced to it. She picked it from the hanging pins. There was a note at the back. It had one line in it. One line that made Cassandra feel like she wanted to live again.

We don't have to be strangers anymore.

---

Nico eyed Zorya as she got ready in the morning.

"Where were you last night?" the curly haired brunette inquired her.

"Errands." Zorya knew he knew, somehow. He always knew her. But she tried to push her luck.

"Those errands involve crossing territories?" Nico questioned.

"Quieten down, Nico," Zorya shushed her best friend.

"I know we didn't have a choice being here, killing innocents in the name of war, but sharing intel with the enemies? You're risking more than you gain here, Zori," Nico opinionated.

"I wasn't sharing intel."

"Then what were you doing in Ventura?"

"I told you, Nico. Errands."

---

"Errands?!" Cassandra mimicked being hurt.

"It was Nico. Golden heart but horrible liar. I was doing him a service." Zorya sat up in the white chair and stretched her hands above her head. She shuffled through her straight black hair and tied up in a bun, all while Cassandra stared at her lovingly.

"I could spend my entire life just watching you," Cassandra said, "You capture me, entirely."

Zorya's heart melted.

She hooked her hands together with Cassandra's again.

"Well, now you can."