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"I-I do not mean to stare! Just please, tell me where I am, or why I am here," Bora pleaded as she stood against the wall of the cell, feeling as though she were pressed against it with every lax step the strange man took toward her. His boots echoed in the small, stone cell.
"You seem awfully confused despite committing such an unbearable crime against me," the man said.
"C-Crime?" she sputtered, her eyes darting away as he got closer, afraid to upset him as she did the first time she stared at his peculiar face for too long. "I-I do not follow."
"You stole something of mine. With confidence, might I add," he scoffed, his deep voice tinted with amusement. "The roses from my garden are quite irreplaceable, you see."
"The roses?" Bora froze when she recalled the bush she had stumbled upon minutes before, one in which she tore a rose off. "I-I apologize! I am a florist, and I could not help myself. Spare me, I beg you!"
The man tilted his head at her, his dark eyes full of hatred and vexation. "One must learn that it is not nice to steal. You must be subject to punishment. Here in the castle, where you shall stay for eternity to repay your crimes."
Bora furrowed her eyebrows at the man, an unknown force of a temper spilling from her parched lips. "Am I to believe I must spend an eternity here for a simple rose? Have you no sense or heart?"
The words seem to strike a dull chord in the man's chest. "Would you like a far more severe punishment than the one of grace I have just offered you? Would you rather desire to suffer the wrath of pain under my hands?"
She grew silent at his harsh words.
"You have no knowledge of my heart, and if there were the slightest of a feeble mind in your small head, you will oblige by my words. An eternity spent in this castle for thieving a rose in my garden. That is the only sensible offer I have to give you. Accept, or die," he hissed. Bora shrunk under his dark glare, and her glossy eyes fell to the floor in silence. It was no use to combat his words, not when she believed it very possible that he could put a spry end to her life where she stood.
Taking her silence as an acceptance, the man stepped back, his face once again tranquil, as if he had correctly predicted the outcome and felt victorious. Then, within a second, he flashed his cloak up, making the girl wince her eyes closed as her hair blew from his actions. In the next moment, she opened her eyes, and he was gone.
The time ticked by slowly in the dark, cold cell. Bora's head had yet to wrap around the situation she found herself in. For picking a flower! It is not as though she poisoned his entire garden.
