𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐓𝐘- a labyrinth sequel

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍

"𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐌 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘." Aurelia glanced up from the chess board at Liam, her second cousin, she supposed. As promised, Aurelia had come back. She wasn't sure why she did, but she thought that just because his sister had been abandoned by everyone, it didn't mean he had to be either. She couldn't imagine how it felt for him, knowing that he'd spent more than half of his life trapped here, with no basically no family or friends to look after him. Aurelia was surprised that after all this time, he'd managed to remain a nice person. He wasn't at all cold or distant with her. And she'd grown to enjoy his company now. Still, Aurelia felt guilty about the fact that she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell her mother about him yet. 

She'd stayed up into the early hours of the morning last night after she came home from the movies. She'd told her mother all about how Donnelly had kissed her, and how it all felt like a scene from a movie. Most daughters would have been embarrassed to talk about stuff like that with their mothers, but Celia Clairmont was always the kind of mom she could talk to about these things. She'd sat across from Aurelia with a pillow clutched to her chest, smiling widely as Lia went into detail about everything that happened. All her mother could do was gush about how much she'd loved Nicolas, and how she knew from the moment he'd first stepped foot in the house that there was something between them. 

"Do I?" She hummed, forcing herself not to smile. God, she wondered how one single kiss could have changed her mood entirely. All the wanted to do was see him again, to kiss him again. Her head must have been in the clouds for Liam to notice it. She was clearly distracted, because she was losing. Badly. When had he gotten so good since the last time she'd seen him? Aurelia could easily get out of it and re-claim the centre, but had she not been distracted, the game would have ended a long time ago. 

"You do," Liam repeated. "You've been distracted since you got here. Did something happen?"

"Nothing I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing about," she replied. Liam raised an eyebrow at her, "Aurelia, trust me. You could tell me that you watched paint dry, and it would be far more interesting than anything I ever see in here."

She suddenly felt sad, knowing that he'd never known life outside of these four walls, not since that fateful accident all those years ago. Aurelia glanced at him hesitantly, and he indicated for her to continue, so she sighed. "Well, there's this boy..." She trailed off, and Liam snorted. "We kind of went out last night," she explained. 

"I don't remember anything about being a teenager, so forgive me if I'm not an expert in this field." She then went into more detail, explaining how Donnelly had come to her birthday party, how he'd gifted her the most beautiful pair of earrings, and how he'd taken her to the movies and kissed her. 

"It was your birthday yesterday?" Liam questioned, and Aurelia nodded sheepishly. He averted his gaze for a moment and replied, "I had no idea. Happy belated."

"Oh, thank you"

"Xander's your cousin?" Liam asked, and Aurelia nodded slowly. She couldn't stop thinking about their fight yesterday. The two of them fought, but they usually made up within a few hours, and it was never like this. She'd expected to wake up this morning to find a text from him, but she'd only been disappointed when she noticed the last message she'd gotten from him was the obnoxiously long birthday text, followed by a series of GIF's he'd sent her. She was almost tempted to reach out, but then she remembered how angry she was with him for snapping at her like that, for assuming she was some kind of helpless idiot. "Why were you two fighting?"

What a loaded question. Aurelia shrugged, "I got myself into some trouble," she explained vaguely. "I was doing something I shouldn't have done, and when he found out, he got really mad at me. He said some things, but so did I."