Daegelus | Volume Two: Vengeance

Chapter Six | Rumours

⊳⊱ ♕ ⊰⊲

| Zoe |

The heartbroken look on Elijah's face lingered in Zoe's mind. She could only try to imagine what it must have felt like for him to have Haru taken away like that...and so soon after they found him. No one deserved that, to lose the person they loved, the person they'd thought they'd never see again. And Haru's father was a monster. How could he punch Elijah like that? How could Haru's parents act so disgusted? How could they ignore their own son's feelings? She didn't like either of them.

Her heart ached in her chest. It ached for Elijah. And the more she thought about it, the more it hurt; the more she felt Elijah's pain, and the more she realized that she didn't have to try and imagine what he was going through. She could feel it. As if Elijah's pain, sorrow, and despair were her own, the feelings twisted around inside her, entwining with her own dismay, and it made it impossible for her to hold the tears back.

She lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling and she sunk deeper into her overwhelming emotions. It was autumn, and she'd usually be outside enjoying the beautiful shades of crimson, orange, and purple; she'd sit under the oak tree updating her blog, answering her followers' questions, but she just didn't have the motivation at the moment.

So much had happened over the last week, and she was still trying to process most of it. Maverick, Ysmay, and Elijah. Xaiden. Her missing sibling. Her missing twin brother. Of course, she understood why her parents had chosen to keep a lot of the facts from her; if she had known before now that her missing sibling was actually her twin, she wouldn't have been able to cope with all the brawling emotions. She'd never been very good at controlling her sadness.

With a frustrated sigh, Zoe wiped away her tears and sat up.

Peaches, one of her Papa's beloved hairless cats, meowed at her from where she was sitting on the floor.

Zoe smiled through her sadness and patted her bed. "You can come up, girl."

The cat jumped up and made herself comfortable in Zoe's lap.

She stared down into Peaches' bright red eyes, and when they shimmered in the sunlight pouring in through the massive arched windows, Zoe thought about her own eyes. When she was in Nefastus, the rim around her irises went gold, revealing an illusion to her; knowing that she'd inherited one of her Papa's visual abilities finally made her feel like the person she was supposed to be. She finally felt like a Reiner. Like her fathers' daughter. But she didn't know very much about what she was supposed to be capable of, and she wanted to talk to both of them about it; however, they were still mad at her, and she didn't want to make them madder by acting as if she was ignoring the fact that she'd disobeyed and lied to them. She'd wait until they gave her the impending scolding.

Somebody knocked on her bedroom door.

Her heart raced a little; was it time for her to sit there and try not to cry while her parents scolded her? "Yes?" she called.

But it wasn't her fathers who opened the door.

It was Edwin, the butler.

"Miss Reiner, Mr August Emberwing has arrived. I was told to inform you when that happened," he told her.

August had finally made it through her fathers' vetting process? "Oh...uh...can you send him up, please?"

"Of course," the butler said and then turned around—

"Can you...bring me some strawberry cheesecake ice cream, too?"

"Of course," he said once again. "Will Mr Emberwing be having some as well?"