Legerdemain

CHAPTER-13

The garden was very different than the one back at home. The flowers were all red and black. Even the water sparkled differently under the gleam of the moon. I sat on one of the perched rocks, with my hands supporting my chin. The air felt better at night. Tonight, I didn't want to think about my mother or that woman from the Ring of Iris, or my future. My life hadn't felt mine ever since the day I was born.

"Hey!"

I turned at his voice. The moonlight fell on his face.

"Hi! Any special reason you are out so late?"

"I couldn't sleep. What about you, Alexedreina?" A small laugh escaped from me as I shook my head.

"You should call me Adreina. Alexedreina is a mouthful." He nodded his head in response. A few minutes passed between us in silence.

"Have you found your twin flame?" I asked him, knowing well that if he'd turned twenty-one, it wouldn't have taken him long to have found his flame.

"Yes." He smiled and looked above at the stars.

"Tell me about her, Rnyx."

"She is beautiful. She is..." A small pause. "...well, when I look at her, it's like I can't help myself, but fall in love with her more and more. She is the shore to my waves. She is my true north. I have never met someone quite like her. So fierce, so kind, so pretty. If I am a lost traveler, she is my right path. I sometimes can't believe that someone like me found her." He kept on smiling at the sky above.

"Wow! That was so raw." He must truly love her. I had never even heard any man talk about their flames in such a way. Every once in a while when I would wander through the halls of my court at night, I heard the guards talk about their lovers or their wives. Most of them had nothing better to talk about than what they did at night. Always sexualizing their partners. 

But some whispers that I heard sent a shiver down my spine. Some made me lose my sleep. Nevertheless, I went time after time when the court slept.  

"Where is she?" I asked him. His twin flame was one of the lucky souls to have such a loving partner. 

"Home," he answered truthfully.

"Home?" I repeated his answer as my question. 

"Yes. She went to visit her father. But she will be back in a few days," his smile faltered. Maybe at the thought that his flame was far away from him.

The stream of water rushed ahead of us, hitting small pebbles on its way.

"I want to apologize for that day. I shouldn't have been so mean and cold." His face fell as I remembered our first meeting.

"It's okay. You have been my savior so many times after," I reminded him. Though he still had his guilty face switched on.

"You should rest. You have a long way to go tomorrow."

"You should too."

We both went to our rooms as the moon gleamed and the night went eerily silent.