Paint It Red ~ A Descendants Story

12. Down Bad

Only two things circled my mind when I woke up in Ryder's room; what the hell happened last night, and that Carlos liked Jane.

The two topics were completely irrelevant to each other yet it was all I could think about. The ache in my brain whenever I thought about the ring and the ache in my heart when I thought about Jane.

I do realise that my feelings towards her were unrealistically fast, but when you're put into a situation like we were, if you even remotely like somebody seeing them after thinking they could be dead does make you fall in love.

The fact that I fell so fast had made me question if I even liked Jane, or just the idea of her. And I still didn't know. I didn't want to ask her out incase it was just attraction not love. (I was also terrifed of rejection, but that's not important)

The worst part is that Castlecoming was coming fast around the corner and I didn't want Jane to go with Carlos. But like Ryder said, I couldn't complain if I didn't do anything about it. But was I going to do anything about it? God, no.

Now for the ring, I had placed it into my drawer before going back to Ryder's dorm, but something about leaving it made me uneasy. It could just be the fact it keeps magically appearing near me, that's still creepy as fuck. I hadn't noticed how much the ring had affected me until it was taken away. My entire body ached with the loss, I couldn't tell if it was draining me while it was on or if it was destroying me now that it was off. Whichever it was, I felt like crap.

'Morning,' I groaned, pulling myself out of bed. Ryder was sat reading on his couch, a mug of tea next to him. It was strange to see someone up so early, Jane was either gone or still asleep whenever I woke up, it was kind of nice to be able to talk to someone though.

'You're up early. Thought you didn't get up until noon.' I rolled my eyes, chucking a pillow from the bed at him which narrowly missed, making a thud against the wall. 'Oi, I have neighbours, and they're dicks. They'll have a row with me if you woke them up, they already yell at me when we're walking the same way to our dorms. Apparently I'm stalking them.' He made a mimicking hand movement while he spoke making me laugh.

I slumped into the couch, I wasn't made for mornings especially ones where it felt like I had been hit by a bus the night before.

'You'll break my couch if you lay on it like that.' He frowned, jabbing me in the leg with his foot. 'Why are you acting like you spent the entire night downing tequila shots?'

I sighed loudly before standing up, and sitting back down again. My head throbbing worse with every minute movement. 'It's the fucking devil of a ring, it did something to me.'

'How can you be so sure?'

I sighed, it could have been anything but I had the gut feeling, and it tended to be right. 'I was fine before you took it off, but the more time I spend without it, the worse I feel.' Saying it out loud left a pit in my stomach, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what that could mean.

'Is this your way of saying you're putting the ring on again? Because you're insane if you are.' There was something in his tone that I hadn't heard before, almost anger?

'No, I'm not saying that. But if it does get worse, I'd rather wear it and have these episodes then whatever is worse than this. What if it's killing me?' I frowned, my eyes stuck to the absence of the piece of metal that I had grown accustomed to.

The emotion that I thought was anger faded and pity replaced it, I didn't know which one was worse. 'I just don't want you to go through that again, that was terrifying from my perspective, I can't even begin to imagine how bad it was for you.'