A Loveless Alliance

Chapter 78 [Illusion]

SIDDHARTH'S POV

I love you.

Those were the exact words she was going to say. Only three words yet they somehow held the very essence of the whole universe.

Too easy to say.

It only takes a second to say them but a lifetime falls short to prove them, to mean them, to live them.

Meant to spread delight yet have caused more wars than any dispute, more deaths than any disease, more ruin than any weapon.

Those three words, famed to be healing, could be more damaging than any tsunami.

I had been a living example, carrying the ache in my chest like a prideful badge and yet, despite the burning, the hurt...
I had never felt more complete; so much so that this pain had made a home for itself in me, making me feel empty on days it didn't knock.

I knew those exact words were about to roll off her tongue. I could recognise their footsteps from miles away, that was the kind of force those three words bore.

Seemingly the words looked only like a tip of the mountain but I saw the weight in her eyes. Heavy, yet somehow liberating.

Myra's eyes fluttered faster, the tremble in her lips made my heart throb in ways I couldn't describe and the water?

The liquid pooling in her eyes was less than two drops but boy I was drowning!

"Siddharth.." She started, her voice echoing in my ears like a lover's symphony.

I was about to witness the very moment I longed for miserably but I didn't feel as if flowers were about to be showered upon me from the sky. Not at all.

Instead the sky groaned, the air grumbled in something akin to anger, like a great creature flapping its wings harder than ever. Even her hair rebelled.

Was this how it was supposed to be?

My heart rose to the very brim of my throat and I felt it beating in every inch of my body.

Myra stepped forward. I fisted my hands as if that would help me, to somehow hold onto the slippery edges of my self control.

"Siddharth...I..lo-"

"Pearl!" I cried out, or maybe my fear did, and my voice? It freaking cracked.

Looking at her like she was about to tear my heart in two, I softly shook my head, somehow embarrassed for having a heart which jumps every time her eyes change colour.

Maybe I just wasn't ready for this life to shove me inside a temple, without the right to worship the Goddess in front of me yet.

Or worse, for the temple to be nothing but an illusion.

"What pearl?" Myra lunged forward, her eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed in frustration. The heaviness in her voice knocked the air out of my lungs.

She stood too close, so close that my skin burned from her heat.

I wasn't the only one sinking, the realisation vexed me more than it comforted me.

What was supposed to be the rosiest event of our lives; who would have thought it would be such a torment?

Or maybe this is exactly how it was supposed to feel? Like someone was drawing the last drop of blood from our body, pulling onto every vein, edging us to lose control.