Cursed Hearts | ATEEZ

EPILOGUE: FREEDOM

It was almost too easy; pretending that, with closed eyes and nothing but the occasional caress of the breeze dancing across the flushed skin on my cheeks, nothing had happened.

In the darkness behind my eyelids, I was able to imagine anything I wanted, to paint it onto the skin and dive into it for hours on end, pretending that the distant sounds of city life and reunions and celebrations were nothing more than those I had grown up surrounded by in Rome.

In the moment of loneliness and comfort the break from reality gave me, none of the horrors and none of the deaths from the last six months could reach me.

June and the Declaration seemed almost impossibly far away.

July and the training sessions with the King of Autumn which had been thick with tension and irritation and competition seemed ridiculous considering my feelings for the ravenette now.

August and the trials of the North and Winter, of Moscow and Budapest, were long left behind with their horrendous cold and heinous burns.

September and the trials of the East and Spring, of Tokyo and Seoul, were slowly fading along with the memories of the grand landscapes and monuments I had climbed.

October and the trials of the South and Summer, of Santiago and Cairo, and the heat which had scorched my skin and the secrets which had finally been revealed to me, had been buried along with the memories of what had happened underneath the pyramids of Giza, sealed away and healed just like the wound in my stomach.

November and the trials of the West and Autumn, of Paris and Rome, the City of Light and the Eternal City, had made me realize my true feelings, both those that had been buried, and those that had lead me to the man I loved and for that, despite the people I had lost, I would forever be grateful.

The wounds of December had healed slowly, painfully, before stopping completely. And, as I let my eyes flutter back open, taking in the marvelous scenery from the top of the highest hill in Martell, letting them travel across the endless stretches of land, colourful roofs, and the river licking up its banks, I realized that, maybe, they would never completely disappear.

Because the Final Duel was still weighing down on my heart, tendrons of guilt and sorrow and loss still wrapped tightly around the exhausted organ although they had loosened enough to let me breathe again after what had happened, to let me live.

The memory of Taeyong's bloodied body, cold and broken, was still much too vivid, much too bright in my mind. The ghost of his last words, "I love you too," still echoed in my ears as I went to sleep at night. And the realization that I couldn't save him in the end haunted me. That, and the dream which I had seen through Selene's very own eyes, the death which I has experienced in her very own body.

The deaths of the two people whose graves I was now facing; one marked by a stone which was dark and smooth and beautiful as the night itself, the other with one of white marble, perfectly imperfect and the best I had been able to find, had changed the course of history for all of Haelan forever.

One of them, the Goddess', had, unwillingly, started it all. Her death, and her love, had started a tragedy which she had been trying to fight ever since from the beyond, staying with the Eight Kings of Haelan in dreams and darkness, in whisps of wind and soft breezes, and in whispers of stories which visited them in daylight where her reign from the night couldn't reach them in any other way. And in me.

The other one, Taeyong's, had, willingly and bravely, ended it all. His death, and his love, had ended centuries of suffering and sickness and freed a people, an entire country, which had endured the tyranny of a revenge-driven God for much too long. He had distanced himself from me, well-aware of my plan to sacrifice myself in his stead, and been the one to take the final blow instead. He was the one who had saved Haelan, in silence and loneliness and all by himself. The crown on my head was purely symbolic.