Threads of Emerald

Ropes of Fate: Chapter 34

His breaths came out in pants as he collapsed on top of me. Sweat beaded his forehead as he pulled out of me, wrapping his heated arms around my waist and kissed my neck.

His blue eyes shone, sapphires glowing like the coals on the fire in the hearth of his room. The room was cosy, the grey bedsheets comfortable as they covered my creamy skin.

"That was ...", Rupert breathed out as he fell on his side and pulled me closer.

"Great", the word came out on a quick breath as I brushed the hair from my face and sat up.

"Is this the part where you leave? What excuse today? Meeting Aphina, your father? Having to look after your mother?", he sounded pissed off. He always sounded pissed off these days when I left him. But, I'd told him so many times that I didn't want a relationship with him, I just wanted these moments of pleasure, moments away from the world.

"I'm not making an excuse. I have to go and meet father, I told him I'd meet him at the little bookshop near Friars Tavern".

I moved off the bed, my bare feet padding on the dark wood floors. Rupert tugged the covers off me, leaving me standing naked in the dim light of his room.

"Hey!", I laughed slightly as I strode over to the pile of clothes on the floor and quickly got dressed. The dark jumper and brown pants sticking slightly to my sweat-slicked skin.

I leaned over, staring at the chiselled tanned skin of his chest, his shoulders, the perfect amount of broadness and the strong curve of his cheekbones and jaw.

I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to leave him, the person I had fallen for since I met him the week before my nineteenth birthday. The 16th August was the day he waltzed into my life and slowly unravelled it.

I never wanted to trade adventure and opportunities for the safe option. But, sometimes the safety I felt with him made me wonder if it would be enough. I understood how father and mother could live at Bluebell Cottage. Love. Love sparked that boredom.

I saw it as they swayed slightly on the wooden pier at the lake, gazing into each other's eyes as if stories of action and fantasy, heroes and villains, lovers and enemies, where all drops of water in an ocean of adventure.

I didn't think it would ever be enough for me. That I could trade the luminescent lights of Visha for the glowing embers of Bluebell Cottage.

Perhaps I could trade it all for Rupert.

And it was that thought that had me rushing out of the door and breathing in lungfuls of the ash-spiced night.

I turned to look at the large, white house strangled by luscious vines of ivy. But it was on fire. Thick plumes of black curling into the fading blue sky of early evening.

I watched the blissful dream of a future burn. Only, it was now Bluebell Cottage on fire, screaming tearing through the taut silence.

But, it wasn't Rupert screaming as he stood in the crumbling ash, the debris swirling around his head like a halo, choking the air from my lungs.

"You did this, Seraphina".

"You broke us by murdering my father. You got your father killed. You got your mother killed. You got yourself locked up."

My right arm began to tingle, that familiar fire wrapping around it like the ivy that stuck to the white house.

I stared down at my right arm, seeing green flames lick up my skin,, watching as a thread of emerald-coloured fire snaked through the untrimmed grass and set the final piece of wood aflame.