Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 173: Words from the Heart

Some of them even looked accusatory.

Xaphile's hand squeezed her own, and with a flash, time returned to normal and sound filled her ears, but with that sound came burning, hot determination and lust for love and life. The things she'd gained during this journey had changed her in ways they couldn't even imagine.

She slid her hand free of his palm and stepped forward, dragging her hood off.

She tossed her hair, then looked out at the people gazing up at her, but everything was silent even though she could hear properly now. Every single person who lived in this village had arrived, true to Angelo's promise: not a single soul was absent save for Amelia.

She wanted the first thing she said to be the most impacting, to display her new self.

So, she said the first thing that came to mind.

"Thank you for coming," she thundered, voice reverberating through the air; shock lit up on the faces of everyone present, especially the guards. She smiled sadly, but she'd expected nothing less since she'd never even said that in the past. "Shocking, isn't it? The sort of reaction merely hearing gratitude from me can cause. It makes me feel even more ashamed of myself."

A murmur swept through the crowd, but Ella raised her hand and everyone fell silent.

"I know that you are all quite familiar with my way of doing things," she said thickly, staring at her people with a prickling behind her eyes. "My brutality, my callousness, my cold hatred for demons, and my prowess. My pride. There's no other way to say it: I was a terrible person."

"That is what you called us out here for?!" one of the citizens jeered, then looked at his wife with a grimace on his face, "and here we were told it was something of importance!"

Ella's eyes landed on him, but even though his words irked her, she remained calm.

"It is important," she said boldly, blinking only once, "and the reason it's important is because I am the way I am today as a result of nearly everyone here. The extent of the emotional pain I went through in my younger years molded me into what I was... what I am, even now."

"The pain of your younger years?" someone much older cried. "How dare you!"

"No," Ella said coldly, finally letting her anger show; her eyes found the aggressor, pinning him down with merciless fury. "How dare you? How dare all of you? I know the truth. I discovered it on my way back here, and I know what it is that all of you did... the treachery of it all."

The man who'd spoken went bone white, as did many others; she took in everyone's faces, taking in how many were scared, and how many were confused.

Most of the civilian adults were bone white, but to her befuddlement, most of the guards were confused... although, there were a few faces that looked afraid. She'd figured it would have been the other way around, that the civilians would be the confused ones and the guards the fearful.

A woman that she recognized as Mindy Hrothgar anxiously stepped forward: thin cheekbones, thin red lips, brown eyes, and dark hair pinned into a neat bun on top of her head... she was a pretty woman, but very tart and no-nonsense. which is why Ella found her expression strange.

The woman wrung her hands, looking seriously upset and alarmed.

"What... treachery?" she earnestly called. "My Lady, what truth have you discovered?"

Asgore, her husband, immediately stepped forward and grabbed her arm.

"Mindy," he hissed, trying to pull her back. "Silence."