Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 178: Because I Love You

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy Eight: Because I Love You

Ella was roused back to full consciousness by the feeling of air being forced into her lungs.

She tried to take a breath, but there was something stuck, and she ended up coughing, hacking, spitting it out; she heaved, struggling to breathe even as she forced the fluid out of her airway, but once it was clear, she still couldn't move.

Her eyes slowly opened to see a masked face peering down at her.

Familiar blue-green eyes stared into her own.

She knew those eyes.

That mask, too.

"Olagrell," she croaked, voice raw and chafed; she blinked herself awake, then, recalling falling into the ocean. "What... happened?"

He said nothing.

His hand was on her throat.

Trembling. Violently.

"Don't move," he whispered, thick, accented voice pleading. "Don't speak. Close your eyes. I am fighting the power that has been cast across me, and I am only barely holding on."

She swallowed, feeling the pressure of his hands, but she felt no fear.

She looked at him through dazed, sleepy eyes, full of nothing but trust and warmth.

"You saved me," she murmured, smiling despite herself. "You're not my enemy. You... you..."

She trailed off, not having the energy to speak, but to her surprise, someone else spoke.

"What are you doing, Olagrell?" a slick, oh-so familiar voice inquired. "Maim her and bring her to me. Just as I ordered."

Ella's head whipped to the side and she stared, shocked, as someone came out of the underbrush. Her eyes narrowed... then, slowly, they widened and ice flooded through her heart with an electric jolt.

That face... that greasy, shoulder-length brown hair, that lightly-stubbled chin and those petulant, pudgy lips...

It couldn't be.

"Oh, my Gods..." she whispered, eyes widening in shock. "What are you... how?!"

Terror blinded her as their eyes met since those lips parted into a wide, strange grin, but the wide brown eyes hovering above his thin, slightly upturned nose were anything but sane.

They shone with the light she feared.

"Oh?" the arrival inquired, grinning a smile that wasn't all there. "Are you surprised?"

"P-Prince Roland?!" she squeaked, shoulders tensing to her ears. "How dare you?! How dare you show your face here?!"

"Oh, do pipe down, I've merely come to make sure he caught you for real this time," the prince of Aerika sneered, folding his arms with a maniacal smirk. "I've been trying to claim you for so long, Ella... I would have succeeded with my plan to blackmail you into becoming my bride far sooner had that damnable faery boy and his brother not escaped through my fingers for so long."

Ella's ears rang as if a bomb had gone off. She stared at him through eyes that suddenly couldn't see clearly.

What he'd said... it didn't make any sense.

None at all.

None at fucking all.

"You... did this..." she said blankly, staring at him in horror, "all this... to young Adariel, to the faeries of my country, to my people, weakening us... to force me into marrying you?!"