Even Then, I Still Love You

Oneshot

"It's cold, isn't it?"

The gruff voice alarmed me. My shoulders bolting, head slowly turning to the source as my caramel globes landed upon your dainty figure.

Seated upon a horse as dark as the abyss at night, its haughty crimson pupils looked down on me, head held up high. You held onto the exquisitely designed reigns, and despite your feminine frame, you emitted a cold and intimidating aura. Your tone forever bearing a sense of authority.

Your skin paler than the snow in the vicinity - caused by a rare constitution that obstructed your initial growth. A constitution that sent the most terrifying and piercing cold that rendered the human body to gradually weaken before death. Yet, you held on.

You held on and managed to live past a number of years no one could possibly manage. With that, despite the disadvantages of the constitution, it held great benefits as well. Granting you an appearance that rivaled even the gods above, and a monstrous talent to surpass geniuses and prodigies in the path of cultivation.

On your magnificent horse, your long, silky ink-like hair fluttered through the shivering winds of a land - once filled with lush greenery - now covered in frost and snow. You remained unperturbed as you dismounted, taking off your thick outer robes before gently wrapping them around me, now embraced in your scent.

The number of shocked faces behind me weren't small. Despite being unbefitting of your status, you still decided to fix the broken down carriage, and even when you left, despite my insistence, you did not take back your robes and galloped away far into the horizon.

At that time - at our first meeting, my heart was stirred. No, it wasn't love, and definitely not 'love at first sight' for it was impossible - at least to me it is - to fall in love with a stranger you just met. What I felt at that time, was a slight feeling of gratitude.

But through the days we met, this gratitude slowly turned into what rendered me a fool. Even now, I still remember those words you said to me with such sincerity in those grey irises. A phrase I longed to hear from your nostalgic voice, a phrase that never knocked on my door since the day you made me yours. How could I - a fool, know that it was all but a lie to take hold of a power capable of controlling this wretched empire? Know that in the end, who truly broke past your barriers of ice and made its way to your once empty heart was not I whom you disposed of once the deal was done?

If I had known from the start of my own demise, would I have still fallen and blindly agree to your sweet lies and broken promises?

A pointless question I asked, for I knew I would have done the same. I do not regret these feelings I held for you. Despite those very same warm hands dropping me down to an endless abyss of darkness, you made me experience love - one I have never felt through the years I have lived before we met, so bittersweet and beautiful.

What I would have done was to give you a smile I had long forgotten to make in a world of hardship and where women are considered tools for heirs. And say in my most sweetest voice, "Thank you, for letting me love."

Even then, I would calmly wait in the very same room, on the very same bed, waiting for you to taste me again even though your eyes forever gazed at another.

Even if you would never say, "I love you" again, just a mention of my name or a tickle of your voice is enough to make me gleeful.

Even if it contained a poison that disabled my being, I would still eat it or drink it as long as it was sent by you.

Even now, though I lay on the cold concrete floor, limbs numb and disabled from the increasing cold, crimson dying my robes with a lackluster blade sticking out from my abdomen. I still mustered up what's left of the strength in me to lay my eyes upon you one last time, the corners of my already cracked lips forming a perfect arc as you dumbly stared at me, an expression you hardly made.

I whispered in an inaudible voice, a phrase that brought me back to the day I entered the gates of a love destined for tragedy,

"It's cold, isn't it?"

Because, even then, I still love you.