{A Wattpad Featured Book}
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Her heart or her people. Only she can decide.
Hated, cursed, outcasted. It was Eleena Asterin's life ever since she was blamed to have betrayed her village. So when she is offered a task to earn back her honour and prid...
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The next morning, as I made my way down the grand staircase, I tried not to think too much about the clean-washed marble tiles on the floor below—no sign of the blood Phoebus had lost. I tried not to think too much at all about our encounter, actually.
When I found the front hall empty, I almost smiled—felt a ripple in that hollow emptiness that had been hounding me. Perhaps now, perhaps in this moment of quiet, I could at last look through the art on the walls, take time to observe it, learn it, admire it.
Heart racing at the thought, I was about to head toward a hall I had noted was clearly covered in painting after painting when low voices floated out from the dining room.
I paused. The voices were tense enough that I made my steps silent as I slid into the shadows behind the open door. A cowardly, wretched thing to do—but what they were saying had me shoving aside any guilt.
"I just want to know what you think you're doing." It was Kallistê—the familiar lazy viciousness coating each word.
"What are you doing?" Phoebus snapped. Through the space between the hinge and the door, I could glimpse the two of them standing almost face-to-face. Phoebus's talons shone in the morning light.
"Me?" Kallistê put her hand on her chest. "By Vonain, Phoe—it almost seems as though you have given up already. You heard what Oberon said. Those hell-sent beasts are already testing our borders. They are trying to move North."
I frowned. If creatures like the Baphomet and Water Eidolons were migrating North, that would mean whatever was attacking Phoebus and Asteria was from the South. Impossible. There was nothing save for the human villages down South. Unless, unless—
Phoebus turned away but whirled back a moment later, his teeth bared. "It was a mistake from the start. I can't stomach it, not after what my father did to their kind, to their lands. I won't follow in his footsteps—won't be that sort of person. So back off."
"Back off? Back off while you seal our fates and ruin everything?" Oberon cut in as he stepped out of the shadows. "I stayed with you out of hope, not to watch you stumble. The Baphomet was on our lands—the Baphomet, Phoebus! The barrier between courts have vanished, and even our woods are teeming with filth like the Water Eidolons. Are you just going to start living out there, slaughtering every bit of vermin that slinks in?"
"Watch your mouth," Phoebus said.
Oberon stepped toward him, exposing his teeth as well. A pulsing kind of air hit me in the stomach, and a metallic stench filled my nose. But I couldn't see magic—only feel it. I couldn't tell if that made it worse.
"Don't push me, both of you." Phoebus's tone became dangerously quiet, and the hair on the back of my neck stood as he emitted a growl that was pure animal. "You think I don't know what's happening on my own lands? What I've got to lose? What's lost already?"
