Page 119 of A Requiem of Fire and Ice

I huff a breath. As I admired the food and surroundings, Pandora searched for an exit in case of emergency. She may have done this when she entered the castle to kill King Ragan. Every entry was mapped out in her brain and engraved.

“What do we do?” she says. “Should we explore?”

“Not yet,” I say. “Let’s give Alad and Astin time before we do our own thing. For now, we should blend in.”

Pandora grins, steps away from me, and grabs my hands. “Care for a dance, then?”

I eye the thirteen couples swaying to slow music and sigh. “Fuck it.”

There’s no use talking to anyone at the party. With a face like mine and a title floating about my fucking head, if one couple were in on it, they would be smart enough to keep their mouth shut. It’s like Alad said earlier. My only option in this situation is to have fun.

Pandora moves her arms over my shoulders, and I place mine on her hips when her body tightens. The hands on her hips move lower, resting on the curve of her arse instead. She is so desperate to keep me away from the scars that she’s willing for me to grope her instead.

“How many times did that peanut-butter fucker touch you without consent?” I ask her.

Her focus shifts away, and her hands tighten on my shoulder. “Uh…why does it matter?”

My eyes narrow. “I want to torture him. Rip off body parts for how many times he touched you when you never wanted it. Then, I will put him back together with the help of my knights, wait until he heals, and do it again and a-fucking-gain. He won’t die until I want him dead. Not a second earlier and not a second later. He will feel every moment of it.”

She sighs. “At first, he pushed me to touch and jerk him off. It didn’t matter to me for a while. Not until he wanted sex. No matter how often I told him I wasn’t feeling it, he ignored me and said I was only ‘roleplaying’ and ‘playing hard to get’. And so, I went into my head to escape whenever he touched me. But, uh…” She blinks to remove the watery eyes. “Three times.”

“I like the number thirty. So, thirty years of torture sounds good to me,” I say. “And I am also sorry, Pandora. No one should ever have to go through what you went through. Even if your mind went elsewhere to escape.”

“It’s okay.” Her brown eyes waver when she looks at me. “If you could escape this life, where would you go?”

She wants to change subjects. I will bite. What she told me must have been hard for her to say.

“I wouldn’t mind going home to Eden Island,” I say. “There’s family there I’ve never met before. I vaguely remember my grandparents, but not a lot. I was young when I moved here.”

“How come you never went to see them?”

“King’s orders. He promised to slaughter our entire bloodline if they ever contacted us or if we contacted them. We became distant after that, and I don’t recall my mother telling me they went to the wedding. She likely advised them not to come. It would have ended in a bloodbath.”

Pandora’s arms tighten around me, and she steps closer to me. When I look down, my nose grazes against hers. “What was Eden Island like?”

I smile. No one has ever asked about my life before the Kingdom of Flesh. Decades have passed since I vividly recalled the fish market, the furniture store, or the pretty dream catchers I could never touch but admired when Dad created them. And so, my mouth moves without warning, explaining a life before Flesh. The streets had a warmth and heart that set them apart from any other place for me. Everything pours out, and Pandora hangs on every word, her eyes glimmering when I mention staring at the colourful fish.

“Do you know why they called the island that?” Pandora asks, curious about every detail of a place I longed to return to but never could. King Ragan clarified that if I ever went back there, the island would turn ablaze with ash, wailing screams, crimson, and bones.

“My mother told me that a very long time ago, there was a fire elemny woman named Eden. At the academy where she was, she and her four friends had to create an island for an assignment. They didn’t know what to call it, so they left it nameless. Years later, she returned to the island after she realised the world was filled with corruption, and with hands meant to burn things, she created life.”

“And she named it after herself?”

I shake my head. “No. The elemny who came there loved and cherished her. And when she died, they buried her in the island's heart and called it Eden.”

Pandora groans, her body pressing against me. “I want to see it! It sounds so full of life. Do you think we can see it before one of us dies?”

My hands grip her arse, my mouth inching close to her when I say, “You make it so hard to kill you.”

Her breath hitches when her mouth grazes against mine. “Maybe that’s the plan all along, Prince Reen.”

I breathe a laugh. “What? You’re making constant plans until I finally give up.”

Pandora’s tongue swipes across my lips. “What if it were a hunt? You let me go; while I travel through all these places, you can hunt me down in them. Doesn’t that sound fun, Reen?”

My cock throbs at the prospect of hunting her all over Eraminia. It causes frustration. Taking a step away from her, I take her hand and lure her out of the hall.

“Where are we going?” she says breathlessly.