Chapter 13 Lila has been by the door
Celine’s POV
“You’ve been standing outside this door,” I said, slowly closing the door behind me.
And that look on her face—it wasn’t hard to see through. It gave out some sort of disappointment far greater than the way I felt toward myself.
She barely stepped back, our bodies almost coming in contact.
“I told you not to let emotions or an insane instinct control you. I told you so.” She sighed, shaking her head as her eyes scanned me through.
She must have found filthiness in me and decided I was someone stupid enough to easily fall for anything without thinking it through.
“I—”
I stopped myself. The words wouldn’t come through.
“Well…” She held my hand.
She spoke no further, but gently walked me away from his area and toward the kitchen. I could tell she had thoughts in her mind about me, but perhaps she was suppressing them from escaping through her mouth.
Even with that, the look on her face screamed them out to me.
These thoughts of hers could be related to the things she hesitated to tell me about.
“Lila.” I paused in my steps.
I just needed her to ease the tension silence was creating. I didn’t even care if we were at the wrong place for her to speak. I didn’t think of all that.
“Shh… let’s go.” She made me continue walking along with her.
On normal occasions, I would have assumed she wanted to dismiss every thought of disappointment in her mind. Perhaps she understood that mistakes were only normal, even in this situation. But that was never so.
It was a kind of suspense I hated, but did I even care anyway?
The fact that she had been connected to my late parents, and had acted as a nanny to me since I got trapped in this palace, made me want to appear pleasing to her.
That could also be a lie.
If I thought it was about her, then that could have been a cover for my obvious guilt—my instincts telling me that an intimate affair with Tristan wasn’t right.
What if it was a series of past events, and my parents’ death haunting me?
“You will eat,” Lila broke the silence, but her eyes did not meet mine as they usually did.
“I don’t—”
“You will.”
I just nodded. If that could help me feel better and dissolve the awkward moment between us, so be it.
We got to the entrance of the kitchen, the same spot I stood when one of the maids, Mira, was with me. The chef with an apron was inside—and so was Mira.
Her gaze met mine, but that smile that had formed on her face over an hour ago didn’t show.
“Mira.” Lila gestured toward her.
She came to stand by our side. “Yes, ma’am.”
She’d stopped looking at me and wouldn’t spare me another glance.
“I need food for her, dinner,” Lila said.
Mira went in to meet the chef in the white apron, and soon came back with a tray of food—the same placement as the tray I’d been served earlier. She passed it to Lila without saying a word to me.
This was supposed to be normal, but not after she’d acted like a close friend who stuck closer than my clothes.
Or was it because they could sense my guilt after doing something stupid?
We left the kitchen with the tray in Lila’s hands.
“The maid,” I said, willing to start a topic about Mira’s unusual state.
Lila didn’t answer, forcing me to stay mute. She hadn’t asked why I was not restrained from leaving the room. Come to think of it, maybe I wasn’t restrained from leaving after all.
At my room door, Lila asked another maid she met around to change the table to a smaller one that would be on the same level as the bed.
She didn’t make me use the dining table—that could be for my protection. Werewolves everywhere.
She placed the tray on the table. “You should eat.”
Without waiting for me to reply, she sat on a chair close to the door.
“I wonder how you had sex with him on an empty stomach,” she said.
“I… I…”
What was I supposed to say? Nothing that would ever make sense to me or her.
The meats on the tray—the red meat, the white meat—stared at me as though they had a mind of their own, judging me with this bit of consciousness they had. I almost believed they could. And here came my late parents’ bodies haunting me again.
I took a bite of the red meat, but spat it out on the floor.
“Celine… You don’t eat meat?” Lila asked.
I didn’t feel I needed to answer.
The meats… they reminded me of their bloody bodies.
I should have tried to know why Tristan’s presence brought up the memory of their death in the strongest way possible. There should be a connection.
Maybe.
He’d told me he had a dream about me, but didn’t tell me what it was about. Lila said she had a lot to tell me, but wouldn’t spill a word. Everything was like a misery—a puzzle I couldn’t solve.
I felt my veins tighten.
My fingers started to shake as they did earlier in the day. I pushed the tray off the table.
“Celine… what—”
My fingers had started digging into my palms again.
“You’re harming yourself… Blood…” She gasped, running off her chair to meet me.