Chapter 43 #2
“They change it every week,” I say.
“If it’s romance, it’s going to bore me,” she says.
I sigh. “You have got to be the most complaining elemny I have ever fucking met, Pandora.”
She barks a laugh. “Says the brooding, grunting Monster Dick beside me.”
I press my fingers and pinch the bridge of my nose. “And what is a ‘monster dick’? This is the fourth time you mentioned my cock as such.”
Pandora stifles a laugh. “Well, Sara and Kylie showed me a book they were reading, and it was a monster with a dick as big as yours! And he had two dicks.”
I side-eye her. “Why would he have two?”
“You know, one for each—”
I poke her on the forehead and say, “Don’t finish that fucking sentence if you want to live.”
She laughs even harder. “It’s so easy to make you uncomfortable.”
A grin spreads across my face. “Okay, then. Let’s play a game.”
Her smile broadens even more, amusing me.
Whenever I played a game with anyone at the castle, they held suspicious and questioning eyes.
Walkyer downright flees because he finds my games triggering.
Mother orders me to leave, and every game I play with any other elemny ends with tears in their eyes.
But when I look at Pandora, the questions I want to ask fade as I imagine the tears in her eyes.
“The game is like Connect Four, but without the game. You can go first.”
“Okay,” she says, and purses her lips. “How old are you? You said twenty-four years too late. Does that mean you’re twenty-four?”
“I’m twenty-six, and you’re twenty, nearing twenty-one.”
“You’re not much older than me. The way you hold yourself…I thought you were older, so it shocked me a little when you said that before.” She breathes a nervous laugh. “It makes me curious.”
“About what?”
“What happened to you for you to be like this…” Pandora frowns, deep in thought. She’s likely wondering about my past. But before she gets too deep in thought, she perks up and says, “My turn!”
“I didn’t…” I sigh. She trapped me with a question when I was curious. So, I wave my hand toward her to go on with another fucking question.
“Where are your scars from?” Pandora asks.
“Previous fights before I awakened,” I answer through thin lips. “My question is the same. Where are your scars from?”
Pandora presses her lips thin, causing my smile to broaden. She will break. It’s been one of the things I noticed about her since I got to know her. Pandora hides her scars, and from memory, I saw her move away from that peanut-butter fucker whenever he got too grabby across her hips.
“Um…” Her hands grip her arms, wrapping them around her, and Pandora stares vacantly at the ground. The movie plays in the background, and the speaker on either side of us blasts explosive sounds.
My hand reaches out to her, wanting to move the stray pieces of dark hair away from her face, but she talks before I can understand what I’m doing.
“My sister and I escaped a fire elemny the night of the purging. We went to the hotel connecting to Elden Keep, but I went back to save this woman. When I returned, Typha closed the door behind her, trapping the woman and me in the room.”
I lean forward and invest in what Pandora has to say.
“Three fire elemny entered—no, four entered, but I killed one. The other three pinned me to the table after the woman told them I was Fross Hart’s daughter. After killing her, they called King Ragan and…” A stray tear slips down her cheek. “He thought I was Typha, so he told them to rape me.”
The colour in Pandora’s brown eyes fades, turning dark and filled with nothing, as if she’s stripping all emotions in the next part of her story.
She sounds robotic and devoid of life. “I tried fighting them off, and when I did, it pissed them off. The bigger guy ripped my clothes, and when I attacked him, he put his hands on my waist and burned part of my body. Then, when he opened my legs and went to move inside me, I screamed.” Pandora frowns.
“I remember little of what happened. Only the knight—Astin—entering, killing one of them and breaking the doors for me so I could get my revenge.”
I understand her hate toward King Ragan more now. If that happened to me, Eraminia wouldn’t be safe. I would have done much more than have names on my list for revenge. The world would have burned until I was the only one left—safe and away from anything that could harm me.
“You’re strong, Pandora.”
She faces me with a weak smile. “I don’t feel strong. Especially not around you.”
I raise my hand and poke her forehead. “Not to give you an ego trip, but I believe you’re the only elemny in Eraminia who can kill me.”
Pandora touches her forehead and asks, “Why do you keep fucking poking me?”
I let out a breathy laugh. “I’m using this as a method to keep you away. It also catches you off guard, and I enjoy the look of utter bewilderment on your face. It turns me the fuck on when you break from being a crow tit.”
She raises her hands and says, “Why the fuck do you care about my fucking tits for, Reen? You call them flat-chested, uninviting, lacklustre and everything under the fucking sun, but crow tit is a new low.”
My eyes widen, and I laugh. “It has nothing to do with your tits, Pandora. It’s a saying, meaning you are trying to fit in without being your true self. And so when I do this,”—I tap her forehead—“you break from that stupid fucking chastity belt persona who never tasted good cock before.”
“You’re intolerable,” Pandora groans.
I lean into her and say, “Were you not going into graphic detail about how I have a fucking monster cock before?”
And there she is. A wicked grin grows on her face, and the vulnerability she holds goes as she strips herself of her insecurities. “Speaking of monster dick. Have you ever rubbed one out while thinking about me?”
This fucking elemny has no fucking filter.
I face away from her and say, “This game is over. I quit. You win. Now watch the fucking movie.”
Pandora sniggers. “I take that as a yes, then.”