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He said he would come back to her in a few days.Daysof this torturous agony, left with nothing to do but torment herself even more with her own thoughts.
Regardless of what happened to her now, she was going to make him pay for this. She would get revenge on him even if it were the last thing she ever did.
The days passed, and Ianora slowly began to lose her grip on reality. She would have moments where she would forget where she was or what had happened to her, and she would find herself dreaming of screaming and pounding on the walls of the coffin, trying to escape, only to wake up and remember she couldn't move at all.
Other times, she would lay there in a daze, staring at the lid of the coffin with unseeing eyes as her mind replayed all the events that had led her to this point. Worst of all was the torment of knowing Castor had gotten to her through her body.
She hadn't been able to hide her desire from him, had been forced to scream how much she'd wanted him to touch her foryearsbefore she had learned the truth of how horrible he had become. And now that he had, his touch was seared into her skin, implanted in her flesh. He'd been gone for days, but she still felt the ghost of his hands on her breasts and between her legs.
Feeling him there, where no man had touched her since she ran from Castor's side, had reignited memories she had long worked to suppress.
When they had been together all those years ago, they were nigh inseparable. Even when Ianora had been falling for Castor, she could hardly believe the feeling of floating in the clouds with him, giddy and bright all the time. At first, she had gone to Castor under her father's instructions, anticipating that, one day, they might need to bridge the gap between their two kingdoms with an official union. Ianora had been prepared to make that sacrifice.
She could hardly believe the kind, intelligent, and powerful man who doted on her when she arrived. Of course, he hadn't been that way at first, but it hadn't taken long for him to open up to her and reveal his true self.
And from then on, over the years, falling for him had been the easiest thing she'd done in her life.
Only it had also been the most dangerous thing. For while she hadn't been public about her courtship with Castor, her father's attentions had turned elsewhere. Another man had taken a liking to Ianora. A man to who Kel Eroch owed a debt.
A debt where he could not refuse whatever the man asked for.
That man was Johnathan, and he was the first to demand Ianora's hand in marriage.
While locked in the darkness of that coffin, Ianora couldn't stop her tears from flowing while she recalled the horrible day, all those years ago, when Ianora had her heart ripped to pieces.
At that point, she had met Johnathan only once—he was a brutal, savage man who had instilled ice-cold fear in her veins. She'd known by one look that he was a man without a conscience. A man willing to do dark, terrible, and wicked things to get what he wanted. And he wanted Ianora.
He had threatened her as much during that first meeting, but to her, he had been a nobody. Someone who wasn't a threat to her, or her family, at all, despite what her instincts told her. She'd thought nothing about his threats at the time.
Yet she vividly recalled the day she'd received the news of the betrothal to Johnathan, not Castor. It was Castor who she'd fallen for, had loved without saying the words for years.
That day, she'd been at Castor's palace. She was told to depart at once and return to Rainada for an immediate wedding, and Ianora had been so overwhelmed that she'd hidden from Castor so she could silently mourn the life that could have been between her and Castor.
And Castor had found her anyway. Despite being unwilling to tell him the truth, unwilling to break his heart as hers had been, he had comforted her with his very soul. Had gifted her a music box to remember him by—an object that had unwittingly become her anchor in the decades afterward.
Only for her to repay him by breaking his heart days later. He poured himself out to her, professing his love and intent to marry her, only for her to refuse him and run away without an explanation. She had planned to tell Castor the truth back then and had planned to get in touch with him over the years. But those plans had quickly gone awry, just as the planned wedding to Johnathan had.
Would Castor have understood if she told him the circumstances of her departure?
Would he have fought for her, stayed by her side regardless?
Or would he have simply perished at Johnathan's hand, as Ianora had always feared?
Castor was a king, and a powerful one at that ... but unlike what Ianora had accused Castor of being, he was not a monster. At least, he hadn't been one back then.
Johnathan, however, ... Johnathan, Ianora was sure he had been a monster since the day he was born.
He was a ruthless man, with an insatiable thirst for power and control. In the end, that drive had been what severed the marriage agreement between him and Ianora. That pact had not been unbreakable by magic or mundane means.
No, the second he laid a hand on Ianora, bruising her and leaving her bloody, for daring to speak against him, even before their wedding day, Ianora's mother had called off the wedding at once. She wouldn't see Ianora married off to an abusive man, no matter the misfortune it brought upon the Eroch family and their kingdom.
Ianora had been thankful to her mother then, but though Ianora had escaped the wedding, she hadn't escaped Johnathan.
Even now, when she had not seen him in years, she could feel Johnathan's dark, twisted presence looming over her. He was coming after her, searching for her with relentless determination, driven by his obsession to capture and control her just as Castor was.
And this royal wedding was a surefire way for Johnathan to find her again.
But if she stayed here, inside this coffin ... perhaps she could avoid two horrible fates at the same time. Yet the longer she stayed here, trapped in the darkness, the more her past tormented her. Eternal sleep could not come fast enough.
