Chapter 3 – Enigma

Jonathan Knightly had been everything she did not want. He was a good man. A man with principles and a sense of righteousness. And she could not stand it. He wasn’t a simpleton. But still, far too simple to understand her and her life. And she could not reveal her true identity to him. She dared not. Doing that would unleash a force so hateful that even she could not have escaped burning in the resulting fire.

Why had she allowed him to come so close? Didn’t she know she wasn’t allowed to? The hate that was alive inside her would take him down. She knew that. Yet, yet she had let him in. Perhaps, perhaps because she wanted to know what being intimate felt like. Not just physically intimate. She had of course experienced that, many times over. But the intimacy that came from being emotionally tied to someone. It wasn’t something she knew she could have. But she craved nevertheless. And with Jonathan, she gave in. 

The moment he had set eyes on her for the first time, she knew he had lost himself to her. How could he not? She was the most exquisite creature his eyes had ever had the pleasure of seeing. Slender yet not delicate, stunning yet not traditionally what one would call beautiful and yet dangerously mesmerising – Aurora was an enigma. An enigma Jonathan wanted to pursue. Her cold eyes said nothing, yet he sought meaning in them. Her body stiffened at his gaze but he could still see how vulnerable it could be. 

Desperately and unsuccessfully trying to maintain a strict stance, Aurora could feel herself melt. He wasn’t appealing to her usual nature. But those eyes had something in them. Something warm. Something Aurora had never seen. How could she? She had lived through the night until now. A night so long and dark that she craved for the crack of dawn. She craved for her personal dawn. 

As he walked up to her, all she could think of doing was run. She wanted to run, run far away as she always had. The way she had run away from her mother’s home. Far away from all that had killed her childhood. From those morbid memories of a past murkier than death itself. And now she wanted to run again. She was scared. Scared to have this man come close to her. Scared to have him look at her. Scared to feel what he was feeling for her.

But how far, how far could she run? She had surrendered. Surrendered to a life of safety. She had given in to the temptation of tasting the forbidden fruit. Forbidden just to her. The forbidden fruit called love, called life. And that was it. It was done. And there was no returning. She had committed the ultimate sin. She had loved. She had loved with all her heart, mind and body. Her soul was never a part of anything anyway. It had ceased to matter a long time ago. And nothing could revive that.

Not even Jonathan.

Her world was something she wanted to keep Jonathan away from. She could not drag him down with her. she should not. She remembered how she had punished herself for letting Jonathan love her. She had punished herself for being what she was…irresistible to him! He didn’t know it wasn’t her charm but something lot deeper that attracted him to her. Only she knew and she despised that.

She despised him for making her feel so weak and vulnerable. She needed control. She had to have control. Those cuts she intricately carved on her wrists could give her control. That was somehting her cold eyes could see but could not stop. That was something all the dark powers in her world could not stop. They couldn’t stop her from hurting herself. Her only trump card! Her only solace…her only morbid piece of happy knowledge. 

The memory of Jonathon’s face twisted in horror when he saw her in a pool of blood lying besides the bed was so vivid, she felt she could almost touch it. that fear was so alive, so close, so real. It was the fear for a loved one, mixed with panic and uncertainty, with inquiry and urgency. His disbelief at what his beloved Aurora had done, seemed almost comical to her. But how could she tell him that she needed to do this to stay sane? He would not understand and he never did. But she loved him. The only man she ever loved. 

He had given her a chance – a faraway but tangible shot at normal life, at normal human life. And she had liked what she had, not without bottomless remorse, yet she had liked it. He had given her the best gift…her Sophie. Her Sophie, whom she had strangled to extract the last breath from her little gasping lungs. Her sophie, whom she had loved. Whom she had loved even after her make-belief world had come crashing after Jonathan’s death. Her Sophie…who was nothing but a corpse now…to be buried deep in the womb of the earth. To be buried next to her father, Jonathan.

Aurora struggled to push away the memories as she picked up the dead child in her arms. She had to do this fast. They would be coming for her. Soon.

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