Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Bella sighed a lot when speaking of her past.

"They say that my birth was difficult. Something about me being a mage and mother not. It's a thing that happens rarely, but for a weak fetus to create a mana-core, it has to absorb its mother's ability to accept mana and World energies in her body. I don't really know how it works, but I crippled my mother with my birth, and I also robbed her of the ability to receive healing through magic. Her days were numbered."

"Sigh… She only lived till I was four. Before that point, I was barely cognizant. But you know what she told me on her deathbed? 'Never hurt your sisters and never try to get what they have… and be an obedient daughter for your father.' I didn't understand these words at first. They seemed like such normal things to say. Of course, at the time, I didn't know of my mother's past… but I did promise to uphold her wishes."

"For the next three years, I was bullied endlessly by my sisters. They'd isolate me, try to direct father's ire towards me, frame me for things I didn't do… Obviously, they didn't harm me physically, knowing that I'm a mage… but they did everything to make my life unbearable otherwise. I gritted my teeth and did not retaliate, honoring my mother's words. My father… he did not do anything to stop what was happening. He'd treat it as a joke… a rivalry of some sorts between his daughters."

Pauses started to appear in Bella's speech more often. But the next part of her story made her brighten up a tiny bit.

"The only place I enjoyed myself in my mansion was the mage guards' quarters. My father hires a group of mages to protect the estates, you see? They're rather expensive to keep for merchants and baron families, but since my father pays them with World Shards, they were happy to serve him and they were also becoming more loyal. One more thing I must mention is that they're awfully capable. They're the reason why I'm so good at fighting, you see?"

"They would teach me how to cast my spells more effectively, train me in martial arts, indulge my requests to spar with them… they were practically my second family back in the mansion. I was happy to be with them, but what I really wanted was to belong with my father and my sisters. Sadly, father was… well, father. And my sisters didn't look like they were going to accept me any time soon. In fact, the bullying got worse and worse as time passed."

Bella got up from her seat across the table and sat on Evin's bed, turning away from Evin.

"And… on my seventh birthday, I decided that I had enough. Sneaked in my sisters' rooms at night and abducted them. Threw them inside the mansion's dungeon and had them spend a night in it. Near morning… I came in to check on them. To gloat and then to demand them to stop bullying me. I was still a child, don't look at me like that. Sigh, but then… my eldest sister, Arelyn, she began to tell me the story of my mother and Ina. Of course, no one told me about those things before… Before that point, I always thought my mother to be the saintliest woman on Alvox. She always seemed like the perfect heroine of a tragedy, always sick, but always willing to smile in my presence."

"So the ugly truth of my mother… I didn't want to believe it. But some part of me knew it was the truth. It would explain a lot of things… the servants' attitude towards my mother when I was young, her last words to me, and the way my sisters looked at me, as if I was the one who murdered Ina. But the truth… it didn't make me see reason. It only made me angrier… I- I only saw red from that point. I snapped, and began pommeling my sister's face with my fists. Over and over and over and over… I think I only stopped when my middle sister, Olevyn got hold of one of the guards."

Bella held her head in shame and, after a brief silence, sighed again. Evin let her be, though his soul ached to get up and embrace her. A bit later, she continued.

"It was a miracle my sister survived. It's also a miracle a passing healer was able to fix her broken face. I swear to the Empress, she's even more beautiful with how mage restored her features," Bella joked, though her laugh was hollow. "But of course, just because she survived, doesn't mean that everything was okay. She was traumatized beyond fixing... She still flinches when she sees me, you know? And if she finds herself in a room alone with me… she would start wailing and sweating, before eventually trying to harm herself… No one knows why…"

"But you know what's the worst thing? Even seeing her eldest daughter like that, my father still treated the incident as some unfortunate accident… I… I…!" Bella hissed, her voice filling with anger. "I don't even want to remember what that disgusting man told me!"

Evin sat silently, his face stuck in a concerned frown.

"I will kill my father. People like him… who just lets things happen, without ever trying to prevent or change anything… they're not worth keeping alive…" Bella sighed and cleared her voice. "It's not that I hate noble society. Whatever I did to make that impression was because I was a still a child, trying my best to spite my father. To hurt him somehow... I soon learned that it had no effects. The man's spineless, so he just accepts everything I do as the acts of some rebellious teenager."

"I need to kill him. True, he did nothing to me, but that's beside the point. He does nothing. And that doesn't mean he's innocent," Bella's voice hardened.

Evin got up from his chair and gently sat behind her. He had no words for her, but he knew that what he needed to do now was to give her a hug. Damn the consequences.

It felt awkward… with his hands wrapping around Bella's waist slowly and hesitantly, but Evin was not going to pull his hands away. His core stilled when Bella's hand caught his, but it resumed beating when Bella interlocked their fingers and let it rest in a relatively comfortable position.

Evin's posture was still kind of uncomfortable, with his side glued to Bella's back, but it was overshadowed by the feeling of softness that began assaulting his mind.

'By the Empress, her fists hit me like boulders when we spar, so how can her body be this soft?'

Evin suddenly began lusting for more of Bella as he made both their bodies weightless and as they began floating over the bed, he managed to fully spoon her from behind. If Bella had any complaints about this act of his, she didn't show it, and even seemed wanting. It felt divine.

'Should've done this months ago…' he cursed in his head and then focused his attention back to Bella's confession, or more importantly, how to respond to it.

But honestly, Evin knew how he wanted to respond. He was just hesitant. In fact, he was hesitating on his decision during most of Bella's story.

'I'm eventually going to talk about this to someone…' Evin thought. 'Since she trusts me enough to share her story and her goals, shouldn't I be doing the same?'

He then put his head on Bella's shoulder and began speaking.

"Whatever you want to do, I'll support it. I don't care if its wrong or anything like that… and I'm not saying this because I feel like I don't deserve to judge others either… It's just how I feel about you. I trust you… and I learned that you trust me too. And as cliché as it sounds, I'll accept you as you are."

Bella pushed her weight onto Evin and nodded slightly.

"You know those rumors about me having something inside my head?" Evin asked, almost whispering.

Bella nodded again. "I heard about your tendency to talk to yourself when you were gathering attendants for your father's funeral."

"Well, they're true…" Evin spoke, but he felt terribly anxious all of a sudden. Despite that, he carried on. "That Voice was with me since I could think, and ever since I became a mage, I've been learning more and more things about it. Actually, most of what makes me great in other's eyes comes from the Voice. It helps me cast magic, it helps me understand my studies, it helps me dodge enemy attacks, and it even helps me speak sometimes… I know I'll only be half the person I am, if I didn't have the Voice in my head."

At first, Evin planned to just tell her about the Voice's existence, but for whatever reason, he ended up confessing much more than he intended. He knew this was making him look a lot more like a scam compared to how he usually looked in others' eyes. But there was no pulling back from this now. He could only trust Bella to accept his weakness.