Trashes of the Counts' Families || Trash of the Count's Family || OC

58

Adara was climbing the Palace walls to the garden, cursing the Secret Organisation and all of the people in it. Why couldn't she just meet with her dad and sit in the garden with him?

I love that garden.

I love Dad.

Why can't I be with the person I love in a place I love?

She was also going to leave the Capital soon. After the Ceremony, she's going to climb into a carriage with Amiru and Cale and leave for the Ubarr Territory. She wanted to see Priest Charlie tonight, but that was no longer possible.

Adara scaled the wall to her and Cale's room. In her haste, she placed her foot wrong and almost fell, but she clung on. She pulled herself onto the window sill, her heart still beating fast from when she almost fell.

The window was still open, and she slipped inside it, dropping her invisibility spell as she did so.

Cale jumped out of his skin when he saw her appear. He did not recognise her for a second, as her skin was pale and she did not have her scars, but then he did, and he calmed down. But, seeing how out of breath she looked, he frowned.

"Adara?" he asked, setting his book on his nightstand and turning to sit on the edge of the bed.

Adara looked at the book on the nightstand.

The Retelling of Puzzle City.

Next to the book, an empty teacup with a simple golden fish design.

"Fuck!" she yelled, feeling like she wanted to destroy something.

Cale made a face at how loud she yelled. None of this was making sense. He thought she would be going to the Temple; she told him about Priest Charlie and how he took care of her in the 4 years that she disappeared from the public eye. He thought she would take longer.

And why did she seem so agitated? It was just an empty te—

"Who delivered the tea?" she asked, more agitation in her voice.

Cale got concerned as he watched how her hand clenched and unclenched, a bit of blood pouring from where her nails dug into her skin. He watched her take off the three hoops necklace with a stiffness to her. She put her sun pendant on instead, smearing blood on it.

"A maid," he responded, taking her hands into his own, preventing her from injuring herself further, the smeared blood a strong contrast to his pale skin. "I never saw her before."

Adara gritted her teeth, muttering a few curses so fast he couldn't hear them. "The tea was poisoned."

Cale froze. "What?"

Poisoned?

The tea?

Have I been poisoned?

He knew the safety hazards that came with travelling with Adara. He knew she was being followed by assassins more often than he took in stray beast people, but he also knew she was handy to have along and that the assassins were only targeting her. He knew there was no profit in killing him. He convinced himself to let her come along, assuring himself that he would never be the one to get hurt.

But those were his reasons before he knew her.

Now that he knows the person underneath that cold mask who threatened to kill him if he did not tell her who was in her best friend's skin, the one who is Adara, he was thinking less about if she was handy to have along, and more about her.