Page 56 of Plaything of the Dark Elf

They don’t bring me towards my bedroom, however. Instead, they’re bringing more towards the front entrance of the mansion. It’s the dead of night!

“Stop, what are you doing?!” I scream, thrashing my arms and legs. “Stop! Why are you bringing me here! Take me to my room!”

The soldiers don’t care. They don’t care if there are tears and snot streaming down my chin, begging them for mercy. They don’t care if my feet are bleeding from the way they’ve dragged me through the mansion.

Not at all. What they’re focusing on is tossing me out of the estate with nothing but the clothes on my back. No money, no food, nothing. They fling me down a small set of stairs.

I fall to my knees and roll down the dirt path that leads up to the mansion. Dirt plumes off the ground and covers my hands. I feel a scrape on my right knee. When I glance up, the soldiers are already making their way back to the mansion. They close the gates behind them and lock them, jiggling it to make sure it’s secure.

Then, they leave me. All alone.

I stare at myself. My dirty hands, covered with grime and scratches. Then, I look at my disheveled clothing, stretched out and wrinkled from the way those soldiers grabbed and tossed me outside.

Be strong, Dalia. You can get through this. You always have.

Something is different, this time around. I feel betrayal.

Yes, that’s the right emotion. Because in the past, I didn’t have a dark elf dangling the idea of love and romance in front of my face like a diamond within my grasp.

Etheron, he… He doesn’t really love me. He never has. This is a game to him and I’m just another one of his pawns. He commands everyone in this mansion. They all do his bidding, from the soldiers to the servant to… me.

I’m nobody to him. Why else would he choke me in front of his butler and soldiers to see? I’m sure they were happy with the scene. Another human dead at the hands of a dark elf! Those bastards marveled at it! They stood there and did nothing to help me!

My tears aren’t made of sadness anymore. The white hot embers within my soul are burning bright. It makes me want to scale the gates behind me, bust into that mansion, and slaughter every single dark elf that gets in my way with my bare hands.

And Etheron…

My upper lip curls. He doesn’t love me. He used me.

I’m certain about that, so it doesn’t make sense why I’m feeling a small glimmer of hope in my heart that this is all a big misunderstanding.

What the fuck am I thinking? Am I hearing myself correctly?

Oh, he didn’t mean to choke you and nearly kill you! That wasn’t him!

But it was! It was Etheron!

“What am I doing?” I yell out, hearing my voice echo across the clearing. Only the skies are my witness. “I’m wishing for something I can’t have!”

I’m stupid! I deserve this. This is the same dark elf that decapitated those servants when he got angry with them. This is the same dark elf who wanted to break my spirit. I want to believe that he’s different and that he changed, but I’m not seeing any evidence of that.

At this point, I’m clinging to a dream that will never come to be. So what else is there to do? I have to move forward. I have to continue surviving.

But…

Glancing over my shoulder, I gaze at the mansion. Those dreams are still floating in my mind, the ones where I’m living happily with Etheron. Where we’re co-existing as mates. He trusted me with the secret of his past. That has to mean something, right?

Stop it, Dalia.

Why do things have to turn out this way? Just as life seems to be looking up for me, something happens and rips my happiness away. I can’t stand much more of this. I should find that river again. I don’t have anything to live for. I have the courage to finish the job this time around, I feel it in my heart.

It’s all a big mistake! He loves you! He wants to be with you!

Those little thoughts keep pestering me, but I’m beyond them now. I don’t listen. Dusting myself off, I stand up. It hurts to walk, but it needs to be done. Slowly but surely, I walk away from the mansion.

I’m abandoning the dark elf who fooled me. The one who tricked me into believing that he truly loved me.

What a silly person I am. How many times does this have to happen until I get it through my head? Romance with a dark elf is next to impossible. All of those sweet nothings were just that. Nothing. Everything he promised me during those nights we spent together are in the distant past and they’re never coming back.

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