A Gift from the Goddess

Chapter Thirty-Nine “Miss?” a voice called out to me. My vision had slowly faded after the shocking realisation of what was happening, and I looked up to see Lucy leaning over me. “Aria?” she called again, worried enough to drop the honorifics. I blinked several times, coming back to reality, but I could still feel my entire body shaking. ‘I was going to kill Aleric.’ The thought kept repeating itself in my head and I didn’t know what to do. In the past, my visions had shown me things caused by others that I needed to stop. But this time… this time it was me causing harm. How could things become so bad between us… that I ended up wanting t o kill him?

“Aria?” Lucy called again.

“Lucy… sorry,” was all I could say, letting her know I was fine.

“Miss, you scared me!”

She threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly. It was nice to know that even after all the hell and extra duties I gave her, she still seemed to care about me. “I’m sorry,” I said and wrapped an arm around her in return, still in shock. 

After a few moments of hugging, she finally pulled away.

“What happened to you? It was like you were passed out… but your eyes were open.”

“Oh...,” I said. I had forgotten how freaky it looked to onlookers. I knew that if I told her the truth, it would be too difficult and emotional for me to go into detail right then. But at the same time, I couldn‘t tell her it was nothing. Because obviously, it wasn’t nothing. It was the same predicament I’d found myself in with Cai last year. To give too little detail and I’d be sent to the hospital for a full check–up, yet to say too much would only b e more trouble.

“...It‘s a side effect of the mark,” I finally said. “It gives me nightmares sometimes when I become stressed.”

I told her the same line I’d once fed Cai and hoped it would satisfy her enough to leave me be.

But she only looked at me as if she had so many questions, like nothing I‘d said was making sense, and in all honesty, I couldn‘t disagree with that reaction. But I couldn‘t give her any more answers for now. Not yet anyway. “Come on, Miss,” she said finally, helping me to my feet. “Let’s get you into bed so you can lie

down.”

now to realise I had secrets I couldn’t tell her. After everything she’d helped

I was happy for just the small amount of peace it gave me. “Stay

can head home… maybe make you a cup of tea whilst I‘m there.” I tensed up immediately. I could have sworn he‘d left but, after thinking it through, I realised I never actually saw him leave. It was just the sound of his footsteps walking away I’d heard right before the vision. …So… he had gone to Lucy to ask her to

Why...? 

his presence. It was because of the vision that was slowly about t o make me pass out. “Okay...,” I finally managed to say, allowing her to go. The minute Lucy left though, I realised that I was now alone in my own thoughts... and it wasn’t a pleasant place. So much had happened tonight, so many mixed emotions. Aleric had shown me a side of him I‘d never seen before, someone who felt vulnerable. It was something I was struggling to come to terms with since, the image of him inside my head, was one

bad way, just…

when I did talk to him, I wondered what could possibly happen in the future t o make me finally snap and kill him.

his credit, Aleric was completely professional despite my awkwardness, and that was something I hadn‘t expected in the slightest. To be honest, I had completely anticipated that he would be angry or even annoyed at how I had behaved at dinner. But he didn’t show any signs of that at all. In fact, he always

Aleric I had only ever witnessed occasionally from afar with others, someone who had never shown their face to me in the past. Was this what it was like to not feel terrified of being around him? Had things really changed so much that I didn’t need to be scared of him losing his temper at any given minute? Though, whenever I thought about it all, the only thing I achieved was in giving myself a headache. I had more questions than I knew what to do with at this point, and knew that only time would be

dinner, I still didn‘t have any better idea o f what was going on. To

Alpha

I found myself standing before Alpha Tytus in the meeting hall,

greeted. “Thank you for coming to see

bowed

in with warriors for status reports. Negotiation input was definitely above my current job requirement. “It seems the Golden Blade pack believe our conditions for the alliance are unsuitable, and are even underestimating the threat we pose.” I could feel Tytus watching me carefully as he spoke, almost as if he was trying to see what was going on inside my brain. “Well... I told them, of course, that our pack was currently revered by the Goddess herself, so therefore the price of the alliance was more than fair.

I understood where this

‘we have a living Saintess amongst us‘,”