SPIDERWEB

"Ah… Mr. Cloud," she muttered to herself, her smile ceasing to a thin line.

She hesitantly clicked on the text, her mood plummeting deeper and deeper into the ground with each sentence.

"How"s it going?" Mr. Cloud texted.

"What?" Gradis replied, taken aback by the casual tone

"How"s your information gathering phase going?"

"According to plan. The parties are approachable and easy to befriend,"

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Will everything be ready in two weeks time?"

"Maybe even this week."

"It"s a shame the party is in two weeks though. You need to have everything ready by two weeks, he should be able to proudly declare you as someone he wants to marry during that party."

"I know and I have no doubt it would happen."

"Good to be confident. If you can somehow get yourself familiar with the chairman, that would be useful too."

"I know, working on that soon."

"There"s no need to be so cold, I can feel the coldness of your words from here."

"Maybe it"s just the coldness of the place you are in right now, make sure you stay warm."

"Can"t have a sick co-worker am I right?"

"Yes."

Gradis scoffed, looking away from the texts.

"Don"t get yourself too attached, after all, you are here to ruin not build. They are not your family."

Gradis read the text again, the glow in her eyes slowly diminishing.

"Yea… I know," she replied.

"Good! I look forward to more good news!"

"Ok, goodbye."

"Bye."

Gradis sat up in her bed, letting her covers wrap around her foot in the process and turned back to her phone, Mr. Cloud"s words reminding her of something she had tried to forget.

""They are not your family…"" Gradis muttered, the words stabbing her as she read them out loud. She ran her hands through her hair and hid her face behind her hand, a hysterical laugh rolling out her mouth, "HAHAHAHA!!"

How could she have forgotten? "Save Julian and Matheio?" she thought to herself as she continued to spit out laughter, "how foolish of me."

Somewhere in between the sweet words she had spoken with Julian and the smiles she had exchanged with Matheio, she had deluded herself into believing she was family. A parasite meant to seep into its new host to feed its repugnant gluttony had somehow misled itself into thinking that its victim was its paradise, as it slowly led it to death. It was pathetic. Believing you could save something that every second you spent with it led it further into the gates of h.e.l.l, was the worst lie one could make to themselves. A lie Gradis had fed to the growing hunger for love in her heart.

It was a shame though. The fancy words called love was something she should never be given the chance to say, because, in the face of revenge and her future, love was just a word.

"How stupid of me" Gradis smiled as a tear rolled down her cheeks.

Somehow after a few sugar-coated, "I love you"s she had forgotten how her face twisted in disgust at the tears of the one she claimed to love. No bright light could cleanse her twisted mindset, no armies of love wouldn"t soften the hate built up in her.

At the corner of Gradis" teary eyes was a notification from the person she wanted to hear from. She turned off her phone, ignoring the message and snuck back into her covers.

"This isn"t my home," she thought to herself, "and they aren"t mine to love."

She rested her heavy head on her pillow and closed her eyes. "It was time for me to wake up."

The walls looked the same as they did the day before and its captive laid as still as it was a week before, but a steady stream now faced disruption in its waves.

Regan stared at the ring in the same finger it was put on about a month ago.

A few weeks after Vixen had gifted it to her, the ring had sat on her finger uncomfortably like a new pair of shoes. Stiff and unfamiliar to the body that held it. Now a month later, the air of unfamiliarity had left but now Regan was plagued with how to deal with the ring and the motive behind it.

She raised it high above her head, it"s bright jewels as bright as it was when it was first on her finger. She stared at the band of the ring, or rather her finger itself. Although the ring was now a normal addition on her hand, the spot it sat on seemed unfamiliar. Like it was taking the spot for something that was meant to be there. Maybe it was because she was aware of where her ruby ring laid that the spot on her finger didn"t feel comfortable having another ring in that position.

Whatever it was, Regan hated it. The strange pulling her finger had to the ruby ring hidden away in a box across her room, the overwhelming rush of emotions when she took off the ring she got from Vixen and stared at the light mark on her finger from the spot on her finger being blocked by the ruby ring from sunlight for months. It was a sick reminder of how she still had feelings for the person who threw her away to this cage for the past 4 months.

She didn"t want to think about it. She didn"t want to remember his bright eyes, the smile he gave her once he laid sight of her, the way he held her, each touch giving her shivers. Worst of all, she didn"t want to remember the face he had given her as she laid in her own pool of blood and he turned around and left her to die. The time she had spent in these four walls, hoping for the day she wouldn"t wake up in a pool of sweat after a nightmare that reenacted the sins she committed, never came. The days where she woke up remembering faces she wanted to forget only increased, a crude nudge of how time never heals. It only knew how to cover wounds and leave behind a scar.