Underneath the coldness of my skin

   A thunderous voice breaks through the walls of Celeste's bedroom, sticking her awake from the deep slumber that took over her what feels like a moment ago. Again, a voice of something crashing down. 

    Celeste threw the sheets away from her body in a flash, in next, she is in the hallway where the screams and grunts echo. Where she can feel and smell blood, freshly shed blood with the horrible scent of death, vampire death. 

   "Mom!" It takes Celeste minutes to realize what is happening before her naked eyes as her voice, horas, and scratchy screaming for her mom. The woman's almost lifeless head turns toward Celeste's voice. The crystally blue of her eyes, brimmed with endless tears that Celeste never remembers seeing flicks up at the same crystally blue of her. 

     "Cele…" The sharp thud of her mom's lifeless body hitting the ground shatters Celeste's whole world. With the same thud, violent scream, and harsh gasp,  Celeste was on the floor as her leg could no longer stand her. She put out her hands to reach for her mother. Everything is blurry, and her face is uncomfortably wet.

   Footsteps echo through Celeste's ears along with the laughter of demons.  A hand comes to yank her hair, pulling her up on her feet. Celest's eyes cut from her mom's body carelessly thrown on the cold floor up to the man holding her up by her hair. Delian? 

   "Delian?" Celeste's wide eyes find the gleaming red bleed on his eyes. 

    "Yes, sweetheart. It's me." His blurry face says with a sickeningly sweet smile etched onto his lips. Celeste blinks her tears away, the pain in the back of her head is dull. But the pain she feels inside her chest is like deadly knives are being pierced through her lifeless heart. 

     "Why- why'd you?" No this can't be real. This couldn't be. Delian, the right-hand man of Celeste's father and the son of his adviser? She must be seeing things because the Delian she knows, the Delian she has seen couldn't do something as vicious as this. 

   "You ain't doing this. No-" Her trembling fingers find his collar and yank it harshly as she could. "No please…" He leans forward, and Celeste can feel his cold nose dancing over the plush of her cheeks. 

   "I still keep you, though." Delian presses his lips on her cheek and trails a thousand down to her neck. Celeste's nails dip into the flesh of his chest as she pushes him away from her trembling body.

     He stumbles back a little and then his arms are around Celeste's waist all over again, pulling her more into him like he hadn't even stumbled back in the first place.  

    "How can yo-u?!" The slap Celeste delivers cuts through the air like a razor blade. It leaves a bright red mark on the pale skin of Delian's cheeks. 

    Was she that blind to not see this brutality in his warm brown orbs that weren't shimmering red? 

    Red eyes flash at her as the fags peek under his red lips which she spends her night pressing kisses on. The same one she let him trace every single inch of her body with, in the ungodly hour of the night. 

   "I love you, but not more than I love myself, my sweet Cele. I desired this kingdom as much as I desired you. I shouldn't have done this if it wasn't for your outdated father trying to find you a prince even after finding out about us." His touch which always leaves Celeste's body tingly now burns her core. Delian's every touch feels like peeling the skin off her body with pernicious claws.  

      Tears stream down her face as she looks into the eyes of the man she loved, the man she trusted, and the man she wanted more than anything in this goddamn world. And never had Celeste ever thought or imagined spitting on his stupidly gorgeous face.  "Traitor!"

     A rasp of chuckle pushes past his closed lips, fingers threading through her hair strands before they clasp them in a destructive grip that she feels the back of her head burn at the impact, eyes watering at its vigor. 

      "I'm the only one here who had and has the right to spit, sweetheart." He wipes away the wetness on his face with his palm, his hand on her hair tightens and the hiss she didn't want out of her lips, went out. Delian finds pleasure in her misery.

       Celeste yet again gathered the spit in her mouth and aimed it at his face. 

    Delian lifted his hand in the air and victoriously landed the back of it, roughly down to her face. Black invades her eyes and the breaking of her face feels too real to not be true. 

    "You're only allowed to do it once in a lifetime, Celeste Gevstin." The clench of his teeth does nothing to scare her when she has her parents' lifeless bodies a few feet away. It doesn't matter if she fears for her life or not, she'll be dead either way. How long she runs, how fast she cuts through the air, Delian will catch her, kill her. 

     And being killed by the hands of the man you loved more than you ever loved yourself is the guiltiest, and most horrid way to die.    

     But she's ready because there's nothing to not be ready for, there is nothing that can root her into this palace, anymore. Everything that she owned and foolishly thought she did is gone. 

    Celeste watches as her parents turn into ashes. Her dad, the most precious person she came across in her twenty years of life, and the best king The Great Atelah had ever seen, who had always been by her side now turned into ashes.

    The two people who had been with her, her whole damn life are now no more than mere ashes.

    She looks into Delian's scarlet eyes, as red as the blood he drinks from the bodies of humans.

     And she sees the demise.

The demise of her, through the demise of peace of the kingdom she has grown in, more than just grown in.