Chapter 9.3

Talking to Fiamma had proved to be difficult right from the start: she avoided answering questions directly, sometimes she said things without apparent sense. Her mind wandered constantly and she seemed absent, even more than me.

Like two ghosts, we had begun wandering the streets of Riviera, talking and observing the surrounding reality, commenting on what we saw without filters. I wouldn't have been able to reconstruct our original relationship, because it had all been so natural and sudden, just like it had happened with Zeyana, but unlike her, Fiamma had been able to tell me what I still didn't know about magic.

I didn't know her story or what had brought her to Riviera, but I was sure she had a purpose, something she would never reveal easily to me, even if I began to talk about my plans and my past. I still remembered the day she had taken me outside the walls of the capital to tell me about the surrounding nature and to show me part of the world in which she lived.

It was hard to tell madness from wisdom with her.

Fiamma moved a lock of my hair and inserted a white flower, arranging it well, so that it could not fall. A few moments before she had revealed to me that Nature had chosen me since my birth, giving me powers for a purpose, which I could not have known at that moment.

"All the women in my family have manifested some kind of affinity for magic…I just have a stronger bond…I think."

Fiamma sighed, but she smiled immediately after: she walked to a branch of the nearby apple tree and touched it, causing it to bend, then she returned to her original position, when she finished picking the fruit she needed. I was amazed by the manifestation of her magic: it was simply so natural, almost as if she were a friend of the surrounding vegetation and not a witch who exploited it with spells or cooking concoctions of some kind.

"Are you like me?"

"There is no one like you, that's why I said you are special."

I bit my lip, hating the frustration she caused me with the enigmatic, haughty air she had.

"I see it in your eyes that you think of me as arrogant, but I also encountered obstacles along my way... that's why I'm here, at least it's how I interpret my destiny, maybe I let the world be too romantic and poetic sometimes. I delude myself."

"It's not. The world is a big nightmare that we all experience" I said following her on a path unknown to me. We were going deeper and deeper into the woods.

"There are different points of view, but I understand what you're trying to tell me... even if in this nightmare you can meet delightful people, don't you think so too? What's her name..." Fiamma touched her cheek, looking curiously at Alex: "Ah yes, your Zeyana right? The woman who brought you to the Riviera."

I was no longer surprised by her, I knew that somehow she was able to know everything about me, even the deepest things that not even I could understand. Oddly, Fiamma mentioned the empress without worrying about her titles, but she didn't seem hostile towards her: the brunette's eyes became softer when she broached topics of this kind with me.

"Do you like the empress?"

Fiamma laughed, but the look she gave me made me question what she meant.

"Zeyana Voklanden is a spectacular woman and she shines like a sun. No one can deny at least this much...but she still she hasn't revealed her real colours."

I sighed, frowning at attempt to decipher her sentences.

As we reached a small waterfall, I momentarily forget all my worries. I let out a sigh, feeling lighter as I was surrounded only by the lush vegetation of the area and not by the people and suffocating crowd that could form in the capital.

"Isn't it wonderful here?"

I couldn't deny it. The place full of life had been able to make the storm that lived inside me less noisy. After all, without nature I couldn't have gotten this far, it was part of me, inside me, and the idea of losing that bond, however fragile it was, destroyed me.

Fiamma had been able to confront me with the truths from which I ran away, with the feelings I hated, and I truly appreciated having met her, but I sometimes wondered if in her absence, I would have avoided hurting the people around me. She had presented me with the perfect place for the ritual, then prevented me from dying inside that cave.

Probably I would never understand

why she had decided to act and not watch silently my fall, the end of my long tragedy. The days dragged along; they were filled with blood and suffering; even the bluest sky turned gray if I looked at it for a long time and the air I breathed entered my lungs scratching me every time, reminding me that I shouldn't have stolen it from other people who deserved it more than me. I was a mess, a mess that had no reason to exist. Why didn't anyone understand me? What good did I bring into the lives of others?

I returned to the present, to the moment in which I had tried to cut my throat with the sword, but I was no longer in the princess's room; around me I saw an unknown room, in fact, it was my room.

I saw my bright red diary, which Keira had given me some time ago. The woman had stated that it would help me sooner or later, even though initially I hadn't given much weight to her words. I had used it to put my thoughts on paper. It prevented me becoming completely insane.

"Alex?" Keira herself walked into the room and explained that from that moment on, she and the other guards would have to keep an eye on me to avoid "accidents" again. I shrugged: I didn't care what they were doing, I could find other ways to kill myself if I wanted.

"I guess you would like to talk to Zeyana... wouldn't you?"

"Yeah..."

"Then why? Why do you keep trying to end your life? Doesn't she deserve at least a goodbye?"

"Apparently she was already ready to say goodbye that day" I said staring at her and feeling the apathy that went up my body and promised me to shut me in a safe place, where no one would disturb me.

"I can't believe you don't care, Alex!" Keira's desperate look and her shining eyes seemed capable of making me give up, but it was a matter of a second, in fact immediately afterwards I returned to the black world where only one voice dominated, the one that mumbled the word death without rest.

"Keira go away... whatever you want to do... Stop it.."

Those days, spent unknowingly waiting for the empress to awaken, as if it were the solution to all my sufferings, were disastrous and only after regaining control of my body and my lucidity, I couldn't have talked about it with clarity.