The Mask Of The Monster - Chapter 92

(From Leandro’s Perspective)

“I am always myself when I’m with you,” she mumbled.

“You don’t express your emotions,” I said.

“What? No, it’s not like that. I don’t feel much emotion most of the time, that’s why.”

“Everyone is at least a bit emotional.”

“Are you?” she asked, giggling.

“Not much, but at least a bit,” I said.

“Well, perhaps I’m a bit emotional too if you put it that way. I mean, you saw me sad and angry…”

“Yes, I saw you sad, angry, frightened, but don’t you think people cry at least a bit at times like that? When you were covered in blood that night, you were literally trembling… but there was not even a single tear in your eyes.”

“You wanted me to cry?”

“Don’t put it that way. I’m just saying that it’s not normal. Girls cry at times like that.”

“You mean, boys don’t?” she muttered. “I don’t know what the difference between boys and girls is in this case. If you’re a boy, that doesn’t mean that you can’t cry even when you feel like that. In the same way, being a girl doesn’t mean you have to cry when you’re sad. I just don’t feel like crying. Well, I haven’t cried for years. I think I last cried when I got second place in an essay competition six years ago. I would not cry that much, I just worked too hard on it. I didn’t expect to lose… I mean, I thought I would be able to obtain the first place. Anyway, my tears just don’t come easily. Perhaps the emotions I feel are not strong enough to make me cry.”

Truth be told, even if it might sound harsh, I wanted to see her cry, even if it was just a single tear, I would feel satisfied. All the time even though she was smiling and blabbering, I could feel a hard shell around her, distancing her from me. Did she feel the same thing when she was around me? I had hidden myself in a hard shell as well, but that shell had cracked; she cracked it and now I could not go back to my previous self around her. Or perhaps I had this personality inside me the whole time, but could never find it. She was the one who opened me and I was happy about it, I wanted to show the inner me even if I did not like that myself. I wanted her to know more about me, the way I wanted to know more about her. I knew about her life, almost everything about her life, but I still did not understand her fully. There was something deep about her that even words could not comprehend.

“Anyway, even I don’t know how Mother died. She died after I left the castle.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I heard that she did not wake up from sleep,” I replied.

When I heard about Mother’s death, I felt a bit of a sting in my heart. It was not too much, rather just a hint of pain in my chest. But it was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw Ella covered in blood in that abandoned house looking like she was going to fall apart at any moment as her hands were trembling. It was true that Mother cared about me, even if it was just a little. But she never managed to give me a sense of warmth and true caring. The first and only person who managed to do that was Ella, just a little human who had basically nothing in this world, yet she made me feel like I was important to her. I had a feeling that if something happened to me someday, she would be sad. The thought made me happy for some reason. Perhaps I sounded creepy, but I truly wanted someone to be sad, thinking that something might happen to me.

“Leandro, I meant to ask you this for quite a long time… Well, do you know what is in the room on the second floor? The room where no one enters?”

“Which room? I don’t remember there is any room where no one enters,” I said.

“There is one, right at the opposite of your office room. We can’t clean that room. There are two guards who are always there like pawns. They warned us not to go inside the room, as if we could with them stand there all the time. Anyway, I thought you would know about it,” she said.

“If I’m right, the room you’re talking about is Mother’s room, at least it was.”

“Then why can’t we go inside? Do you think there is something that we are meant not to see?”

I was a bit curious about what could be inside the room, but now I was suspicious of her. The way she was talking about it, if I was right, she would surely try to go inside the room, no matter what she had to do for that.

“Don’t. Just don’t even think about it,” I warned her. I knew her perfectly well enough to get a hint that she was already making a plan in her head as to how she could go inside that room. She was the type of person who would go any length to know something, especially if it was something they were not supposed to find out about. But then why had she not gone there yet? Was she waiting to know if I know about the room first?

“I can’t just brag into that room, you know. The guards are really big. But…”

“No, you’re not going there,” I said, cutting her off. No matter what happened, I could not let her endanger her life. I was aware of my feelings for her- there was no way I would be able to live without her and even if I lived somehow, I would not be called alive. How could there be a life without a soul?

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, tell me more about you,” she said.

“What more do you want to know?”

“Anything. Like your abilities as a shifter.”

“You saw some things like I can smell little things, see clearly than others, and run faster than humans, a lot faster actually. And I can jump from a tall place and land without any problem,” I said.

“Anything else?”

“I don’t know about more things right now. I’m still looking for details. Anders and some others are working on this matter. Don’t worry- I’ll let you know if I find out,” I said and kissed her hair.

“And how do you know my dad? He seems to be… scared of you,” she mumbled.

“Well, you know he works against shifters even though he is a shifter himself.”

“He has his reasons though he needs to understand that all shifters are not bad.”

“Yeah. But he hates me, at least he fears me a lot. He should. He is the leader of a group that works against the shifters. It’s the same group that you told me about the other day who was trying to kill Nicklaus. Your dad is their leader. His name is Alessandro Siena. You look a lot like him, but I never for once thought that you would be his daughter. And besides, you don’t share his surname.”

“I don’t share anyone’s surname. It’s a name that I’ve given myself,” she said. “Mom’s name is Elle Star. She gave me the name Ella, perhaps so she would not forget my name. But she never gave me a surname. It was always just Ella. The kids in the school used to tease me about it. Not that I cared, I mean, I don’t care now. Well, at that time, I was little and didn’t know about a lot of things. I would get upset easily. So, I gave me this surname.”

“Why ‘Griverd’?” I asked.

“Well, there was a graveyard near my old kindergarten. I used to go there a lot. There was a cat that used to stay there all the time. I used to go there to feed him. That’s why they used to call me graveyard. I just wanted to remember the time when I was teased, so if I meet someone like me in the future, I would be able to show them that I even gave myself a name using something they used to tease me with,” she said, smiling. “I will show them that those people could not break me. Rather, I used their own weapon as mine, and now, they can’t even take me down. You know, middle finger to them, huh!”

[We all love a woman who shows middle finger to the ones who wronged them for no reason.. Ella never had anyone truly by her side and neither did Leandro. That’s why both of them fell for each other very fast since it was the first time they tasted the warmth of affection]