574 Please Read (2/2)
'Be strong, Evie. For the sake of your family and the entire empire,' she whispered to herself again and again. She squared her shoulders and looked up once again as she waited for the doors to open. The moon and the stars were brightly shining down on her.
In her daydreams, her wedding day always took place on a fine sunny day where she would be surrounded by falling petals dancing in the wind. Who would've thought she was going to get married in the middle of the night and to a creature of the night?
The sky was clear and calm and peaceful. The stars blinked at her but even the calmness of the sky couldn't ease the turmoil that was bubbling inside her. Her pulse was racing and all she could do was take deep breaths, again and again. Her hands were shaking and it took all her strength to keep them still again.
Her presence was then announced and at long last, the procession began.
The hall she walked into screamed of luxury and was a feast to the eyes, but contrary to all the beautiful grandeur that filled the room, the atmosphere was, as expected, tense and heavy. It was extremely rare for vampires and humans to be present under one roof. There were occasions, of course, where the two races stood under the same roof but the difference this time was that they weren't intent on killing each other. Because of this wedding, the vampires and humans agreed to a ceasefire, the first one in history.
As she walked closer to the altar, her long, tapered fingers clutched her dress hard - an action that went unnoticed by the guests because her hands were swallowed by the voluminous folds of her gown - but Evie's eyes remained fixated on the floor. Her face was still facing forward but her eyes were trained on that single spot, always 5 feet away in front of her on the floor. She couldn't relax. She felt like she was walking on a small, thin stretch of road between vampire and human armies on the battlefield right before they collided and killed each other. Above all, she felt like a small, innocent little lamb voluntarily walking to the butcher's house to be sacrificed, despite being promised that her soon-to-be husband and the vampires would never hurt her.
The tension was so thick in the air that all she wanted to do was turn around and run away, but she didn't. She couldn't.
Evie couldn't hear anything but the loud pounding of her own heartbeat. She couldn't even raise her eyes to take a peek at her husband-to-be because she was terrified! All her encounters with vampires terrified her to the core. Granted, she hadn't seen that many of them, but five years ago, she had come across a captured vampire. The vampire had had his sharp teeth bared, snarling with disgust and rage at his captors, and his eyes had glowed blood red which was a stark contrast to his overly pale skin. This vampire's appearance had horrified Evie. The same was true of the vampires who attacked her carriage a year ago.
She was scared of all vampires. All humans feared vampires. Vampires were the villainous monsters that mothers always used to scare their children. And yet, here she was, about to marry one of them.
Lost in her own fears, Evie didn't realize that she had reached the altar and she was instantly pulled back to the present when a hand appeared in her view. She almost stumbled in shock. Staring at the hand, Evie swallowed. She just knew this was the hand of the vampire prince she was going to marry.
Slowly, she lifted her eyes, her gaze moving from his hand, up to his elbow, across to his abdomen before stopping on his chest. She breathed in silently before she continued upwards, finally stopping on his face.
And the moment their eyes met… Evie's heart momentarily stopped.
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I can't post \u003cSpellbound\u003e here on webnovel because I am working with an artist for it's comic version. So it will only be available on patreon.