Song: Perfectly Wrong by Shawn Mendes
Taste the poison from your lips
They leave, we're as good as gone
Oh, our love is drunken in
Singing me my favorite song
Me and you, we were made to break
I know that's true, but it's much too late
There's no use, we were made to be
I know the truth, and it's much too late
You're perfectly wrong for me
And that's why it's so hard to leave

"I—I'm getting engaged."

The world nearly came crashing down on Glacia. The words sounded as though she was sinking underwater. Glacia had to gasp for breath before speaking.

"En—engaged?" She repeated dumbly.

He gave a blank nod. "I won't be marrying of course, it's too early to do that. But I will need to be engaged to someone, someone who is going to be my Queen."

She couldn't bring herself to ask more. At the same time, she needed to know. "To who?" She whispered quietly, afraid of the answer she'd get. "Keisha?"

"I was never actually romantically involved with Keisha." He said simply.

He took a deep breath, and finally said it.

"I'm getting married to Rose Blanchard."

Glacia actually fell from the shock, but he had steadied her. He was watching her reaction closely. It was the same tactic employed when he was trying to garner how she felt from healing him at his bare skin.

"Rose? As in, my best friend Rose?" She simply couldn't comprehend why she, an Insurgent, would be with Asher. After all, she had expressed distaste for the boy numerous times. Had they been together while she was gone..?

He seemed to guess what she was thinking, and actually felt some small satisfaction upon seeing that she still had feelings for him. Her reaction showed her jealousy, the best indication.

"At times like this, we use the betrothal made from birth. Rose is actually a daughter of a high-up official who had passed on, you know. Old-fashioned, but—" He bent closer so he was leaning slightly over her, only inches away. "— But you know I don't have to follow rules. I'll make my own rules. I go against norms."

You remember. She couldn't tell if she remembered to breathe, seeing him up close. The light caught the tangle of his hair, the undeniable reclusiveness yet attractiveness of Asher. He was hers once, it was still breathtaking for her to imagine that.

"If —" He searched her eyes, "If there's the slightest bit of chance that you still harbour feelings for me, I would want you to come back." His eyes fluttered close. "You of all people should know who'd I really want."

"And who is that?"

Glacia was surprised by the steadiness of her voice. Asher flinched a little bit, ramming into a lamp behind him.

He gave a look of unease. "Do you really not --"

"You can't be talking about me. What you did back there -- thank you for saving me, but I didn't appreciate how you sounded as if I was your possession."

"I... I didn't mean for it to be that way."

She sighed, trying to keep up with the act. "Asher, have you not moved on?"

His face twisted, and his eyes drifted to her neck. It was empty. She hadn't worn his silver necklace.

Glacia realised what he was looking at. She briefly touched her own neck, grateful for a second that it helped to contribute to her act. She always wore the necklace, but now it was in the bathroom because she had taken it off when she showered. She never stopped wearing it, and he had to see her that one time she did.

He swallowed, and slowly a cruel coldness seemed to spread across him. He spoke crossly. "I was wrong. People change, and I see that you have."

Glacia nearly shuddered from the frost and heat radiating from him. His iciness was enough to surpass her virtus. She bit the bottom of her lip.

"Yes I have, Asher. I can assure you that I'm doing well. You can go back now."

"Why did you draw me then?" He said hotly, his anger rising. "And why did you let me hold you? Why were you confusing me like that?"

"I needed an artistic piece for my submission. I'm sorry I borrowed you, then. Don't take it to heart."

Asher blinked, registering the words slowly. She could see the rise and fall of his breaths, his shaken manner. It hurt that she had to convince him that she didn't like him anymore, but she had to make him stay away from her. There was no future between the two of them, the Vision they saw made that clear.

"To think I called you 'my girl' for that." He scoffed. "I've never done that for anyone."

Glacia's heart sank. She wasn't his first, but he had confirmed so many times that he had never felt for anyone the way he did for her. She put her hands behind her back, entwining them together.

"And now you can say that to your fiance."

"You mean it? You really want me to get engaged to her?"

Glacia sighed. "After all, we did have a history together. I trust Rose, I know she'll be able to take care of you well. And I wish you the best, so I know she'll be good for you."

She hoped her friend would support him if she were to be with him. Knowing Asher, surely he would have discovered that Rose was an Insurgent. She wasn't too involved with the Insurgents, so at least her mind could be changed. After all, Asher had managed to turn many Insurgents against Dante over these few months.

"Yes." Glacia spoke with finality. "You shouldn't keep your hopes up for me. I don't think we should see each other anymore. We said this much that day six months ago, and yet we have met each other twice in the mortal world. I believe the first was accidental, but now I have no idea why you'd look me up in my school just to say something as silly as this."

His mouth opened, then he closed it on second thought. Asher turned, prepared to head out of the door. Every step he took was like a punch to Glacia's gut.

"I must have been an idiot to think you'd still feel for me too."

He said that in a voice so low that Glacia thought it couldn't have been meant for her to hear. He put his hand on the doorknob, twisted it with rage, and threw the door open. He did this so forcefully that the door flew out of the hinges, but he didn't seem to know or care.

Glacia sank to her knees once she was sure that he was gone. She clutched her chest, feeling for where her heart would have once been at. She was torn, breathing deeply as if she was crying, but with no tears or sound coming out.

"Oh, Glacia." She heard Cece pass by, see her delirious state and sigh. Her friend went to her side, putting her hand around her.

"Cece, what am I going to do?" Glacia asked, her voice breaking.

Cece tried to put two and two together. She stared at the door that came apart onto the ground. Glacia had told her once about a love so great that it had made her hurt, but she never knew that she was referring to this boy.

Cece thought he looked too good to possibly be true. She wasn't very surprised that he would break Glacia's heart like that, since Cece was under the assumption that he had said something nasty to her. She didn't expect it to be Glacia that started it first.

Glacia buried her face in her hands. These choices were tough, but she had to make them. It was the only way imaginable to save Asher --

The boy she loved.

Now that he was away, this thought rang clear. She realised that she loved him, even if they had never said it before.

Glacia knew from the books she read growing up that people often used the word love too easily. She felt that love took a while to form, and she never expected to find it so abruptly. The past months apart from him only made her feelings grow, so much so that she believed that if she didn't love him already, at least she was about to.

And that made things all the more messy. A love wasn't something you could forget so easily. She believed that even if she couldn't end up with Asher, no one would ever come close to him. Even if he had managed to dig her out of his heart someday, she could never do the same.

And of all people, her one love had to be the person she couldn't be with.

***
Song: Quit by Ariana Grande, Cashmere Cat
And you say that I'm the devil you know and I don't disagree
No, I don't see the harm
They say, "You crazy, just leave him, he'll suffocate you"
But I wanna be in your arms
They say, "No, don't pick up the phone, let them think there's nobody home"
But I'm under your spell
'Cause when you call my heart starts to roll, I always want more
It's my heaven, my hell

***
That day, Glacia couldn't bring herself to go to class. Everyone else had assumed that she had ran off with her boyfriend. In actual fact, she had checked into a hotel, lay in the bed and cried herself to sleep.

"Gosh, Glacia. Why have you been crying so much lately?" She chided herself. She remembered every single time she shed tears, considering she never really did that in the past. It was after entering the Realm did she feel such intense emotions that had caused her to cry.

She was so out of herself that she didn't even take notice that she had entered the shower in her clothes, that she had ordered shellfish gumbo for room service, despite being allergic to crustacea.

Still soaked, she climbed under the covers, thinking about what she had said. She uttered those words so bitterly that even Asher, someone who could detect lies well, had believed her whole-heartedly.

Glacia shut her eyes, willing herself to sleep. It was 3am again, and she didn't think she would be able to make it through if she went another day without sleep.

That was when her phone started buzzing. It was on silent mode, so it was buzzing on the bedside table. She put a hand to shield her eyes, but was indeed curious about who would even call her at this odd hour.

"Hello?" She said, picking up the phone.

"Glacia? It's me."

She knew that voice. "Noah? What do you want?"

That Eros Regiis had played an integral part in bringing them together. She almost wished that he hadn't.

The phone seemed to be passed around as she heard some heated exchange on the other end of the line. It was Nigel who spoke next, in a more frantic voice.

"Glacia, you need to come back to the Realm now."

She nearly sat up, confused as to why he had called to say that so forcefully in the middle of the night. Nigel was usually gentle and funny, but he was dead serious now. She could feel the tension and anxiousness emanating from the other end of the line.

"W--why?"

"Asher went to drink and he passed out cold. At first we thought he simply had too much, then we realised he could always hold his liquor well. And we discovered that what he drank wasn't wine --"

Glacia could guess what was to be said next. She started pushing off the covers, rushing to pull a jacket over herself. Her heart was beating furiously, she had gone pale at the sound of those words.

"-- It was the Red Ruby. He's passed out, and we don't know if he'll make it..."

Glacia was out of the door before she knew it. Delirious, she ran frantically, only half-listening to Nigel explain how there was a plane sent for her, at the helipad of some hospital nearby.

Glacia didn't care that cars were swerving left and right, she rushed madly across the busy road that was still alive in the dead of night. Her heart was racing faster than any of those cars. She dived back and forth, her mind on nothing but Asher.

She could hear the panicked words on the phone. "Please say you'll come. In his feverish state, he was calling out for you whenever he was half-awake. Then he would always go unconscious again."

By now, Glacia had ended the call. She saw the sleek black plane, the special design that only belonged to Royalliers. It landed on the rooftop of the hospital, and she climbed the stairs three at a time to get there. She was moving at lightning speed, propelled by the insane longing that he would be okay.

Silently, she was praying. That was all she could do now, for they did not know of a cure to the Red Ruby yet. She wished he would be okay. Hell, she hadn't even gotten the chance to tell him about the newfound realisation that she loved him...

He had to survive to hear that from her. He had to.