Ensnaring his Dark Moon-Chapter 282: A good person

’’What if she truly was my mother? What if all her words were true?" Luciana clutched the material of his shirt. It was so real, her voice, her tears... It was her mother, not an illusion.

’’You miss her. You want her back desperately but it was not her,’’ Cardan said it like he could read her soul. He kissed her shoulder, ’’Deep down, even you know that she was not your mother.’’

Luciana tilted her head back to look at him.

’’She looked the same as the last time you had seen her on her deathbed, didn’t she? She hasn’t aged a day, she was wearing those same clothes, her hair was the same, her face...’’

’’Stop,’’ she gasped.

’’The woman you saw was your heart’s projection on the mirror. Do you know why her voice sounded distant in your ears? That’s because you are forgetting her voice. And she disappeared so early because she is faint in your mind. As you grow up, you are forgetting your mother.’’

Luciana trembled, ’’Just stop,’’ she said weakly. She hated this feeling of forgetting the most important person in her life. She hated it with everything she had.

She had almost been sucked into that mirror. Now that she thought about it, a shiver ran down her spine.

Luciana tilted her head to look at the mirror quietly.

Cardan pushed himself to his feet and pulled her closer to his chest.

Holding her gently in his arms, he walked out of the secret passage.

As he walked through the hallway in silence, his face was frigid. A few servants who passed by them staggered back in dread.

’’You are scaring people,’’ Luciana broke the silence between them with a whisper.

’’Do I look like I care about them?" His icy eyes cut through her.

She lifted both her hands which were hanging by her sides. Wrapping one hand around his neck, Luciana smoothened his frown with the other, ’’What do you care about then?" she asked as he kicked open the door to his room and stepped inside before closing it behind them.

’’Are you doing it on purpose?" Cardan placed her on the bed.

Luciana was dumbfounded, ’’What... did I do?" she blinked as he sat beside her on the bed.

’’Putting yourself in danger just to reduce me into this...’’ he grabbed her hand and pressed it on his wildly beating heart, ’’You want to see me turning into a pathetic mess for you, don’t you?" 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Luciana looked at him quietly, her eyes softening gradually.

Cardan was still in a panic. He knew how lethal it could have turned out to be had Luciana stepped inside that mirror.

Not everyone was as lucky as Duke Maverick who only dreaded that fire that made him lose his powers and Duchess Flora.

The more one’s insecurities were, the further one would be trapped in the web.

Cardan knew how to break the spell but the person trapped inside the mirror had to regain a thread of their consciousness, they had to be willing to live, to hope, to dream.

And Luciana? She was a dweller of the past. She was an enchanting woman with layers upon layers but to Cardan, she had always seemed an illusion. She lived like an empty shell of herself as if the world could burn in hell and she would not bat an eyelid. He had never seen her acting like a normal woman with desires. She was attached to many things, and even a few people but at the same time, she kept herself detached from them so if they disappear, she would not feel anything. She kept herself away from emotions but her haunted eyes spoke depths about her pain, about her sufferings. Her scars revealed how they molded her into this shiny shell of the person she was with a soul cowering in some corner.

Luciana was the kind of victim the enchanted mirror craved. A soul which might never seek an escape from the darkness would be fed on by it.

Luciana did not know what possessed her but when she saw Cardan’s solemn appearance, the hint of fear in his eyes, she went from the person needing comfort to the person providing it, ’’I am fine now. I... Earlier I was just passing by. I did not go there on purpose but I kept hearing my mother’s voice and various thoughts consumed my head. I thought she was imprisoned there somehow or that she needed my help. And before I knew it, I was there...’’

Cardan pinched her chin, ’’Don’t even talk about it.’’

His grip made her squint her eyes.

Realizing that he had caused her pain, he loosened his grip and stroked her chin, ’’If you want to go somewhere, take me with you. If you need something, ask me. Don’t go there wandering alone. Every part of this castle is tainted with black magic. From the walls to the pillars....’’

Luciana gulped, ’’Is it...’’ she hesitated for a long time before asking him, ’’...Is it your mother who did that?"

An undecipherable glint passed in Cardan’s eyes. After a moment of silence, he nodded, ’’She wanted to torture every living relative of Adeline Daven. No one, not even my father knows that despite being trapped there in that prison, she found a way to come to mortal land every once in a while. I used to visit her from time to time and sometimes, she would keep me there as her replacement. ut her powers were exhausted easily so her visits were limited.’’

A chill ran down her spine and Luciana felt her palms turning cold. That woman... is something else.

’’When Es... sister-in-law came here, she used to have nightmares and hallucinations,’’ Cardan confessed.

’’Was it your mother again?" Luciana smiled a bit at the way he addressed Esme. Who knew that they would all come together in such a way? A year ago, all of them hated each other’s guts.

’’Partly. It was because of her spells but I had hand in it as well.’’

Luciana quietened.

Cardan held his breath, the life inside his eyes seemed to have died as he waited for her verdict on the words he uttered.

In the end, Luciana laughed gently as she shook her head, ’’Your past self would never have called her sister-in-law. My past self would never have befriended her,’’ She raised her hand to rake her fingers through his hair as she let them rest beside his ear, ’’Don’t look at me so nervously. Who are we to judge what is good and what is evil? All good people are a little evil. All evil people have a little good in them,’’ she smiled.

She had taken countless innocent lives, mers, and humans both, on her father’s orders. She had cruelly eliminated every person who challenged her authority in the sea. Just how much of an untainted angel was she?

Cardan’s eyes glimmered, the depth of his blue eyes shining back to life, ’’Are you calling me a good person?"

’’Is your narcissism contagious?" she rolled her eyes and pulled a pillow between them when he leaned closer.

’’I am not certain about narcissism but my charm is.’’

Luciana laughed, ’’Cardan!" she glared at him, ’’Tell me something... I have been curious about it for so long.’’