⊰ chapter five ⊱

Jungkook followed where his drumming heart took him to; he followed into the darkened snow covered yard of the Ball arena. The red haired woman's breathing was so heavy that Jungkook mistook it for the thundering clouds for a moment. Her steps came at ease, slower than the time she ran out of the crowd of guests in the arena. Dara sniffed before feeling her way of isolation invaded by Jungkook who stood still behind her. Her red eyes, pouring the ocean out, stared back at Jungkook for a minute. Jungkook sighed, "We should go back to the ball, people are―,"

"No," Dara whispered, fists strong, "No. Never again."

"Never again what," Jungkook muttered, confused.

Dara's dark lashes looked up into Jungkook's night-like eyes, not the honey brown under the moonlight, "Never again will I let you use me...you have done enough. You have taken enough advantage of me―,"

"I have taken no advantage of you―,"

"You tripped me." Dara's throat throbbed, "That night. Asking to be my concubine, tripping me on you, making me indulge with your touch saying I yearned it―,"

"―because you did―," Jungkook was abruptly cut.

"―you were pretty much the stranger to worry about that and I was the fool to let you in," Dara whispered, "All that to drag me here into your shithole, Jungkook. Your lies, your little, white lies...i believed them."

Dara couldn't believe all of it. She grabbed her head, her mind going berserk. Her eyes closed before popping open as she gushed out, "Fuck. What have I done?"

"Koveski," Jungkook sighed, "You are tired. I will have someone drop you off at the residence."

The heir grabbed the girl's arm, feeling the absence of warmth. Jungkook looked at her when she wouldn't budge. Dara freed her arm with her eyes locked with Jungkook's, her lips glittering under the moonlight against the gloss. Jungkook looked down at the pair of plump lips, his lashes lowered. Jungkook stepped closer, grasping her arm again, "To be your concubine, was not to trip you. I wasn't thinking straight. But to be your soldier, I didn't think I will love it so much that I forgot my origin."

Dara's usual siren eyes warmed into two puddles of water, her lips tightened, "You told me I was a Queen, Jungkook. You told me you loved obeying me, loved the ruler in me―,"

"And every bit of it is true―,"

"A lie," Dara whispered, shaking her head, "I thought I was your homeland."

Every soldier's homeland is the ruler who rules them.

Jeon Jungkook's world shattered. She thought? Of course, there is a bigger turn in the situation.

"You would get your joints bloody for me." Dara's voice broke, "You picked me at my fragile, you held me at my lowest, you screamed my name like it was the last thing you would say before Theon ordered your execution. You took all the fire and never let a flame touch me ... .why did you do all that for?"

"It was my duty, Koveski," Jungkook whispered back, "I took an oath to protect you. No matter who you were, a promise is a promise. But I also took an oath to return to the throne that I deserved, to avenge my father's death. And you were the last of Arver's traces that West had set upon me."

Dara stared, "So I really was the rock in your plan."

He didn't answer.

"Would you have killed me?"

"Yes," Jungkook said, nodding, "I would have. I can't anymore."

The air smelt like crystals.

"I am too used to protecting you. Too used to being your shield." Jungkook bit his lower lip. The trinkets Jungkook made for Dara sparkled along with her gown, the snow flakes holding her breasts shimmered and the stones that decorated her eyes was like a crystal rainfall that complemented her eyes, "But it's alright now. West will accept you―,"

"I don't need your hometown to accept me," Dara fought him, "You can never win North with what you have done to me. If you take the blood throne, you will take it over my dead body―,"

"Don't fight for something you don't deserve or were never born for," Jungkook was now holding onto Dara's lower waist, her chest pressed against his, "You don't need the blood throne over your head again. You have fought enough."

"I haven't even started," Dara confessed, "I may have been a fool to have you explore the inches and corners of me, and you may take pride in that, but you will never rule the blood throne the way I did."

"Of course not," Jungkook nodded, "And that isn't my goal. I will destroy your home, The East and set it into blazing fire and yes, I won't let the flames touch you. But to rule viciously like you, so viciously that you had me fall to my knees and forget my goals―never that."

"Pity," Dara jerked her chin towards Jungkook's face, her arms resting against his chest as she tried to free herself from his snaked arm, "Such pity that you will rule in vain, rule a country that is in love with me."

The red hair hesitated and then with all the uneasiness in her voice, she said with greeted teeth and watering eyes, "You will die living up to me, Jeon Jungkook!"

"You cross the line one more time―,"

"You can't shut me up!" Dara screamed out but the music muffled her voice inside the arena as they argued hundreds of steps away from the ball. Dara's eyes, the rage she was born with appeared clearly infront of Jungkook, "I may not be the blood heir but I have created a fortress out of Zisk in less than six months and every inch of my reign―be that short―was so tripping, you could lose your sight from the light I paved with!"

Jungkook was stunned. She wasn't lying.

"So you take that throne over my dead body...," Dara proposed, "Or forget me and erase me from your life and let me go my way."

"You aren't going anywhere―,"

"You will let me out," Dara nodded, "I wish not to be beside you anymore. I have my home South, I will go away and you can take the throne and forever be grateful for the traces I left for you and call the fucking blood heir that you are―,"

While holding Dara's slim body against him with his left arm and tightening his hold around her waist, Jungkook snatched her face and slammed his lips into hers. Before she attempted to push him away, Dara's arms trembled. However, he was stronger, and every time his lips touched hers before his tongue touched hers, Dara felt more vulnerable. As he licked Dara's lips, Jungkook's right hand slid under her hair and gently pulled her head to one side. Her eyes began to tear up, smearing across Jungkook's cheeks. He could sense her anguish and her distressed state of mind, but all he knew was that he had screwed up.

Jeon Jungkook fucked up, and he knew he did.

Dara attempted another time but she failed.

You yearn for touch.

Jungkook had said. She did. And how he knew of her heart, she didn't know. She couldn't tell. But Dara had no idea the trick of time would only make her yearn for Jeon Jungkook's touch to the point that every word of heart he had ever mentioned was questioned in her head. All the power she bestowed and held in the palm of her hands...Dara couldn't believe she was fooled.

Love makes you do crazy, blind and forbidden things.

In his embrace, she felt adrift. She was being held against him by those strong arms like a pillar. The joy of rage and dominance appeared with a chest full of pride as his lips tasted her mouth. After pulling away from her mouth, Jungkook smelled her cheeks because he couldn't manage to leave them. Her aroma was so potent and comforting to his nose that it made her cheeks smell like lavenders. After pecking Dara's jaw, Jungkook's hands snaked up her icy arms and he hummed against her, "Don't mention leaving again, Koveski."

"I will," When Jungkook again caught Dara's bottom lip, her chest pounded against his, and she closed her eyes. Finally, Dara pushed Jungkook aside and moved on while maintaining a watchful expression and rapid breathing. Dara shook her head and gripped her waist to prevent a collapse, "I can't stay with you."

"The day you leave," Jungkook caught onto the air, breathing again, "will be the day I stop hoping."

"There is nothing left to hope," she made it clear, "You don't even know what hope is."

"Then you must have taught me the wrong way of hope," Jungkook argued, "Because from power to ruling, lush to lust, you taught me all of it in a new light, Koveski. But I have no regrets,"

Dara's lips twitched, her spine straightened, "If you have no regrets, then why do you call me by my middle name?"

It looked as if Jungkook's face was the visual present of a violent crime scene. He had nowhere to run from this. His mouth darkened, his eyes turned a bed of roses when he glanced at her before looking back to her eyes. As if seized from one of his wildest dreams, his toes curled as he felt those daggers shove him down into the ground―Dara's eyes searched for the answer she didn't need to hear at that moment. Jungkook would look away, but he was once again, way too emerged into her beauty.

"You don't call me Dara anymore, are you so guilty?" Dara whispered, "Does calling me by my name, the right to call me by my name that you gifted it yourself at North, make you regret it?"

"No." Jungkook denied at once, "Your name is for the ones who are in love with your long, shining, berry red hair. And I certainly am giving my best to despise the last thing that makes you my problem."

"Fine," Dara walked to Jungkook at once, without a second question. The girl grabbed the sword out at his waist that complemented his outfit for the night and pushed the handle against his hand. Jungkook frowned.

Dara Koveski Arveri, with all the strength that was left in her, bent Jungkook's unaware and unready arm to swing the sword she was forcing in his hands underneath her hair and chopped off the bigger quarter of her red hair. Jungkook shrieked loudly, mumbling the curses as his eyes bulged out at the scene of Dara's gorgeous hair falling to the grounds of the West. The snow was now printed with the berry hair upon it.

Dara looked up with her revived forest green eyes, full of rage and revenge as she grinned up at him, suppressing the grief she held at the same time behind her eyes, "Hope this makes it easier."

And she held her tears.

And Jungkook stared at her in horror. Her hair till her shoulders, the edges of her hair screwed, uneven. There stood a result of one of his worst nightmares that he had in the shelters of the North.

He felt shattered―Dara made him do that.

Jungkook realized one of them was Dara's berry red hair against his unbreakable blades. And if there had to be more meaning of Berry Blades, this was the worst one out of all the nightmares-come-true he had ever experienced.

Dara no longer had the red hair he was in love with.

\

oh yall gonna miss her red ass long hair