his seventh heaven

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"A-Alek?"

My doppelganger jolted upright from his bed, his expression conveyed all the shock that he was feeling right at the moment as he stared at me with wide eyes.

It was a long pause of silence for me to overcome the fear of meeting the puppeteer of my life and accept that I hadn't been anyone in the past two decades except as his shadow. I had been forced to live for him for all the years that I stayed within the confining walls of the Illiades. When I managed to breathe again, I nodded, "I'm glad that you remember me."

Aillard's words were incomprehensible when he mumbled, "I-I, uh, no—"

"Calm down, I'm not here to cause trouble," I assured. "I just need to speak to you before Eldrick does."

Aillard seemed as though he didn't quite understand what I was getting at. After all, I had spent my time avoiding him to my best effort since the Thindrels entered the Illiades household. The pair of grey eyes focusing on me looked so pure without a single pinch of dirt and evil intentions in them, irking me.

Adjusting my gaze away, I took a seat right beside him and said words that I would've never told anyone in my entire life, "I need you to help me, Aillard."

"W-What is it?" Aillard gasped, as though realising that I had done the most impossible thing of asking a favour from him.

I took out a photograph from my jacket and couldn't manage to hold onto the smile that was lifting from the tip of my lips as I looked at the person in the picture smiling ever so brightly. I painfully handed the photograph to Aillard and he took it, studying it carefully before he asked, "Who is this?"

"The love and light of my life," I said unhesitatingly.

"I'm happy for you, Alek," Aillard smiled, taking a glance at the photograph in his hands again before looking at me with an expression of sudden realisation, "But, is there a reason that you're showing me her photograph?"

"I had helped you out for over two decades of my life, Aillard," I pointed out. "It's time for you to help me out."

I had been progressing with my recovery, at a ridiculously expedited pace.

My whole recovery didn't consist of all the medical therapies I could ever think of and getting my life back together. It was a whole lot more of even trying to learn all the things from the time I had lost during the entire comatose phase. As Alek had guessed, Dad really visited me a few hours after he left my ward. When Alek was done telling me all the things he needed me to do, he warned me to keep our meeting a secret and made sure that Dad wouldn't know about his presence in Finland.

I get why Alek felt that way, he was never properly treated back when we were young too. I also knew why Alek would hate me that much — I was the reason he lost everything that belonged to him. Since moving into the Illiades and meeting Alek, I always felt that I owed my good life to him and made a conscious effort to give back to him in any way that I could ever fill the gap of his loss. Wealth and power were never the ambitions of a boy born out of wedlock, especially since I knew how twisted a human could get when they desire things that were never meant to be theirs.

Recollection
Aillard | 10

I woke up in the middle of the night because of a nightmare that left me covered in cold sweat. It was one of the usual bad dreams that haunted me every other night.

After waking up from that unsettling dream, I couldn't manage to fall asleep again no matter how much tossing and turning was done. Frustrated, I crawled out of my bed and left my room with the intention to grab a glass of water from the kitchen downstairs.

The rest of the house was laden with the usual silence and darkness, except for the ray of light in the hallway that caught my attention immediately. It was the light that escaped from the ajar door of the master bedroom and a feeling of disgust brimmed from my chest. It had to be one of Mom's guests again.

Mom had night guests. To be exact, guests that would throw their clothes all around the hallway and make off-putting grunts in her room. I was warned to stay in my room during nighttime, so I should never be caught sneaking out even if I simply wanted to grab a drink or take a breather.

Perhaps I should've felt blessed that commoners like us had the chance to live in luxury because of Mom's guests, but even a huge house had four walls that trapped my entire existence within. I never got to attend schools, I never had the chance to make friends with children of my age and I never had the chance to even know the warmth of human beings.

Trying my best to keep my movements as silent as possible, I headed towards the stairs but Mom's sudden squeal surprised me as I stopped where I was and overheard a conversation that was never meant for me to hear.

Inside the room, Mom laughed while panting breathlessly, "You sold her back to Eldrick?"

I peeked through the gap of the ajar door and saw a stranger slamming his body against Mom as he replied, "Why would I run with a woman like her?"

"The Findlays are rich too," Mom smirked, swiping her hair to the side as she straightened her arms to hold onto the man's shoulders.

"When she decided to leave Eldrick, the Findlays threatened to cut off all ties with her," the man scoffed. "I wouldn't want to be with a poor woman."

"What do you think would happen to her?"

"Death, I guess," the man said nonchalantly. "Eldrick is not a forgiving soul, especially to this woman who had betrayed him. You know what's the sickest part?"

Mom moaned, "Hmm?"

"Both of you look exactly alike and fucking you is like fucking Selene Findlay," the man laughed. "Who knew Eldrick would be so obsessively sick in his taste with woman."

The expression on Mom's face became twisted as she replied coldly, "All the more why I cursed for that woman to be dead. Her throne was mine, to begin with."

When the man was done with his deed, he crawled out of bed to grab a cigarette stick from her dresser. Lighting up the stick, he said, "You better hold onto your side of the deal, Thindrel."

"Of course," Mom lazed in her bed, satisfied. "As soon as I become the Lady of the Illiades."

Quietly, I returned to my room with the knowledge that nothing actually feared me more than the greed of Mom and she had only willingly kept me in this house because I was her entry pass into the house of the richest man in this country.

I would've never been born if I didn't serve a good purpose to her, especially when my body was frail since birth. For a sickly child like me, I would've been a burden that she would heartlessly choose to abandon if I wasn't Eldrick Illiades' child.

─────────────── Three months later

I went back home after a busy day of work with a piercing headache that was almost killing me and I couldn't remember the last time I ever felt so sick. Stumbling past the hallway while kicking my shoes off, I had to grab hold of the surface beside me to support myself into the house. Holden was at the entrance when I came through the door and he quickly came forward to hold onto my arm as he worriedly asked, "Wren, are you okay?"

My head was already spinning and my vision blurred as I gave a weak reply, "Not so great."

"Wren?" Grecia rushed towards me when she noticed that I wasn't my usual self and she placed a palm over my forehead as I felt comforted by the coldness of her touch. She gasped, "You're running a fever, darling."

"I am?" I asked, frowning in confusion. Is that why I'm feeling so sick?

My own thoughts only lasted for a few moments before I felt like I was floating through the air and everything ahead of me went dark. 

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