Conquering His Cold Heart

“Okay, why don’t you continue right where we stopped?” Vincent rested his arm on the window of the carriage and excitedly asked Tilla.

Tilla glanced at Vincent’s face. He was sitting right in front of her. She didn’t know what was so interesting about her dull life that Vincent wanted to hear about it for two days straight.

“Aren’t you bored after listening to my nonsensical rambling for the whole day yesterday?” she innocently asked Vincent.

Vincent leaned back on the cushion comfortably. He smiled at Tilla and asked instead, “Why would I get bored when I got to listen to your life story? And why do you say that your life story was some nonsensical rambling? Your life isn’t nonsense. You are the handmaid of the Queen, for heaven’s sake! Be a little proud of yourself.”

The corners of Tilla’s lips subtly curved up. And she shyly mumbled, “I became her handmaid because she took a liking to me and wouldn’t accept anyone else as her handmaid.”

“See! That alone explains how good of a person you are. So, why wouldn’t I be interested in you?” Vincent cleared his throat and quickly corrected himself, “Um... I mean, why wouldn’t I be interested in your background and your story?”

Tilla didn’t want to get flattered by Vincent’s sugar-coated words. However, she couldn’t help but feel that way.

Warm blood rushed to her cheeks when she further saw Vincent looking at her without breaking eye contact. And to add to that, he was also smiling at her, which further made her heart flutter. She looked away in embarrassment.

.....

“You can start whenever you want,” Vincent rested his chin on his palm and asked her.

“Um...” Tilla hummed for a while as she tried to recall where she had stopped yesterday. “But I have already told you almost everything. As I said earlier, I didn’t have an interesting life. All I did was follow around the Princess, I mean the Queen, and that’s it.”

Vincent furrowed his brows and sighed. He wasn’t convinced that the two ladies didn’t do anything fun. “So, you two never visited somewhere interesting, or did something as teenagers? Like secretly running away from the castle or mistakenly burning down the curtains or something like that?”

“Hmm?” Tilla giggled at the things that Vincent assumed the two of them would have done when they were teenagers. “No, we never tried running away. And no, we never burned down the curtains.” She laughed while covering her mouth and asked, “Who does such things?”

Vincent scratched his head and whimsically replied while pointing at himself, “Yours truly might have done that once.”

Tilla raised her brows and leaned forward. And she asked in a surprised voice, “You tried running away from home? Or did you burn down the curtains?”

Vincent covered his eyes as though he was now embarrassed about his own actions, and he laughed, making Tilla’s heart skip a beat.

“Argh! I shouldn’t have said that!” he mumbled while covering his whole face now.

“Why not?” Tilla shifted at the edge of her seat and showed her interest in the topic, “You learned everything about me. I think it is only fair that you also tell me all about yourself. Wait. You’ve lived for hundreds of years. So, maybe you can at least tell me a few things about yourself?”

“Yes, fair enough.” Vincent smiled.

He thought for a while and then started telling his story to Tilla, “Okay, here it goes. I was very new to the castle at that time. I had never seen anything like it before – the huge building, the sophisticated decorations, the large rooms, nothing. When I discovered that there was something called candles and that I could carry that small fire without burning myself, I got a little too excited.”

“How old were you at that time?” Tilla asked. She was expecting to hear that he was somewhere between 10 to 15 years old at that time.

However, she was completely blown away by Vincent’s reply.

“I was around 75 years old.” Vincent gave a melancholic smile and said, “Anyway, I got a little too excited. I was holding the candle in my hand and I started to run around the hallways and the rooms of the castle. What I didn’t know was that the wax would melt down, unlike the torches, and that it would be hot. So, when the wax dripped on my hand, I panicked and threw that candle away. I happened to throw it right at the curtains. And it immediately caught on fire.”

“You weren’t hurt, were you?” Tilla sounded worried for Vincent.

Vincent felt a little happy when Tilla was concerned about his safety, even when that incident had happened a long while ago. He smiled and replied, “No, I wasn’t hurt. Thankfully, Caspian saw the burning curtains and ordered the guards to put the fire out. But I was banned from playing with candles after that.”

Tilla let out a sigh of relief and said in a low voice, “So, you have been friends with His Majesty for a long time, huh?”

“Mmm... I wouldn’t say that we were friends.” Vincent furrowed his brows and said, “At that time, I was just someone who Caspian had taken pity upon. He...”

Vincent took a deep breath and looked out of the window. He contemplated whether he should be sharing anything more with Tilla or not. He didn’t want anyone to judge him based on his past.

‘Tilla would be the last person to judge me,’ he concluded after a while.

He inhaled the fresh air and then turned to look at Tilla again. And he opened up to her, “Caspian had come across me when I was in an illegal fighting pit. I was kept as a cattle that those monsters of vampires would send to fight in the pit.”

His voice was slowly breaking as he spoke further, “I was just bones and skin at that time. I would only get to drink if I won a match. If I lost, they wouldn’t even bother putting my broken bones back in the right place. I would have to put myself together somehow; by hitting myself on the wall and something like that.”

Vincent clenched his jaw and mumbled with a shaky breath, “And when I would heal a little, they would throw me back inside the pit as if I was a bone for those dogs to munch on.”