Elysium: Desired by the Cold-hearted Princess [GL]
Chapter 169 169: I like her

Seraphina's POV

I woke up with a jolt, though it felt like my body hadn't fully caught up with my mind. The sharp pain in my head was unlike anything I'd ever felt before—like someone had taken a hot poker and driven it straight through my skull. Every attempt to move was met with resistance, as if my limbs were weighed down by invisible chains, and the effort alone made my head throb even more.

I groaned, my throat dry and scratchy, the sound more like a croak than anything human. My body felt foreign, as though it belonged to someone else, and I couldn't decide if the heat I was feeling was external or burning me from within.

Taking a shaky breath, I tried to calm myself. 'It's just a hangover,' I thought, though even thinking hurt.

I've never really been drunk before, but I had seen enough movies to know that this was what a horrible morning after felt like.

I tried to move, but my body felt heavy, immovable, like I had been glued to the bed. My muscles ached, and every movement sent another wave of pain shooting through my skull.

This wasn't just a hangover—this was punishment from the universe itself.

I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down, though each breath I took felt painful. Slowly, I exhaled, hoping that maybe if I just lay still long enough, my head would stop throbbing, and my body would stop feeling like it had been hit by a truck.

I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that keeping them closed might dull the pain. Big mistake.

Images from the night before came rushing back, hitting me like a wrecking ball.

At first, it was simply a blur of noise and flashing lights. The loud music, the suffocating smell of cigarettes, and then the bitter taste of alcohol on my tongue.

I saw myself downing glass after glass of that bitter poison, convincing myself it would help me blend in and feel normal. I remembered how the room seemed to tilt, and how my body buzzed with a strange energy that I didn't understand.

Then there was Electra. Her face suddenly appeared in my mind's eye, clear amidst the chaos. I remembered seeing her standing in front of me, her expression a mix of concern and confusion.

And then...

Oh no.

I kissed her.

Oh god, I'd kissed her.

The scene replayed in my mind with horrifying detail. My hands grabbing her face, and my lips crashing on hers in a desperate, reckless moment of... what? Impulse? Heat? Stupidity?

I felt my stomach churn, and it wasn't just from the hangover.

Electra had pushed me away. I remembered that too. The way she'd looked at me afterward, a mixture of shock and something else I couldn't quite place. Embarrassment? Disappointment? Anger?

The next memory was even worse.

We were in a dark classroom. How we got there, I had no idea, but I remembered the awkward silence between us.

And then I said it.

I had confessed. Like a drunken idiot, I had told Electra I liked her, and worse still—I had asked her how she felt about me.

The scream tore out of my throat before I could stop it.

My own voice, echoing in my head, made my skin crawl. What was I thinking? What in the world had possessed me to say something so utterly stupid and so humiliating?

The scream only made my head hurt worse, and I clutched my temples, as if trying to physically hold my skull together.

I wanted to curl up and disappear. My body was still glued to the bed, but I wasn't sure I even wanted to move. If I could melt into the mattress and cease to exist, that would be preferable to facing whatever fallout awaited me.

For a moment, I considered the possibility that maybe—just maybe—I had imagined it. That the alcohol had twisted my memories into some nightmarish hallucination, and none of it had actually happened.

But no.

The vividness of the memory, the way I could still feel the heat of Electra's hands on mine when she gently pulled them away, and the way she said, "You're not yourself right now"—it was too real to be a fabrication.

I groaned, burying my face in the pillow.

What had I done?

Electra was already hard enough to deal with, and now, thanks to my alcohol-fueled stupidity, I had handed her yet another reason to tease me.

Oh, the horror!

But as the initial feeling of embarrassment started to subside, a new emotion began to creep in—confusion.

Why had I said that to Electra? Sure, I'd been drunk, but alcohol didn't create feelings out of nowhere. It just amplified what was already there.

I thought back to all the times I'd felt that strange pang in my chest when I saw her. The way my heart raced when we argued, how her rare moments of softness caught me off guard, and how I couldn't stop thinking about her even when I wanted to.

Was it possible that...

No.

I shook my head, immediately dismissing the thought.

This wasn't real. None of this was real. Whatever strange feelings I had toward her right now didn't matter because I'd already been rejected, and the moment we figured out how to get back to our real lives, she would most likely never want to speak to me again.

And yet, even as I told myself that my feelings didn't matter, I couldn't shake the lingering warmth of her lips on mine or the way my heart had skipped a beat when she looked at me with those piercing eyes, full of something I couldn't quite name.

God, I liked her. I liked her like crazy!

I let out another frustrated groan, rolling on my side and pulling the blanket over my head.

Maybe if I stayed in bed all day, I could avoid Electra altogether. Maybe she'd forget what happened, and we could both pretend none of it ever occurred.

But deep down, I knew that wasn't going to happen.

Electra wasn't the type to let something like this go, and neither, it seemed, was I.

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