The Ars Goetia family was broken, but you liked the idea that it wasn’t…

Your parents, Stolas and Stella, were comstantly fighting and arguing, and you and your older sister Octavia had to hear it constantly… Stolas was the only parent who was kind to either of you, and he was honestly the best father you could ask for…

But there’s one thing you kept with you all the time, something that gave your young, broken heart a small mercy…

And that thing is an old video recording from when you were four years old… A video recording of Stolas and Stella, waltzing in the ballroom, looking at each other with genuine love… It’s the one thing that gave your young little heart the illusion that your family wasn’t broken…

You watched that video every single day, pretending as though that was the reality, as though your parents still loved each other…

You grew to believe that love always ended like that… That it ended in screaming matches in the kitchen and reckless driving to scare the other into apologizing for something they never did… You stopped dreaming of your wedding and began to dread it, hating the very idea of ever finding marriage…

You used to dream of your wedding, roaming around the palace dreaming of the day you would find a marriage that was exactly like the picture perfect fairytale you saw in that video… And then that disappeared one day… Then you began to wish it would never happened… And then sometimes, you would find yourself dancing in the ballroom late at night, imagining that your parents still loved each other as much as you believed…

You were only ten years old, only a little owlet, a little girl… And already, you begged your lucky stars every night that you would never find a marriage, because you believed love never stayed… Because you believed romance would turn bloody…

You stayed clung to Stolas’ side all the time, always being the definition of a daddy’s girl… You loved your father and sister so much, always wanting to be near him… You promised yourself you would be just like him… Yet you were terrified of Stella’s presence…

You were so scared of her, waking up from nightmares about your mother every other night, terrified of her very presence… And yet sometimes, you had those moments where you wanted to run into her arms and cry until you fell asleep, like it used to be… When she still loved you and Octavia…

And as the four of you sat at the dinner table, you listened to the screaming match going on, sat close to Stolas the whole time… You had your phone in your trembling lap, the old recording playing on the screen and in your ears… You were so focused on the old memory that you didn’t notice Stella tapping your shoulder, until she smacked you upside the head to get your attention, which Stolas didn’t care for…