Niall's P.O.V.

From the moment I entered the house, something seemed off. There was an eerie silence that seemed to echo off the walls, whispering to me. Something was wrong. Something bad had happened.

“Come on, guys,” I called to Nate and Colette who were retrieving their backpacks from the car. The came trudging into the house with their backpacks over their shoulders, and immediately I closed the garage door and turned the lock, then set the alarm. Funny, I was sure I had put the alarm on before I left the house. Nate and Colette set their backpacks down, looked at each other, then at me.

“Daddy,” Nicolette tugged on my shirt, noticing the frown on my face. “Daddy, are you okay?”

I looked down at her, then at Nate to see him staring inquisitively at am as well. “Just, stay by the phone, and if you hear anything, call the police, okay?”

Nate and Colette blinked. “Okay…”

I kissed both their cheeks, and took a deep breath leaving them in kitchen.

“Aria!” I yelled, making my way up the stairs. She’s here. She’s fine. She’s just hiding. I quickened my pace up the stairs. “Aria?”

I waited, paused, searching for an answer. A squeak, a cry, anything.

She’s here. She’s fine. She’s just hiding.

I reached the top of the stairs and deadpanned the entire floor. Searching for her, for my princess. My heart rate began to increase when something on the floor caught my eye. I took a step closer, then another, and another, until clarity hit the sight before me and my knees weakened. Blood. A decent pool of blood, fresh, red and glistening against the rays of the sun sneaking through the window. I fell back, sticking my arm out against the wall to support myself.

“Aria?” I yelled. “this isn’t a joke!”

I clenched my fists, waiting and waiting for someone to answer me. For Aria to answer me.

But no answer came.

It wasn’t Aria’s blood. It couldn’t be Aria’s blood. She was here. She was fine. She was just hiding. Just hiding. Surely it was Candace’s blood, or someone elses. Just not Aria’s.

I bolted out of the living room and pushed open our bedroom door, expecting to see her lounging on the bed. On the contrary, I saw no one. I broke into a cold sweat. Slowly, my eyes shifted to the floor, and followed a trail of blood drops that led straight to the window. And the window… led to anywhere and everywhere. She could be anywhere.

I shook my head, as if it would get rid of the thought. The only place Aria could be was here. She was here. She was fine. She was just hiding. I hurried into the bathroom, yelling her name, pushing the shower curtains back, hoping she was just in the bathtub. I kicked open all the other bedrooms, rummaged through the storage closets. I searched under the sofas and behind the television, pulled up carpets, and each and every second, new tears began to pool in my eyes. I yelled her name, her short, yet beautiful name. The name that meant so much.

And still, there was no answer.

Pain struck in my chest as I went back into our bedroom, and suddenly my knees buckled as the pain conquered me. One by one, my tears began to fall, mixing in with the blood on the floor. Her blood. Aria’s blood. No. No, no, no, no, no.

She wasn’t here. She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t just hiding.

She was gone.

The ache in my heart grew, because I lived for Aria. My heart was hers, and with her disappearance, came the disappearance of my heart. The ache began to spread like a wildfire all over my body, causing my to lower my head and curl into a helpless ball of sadness.

“Daddy?” a small, childish voice asked. “Daddy, there’s blood on the floor.” I looked up with red, bloodshot eyes to see Nicolette pointing to the circle of blood in the living room, Nate standing behind her looking startled. His eyes followed the trail of blood that led to the window.

“Daddy, whose blood is that?” Nate whispered, setting a hand on my shoulder. I felt his little hand shaking rapidly against my arm.

“Daddy, where’s mum?” Nicolette asked slowly. She was figuring it out, and I didn’t have to tell her a thing. I heard the breath catch in her throat.

“Daddy!” Nate yelled suddenly, startling all of us. “Where’s mum!? Where’s mum!?” he screamed, hitting my back as I shielded my body away from him. “Where is she!”

Nate threw a fit, screaming and crying because now he knew. He’d connected the dots, and Nicolette slowly began to realize what Nate had discovered.

“I-Is that mum’s blood?”

I forced myself to look at her, to watch her face and composure crumble, to see Nate, knelt down on the floor with his head dug between his knees, crying silently. Nicolette took a step back, seeing my tear stained face.

“Where did she go?” her voice cracked. “Did she run away?”

“No,” I said immediately. I didn’t ever want them to think that Aria had walked out on us. She would never leave us on purpose. She loved us too much. She was taken by force. She was dragged out that window after being assaulted. She’d been kidnapped, and if I had come home just a few minutes earlier, I might have been able to save her. She might still be here. She might still be safe.

I dropped my head, raising my hands to my face as news tears pricked my eyes.

Aria was gone, slipped out from between my fingers like water.

I must have spent hours, sitting on the bedroom floor, crying and calling Aria’s name like she would answer. But I knew she wouldn’t. She wasn’t coming back, that, Candace would make sure of. I just couldn’t seem to grasp to idea that I was never going to see that beautiful face, that golden blonde hair, those sparkling blue eyes, ever again. I wouldn’t have her to help raise Noelle, she wouldn’t get to see her kids grow, hell, she wouldn’t get to see Will and Nicolette get together the way she always fantasized.

My mum came home with Noelle, and everything soon fell in place for her when she saw the blood, no sign of the mother of the child in her arms, and me, broken down on the floor. She tried to comfort me, help me focus on something else, but I couldn’t. Aria was my world. Losing her was like losing everything I lived for, everything I breathed for.

Without her, I was losing air. WIthout her, I couldn’t breathe.

---

The whole house seemed quiet without Aria, except for the sound of Noelle crying. She begged for her mother to hold her, and because Aria could not, Noelle resorted to crying all night. Noelle hated the bottled formula, and soon she even turned down my arms. She just wanted Aria. Noelle only allowed Maura to hold her, because maybe she sensed that Maura was the only female figure in her life now that Aria was gone.

A month passed, and Noelle finally began to let me handle her. She still pouted and cried often when she was hungry, and she occasionally spit up the formula milk just to remind me that she hated it. I knew she hated it, but there was nothing I could do. I realized just how much Aria meant, not only to me, but to her whole family.

Nate hid himself in his room, coloring viciously through his entire coloring book, them crumpled each and every paper and threw it in the trash. He won his art show, coming in first place, yet the second he got home he threw his award trophy on the sofa and ran upstairs to take out his emotions on his coloring. One day, I stopped by his room and saw him stabbing a crayon frustratedly into a paper, tears falling onto the paper. He stabbed the crayon into the paper until the crayon snapped, and then he tossed the crayon towards the trash, then covered his eyes while he cried.

Nicolette, similar to Nate, acted differently. She had lost all her bubbly charisma, and she no longer had her friends over. She sat in front of the wall of pictures, staring at them for hours on end. Both my children were like zombies, exposed to the terrible world at such a young age. Nicolette came to my room crying, begging me to hold her. She kept asking me where Aria was, and demanded that I not lie to her.

“She’s going to come back.” Was all I would say.

Because I didn’t know where Aria was. I didn’t know what was happening to her. I didn’t know who was with her. I didn’t know anything, and that killed me. I felt dead, light a firefly without it’s light. Peanut butter without jelly.

A prince without his princess.

---

“One day, one of the prince’s friends brought back a hurt princess.” I told Aria, smiling down at her. “ She had been kicked out of the palace in her father’s kingdom for standing up for herself. The prince immediately declared the princess to be beautiful. He knew as time passed, that he was developing a mad crush on her.”

Aria giggled.

“Anyways, the prince had a feeling that now that he had found this perfect princess, he wouldn’t get her. And then, one day, the princess came and told the prince that she liked one of his friends. The prince was beyond devastated, and watched the princess and his friend slowly fall in love with each other. The prince thought that he was done for good, but then the princess told him that she didn’t love his friend anymore.”

Aria listened carefully, analyzing my story. I knew that she had made the connection by that small tint of red on her cheeks.

“Even though it was his friend, the prince couldn’t help but feel happy. He figured that he might have a chance with the princess again. Meanwhile, the princess had been threatened by her father, sending his guards to tell her the threats. One of the prince’s other friends had a really strong connection with the princess, and they shared everything. The prince was slightly jealous of him. Somehow, and it must have been a miracle, the prince finally got the chance to hear the princess say that she liked him. The prince let the princess stay with him at his palace, and his parents were happy to know he had found his princess. But then, the prince was an idiot and fought with the princess, causing her to leave.”

Aria kept her eyes on the ceiling. Suddenly, she rolled her eyes and got off the bed, heading for the door. I frowned, quickly following her. I could see her smiling, even though she was turned away. She kept walking, eventually going out to the balcony. When she couldn’t walk any further, she turned around to face me.

“Niall, this is so incredibly chees-“

I pressed two fingers to her lips so she couldn’t finish her sentence. I backed her up against a wall of the balcony, keeping her from looking anywhere else but at my eyes.

“The prince fell into slight depression. He missed the princess so much, and didn’t know where she had gone. One day, the friend who had a strong connection with the princess made the prince and the princess meet again. Over a short period of time, the prince and the princess made up."

“And now, they’re standing on his palace balcony, at this very second. And the prince is retelling his princess the whole story. Retelling the story to his beautiful princess. Hoping it won’t ever end, hoping that she will never, ever slip away.”

I stopped talking, just gazing into Aria’s bright blue eyes. Her eyes were developing tears at the corners, her smile growing.

“Still cheesy, Niall.”
-

---

That was the day I had given her the nickname, and it stuck with us for all these years. But now, I realized that it was more than just a name. It was what Aria really was to me. She was my princess, and I was supposed to protect, be her prince, her knight in shining armor.

But I let her slip away.

Maybe if we had realized what was going on earlier, maybe if we had gotten some help from the police, things would have turned out better. However, I don’t think that police could have done much. Candace was part of the FBI. Maybe if we had been quicker on our toes, noticed the connections faster, acted rapidly, Aria would still be here. But what happened had happened and no matter what I could have done, I didn’t do.

Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve.

Notes

The End.