AVELINE’S POV
“What the fuck am I doing here?” I asked myself while I looked around, touching my own arms and pinching the skin on my wrist hard enough to hurt, not believing I was actually still alive.
I was meant to be dead, but here I am, standing in the same forest that ruined me, and made me become an outcast and I eventually killed myself. I could still feel the rush from the aphrodisiac drugs running through my veins, Someone had put something in my wine. I didn’t know that the first time I died, but reliving the same moment again, I could feel what I never felt back then due to my adrenaline, I could taste it, the bitter sweet taste I felt burning in my throat. I closed my eyes, and listened to the sound to know if the bandits were still following me.
“Okay they’re not here yet.” I spoke to myself, while thinking of another way to escape from the forest. I walked into the forest, still calm that I was alone, and I could strategize more.
Snap…
I paused in my track, immediately I heard the snap of a twig which could only be caused by a foot.
“Who’s there?” I asked, getting scared and anxious. I waited nervously for an answer, but got nothing in return. Before I could calm down, I heard the footsteps of people, like they were running.
“Fuck they’ve found me..” I didn’t need any soothsayer to tell me to run, before I started running. I ran as my legs could carry me, internally praying for them not to catch up with me. I could hear their voices, and I knew they were already catching up with me.
While running, I slipped on a branch and twisted my ankle.
“Fuckk!!! Fuck!!! Fuckk!! No not now.. come on Aveline try getting up you need to survive.” I screamed at myself, while trying to get up, but the pain was so bad that I had to sit down.
I couldn’t give up now, I was given a second chance to make things right. I couldn’t let go like that.
I stood up again, and felt this sudden rush of adrenaline. I tried to run again, but was stopped by a hand on my arm.
"Where do you think you are going, sexy?" said the man grabbing me.
I did not even need to see who it was to know who he was. When I turned my head to see him, four more men came out from the bushes behind him.
The touch from the guy holding me, sent sparks to my pussy, and I knew the drugs were already taking control.
They were looking at me as if I were their prey, and I could not stop wondering what had happened to me that led me to this state I was in.
Hours earlier at supper, my family had toasted to my engagement like it meant something to them. My father raised his glass first, and my mother smiled the only way she knew how to in front of the guests. My elder brother didn’t even bother looking up from his plate. I remembered thinking back then, that maybe this time would be different since I was finally getting married to the crown prince, but they still didn’t acknowledge me.
Someone slipped something into my cup between meals, and I only realized it once I was already stumbling through these trees, and being chased by men I had never seen before in my life while wanting to stop and sleep with all of them.
Last time, I ran for the cliff at the end of the trail. I remembered the wind pulling my hair straight back, and the ground disappearing under my feet, right before I jumped. At least this way, nobody can call me ruined and a shame, for allowing the men to have their way with me.
My adrenaline didn’t make me feel the pain from breaking my leg on the rocks below after I fell. I crawled home through the dark with blood soaking through my dress, expecting them to run to me, and try to help me clean my wound and freshen up, but that was just my imagination.
What came after was worse than dying. My father looked at me like I was a taboo, and wouldn’t even come near my bed. My mother cried, but she wasn’t crying because I was injured, she was crying because of what people would say about our family name once word got out. My own brother wouldn’t look at me at all, not once, not even when I called his name from across the room.
They told me a ruined girl was worse than a dead one. I remember lying there for days, my leg wrapped and useless, listening to my mother whisper to the servants that I should be kept quiet, and hidden, kept out of sight until the scandal passed. She never once asked if I was in pain. She never once asked if I was scared. All she cared about was who might find out, and what it would cost the family name if they did.
My father visited my room just once during those weeks. He stood in the doorway, never entered my room, like I was a taint to his image. He told me I had shamed us all and then he left, and never came back.
After enough days of hearing that, I believed it. I believed them all, even though a part of me knew I wasn’t what they called me. I started to imagine if killing myself would be better than living in this nightmare.
I walked to the stable one evening, and found a rope which I used in ending my life in the dark, while the rest of the house slept without a single thought for me.
That was how my first life ended. But I’m not doing that again.
A hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, in a rough and tight grip, enough to bruise.
My legs staggered from the wine, and I couldn’t help but feel wet. I couldn’t even scream properly the first time, my voice coming out thin and useless.
But something else was awake in me this time too, I was ready to survive and change my destiny. So when his fingers dug into my skin, I didn’t freeze the way I did before. I twisted free, harder than my body should have let me, and I ran.
But I didn’t run towards the cliff, rather I ran in the opposite direction, there was an old chapel further up the ridge. I remembered a groundskeeper talking about it once, years ago, back when I still had the patience to listen to his stories.
He said it had been empty so long that even the birds gave up nesting there. I didn’t know if I could find it in the dark, I didn’t know if it would even help me once I did. I just knew I needed to run.
My lungs burned from the cold air, sharp enough to hurt going in and out. Behind me, boots crashed through the snow, closer with every breath I dragged into my chest.
My heart was slamming so hard it actually hurt, like it might crack one of my ribs from the inside. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Stopping meant going back to exactly what I had already lived through once.
The trees seemed to go on forever, and my arms aching from pushing branches out of my face. More than once my foot caught on a root and I nearly went down hard into the snow, catching myself at the last second with hands that were already numb from the cold.
I thought about my old life more than once in those seconds. I thought about my father’s face.
Somewhere behind me, one of the men shouted at the others to spread out. Another voice laughed, low and ugly, carrying easily through the still night air. The sound of it crawled up my spine and pushed my legs faster, even as my lungs screamed at me to stop, even as my chest burned with every ragged breath I forced into it.
I didn’t stop.
Then, through the black trees, I finally saw it. Half a roof caved in on one side. Relief hit me so fast my knees nearly gave out again from exhaustion.
I didn’t slow down, rather I threw myself through that door with both arms out in front of me, praying for anything at all except more of the men chasing me.
Before I fell, a hand caught my arm.
My eyes widened, and I couldn’t help the fear that went through my mind.
“Leave me please!!…. Somebody help m…” I screamed my lungs out, but was cut off by a hand on my mouth.
