A bad pain was hurting my chest. It felt cold. It was very painful. My chest was hurting much from this cold pain.
The first thing I felt was pain. It was a sharp pain that made it hard to breathe. It felt like someone had taken my heart and squeezed it tight in their hand.
So this was death.
I remembered everything clearly: the way people betrayed me the way I fell the darkness that surrounded me completely. I had closed my eyes I was sure that was the end of everything, for me the darkness of the betrayal and the fall were all that I could think of.
Then something strange happened. I heard voices. The voices were really loud and clear. I mean I actually heard the voices.
"Your Majesty," a voice said, "the bride has awakened."
Bride?
I took a breath in. Then I sat up really fast.
Silk sheets slipped through my fingers. The candlelight was flickering against the stone walls. The air had a smell that was of weird. It was like incense and something else that was metallic, like blood. Silk sheets and candlelight and that smell of incense and blood were all mixed together, in that moment.
This was not a hospital. This was not my world.
My vision. Then I just froze. I was really frozen, in place my vision was clear now.
I was sitting on a bed with red fabric all over it. My hands were thin and pale. They did not look like my hands. When I looked down at myself I saw that my body was wrapped in a dress with silver patterns on it. The dress was really fancy with threads all over it. My body in that dress looked really strange, to me.
A wedding dress.
My heart was beating fast. No this is not possible. My heart was. I thought to myself my heart is pounding this is just not possible.
The big doors of the room slowly opened with a noise. I did not have time to think about what was happening. The doors made a sound as they moved. The room was called the chamber. The heavy doors of the chamber creaked open.
Footsteps echoed. They were slow and deliberate. The footsteps were also really calm which was terrifying. The footsteps sounded calm.
Something inside of me said that this was not right. Every instinct in my body screamed that there was danger. I just knew that something bad was going to happen. Every instinct in my body was telling me to be careful that there was danger, around me.
A tall man walked into the room. The man was very tall. He stepped inside slowly.
The man had hair that hung down over his shoulders. His eyes were cold and sharp. They looked really mean. They locked onto me. He was wearing armor for some kind of ceremony. It was a little dirty with blood, on it. It looked like he had just been fighting in a war. When our eyes met I stopped breathing for a second.
I knew that person I am talking about him the man I knew.
I had never seen him before. I knew that face right away. It was a face I remembered the face of the man I was thinking about that face was really familiar, to me.
King Kaelthar.
The cursed king. The villain of the novel.
The man in this story was going to do a thing to his wife. He was going to kill her on the night they got married. This is what the story says about the man and his wife on their wedding night. The wedding night is supposed to be a time, for the man and his wife but in this story the man is going to execute his wife.
I felt really scared. My blood ran cold when that happened. The thing that happened was very frightening, to me. My blood ran cold.
This wasn't just another world .
I had been reborn into the very fantasy novel I read before I died.. To make things worse I was not the main girl in the story. I was actually a part of the fantasy novel I loved reading. I was not the heroine. The fantasy novel I had been reborn into was the one I read over and again, before my death.
I was Seraphina Valenwood, the queen that everybody loved to hate. People thought I was a bad person, especially the king. He wanted me dead and it seemed like my time was running out. I was supposed to die before the sun came up.
King Kaelthar stopped a steps away from the bed. He looked at it with a lot of disgust. His eyes were really sharp. It was clear he did not like what he saw. King Kaelthar just stood there looking at the bed with that disgusted look, on his face.
He said to me "So you are awake now." He did not sound happy. His voice was really cold when he said "you finally wake up".
His voice was low and dangerous, devoid of warmth.
I swallowed hard I made my hands stop shaking much. My hands were shaking really badly. I forced them to be still. I did not want my hands to keep shaking like that so I made them stop.
In the story Seraphina did something crazy on her wedding night. She poisoned herself so that people would feel sorry, for her.. The king was not fooled by Seraphinas trick. He knew what Seraphina was trying to do. So the king ordered that Seraphina should be executed.
Was this the moment?
I tried to speak. My throat felt really dry. I said "Your Majesty"
The man just laughed at that idea. He really scoffed.
He told me to stop pretending. This marriage was something the council made me do. I want to make it clear that you will not get anything out of this marriage. The council is the one who made me marry you so do not think that you will benefit from it.
My mind was really racing. I could feel my thoughts going around in circles. I just could not seem to slow down my mind. My mind kept on racing.
If I do what the story says I will die tonight. The original plot says this is the night I die. I am supposed to die tonight if I follow the plot.
Execution by sword. No second chances.
I held my fists tight under the blankets.
No.
I had already died once. I was not going to die not when someone else was trying to decide what happens to me in their story. The thought of being a character who is doomed because of something someone else wrote is just really scary. I was determined that I would not let that happen to me that I would make sure the story of my life is mine to tell, not someone Story where I am just a character and I am doomed from the start.
King Kaelthar turned his head a little to the side. His voice was really cold.
The man told me that at dawn I will go to the tower. I should hope that I behave myself until that time. He said this to me. It sounded very serious. The eastern tower is where I will be going at dawn.
The eastern tower.
In the novel that was the place where Seraphina was put in prison before something terrible happened to Seraphina. Seraphina was killed.
My heart was beating fast. It was like it was going to jump out of my chest. My heart thundered with every beat.
This was the moment. The moment when everything changed completely. The moment everything diverged from what was normal.
I lifted my head. Looked right at him. Something the original Seraphina never had the courage to do. I said "I will not die quietly". My voice was shaking. It was firm. I was talking about my death and I meant what I said about not dying quietly the original Seraphina would have probably been too scared to say that.
The king stopped what he was doing. Just stood there for a moment. He was the king all and the king had a lot to think about. The king was thinking deeply.
The man turned around to face me again. He looked really surprised. He made his eyes smaller like he was trying to figure something out. The man turned back, to me slowly.
What did you just say? I did not quite hear what you said. Can you please say that again?
I had to make myself breathe.
"If you want to kill me" I said, "then please let me show you that I am not that woman. I want to prove that I am not the woman you think I am. Let me have a chance to show you the me, the woman I really am."
The room was really quiet. There was no sound all. Silence filled the chamber. It was still that you could hear nothing.
For the time the man saw something in his eyes that was not hatred or anger but interest in the conversation. The interest, in his eyes was something it was not the hatred or the anger that the man was used to seeing it was interest.
He said "prove it" in a quiet voice.
He stepped closer, to me. I felt really small because he was so much taller. The man was huge. His presence was really overwhelming. He was standing over me and that made me feel weird. The mans presence was overwhelming.
King Kaelthar said this to me in a voice but it was really scary. He told me I have three days to do what he wants. If I fail King Kaelthar will end my life himself.
The door slammed shut behind him. He heard the sound of the door slamming shut behind him the door that he had just walked through and now the door was closed. The door was shut tight it was really shut the door was not open all.
I fell back, onto the bed. My heart was racing really fast.
Three days.
I have three days to change the way my life is going. These three days are all I have to survive the king who wants to kill me. The king is really going to kill me. I was looking up at the ceiling. My hands were shaking really badly.
"This time," I whispered, "I will rewrite the story."