The young woman, who looked no more than eighteen, sat at the far end of the chamber on a rocker, her legs pulled up on the chair and her bent knees drawn to her chest. Her off-white nightdress was covering her pulled-up knees, her head buried between them as she rocked the chair back and forth, a creaking sound resounding in the silent room. Her blonde hair poured down her back in waves and around her shoulders.
She was hurting, but no one wanted to hear her out. She was in pain, but no one cared about her own pain. She was treated unfairly because she was a woman. Nobody blad the person who had hurt her, nobody pointed a finger at this person, but her. Everybody shad her for sothing she hadn’t initiated. How dare them all?
How could they all turn on her like that?
The chair continued to rock as the feeling of injustice swelled in her chest like an unbearable weight. She wanted to yell and burn down everything around her, burn down the world and everybody to ash until they could see how unfair everything was.
She wished to set fire to it all, kill them all, and then end herself. She wanted it all to end. Those were the thoughts in her mind—exactly what she wanted to happen.
She stopped rocking the chair back and forth at the creaking sound of the door. Then, almost slowly, she lifted her head from her knees and looked towards the door, and then she froze, eyes staring unblinkingly.
As hurt and in pain as she was, her hazel eyes were set with no trace of tears, but they held bitterness and resentnt as they landed on the person who had entered through the door of the room that had been locked for days now to keep her in here. Her fingers fisted around her nightdress, and hate consud her at the sight of the person.
"Good evening, Isabelle. How have you been doing?" ca the mock-concerned voice of the person that only made the hate and anger swell all the more in her chest. His blue eyes looked into hers, and his blonde hair fell ssily around his handso face—a face she had thought she would never get enough of and would love to wake up to every morning, a face that she had fallen in love with at first sight. But now that sa face was what she hated the most and wished to destroy.
How dare he co into her chamber after what he had done to her life?!
"Your mother told you are not eating and you grumble at night again?" the man said as he closed the door behind him and walked forward, hands tucked casually in his pockets. "You will get yourself sent to the madhouse if you continue like this, my love. Accept the fact that you’re at fault, and we can resu our life and look forward to our marriage like nothing has happened." A smile pulled at his face as he held out his hand to her, and that smile was the last straw of her restraint.
"I will kill you!" she gritted as she lunged at him like an arrow shot from a bow. It was with so much speed that even the man standing there didn’t see it coming.
Everything happened so quickly, too quickly for her to realize what had happened to lead to it. All she knew was that she couldn’t breathe.
Smoke consud the room, curling around her, and every breath she took drew the thick smoke into her lungs. Not just that—her skin was burning as flas ate away at everything around her. She gasped for breath and scread for soone to help her, to get her out. She pounded against the locked door to escape the flas, her screams turning hoarse and almost animal-like when no one ca to help her.
How had she gotten into this place? How could she be burning in flas inside her own room? She scread a na that was drowned out by the roaring flas.
Belle gasped awake, breathing hard, her heart slamming so forcefully against her ribs she could hear the drum of it in her head. She belatedly realized she was trembling, and at the sa ti, she felt hot all over her body. She blindly reached for the jug of water she rembered keeping on the nightstand last night after she had finished eating.
She gulped down the entire water in the jug before she began to feel the heat subside inside her and her heartbeat becoming steady again. It had been so long since she had been this shaken by a nightmare. The last ti anything had shaken her like this was when she used to get haunted by the scene of her childhood attack, which she had now outlived and overco.
How could it feel so real and yet unreal? Belle wondered as she dreadfully looked around her and realized it was still late in the night, the room dim with the only light being a single candle on the stand where the wax had lted to the edge, almost exhausted.
Light rain could be heard tapping against the roof, and the fireplace had burned out with only glowing coal in the place. She heard the distant rumbling of thunder and lightning flashing in through the closed windows. She shivered, trying to take in her surroundings and assure herself that what she had just experienced was a terrible nightmare and that it couldn’t have been real.
She turned to her side, seeking desperately for the warmth of her husband, but she was disappointed to find that he hadn’t co to bed. However, her disappointnt did not last when her eyes fell on a set of adorable dark eyes staring at her in the dim room and a small body crawling towards her to sit on her lap.
Her husband wasn’t there, but her son was, and Belle reached out and pulled him into her arms, hugging his little body to her chest, desperately seeking any comfort. She breathed in his baby scent, and she was delighted when Angel held her back, and soon everything began to clear away—the fear and anger she had felt in her sleep, everything evaporating like sand in the wind.
Belle hugged her son for a while longer before she moved back and looked down at the baby, who was now staring at her with what looked like a question in his dark, round eyes. His baby hand was still holding on to the front of her dress, and he was standing on her lap so his face was on the sa level as hers, or at least almost on the sa level, as he hadn’t grown any taller yet.
"It’s nothing, son. It was just a nightmare. I am fine." She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his chubby, smooth cheek. "How did you get here? Did papa bring you to while I was asleep?" she questioned, feeling that holding the boy made her feel much better, and she smiled when he nodded his head at her question.
"Popo..." he said—it was his way of trying to say papa.
"Where is Papa?" she asked, playfully nuzzling his soft tummy with her nose to assure him she was all right so that the frown could drop from his baby face that made him look older. He laughed and giggled, pushing at her head frantically with small hands, his face turning boyish again.
"Popo..." he said when she stopped nuzzling him, and then he pointed out as if to tell her his papa was not around and was out.
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