It was from my husband, the man I had always trusted, the man I loved all my life.
He leaned back, his expressions dimmed.
"Can you just die peacefully?! I don't even love you anyway. I never did. If not for our plan I wouldn't sleep in the same room as you. You disgust me!"
I wanted to laugh. Why do this fucker think I still cared? I'm dying and there's no bigger feelings in my heart than wanting to kill them. The hatred overflowing over my limp body made me feel like I wanna die.
Love? Why did I even believe in that kind of nonsense at the first place?
My throat closed like a fist.
"That's right! He never loved anyone aside from me," Margarette finished for him.
Heat flared in my chest, bright and blind. My hands, which had once fought in an endless war, trembled.
The room spun with the their betrayal, the milk I drank before I slept thinking it was out of pure concern, the thought I had when he held it to me like I was the luckiest girl in the world, the act of pure trust I gave them all my life.
All of those disgusted me. It filled me with emotion even hatred cannot begin to describe.
I thought of all the men and women I had ordered executed. I thought about the look on the lieutenants' faces when the rope was tightened. I wanted to imagine it was them. I never wanted to forget, I never wanted to forgive.
The ceiling above me blurred. Their victorious laughter echoed as I lay limp unable to respond faded into distance.
I mustered all the last remaining strength I had to flip them off.
All I had left was a single thought insid e my head. Sharp and terrible.
If I was to die, I would die remembering their faces. I would die knowing I never got to get back on their betrayal. That they actually succeeded in their plan. I would take the memory of their betrayal like a blade and hold it up until my last breath.
I wanted to remember how pathetic I was.
My entire body went cold and my consciousness slowly drifted away.
Cold?
When I opened my eyes again, I was surrounded by water. I was drowning, water filled my lungs. I struggled to breath until I felt a cold marble in my hand that I can hold unto. I was inside a very strange room, it was cold. The thing I was in was made of material like porcelain in the shape of a tub. The room was small and covered in tile.
A bath tub? A sensed of familiarity flowed inside my mind. Why do I feel like I knew this place so well?
My hand lifted. It was small. It looked foreign. A thin, pale scar marked my inner wrist. The line caught the light that illuminates from the small window.
But why? I'm pretty sure I died inside my bedroom. I'm sure it wasn't a dream.
Even the hatred is still burning inside me.
I sat up too fast and the world reeled. My head was thick with a shame that was not mine and all the memories were too loud.
Allesha Seres, the name flash inside my head.
A discarded wife. She was tormented. Manipulated and cheated on. The shard of memory that followed was enough to make my blood boil: a lover's laugh in a doorway, a man who is my husband with a woman that is not me clinging on him, a friend whose betrayal shoved me to death and a husband who got pushed around by her every word if not hitting me with his own hand.
I touched the thin scar. A tremor ran through my body, it was not fear. It was anger.
Pathetic. Why would you kill yourself because of that? You were alive when you found out? You might as well kill them.
I hated how similar our situation is, I hated how different we responded.
I hated that it was me who had to die. Someone who would give anything just to be alive and get my revenge to soothe the anger inside of me.
Allesha, you've been really pathetic. It's making me angry.
But it's not your fault. It's those people who drove you to make that pathetic decision.
I swung my legs over the tub and stood on feet in the cold marbled floor, my clothes soaked and dripped. The bathroom unlike in my previous world smelled of detergent , a smell both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I stepped outside. The room was smaller than my palace but still carried the same elegance welcomed me, the water dripping from me leaving traces in the tiled floor. I walked aimlessly inside the room and then I stopped.
A cracked photograph on the wall showed a woman's arm around a man, one wearing a white gown and the man wearing a suit and tie. Both flashing a genuine smile. She was familiar of that, they had the same set of painting when they got married.
I remembered everything in flashes: the poisoned milk, the way my husband's hand had been colder than it should be, Margarette's sinister smile catching the moonlight like a blade.
I remembered the final moment—how I had wanted to make them pay, how the last thing I'd seen was their hands joined and my life slipping away.
Now, in this borrowed body, the rage that had been hammered into me in that bedroom returned like a living thing.
The anger never subsided.
"Allesha," I said aloud to the empty room, my eyes fixed at her smile on the photograph. The name tasted different on my tongue than Esther. But I should get use to it. After all, I am Allesha now.
"I will make you suffer," I said to the face of the man in the photograph, almost warping into my husbands face and to the memory of her best friend playing her.
"I will make them kneel and beg for forgiveness." I didn't even notice but the tears of anger streamed down my face and I wiped it with the back of my hand.
I pressed my thumb into the thin white line on my wrist, it didn't hurt, the wound had miraculously healed but the water in the tub still stained of blood.
You will never beg again, Allesha. I will make sure it will be their turn to cry.
Fate had made a mistake by letting me live twice. I intended to make sure someone will pay for their betrayal. I don't care if it's not them.
My hatred need it's direction.
After all—what else did I have to lose?