"How miserable," Abella heard a ringing voice. She felt as though she was floating in the darkness, and the poison no longer hurt. "You were poisoned by the one person who's love you yearned so desperately for. Alright, I've made my decision. You. Abella Rose Silverstein - I have chosen you. You will live again and again; repeat your life again and again; until you are finally happy in life. So go now, achieve what you want, do what your heart desires, and find a way to be happy. Only then may you rest in the peaceful blissfulness of death."

After the voice finished speaking, the floating sensation Abella had felt stopped and she suddenly felt as though she was being sucked backwards, and then everything went white. Soon, her eyes jolted wide awake, and she was standing in front of the door to Duke Silverstein's office.

"Come in," his voice was as cold and stoic as it was two years ago, and just as firm and disdainful. In Abella’s past life, she bowed down to his every wish and desperately vied for his attention and love. Not anymore. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. Swinging open the double doors, Abella vowed silently to herself that she would not be so quiet and obedient as she had been in her first life.

“Father,” she said, a bold, brazen tone to her voice that seemed unfitting of such a petite and weak looking girl. But all her courage slipped away as Duke Silverstein looked up from his work with an icy glare.

“What is the meaning of this, Abella? Noble ladies such as yourself do not speak in such a vulgar manner, nor do they burst into rooms with such ungracefulness. How insolent,” he snapped. Abella felt less and less courageous by the second, but gulped and opened her mouth again. “I should punish your nanny for teaching you so poorly!”

A cold, sharp silence filled Duke Silverstein’s office for a long moment, Abella frozen under the heavy, icy glare of her Father. She couldn’t bring herself to speak, and Duke Silverstein didn’t speak either. Abella jolted as her Father sighed deeply, before opening his mouth to speak.

“I will make this short and get straight to the point; I'm very busy right now. You are to marry the Crown Prince." Duke Silverstein’s words were the exact same as Abella remembered from her first life. It was as if he was set to say those exact words.

“No!” Abella yelled loudly, her exclaim followed by silence. The misery and pain she had felt at the Imperial Palace during her first life flooded back into her memories, breaking through her fear. The amount of embarrassment and tormenting she had gone through was far worse than anything she could possibly go through at the Silverstein estate. None of her siblings’ crude remarks and comments or maids’ rude gossip about her could ever be as painful as the harshness she had been put through at the Imperial Palace. “I refuse to go to the Imperial Palace, Father!”

Duke Silverstein's stoic face creased in a frown, the exact same face he had made in Abella’s first life, followed by the words she remembered all too well. "Remember, Abella, you don't have an opinion in this. You will become the Crown Prince's fiancée."

“No!” Abella yelled louder, even though she was already shaking in fear under Duke Silverstein’s intensely dissatisfied glare. “I won’t go! I won’t, not now not ever!”

“Fine then.” Abella was surprised at the Duke’s words. He had given her what she wanted? Abella snuck a peak back at the Duke, only to see him completely uninterested in her and busy doing his work once again. “Now get out. I’m a busy man.”

Maybe my first life was all a misunderstanding. Father- he wouldn’t poison me. The maids were perhaps blaming him—maids can’t be trusted! Their words were lies! Abella thought hopefully, a small feeling of triumph spreading through her warmly.

“Thank you, Father.” Abella curtsied respectfully to her Father and left with a skip in her step, humming happily.

~~~

Abella woke up with a start. Why was her bed moving? Why was everything so shaky? Opening her eyes, she looked around. She was in a carriage! But where was she going? A deep feeling of dread built up inside her – was she being kidnapped? In a hurry, Abella ran to the window of the carriage and looked out. She was met with the view of tall, dark trees that lined an earth path, seeming as though she was in the middle of nowhere. Dread was replaced with fear in Abella’s heart as possible situations raced through her mind. Perhaps she was being led far off to be murdered and then dumped in the wild so no one would ever find her body. Perhaps she was being taken to another kingdom to be sold off as a slave. Perhaps she was being taken to a temple to be sacrificed to the gods. She tried opening the carriage doors, only to find them locked firmly. That just made her fear grow. All her obscure ideas were making her more and more afraid until she started banging on the window of the carriage and screaming loudly, “help! Help! Someone, please! If anyone’s there, please save me!”

Despite how hopeless it felt, Abella kept yelling with the thought that ‘perhaps someone would hear me and come save me’. But her desperate cries and screams were met with nothingness and utter silence. Her throat hoarse and pained, she could no longer scream or cry or yell, and she merely sat down on the seat, quietly sobbing.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the carriage stopped. Feeling the abrupt pause in motion, Abella stood up cautiously and peaked out the window. Suddenly, the door was yanked open from the outside and Abella tumbled out of the carriage onto the ground. She found her chance and opened her mouth to scream for help once again, but before she could, someone covered her mouth with a gag and forced her to stand up. Glancing to see who her kidnapper was, Abella was shocked to see that it was some maids from the Duke’s estate.

“Finally we’ve arrived. I was going crazy from her ear-piercing screams,” one maid tutted with irritation, glaring at Abella.

“Urgh, she’s a filthy mess! Like a scumbag. She’s just like her mother – a dirty peasant who managed to crawl into the bed of a noble! How despicable! I’m sure her only daughter would be exactly the same!” the other snapped. As soon as the maid brought up her mother, Abella became incredibly angry. She hadn’t really loved her mother, or at least she thought so, but she was still furious nonetheless. Kicking away the maid that restrained her, Abella punched the maid who had spoken vulgar words about her mother, fire burning in her eyes. The maid screamed loudly, but Abella grew angrier and leapt on top of the maid, punching her in the fact repeatedly. By the time the other maid got up and dragged Abella off the maid, the maid’s face was all bruised, swollen, and bleeding.

“What a violent wrench! Is she even a noble? How dare you!” the maid who had dragged Abella off slapped her across the face sharply. “I can’t believe someone like her was given the golden opportunity to marry the Crown Prince, and then acted like some wild beast!”

That day was the day that Abella realised that she ended up in the Imperial Palace. Under Duke Silverstein’s threats and glares, Abella was forced to live the same way she had in her past life. As a spy to the Duke, but no longer by free will. The two other maids who had brought Abella to the Imperial Palace also spied for the Duke, but on Abella to make sure she never did anything sneaky or tried to escape. And so, four years flashed before her eyes, fours years of the same torments and pain and bullying that she had tried to desperately to avoid, except worse. Even the two maids openly bullied Abella, and when other nobles saw this, they too began to mock her.

The Crown Prince and the Emperor acted as cold and frosty towards her as ever, and she hardly saw them. Finally, when she could no longer take it anymore, Abella climbed off the edge of her room’s balcony and jumped off.

That was how her second life of misery ended.