She heard the book collide with the floor, but her mind went somewhere else and her eyes glazed over. The room went deathly quiet and she could only hear the sound of her heartbeat. Questions piled upon questions and the only answer she could extract from her thoughts was vague and unclear. She sat up and began to tap her foot on the floor to create noise and distract her thirst for the answer. She had learned from a young age that the truth sometimes did more harm than good. Like when she had tried to figure out why her mom left or why her foster father was less than "nice." They all resulted in unwanted truths, excessive nightmares, and added to her drinking problem. She knew that the facts yielded a truth that ended up being more than a mere coincidence, but she labeled the strange happenings as a coincidence. Her declining health was caused by the truth, and she wasn't ready to face this truth. So she did as she had always done, she grabbed a bottle of beer to drown her thoughts and clear her head. She drank until her throat stung a bright red and she stopped feeling pain, fear, and sadness. Her eyes blurred and her surroundings became dark. She was disoriented and could barely move, but she managed to climb onto the couch. Bile rose up her throat and her breath became ragged; only the sounds of choking could be heard in her smoke filled apartment.
***
Like many fairytales, this one begins with a beautiful woman locked away in a tower. She had long black hair and crimson eyes that shone like jewels. She always wore pure white dresses and smiled while she gazed longingly out of the window for freedom. She talked to birds and sang while patiently waiting for her prince charming like the damsel in distress she was. There were only a few differences. One: the woman was pregnant. Two: she was confined to a manor. Three: she was confined in the manor of a man who was supposed to be her prince charming. Rather than a prince charming, he was an evil duke that captured her to conduct an experiment. The results of the experiment would be the child she was carrying in her womb. Her eyes had already lost their shine from months of captivity and she had lost her will to live with each passing day. 'I have to give birth to the child of a monster,' she thought while silently crying. She was strong and she knew that, but love had weakened her. The duke made sweet promises and captured her into a web made of lies, but she was a fool for believing him and willingly following him. Only when she saw his other face, did she finally see that she was in love with a lie, but by then, it was too late. She pulled at the chain tied around her leg that obstructed her mana and rendered her useless, then smiled bitterly. She stroked her bulging belly and clenched her fist. "I should have never left the Forbidden Forest."
In a futile attempt to escape, she knelt on the floor and tore at the carpet till her fingers bled. Even when her hands were covered in blisters and bruises, she continued to scratch at the carpet.. Finally pieces of the carpet fell off and she tore until she caught sight of a slip of paper. She grabbed it and lifted it into the air. After unfolding it, she ran her fingers along the edges of the paper and laughed in triumph. It was a teleportation scroll back to her home country and her ticket to freedom. Her mother had gifted it to her before she left her life behind and everyone she knew. 'It's ironic,' she thought while playing with her hair; she had said that she would never go back, but now the opposite was occurring. When she was about to tear the paper to teleport back, she suddenly felt liquid trickle down her leg. Then she felt a sharp pang. Her breath quickened and her heart began to race; she was going into labor.
The duke was cruel and couldn't even have spared a single wet nurse for the expecting mother, so the woman had to give birth to a child alone in a cold and dark room with a single window. The woman instinctively knew that the Duke had left her and her unborn child to die. They were an afterthought to the Duke who was busy playing and spoiling his beloved first daughter with tainted blood. Her child would have pure blood and yet it was treated with contempt before it even left the womb and saw its first light. There was only one life that the unloved child of a duke could live; it would spend every waking hour praying that they would have a tomorrow or even an hour left to live, every waking moment would be spent waiting to be used in a political marriage, thrown away, or be used then thrown away. With a grunt, she made her way to the bed, opened her legs, and began to push. She began to scream, but no one heard her voice from the abandoned manor. After hours of screaming, her eyes were bloodshot and her voice had disappeared, and with one final push, the soft cries of a baby could be heard. As she held her baby in her arms, she whispered sweet lullabies and smiled into the baby's crimson eyes that resembled hers. "My sweet daughter," she whispered. "I shall name you Kritana."