Finale

While dying, the strangest of thoughts crossed Arabella's mind. She thought of everything and nothing.

She thought of her childhood pet. She thought of late nights reading in her room. She thought of her father's funeral. Random and disconnected memories followed her as she floated towards unconsciousness. She became weightless and inconsequential. Yet, among the blurred noise of her disconnected memories was one thing that prevailed.

Olivia and Layton must be worrying about her at this moment.

Since their father died when Arabella was 14, it had since only been the three of them together. They were never a normal family, far from it. They never got along like a normal family would either, but it was unspoken that they only had one another in this world. Her half-siblings were the closest thing she had to guardians. She was spoilt, bratty, and difficult. Yet, they never abandoned her. Even if they would go weeks without interaction, eat their meals separately, and argue, they were still family. And they were the only people who believed her wholeheartedly when she was accused of poisoning Alistair.

It meant everything to her back then. It still did.

She missed them. So much so that the thought of them brought her greater pain than the rope around her neck.

Her mind flashed back to nights standing barefoot against the filthy damp stone of the jail and looking longingly at the sliver of moonlight that barely grazed her frostbitten fingertips as she reached out. She relied upon 'what ifs' to open her eyes every day in her cell. All the things she would have done differently, all the things she would have said...

Arabella didn't want to die. She wasn't ready. She had barely lived. Her death meant nothing.

But her time was closing in. Each moment felt like centuries as she felt herself slip away.

That was what she remembered thinking in her final moments... So why was it that she was still standing?

A harsh lightning strike barely pulled the girl out of her stupor. She was facing a large floor-to-ceiling window in wide-eyed disbelief. The heavy battering of rain filled the room with overwhelming white noise. This was her bedroom. Not her prison cell and definitely not the gallows. She hadn't seen this place in a year and yet, somehow, she was standing surrounded by all her old comforts. A far cry from the leaking, rat-infested cell. Maybe she was dead or dreaming...

Slowly, Arabella raised a delicate touch to her neck and was filled with instant doubt. Her neck seemed fine. But the sensation of the rope scratching at her throat and her desperate gasps for oxygen were too vivid. It was all so strange. She remembered her own death so clearly, each lingering second was imprinted in her mind. Each and every second.

Again, thunderstruck, illuminating the room in stark white light. A sharp breath escaped Arabella's lips as she was once more dragged forcefully out of her trance and thrown back into the present moment.

"A dream...?" The words left her throat softly and without strain. Did she feel... energised? No that wasn't the right word for it. She felt the slight lull of exhaustion from waking up, her mind slightly warped from the darkness of her room. She felt alive. Natural sensations that she had before seen as inconveniences before learning what extreme exhaustion and cold felt like in her cell.

When had she fallen asleep? There was no other explanation for this but a long and painful nightmare. One that seemed to last for years. It was certainly a bad omen of some kind. Arabella sighed, resting her head against the cool glass window, letting the sounds of rain wash out the troublesome

thought in her mind. It soothed her.

It was pitch black. Just how long had she been asleep? It would be best for her to not get so worked up over nothing. Her feet padded across the plush carpet of her room and she buried herself deep in the soft blankets of her large bed. For a long while, she just lay there, hugging a pillow to her chest. Listening to the rain, she let herself rest easy for what felt like the first time in a while without the burden of her thoughts.

Everything was fine...

Until come morning, she had spared one glance at her reflection in clear daylight.