The Truth
1247 Words
Eva closed the door behind her.
The moment she entered her room, the noise of the mansion disappeared.
Her room was dark, the curtains drawn tightly over the windows. Only a faint beam of moonlight slipped through the gap in the curtains and fell across the large mirror standing against the wall.
Eva walked toward it slowly.
She sat before the mirror and stared at her reflection.
For a long time, she said nothing.
Her face looked pale. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but there was something different in them now.
Something cold.
Something almost frightening.
“Prince Robert…”
She whispered his name.
“So you suspect me.”
A faint smile appeared on her lips.
She had believed that staying away from the capital for an entire year would make her innocent in everyone's eyes. She had thought that no one would ever connect her to what had happened.
After all, she had been in the village when her family died.
She had been far away.
She had an illness as an explanation.
She was supposed to be the grieving daughter.
The innocent survivor.
But Prince Robert was looking too closely.
Eva's smile disappeared.
“How dare you suspect me?”
Her fingers tightened against the edge of the table.
She stared at her reflection.
“Everyone always believed I was too innocent to hurt anyone.”
Then she laughed.
At first, it was quiet.
Then louder.
“But the truth is… you were never looking at the real Eva.”
Her reflection seemed to change before her eyes.
And suddenly, memories came rushing back.
Not memories from the past year.
Memories from dreams.
Dreams that had haunted her for years.
For the past two or three years, Eva had repeatedly dreamed of another life.
A life that felt impossible.
Yet every dream had been painfully real.
She had seen what would happen to her younger brother, Kevin.
In those dreams, her stepmother slowly pushed him away from his studies. He was denied the future he had dreamed of and eventually dragged into gambling and addiction.
The boy who had once entered the Imperial Academy with dreams of becoming someone important was reduced to a broken young man.
And then he died.
He was only eighteen.
Eva had seen his bruised body in her dreams.
His hands.
His legs.
His broken spirit.
She had screamed every time she saw it.
But the nightmares never stopped.
Then came the dreams about herself.
She saw the truth about her engagement to Ethan.
The engagement had never been born from love.
It had been arranged between two powerful families long before Eva and Ethan were old enough to understand what marriage meant.
And Ethan had never truly loved her.
In her dreams, Eva discovered that his heart belonged to her stepsister.
The gentle, respectable man everyone admired was not the man he appeared to be.
He humiliated Eva.
He treated her as though she were nothing.
Eventually, he brought her stepsister into his life as though she were his true wife while Eva was pushed aside.
Then the rumors began.
People in the capital whispered that Eva was immoral.
That she was shameless.
That she was a disgrace.
Her reputation was destroyed.
And the worst part was that her own family did nothing to protect her.
Her father, Martin Watson, the man everyone praised as a noble and honorable minister, had been hiding another face.
In Eva's dreams, she saw the things he had done.
The corruption.
The cruelty.
The people he had destroyed to protect his position.
And then she saw her mother.
Her mother had never simply died from illness.
She had been alive.
Eva saw her being taken away.
She saw her trapped inside a coffin while she was still breathing.
Alive.
Terrified.
Begging for someone to save her.
But no one came.
Eva's mother was buried alive.
The truth had been hidden from her for years.
And then came Eva's own downfall.
After everything that happened with Ethan, her family abandoned her completely.
Her father refused to take her back.
She was thrown out.
The woman who had once lived in a beautiful mansion became someone with nowhere to go.
She wandered from place to place until she eventually reached the temple.
There, she met Father Grey.
She had believed he was different.
She believed he was kind.
She believed that perhaps, after losing everything, she had finally found someone who would protect her.
But Father Grey betrayed her trust too.
He took advantage of her innocence.
He hurt her in ways she could never forget.
And eventually, Eva became nothing more than a shell of the person she had once been.
A living corpse.
Until one day, she could take no more.
In the final dream, Eva saw herself standing at the edge of a mountain.
The wind was violently blowing through her hair.
There was no one coming to save her.
No family.
No fiancé.
No friend.
No one.
She stepped forward.
And jumped.
Eva's eyes slowly opened.
She was back in front of the mirror.
Her breathing was calm.
A strange smile returned to her lips.
She finally understood why those nightmares had followed her for years.
They were not meaningless dreams.
They were warnings.
Fragments of a future she had somehow been allowed to see.
And now she had changed that future.
She had already destroyed the people who would destroy her.
But there were still many names left.
Her stepsister.
Ethan.
Those who had spread lies about her.
Those who had betrayed her.
And even members of her mother's family.
Eva remembered how powerful her maternal family had once been.
They had influence throughout the capital.
But in her dreams, she had seen how the Eldest Prince had eventually moved against them.
Their entire family had been executed.
They had begged for mercy.
They had asked the King to listen.
But their voices had never reached him.
The Crown's silence had condemned them.
Eva remembered every face.
Every betrayal.
Every person who had stood by and watched her life fall apart.
Even her own friend, Marcella, had betrayed her.
Eva had spent her entire life searching for love.
And every time she trusted someone, they used that trust against her.
She slowly stood before the mirror.
Her reflection stared back at her.
Beautiful.
Calm.
Completely different from the frightened girl everyone believed her to be.
“I finally understand.”
Eva touched the mirror with her fingertips.
“You all thought you could decide my fate.”
Her eyes became cold.
“You thought I would remain helpless.”
A quiet laugh escaped her lips.
“But you were wrong.”
She turned away from the mirror.
“No one will destroy me again.”
Eva walked toward the window and pulled the curtains open.
The capital glittered beneath the night sky.
Somewhere in that city were the people responsible for her suffering.
Some of them were powerful.
Some were respected.
Some were protected by the Crown.
But Eva no longer cared.
She had already survived the worst version of her future.
Now she had only one purpose.
Revenge.
And this time, she would make sure that no one escaped the consequences of what they had done to her.
The innocent Eva was gone.
What remained was a woman who knew exactly what the future could take from her.
And she would never allow it to happen again.
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