Chapter 2:The Dying Pact
1088 Words
Elena’s POV
I scraped at the wet earth with my numb fingers, each breath a mouthful of glass because of my crushed ribs, the sound of an engine running nearby gave me enough strength to keep going. I broke through a bramble and found a black sedan crumpled against an oak tree, smoke rising from under the hood as a woman’s soft, pained moaning reached me from the smashed window. I staggered towards the car and peered in, and saw a woman trapped behind the wheel whose face was a crisper, more aristocratic version of mine.
"Are you… a ghost?" she breathed, her voice like leaves in the wind.
"I'm... as close to death as you are, but I have to help you," I said, reaching in, but her grip was too strong and she clutched my wrist and shook her head while blood soaked her silk blouse.
"Never mind--I can’t feel my legs, and my time is running out, but you need to listen because fate brought us together for a reason," she wheezed as she withdrew a leather wallet from the glove compartment. She told me that she was named Seraphina Thorne, and that her stepmother, Evelyn, had locked her away in an asylum for fifteen years to steal her life.
"I spent my youth in a padded room while my half-sister Sarah lived my life and squandered my inheritance," she said, her voice trembling with a fury that rivaled my own.
"Wait, did you just say Sara?” I stammered, my heart skipping a beat.
“Yes Sarah Thorne, why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
Because my husband just pushed me off a bridge so he could marry a woman named Sarah, a shipping heiress,” I said, and it dawned on us both quickly.
“So she’s ripping us both off,” Seraphina whispered with a bitter smile on her lips, “she wants my money and she took your husband to go get it, but we cannot let her win, Elena.”
“How? I’m a nobody with nothing,” I said, staring at her high-end jewelry with my dirty hands.
Take my life,” she said with conviction, placing the wallet in my hand. “Take my ID and go back as Seraphina Thorne, because I haven’t shown my face in fifteen years, and that’s why they won’t want to see me.”
"I'm not her twin, Marcus will know as soon as he sees me.” I argued
"They think I’m a lunatic, so any changes will be blamed on trauma, and as for your face... you’ll have to change it,” she said, just as the headlights sliced through the trees and two men were tumbling through underbrush.
"Seraphina! Oh god, we're here!” a woman screamed, coming to the window.
“ Uncle Silas... Aunt Catherine... you’re just in time to save the Thorne name,” Seraphina gasped, staring at the man behind me.
“Who is this woman, Seraphina?” Silas said, his voice low and wary.
“Seraphina is my shadow, Uncle, and she’s the one who’s going to help you bring down Evelyn and Sarah,” Seraphina said, coughing blood. “Silas, listen to me, I’m not going to make it but this woman has been double-crossed by the very people we despise.”
"Do you want us to go out of our way for some random person?" Catherine asked, her eyes wide with terror.
"She is the new Seraphina," the dying girl insisted. “Uncle, take her to a private hospital and make her face like mine, give her the scars we gave me in that institution so she could never be called a liar.”
Silas met my gaze, his eyes roving over my form as he calculated the value of the risk.
“If we do this there’s no turning back, you’ll have to vanish entirely, Elena,” he told me.
“I’ve already vanished, my husband made sure of that,” I said, meeting his gaze.
“Just give me the means to kill Marcus and Sarah, and I will do anything.”
“Good,” Silas said, as he took the wallet and put it up. “Catherine, get her to the car and hide her somewhere invisible.
"What about the car? What about you? ” Catherine cried, as she gazed at her niece.
“Burn it,” Seraphina breathed as our eyes locked one last time. “Put on me Elena's dress... let the bookshop girl pass away in the accident... and let the world know that the actual Seraphina lived through it.”
I was standing there in a daze as Catherine helped me change out of my muddy red dress into a spare silk robe, observing Silas as he shifted Seraphina's body into the driver's seat and laid my damaged garments across her.
"I'm sorry," I breathed, and she inclined her head ever so slightly before it dropped forward.
Silas lit a match and threw it onto the backseat that was soaked in gasoline, the car igniting in a ball of fire that turned the rain into steam.
"Move, now," Silas ordered as he hauled me in the direction of their vehicle and sirens grew louder behind us.
While we drove away, I glanced in the side mirror at a woman I’d never known, aware Silas was already plotting the operation that would erase Elena Ross forever.
"You will have to learn every habit and every memory she ever had, and the pain of the surgery will be nothing compared to what I'll put you through for training," Silas said.
“I don’t care how much it hurts,” I told him, holding the robe. "I just want to be there when they find out that the woman they tried to kill is taking their kingdom away."
"You have the right spirit for a Thorne," Catherine said softly.
" But be wary Evelyn is a viper and she will grasp at any chance to send you back to that asylum."
"Let her," I said, a frigid determination settling in my gut.
"She thinks she’s dealing with a broken girl, but she’s about to find out that a woman with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous thing in the world."
The car sped into the night, and I knew the next time I saw Marcus, I wouldn't be the wife who begged for his love, I would be the heiress who watched him burn
- Writer
