Prologue
When does someone's life end?
There are many moments when a person thinks ok, my life is over now, I for one thought about it several times.
I thought about it the day my father came home with his new wife.
I thought so when he enrolled me in the all-girls boarding school.
I thought so when I came back from Russia for the first and last time.
I thought so when he told me that I was going to marry someone I didn't even know.
But in none of those times has my life really ended. Or rather, a new one began that I couldn't understand, that I couldn't see, not until I really lived it.
All those times I said that, I never felt what I felt at that moment. The moment I died.
The moment I saw him held on the ground, stuck watching as that beast pounced on me and threw me to the ground, ripping my clothes off and getting rid of his.
Fear, real fear, is what made the difference.
That fear that grips your guts and prevents you from even breathing, your lungs tremble and your heartbeat is so fast that you can hear it in your ears, so loud that it muffles any other sound around you.
Real fear is the one that gets adrenaline pumping through your veins, giving you the strength to do something you would never have done before.
And it was like that with me.
He gave me the strength to grab the vase and smash it on his head. Nothing was more beautiful than watching the pottery shatter and cut through the skin of that beast. His cries of pain as the blood dripped copiously down his cheek and then wet my pure white dress.
That dress was so beautiful, my heart sank when I saw it for the first time and now it was stained.
Fear had given me the strength to react and perhaps it had always been fear that had pushed the beast to attack me again.
But it wasn't fear I'd felt when he'd slammed me to the ground the first time, it'd not been fear I'd felt when he'd grabbed me by the neck and slammed me to the ground a second time.
I hadn't felt it when I had heard an unmistakable crack and not even when an excruciating pain had clouded my vision.
It wasn't fear that I felt every time my head hit the hard floor, every time the air disappeared from my lungs, it wasn't fear.
Not when my vision had clouded and I had finally found myself in my field of flowers. Not when I was finally free.
The only thing I felt was a bit of regret, regret for not having had more time with him.
But time was over for me and now I was free.
