Warm liquid covered my skin.
Before I could understand why, cold air struck me, and my body tightened on instinct. My chest burned as I drew my first breath, then a sharp cry tore from my mouth.
I went still.
The sound had come from me, but it was not my voice.
I forced my eyes open. Bright light flooded my vision, broken by blurred figures moving above me. Someone supported my head while another person wiped my body with a cloth.
I tried to ask where I was, but all that came out was another cry.
A woman nearby said my lungs were strong.
My lungs?
The room slowly came into focus. White clothing, masks, gloves, machines beside a bed, and the unmistakable clean smell of a hospital.
My thoughts were clear, but my body felt wrong. My arms barely moved, my fingers were impossibly small, and I could not hold up my own head.
Then I remembered.
I had died.
The memory returned in fragments. The locked room, the silence, my trembling hands, and the terrible certainty that no one would come until it was too late.
There should have been nothing after that, yet a nurse was carrying me across a hospital room.
I looked down at the tiny arms pressed against my chest and finally understood what my mind had been refusing to accept.
I was a baby.
The nurse placed me against the chest of a woman lying on the bed. Her face was exhausted and wet with tears, but the moment she looked at me, she smiled.
“My beautiful girl,” she whispered, drawing me closer.
The words struck harder than the cold air had.
Beautiful.
No one had ever called me that without cruelty following soon after.
A man stood beside the bed, holding the woman’s hand. He leaned closer and welcomed me in a voice thick with emotion, his fingers hovering above my head before he touched me with careful tenderness.
They were strangers, yet I already understood who they were.
My parents.
My new parents.
The truth settled over me so completely that I forgot to struggle.
Reincarnation was real.
I had died, and somehow, I had been born again.
A laugh rose inside me, but my new body turned it into another cry.
My mother adjusted her hold at once, and a nurse suggested that I might be hungry.
No, I wanted to say. I have just discovered that death is not the end. Hunger can wait.
I opened my mouth, but another helpless sound escaped.
Being a baby was going to be difficult.
My mind still belonged to the person I had been, but my body reduced every thought to crying. Confusion became crying. Fear became crying. Protest became crying.
At least I had not been reborn into my previous family.
The thought brought more relief than it should have. Had reincarnation returned me to the same parents, I might have believed that death itself possessed a cruel sense of humour.
For one terrible moment, I imagined opening my eyes and seeing my first mother staring down at me with the same disappointment she had worn throughout my childhood.
No. Once had been enough.
The woman holding me continued speaking softly. She told me I was safe and that they had waited a long time for me. The man beside her stroked my head with such care that my body gradually relaxed.
I wanted to believe them, but wanting to believe anyone frightened me.
Trust had never ended well for me.
Julian had made certain of that.
His face returned with painful clarity.
Before him, I had never known what it felt like to be chosen. My family had money, influence, and a name that opened every door in Auremont, but none of it had protected me from the people inside our home.
My parents were ashamed of my appearance. They kept me away from balls, dinners, charity events, and almost every occasion where someone might ask why their third daughter looked so different from the other two.
My sisters stood beside them in photographs while I remained at home. Sometimes people were told I was ill. Others were allowed to believe my parents had only two daughters.
I grew up in a house large enough to get lost in, yet there was nowhere inside it where I felt wanted.
My sisters never defended me. They had learned from our parents that I was the one person they could hurt without consequence. They reminded me often that no one would ever love me.
Then Julian appeared and proved them wrong.
Or so I believed.
He listened when I spoke. He asked about the books I read and the places I wanted to visit. He looked at me without disgust and touched me without shame.
For the first time, I thought someone had seen me rather than the face everyone else hated.
I gave him my trust, and then I gave him my heart.
By the time I learned that he had approached me because of a bet, I had already given him more than I could take back.
His friends had wanted to know whether he could make the ugly, hidden daughter fall in love with him. I had been a challenge, something for them to laugh about once the game ended.
I still remembered the moment I heard him speaking to them.
He laughed about me as though I had been foolish for believing his lies. He made our relationship sound like a private joke that had gone on too long, and when they mocked him for being with me, he did nothing to stop them.
He knew what my family had done to me. He knew how difficult it had been for me to believe anyone could want me.
He used that knowledge to earn my trust, then left me alone with the humiliation.
Julian had not created the pain that destroyed me. My family had spent years building it. He had simply delivered the final blow.
I had reached the end of a life in which everyone treated my existence like a burden, and I had been too broken to imagine anything changing.
So I ended it.
A nurse leaned closer and commented on my hair. My mother touched the damp strands against my head, her tired smile widening.
It was white.
That surprised me, though perhaps nothing should have surprised me anymore.
A new family. A new body. A new face.
I wondered what I would look like when I grew older, then stopped myself.
Beauty had controlled too much of my first life. It had decided which daughter was celebrated and which one was hidden. It had allowed people to treat cruelty as though it were reasonable.
I would not let it define me again.
If I grew into a beautiful woman, I would accept it, but I would never believe it was the reason I deserved love.
My new mother drew me closer. Her heartbeat filled my ear, steady and warm, while exhaustion began to pull at my small body.
I did not know why I had been given another life. I did not know whether it was mercy, chance, or something I would never understand.
What I did know was that I remembered everything.
I remembered every insult I had accepted in silence, every event from which I had been excluded, and every time I had lowered my head because defending myself seemed pointless.
I remembered Julian and the way I had allowed his betrayal to confirm everything my family had taught me about myself.
The girl I had been was dead. I could mourn her, but I would not become her again.
My fingers closed weakly against my mother’s skin.
In this life, I would not wait for someone else to decide that I mattered.
I would not beg for affection.
I would not remain silent while others treated me as though I had no value.
Most of all, I would never again be the weak girl everyone believed they could step over.
