"Who are you?"
Andreya gasped and lurched up in complete blackness—no, not blackness. Nothing.
She was panicked. Distraught. Horrified. Something clutched at her chest—her own hand? She did not know, but she remembered pain.
She did not know why.
The nothingness warped like a dizzying moment and the same voice as before spoke again, wrong in every familiar way.
"Who are you?"
Death.
She stared at it as if it held something... a memory?... an offer?... She accepted it, whatever it was—
—and everything came back.
There was a brilliant palace filled with lots of people, lots of faces. Two figures, she didn't know who. But a young man cradled her in his arms, saying her name between broken sobs and cursing himself, the world, the cruel hand of Death—whatever it was that had taken her away.
She wanted to go back. The more she remembered, the more it hurt, the more she felt, the more she regretted.
"Reide!" she called to his memory, pulled apart at the seams of her nonexistent form. But that was all it was now. All it could ever be, now that she was here, and not there.
A memory.
Death recognized her will to live like a hound dog to a scent and each and every image around her vanished in the blink of an eye, the tick of a clock, the snap of the wind. A love of life, a need for more, a desperation for an ideal that she could no longer reach—distinctly human traits.
"Andreya Katradiya Marivatan," it said.
She stared out at the nothingness, disbelieving. Her name from a foreign voice, her life at the hand of Death. She was not turned away now, as she had been so many times before.
Now she wanted to go back, and because of that, she could not.
"You are dead."
With those final words, Death granted Andreya all she had asked for and stole all she had loved.
──── xxx ────
Heyyyy! So this is the end (it's so sappy, I know, I know). Thank you so much for sticking through with Andreya and Reide until the very last! You guys are so wonderful and I'm so thankful for you. Anyway, that's all, folks! Best of luck if you're in the ONC and I'd love to see what you've got! ❤️
Final wordcount: 35k :)
STAI LEGGENDO
The Duchess Cannot Sleep || ONC 2021
FantasyDuchess Andreya Marivatan was murdered at the age of twenty-two. It was during the hours the pool of night was deepest, Andreya soundlessly asleep in silk sheets behind the curtains of her elegant canopy bed. By the time she awoke to a noise, the de...
