Chapter 9: Escaping

Immediately as the sun set and night fell upon the land, Ave, who had been pretending to be asleep, snapped her eyes open. She hurriedly climbed down from the bed and began preparing for her escape.

She'd dismissed Lydia early so she could put her plan into motion without causing the maid to doubt her intentions. Before the sun had set, she'd asked Lydia to take her around the Dooming Palace for a walk so she could strategize her escape route. To her delight, she'd found the perfect place to leave the palace without any of the guards knowing.

If there was another thing Ave was good at in the modern world, it was sneaking out without anyone noticing.

She quickly took off her sleeping robe and put on a chemise instead of a complete dress. There was no way she'd be able to run comfortably in one of those princess dresses with tight corsets that had almost knocked the life out of her that morning when Lydia tightened it around her waist.

The sky looked cloudy with no moon in sight, so she'd need a lamp or torch to make her escape. At this moment, the room was dark as Lydia had turned off all the lamps on her way out, and Ave was using her instincts to locate whatever she needed.

She picked up the lamp and wondered how on earth she was going to turn it on now. They don't possibly use lighters or matchboxes in this era, do they?

She should have asked Lydia to leave the damn lights on, but she'd been so eager to get the maid out of the room. However, Ave wasn't going to allow the lack of light to unmotivate her now that she'd figured out everything.

She picked up the lamp, put on her shoes, and quietly left the room. Right outside the chamber in the hallway, many lamps hung on the walls. She looked around cautiously before she switched one of the lamps with the one in her hand.

'I hope none of those guards at the entrance is still awake or else I'll be doomed for sure,' Ave thought as she walked quietly to the double doors of the palace. To her relief, the guards were no where in sight and the entrance door was as quiet as a graveyard at night.

It seemed even the heavens were on her side tonight, Ave thought delightfully.

Once she was outside the building, Ave was welcomed by a gust of cold wind that sent an ominous cold shiver down her spine.

'Damn, it's cold!' she thought as she ignored the cold and began to run for the fence area where she'd seen a good spot to climb over and leave the palace premises. Nothing was going to stop her tonight, not the cold, nor anything!

Swiftly, Ave crossed over the fence and smirked in satisfaction. Good thing she was a fit woman in her era, a woman who'd gone through intense training to fit a stunt double.

The moment she landed on the other side of the fence, Ave was met with a vast land and then a dense forest area on her right.

According to the map she'd taken hours to study and understand, the forest area would be a shortcut to the village. Without hesitation, she dashed towards the forest, running without stopping to think of what she might encounter in such a dense place.

"Home, here I come!"

After about thirty minutes of walking in the dense, quiet forest, Ave realized she was...lost!

It seemed she'd been walking around the same place or was everything the same here? She couldn't have followed the wrong direction.

Looking down at the map, she couldn't seem to understand anything about the forest anymore.

The tall trees loomed over her, their branches like skeletal arms reaching out in the darkness, made her swallow hard. The only sounds she could hear were the crunch of leaves she was stepping on and the occasional rustle from the wind.

And then suddenly she heard a weird cry from the distance. A cry that made her heart drop to her stomach and made her still.

That couldn't have been an animal's cry, could it? Oh no, she hadn't thought about wild animals when she'd dashed into the forest like it was her father's house!

Should she just go back to the palace and plan her escape when it was bright in the day?

No!

Her heart pounded in her throat as she decided to continue on her plan to escape. The cold seeped into her bones, and fear began to creep in as the weird cry seemed to be coming towards her direction from the distance and she could hear the leaves rustling from the direction.

Ave began to back away quickly from whatever was coming towards her in the forest.

She didn't come all this way just to run back now because she was scared. Going back would mean accepting a fate that wasn't hers, and moving forward meant fighting to live, to go back home and face whatever danger lays in this forest.

The thought of facing that psycho prince was enough to motivate her not to go back to the palace. And the fact that Lydia had told her that they would be attending a royal dinner tommorow and being around the rest of the royals, made Ave more than determined to leave before she'd meet another person who'd strangle her again.

She looked around the dense forest, trying to keep her breath steady and to see what was coming in her direction.

The shadows seemed to dance around her, and the darkness felt alive, pressing in on her from all sides. Every snap of the twig or rustle of leaves made her jump.

Something moved ahead, and Ave raised her lamp, her hand shaking to see what it was. She could barely make out the shadows but whatever it was, it was huge.

"This is just like a horror movie," she muttered to herself, trying to muster some courage. "And what have we learned from horror movies? Don't wait to see what it is—run for your fucking life!"

And she did, sprinting through the forest as fast as she could. But too bad, something had to caught her leg, and she went falling. Before she could stop her fall, she hit the ground with a strong impact that knocked the life out of her and made the lamp fly away to the opposite direction.

When she woke up again, she wasn't in the forest nor was she in the palace...she was... Where is this place? Was she back in her era?!