Chapter Two

Aria's POV (in Jasmine's Body)

I slept on a gold, warm-lit bed and the soft sound of crystal. My lids fought to rise above a ceiling bearing sparkling chandeliers and furniture that had gold adorning them hanging from above. I remained still for a short while, trying to soak in the lavish surroundings. A pounding headache pounded at the rear of my head, and I was relieved to find that my skin was unburned…though my mind remembered the fires that had consumed my former life. The feelings were alien and synthetic, as though I'd been rebuilt in someone else's body.

I yawned, and this odd looseness in my arms. The warmth of the fire had given way to numb ache, reminding me that even if I were rescued, something essential had changed. My head wobbled as I struggled to piece together answers: Which room was this? Where was I? The softness of the bed and muffled rustle of silk drapes testified to decadence and luxury.. just the reverse of the stark realities I'd known.

"Jasmine?" a soft, uncertain voice called from my right.

I turned slowly and saw a girl my age standing nearby. Her face was a study of conflicting emotions—a mixture of disappointment and relief that seemed to flicker across her features. "You're awake?" she repeated, stepping closer as if to confirm my presence.

My throat was parched and had a high, thin whisper only instead of words when I tried to speak. "Where… am I?" I stuttered, my voice trembling with confusion and necessity for answers.

Her glassy, distant eyes had been scrunched up in shock now. "Jasmine, you're home," she ventured, tilting her head to the side as if folding up her memory for something to base her words on. "Don't you remember?" She had been speaking quietly, but adamantly and not to be refuted. And then, as if to protect herself from her uncertainty, she went on, "You won't remember everything, but you'll have it sorted out."

A chill knot in my stomach. "Jasmine" resonated in my mind, and yet all was dreadfully amiss. I recalled the flames, the agony, the pride of dying. And yet I was here, alive and in a room refuge and gilded cage. A tiny, shaking thought burst into my mind: If this woman believes I am Jasmine, then I am leading another's existence. I could hear my heart thudding within me because I had realized the miraculous fact that I was confined within Jasmine's body. Mine was reduced to ashes in the fire, and now I was confined within someone else's body, not mine.

The girl's gaze slanted by an inch when she glanced at me as if sensing the difference immediately after it occurred. "You. You're different," she stuttered, her voice accusatory.

I took a deep breath, trying my best to be calm amidst the turmoil raging inside me. "I just felt. Different," I admitted in a soft tone. "Tell me what happened before that. I mean, before waking up like this?

Her eyes smoldered cold, and for the first time, I felt the full force of her voice. "It was idiotic, Jasmine," she told me, her tone chastisement tinged with despair and resignation. "We were lucky that nobody ever found out quite how many sleeping pills you'd taken. Mother lost her mind, screaming—and Amy. Well, Amy was upset. She said that you disgraced our entire family.".

Each word struck me like boulders by the ton. Overdose? Shame? They were facts of a life I'd otherwise remember, and they seemed as distant as words from another world. "Amy—your sister, isn't she?" I stuttered, looking for a spark of reality in her eyes.

The girl's face was fixed in an expression of dismay, and then resignation. "Yes," she asserted, her voice shaking and harsh. "But maybe it would be better if you didn't know all of this yet. Some things would hurt more than they would heal." There was a verbal fierceness to what she was about to say, a warning that I was on thin ice.

I clenched a half-smile, starved for human contact in this other person's world. "Thanks for dropping by," I growled, the words as untruthful as they were to the panicked questions racing through my mind.

Her voice faltered then, cold, imperious as a necessity. "All right, Jasmine," she addressed me with that transition name which wrapped around my own like a garroter's cord. "You're my best friend, and you see, you have to know there is no other. You must wed Adam. There is no other." Her eyes glinted with unshed tears, and anger and relief blended. "You frightened us all so appallingly."

I was hit with a rush of terror and guilt. "I. I'm sorry," I stuttered, my tone not nearly hard enough that I had to speak the apology phrases that I so desperately wanted to say.

Her own eyes became less tolerant. "Sorry won't wipe out the pain, Jasmine. Adam is ruined—and he has every right. Do you have any idea of the shame you've brought to this family?" Her words hung in the air like a verdict, unshifting and judgmental.

I covered my face in my hands, the total of what I was trying to fight flooding down around me like a landslide. I did not remember being Jasmine, or that final desperate gesture that set this sense of disconnection from myself into motion. "I paused, never meant." I began, but the words hung in the air.

"No, you didn't," she swore with venom. "We're lucky, in fact lucky, that he's still going ahead with the wedding." The "wedding" just hung there, weighing over me, full of unspoken threats, and I shrank back from its threat. I wanted to know more of Adam—and of this wedding, what this wedding was. My question-crazed brain ran wild: Who was he? What was it that dominated us all?

Before I was able to utter another word, the girl glanced over her shoulder, her brow furrowed as if remembering another command. "Recall it, Jasmine," she snarled in a frosty, low voice, "another mistake and I will not be so forgiving. You will not shame us again." Her voice had no softness in it, and all I could do was remain silent, resignation and fear coursing through my body.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, she went on, "Amy will speak to you shortly. Pay careful attention to what she has to say." And with that, turned and vanished, leaving me alone in the lavish room—a room now that seemed more akin to a gilded cage.

I breathed deeply, attempting to shake my head into reality from the whirlpool of identity, obligation, and terror. And the subsequent silence afterward that recalled with it a breathy, remembered remnant of what we were. "Don't let them break you, Jasmine. You've always been a fighter." It hurt and comforted me—a memory of what I was, or what I remained to be somehow, in some hidden core of self.

I fought on against the other fog of despair and tried to sit up and see. The room was an expensive education in contrast: beautiful porcelain vases on the mantel, and black velvet drapes which concealed secrets cast into shadow. All a promise of a life I am now to lead—a life not built of me, but one which I can still take by choice.

No sooner had I prepared myself to begin studying all this when I heard the door slowly open? There was this younger girl, seventeen years old, who entered with a look of authority and suspicion chiseled on her face. Her face was as pale as possible and chiseled into a hard expression of interest as she gazed at me. "You're not kidding," she said contemptuously, with unspoken scorn in her voice.

"Amy?" I crept slowly, the name familiar but perilous.

She growled in agreement, arms crossed over her chest in a hug-as-if-hugging the formidable tempest. "My mother taught me to be 'tender' to you," she told him with a voice that was laced with ironic sarcasm flavored with sinister warning. "Or let me make one thing clear once and for all: should ever again you attempt anything like this duplicity if you so stupidly risk what is due you…you will not be so lucky the next time."

I swallowed hard, the danger descending over my chest like an anvil burden. "I—I won't," I promised, though the entire me quivered with uncertainty. She smiled faintly, her face somewhat repulsed, and went on, "Good. If ever you reject Adam, I'll make certain you never glance back and repent the cost. You made us all culpable, Jasmine. That will trouble you."

I was unable to utter a word until the giant door creaked open again to let in a man who seemed to fill the room space around him. Muscular and commanding, his unrelenting stare swept across the length of my whole self. I shuddered as he strode towards me.

### Instruction:

I could hardly whisper, "Adam?" the name on my lips quivering.

He smiled—a cold, controlled curl of the lips that did nothing whatever to melt the frost between us. "Jasmine. Again," he went on, his voice softened and untinged with a trace of warmth. Every step he took had in it a sense of authority, and I knew that insolence would ere long have its reckoning.

He descended with me slowly, never once lifting his eyes from my face. "Your tiny lie has awakened more than a whisper," he began, his tone a blend of ice-cold and contained fury. "Do you know the tempest you've let loose?

I forced the bulge in my throat down, struggling to be heard. "I—I didn't mean to hurt anyone," I stuttered, every sentence hanging in mid-air as a weak protest against his unrelenting stare.

He lifted an eyebrow, his acid eyes. "Didn't mean to?" he parroted back, sarcasm dripping from the words. "My fiancée attempts suicide to escape from me, and you think that was an accident?" His laughter was not amusing, the sound echoing back off the rich paneled walls like a threat of what was to come.

Desperation coursed through me, and determination was gathering. "I…I was desperate," I said, my voice unable to conceal the storm that stormed inside me. It was one of the reasons that in another universe would have been sufficient. But here, within Jasmine's universe, it could only make imperative what I was meant to feel and what I felt apart.

Desperate, too," he laughed in contempt. "Jasmine, you don't have to explain desperation. You are to be my wife—whether you like it or not." His tone was hard, resonating with the dark promise of an irreversible fate.

My breast was battered with agony as I comprehended the extent of my torment. "I know," I gasped, every syllable a victory over fate. His closeness was suffocating, and his words cut the air like a proclamation.

"You'd do well to be thankful," he scolded, angling forward in his chair so that his frigid stare grew even more intense point-blank focus on mine. "I would have departed on the first whiff of your disobedience. If not for the honor of your line. Let this be made clear unequivocally in your mind: if you shame me or mine again, there will be consequences infinitely worse than your most fancied terrors."