When vengeance strikes in the form of a bullet out for the princess's blood, Princess Aleia VonAuclair must flee the heart of her country in order to protect the people she loves and take back the pieces of her soul she'd lost to the girl she once l...
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I needed air. I needed space. The walls were closing in on me by the minute and I just needed...I needed...
My feet stumbled down a brightly lit hallway. I didn't know where I was going - if I was even going in the right direction, if there even was a right direction - but I just needed to go somewhere. Anywhere but here, where I was a prisoner trapped between these four walls.
I gasped for air, but oxygen failed to enter my lungs. It suffocated me from the inside out and the pressure crushed my chest like an industrial hydraulic press. I was still coherent, still lucid but it was only matter of time before I wasn't.
I blindly followed a row of doors and hazy framed photos before I spotted a glass door farther down the hall.
My heart lurched in my throat, and I clambered towards it, desperate for it. The panic attack lurking around the corner was beginning to sink its fangs into my blood - I could feel it. They were little but razor-sharp claws underneath my throat.
Heat shot through my veins, disrupted seconds later by a cold flash. The temperature in the room dropped. All I felt was the bitter chill.
I just needed to reach that door. If I reached that door, I could breathe. And that was all I needed. To breathe.
My palms slammed the doors wide open, and a wave of fresh, chilly night air crashed over me. I squeezed my eyes shut and relished in the slight nip on my skin, on my flushed cheeks and my trembling hands.
The grip in my throat loosened, the pressure building in my lungs dropped and it felt like I could finally breathe again.
It was like I'd escaped prison just to find myself standing in the middle of an open, cloudless night sky. My sock-clad feet stumbled over to the icy railings with a frantic desperation.
My heart drummed erratically inside my chest; a caged animal determined to be set free from its confines. I forced a swallow through the knot in my throat and took deep, calming breaths.
I'm okay. You're okay. It's okay.
I'm okay. You're okay. It's okay.
I took one more deep breath, and exhaled through my mouth, the shallow gasps of air slowly shifting back into a steady rhythm. I shut my eyes tight again and just breathed.
Faint howls of the wind rustled against a cacophony of falling leaves. The distant honks of cars and screeches of tires punctuated the quiet of the early night.
The cold railing bit against the pads of my fingers, the chilly breeze blowing kisses over my flushed cheeks.
The dry crispness of the autumn night air traced the columns of my throat as I tried for another inhale, and with each one, they seemed to be getting easier and easier.
My heart, while still erratic in my chest, slowed to a distant thrum and when I finally felt like I wasn't tipping over the edge of an unknown cliff, I took a step back.
