Grimm Fantasies: Cinder Princess

Burn

This chapter may be a bit confusing but it's written this way to sort of emphasize the shakiness of this part in Ashley's life...Yeah...Anyway it's broken up into three parts it goes the beginning of the chapter, then jumps to the end of the chapter and then back to the middle. Hope that helps when you read it.

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  Ashley was up in her room when all hell broke loose down stairs. She saw the cars pull up the drive way and knew they were home.

   "Don't go down there." The maid Suzy said with an air of urgency as she caught Ashley by the arm. Ashley frowned and opened her mouth to ask why but was cut off when her father shouted her name from down stairs. Suzy slowly let go of Ashley's arm. "Be careful, and run."

   Her father and step mother were there, along with her step sisters and Mara, all of them wearing black hunting gear, anger in their eyes.

   She was in trouble...

   Ashley ran through the forest panting and stumbling, leaving a trail of blood as she went.

   It burned.

   Everything burned.

   It hurt.

   She had to keep going, keep running. The anger in her father's eyes burned in the back of her mind just as fiercely as her wounds did now. The words the maid had said to her egged her on as she tripped over some over growth, finding a tree to grasp a hold of and propelled herself forward. It seemed as if the forest around her were shaping itself to help her. It bent and shifted almost as if it moved to her commands.

   She heard the sounds of her pursuers. The shouts and hollers from the people she called family.

   Family.

   The word was foreign to her in more ways than one. Everything she knew, or thought she knew was falling apart around her; revealing the darker side of things. Her rose colored glasses had been forcibly yanked from her, leaving her feeling abandoned and alone.

   She felt betrayed and it hurt. Her family scared her but they'd always protected her. But now...Now things were bleak.

   She couldn't believe it, how could they lie to her, how could they smile while holding a knife to her throat?

   She couldn't believe it.

   It hurt.

   Ashley stumbled and tripped through the forest the underbrush was surprisingly hard to trek through but the people she'd called family all these years didn't seem to be getting any closer. She didn't want them to get closer; she didn't want them to catch her. She feared what they'd do to her.

   Thoughts of them putting her in a tiny cage like they did with that girl that turned into a wolf, thoughts of the horrors that would await her if they got their hands on her clouded her mind. The things they'd done to her in just the small amount of time moments ago were just a preview of what was to come if they caught her; Ashley was sure of that.

   The bleeding welts and burns on her exposed skin stung with each movement, but still Ashley pressed on. Adrenaline pumped through her veins pushing her ever forward away from the evil that followed. Her ripped clothing became ever more ragged as she ripped her way past thorn bushes and low hanging branches, as she ducked and jumped over any obstacle that came her way.

  Ashley was so wound up in her own thoughts and blinking back the tears of pain that threatened to break free that she hadn't noticed the sudden silence from her pursuers. She was so lost in the clouds of her mind that she didn't notice the suddenly dark shift in the forest, the sudden rise in temperature or the wind picking up.