Blind Beauty

Blind Beauty | 23

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Chapter Veintitrés

 

Arlette could’ve had stayed at the palace—let things take their own accord. She could’ve had also fought the constant yanking in her soul telling her to go look for him. But she just couldn’t. She couldn’t let Fate do this to her. Not now. Yet Fate knew she would do this. She would look for him—look for him until she found him. And she didn’t regret coming here. As crazy as it seemed, if she had to do this again, she would, without a thought. Because...because she couldn’t let him die. She just couldn’t.

Hearing Simone’s voice, she felt thorns clinging to her body, every word she uttered out weighted by a dark, painful heaviness. She laughed and Arlette came to a halt. Arlette felt strange. Horribly strange. Not the fact that her body was feeling hot and cold and like she had pins studded all over her all at once, but the fact that the darkness she was used to seeing was not total darkness anymore. A faded light flickered across her vision. Her heart thumped madly, eagerly. What?  Was it what she thought it was? But as soon as it came, it disappeared...and...and everything was just a blurry light. Arlette rubbed her eyes, feeling funny, and every time her hand ran over her eyes, the blurry lights and spots she was seeing were no longer blurry. Instead, she saw just about everything around her.

 

Arlette gasped in horror and astonishment. Just as described, the Dark Forest was indeed dark. Sculpted black and terrifying. Arlette rubbed her eyes feverishly once again, not believing what she was seeing. She blinked, letting her eyes run quickly through the whole forest. Her mind couldn’t wrap around this. At all.

 

She must had been going insane. But everything looked so crude, so real.

 She didn't like it.

The ashy, black trees were tall enough to reach the sky and the branches were thick enough to cover it, giving her a nauseating, frightening feeling. Everything was just so sickly dark, Arlette could feel things watching—lurking on her. She looked down at her feet, glancing at the hard ground that followed a path deep inside the forest. She looked hard at it—at its sickening cracks and its dull color. Arlette was going crazy. She must have. This couldn’t be happening. Running her hand down her face, Arlette touched a dark, thorny bush nearby, her finger quickly feeling a stinging sensation.

 

Next thing she knew, droplets of red liquid oozed out of her and to the ground. “Blood,” she whispered, astonished, knowing the smell more than anything else she knew.

 

Suddenly Arlette heard footsteps gain up on her, making her turn around sharply.

 

“Arlette.” The frame before her said. It was Simone. Arlette looked at her, feeling overwhelmed by everything. She frowned, cocking her head and looking at Simone curiously. Simone was wearing a dark purple dress that screamed her name. Her bare arms were pale and filled with dark wisps embedded to her skin that began at her forearm and stopped at her knuckles. She was graceful but unnerving. Her plump lips were also a very dark purple...