Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 231: Back to the future

Ave opened her eyes. She blinked a few times to get her eyes to adjust to her brightened surroundings. She narrowed her eyes slightly when she was met with a white, familiar yet unfamiliar ceiling.

At first, she was confused when she looked around her surroundings; there was no door nor a window. Everything was white. Looking down, she realized she was lying on an invisible bed. She knew this place, Ave thought as she pushed herself away from the invisible bed and stood to her feet. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

She’d been here before, but why was she here again? She had mistaken it for heaven the first time she was here, and now she knew better than to call it that. She looked down at her arm where she had been injured and was surprised to find her skin smooth with nothing. Her hair was red. The last time she was here, it had been blonde. One moment she was with Lucian, and then everything turned blank. The next moment, she found herself here. Why?

What was she doing here? Why was she here again? The last time she had been plunged into this strange white place had been when she first came to the past and was trying to escape back to her time. Wait, could it be that she was here because her time in the past was over? Just because she belonged in the past didn’t mean something couldn’t happen that would take her back to the future again. This white place could be a transitioning passage to the past and future, just like in movies.

With those thoughts in mind, a wave of panic overwhelmed Ave so much that she could hardly think as she began to run around the white room.

"Hello?!" she called out as she recalled the last time she was here. She’d met that shadow woman in this same place. The last thing she wanted right now was to get plunged back to the future when she had already begun to make a life for herself in the past. She had a family now—Lucian and his half-siblings. She could never imagine leaving them for that lonely life she had in the future. Though the past was filled with many dangers, she would walk through any danger for as long as she had Lucian by her side.

"Why am I here?! Take me back to my husband!" she yelled to the empty space as she panicked, looking around. She was about to yell again when the white surroundings suddenly began to spin around her. Everything turned pitch black before her eyes, so much so that she couldn’t even see herself. She was plunged into a soul-colliding darkness that almost made her believe she’d lost her eyesight until a door at the far end of the darkness opened. She could see the brightness spilling in from the opened door, then watched as a shadow walked out of the brightened door. The shadow stopped at the entrance without coming forward, but from the flowing hair and figure, Ave recognized her as the shadow woman she had met here once.

"Why did you bring me here again?" Ave questioned as soon as she got her thoughts together.

"Isn’t it strange, Aveline? The last time you were here, I remember clearly how you seemed desperate to go back to the future," came the soft voice of the shadow woman, holding a hint of warmth and friendliness in it—something that wasn’t there the first time they met. Her voice had sounded emotionless then.

"You did well in healing his darkened heart and guiding him onto the right path." She muttered softly to Ave.

Though Ave didn’t like that she was brought here against her will, as she no longer wanted to have any connections with the future she had decided to leave behind and move on with her life, she couldn’t help but agree with the shadow woman. The last time she was here, she had been so desperate to go back that she would do anything for as long as something would take her back to her luxurious life. But this time, it was different.

"People change, you know. And after I realized what you did to switch my soul with a child from the future, I have no reason to want to go back there when I belong here with my husband," Ave mused quietly. She didn’t have to see the face to know who this shadow woman was. It was Lyria, Lucian’s mother. She could tell from her voice and figure after she had seen Lyria and her real mother in the mirror.

"You know about that already..." she heard the woman say. It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yes, I know everything you did, but don’t worry. I hold no grudge against you. You did what you had to do for the sake of your son," Ave assured. Then she continued, "But I have questions I wish you would answer."

"As much as I would be glad to answer your questions, my child, I am limited to questions and answers," she said sorrowfully.

Ave had many questions she’d like to ask the woman, like how she was connected to Roland and Rosette. She wanted to know who Roland was. But hearing her words, she had a feeling she wouldn’t be getting all the answers to them. This wasn’t a person but more like a shadow, where she had a feeling if she had a flashlight and put it towards her, she’d disappear. Before she could ask any other questions that might waste her time and in the end not get the answers to, she asked the most important one.

"Now that I am in the past, will I be there forever, or would there ever be something that will take me back to the future someday?" she asked, her fingers subconsciously clutching tightly to the side of the red dress she wore—the same dress on her body when she fell off that stage in the future. She couldn’t see it in the darkness now, but she’d seen it when the room had been white. That had added to her panic of being thrust back to the future. She didn’t want to go back there again.

The shadow was silent for a while before she said, "The day I swapped your soul with the child from the future, I hadn’t made it a permanent spell because I wanted it to be possible for you to come here someday. I knew Lucian would need you, but then I never thought I’d die before that time..."

"So do you mean to say, just like I went to the future and came back to the past again, it is possible that I will go back there again?" Ave questioned in disbelief, hoping that wasn’t what the woman meant. She didn’t want anything like that to ever happen. She’d killed Madeline, which meant there wouldn’t be a face like that in the future. She didn’t want her destiny or life to be in someone else’s hands, thinking they could take her around anyhow without her permission. She’d rather clear up things now and choose to stay where she felt more at home.

"It’s for your own good, my dear. The past is never safe for anybody with the powers you possess. Anne knew that when she asked me to send you away, but because I couldn’t watch my son suffer, I made it possible for you to come back," she confessed.

"And also possible for me to go back, right?" Ave muttered. "Why do you think Lucian needs me, what is our connection?" she asked curiously.

"I can’t answer that. It is for you to figure out."

"Then what if I choose to stay in the past forever? Would I be taken back to the future again?"

The woman sighed, her voice softening with a hint of sadness as she replied, "If you choose to stay in the past, Aveline, the future will always remain a thread woven into your fate. You were never meant to remain here forever... someday, the path will open again and take you back."

"Then how can I avoid that path?" Ave demanded in frustration.

"As long as your soul doesn’t wander off too far away."

Ave’s lips parted, about to ask more questions, but before the words left her mouth, the world around her began to spin violently. Her vision blurred, and the woman said something she didn’t quite hear, her voice fading into the distance like a faint whisper, leaving the rest of her sentence hanging.

---

Ave woke up to the sound of a loud commotion in the room that sounded somewhat distant in her slightly foggy brain and aching body. Pain. Her entire body was in pain. She forced her heavy eyelids to open. She didn’t know why it felt like she had been in bed for like forever. She couldn’t tell for how long, but the strain in her muscles and the fierce dryness of her throat made her realize she must have been bedridden for some time now.

The distant commotion made her panic when she recalled her time with the shadow woman and the words she had spoken. She realized just how uncertain she was about where her soul would wander to. Where was she now? Was she in the future or the past?

When Ave quickly opened her eyes at first, her vision was blurry, and the commotion was louder, but slowly and gradually, her vision cleared, and so did her hearing.

"...you should calm the hell down! I will not tolerate you taking the lives of my kingdom’s doctors for the sake of a mere girl. The doctor said she would be fine and is still unconscious because of the blood she lost!" came King Talinor’s outraged voice, but a loud bang followed his words as Lucian slammed his fist angrily on the wall.

"How in hell do you expect me to calm down?! She has been like that for days now! If you don’t tell your godforsaken doctor to get in here this instant, may the lord save his entire family because I’ll hunt them all down!!" Lucian bellowed in outrage at the king, who stood at the door, blocking the last skilled doctor of their kingdom who hadn’t died yet from Lucian’s blinded rage.

"Brother Lucian, you should calm down. It’s not good to—" Prince Orion, who had come to visit Ave with his siblings like they did every day since she had been unconscious, was saying, but he didn’t dare complete his words when Lucian slammed a vase of flowers on the table against the wall and turned to glare at him. Orion stepped back to stand beside Zane, who didn’t even bother to calm the prince, as he knew nothing in this world could bring this bullheaded man down but his wife.

Isolde and Celeste also stood back, away from his crashing things, fearing he’d hit them by mistake like he’d done to one of the Nazia princes yesterday, who’d almost lost his eyesight when he got hit with a goblet. They’d never seen their elder brother in this state, and though they were worried about Ave, he worried them more because they feared he’d kill someone again if he didn’t calm down like everyone was telling him to. Even though they didn’t know what was actually wrong with Ave, they’d heard rumors that she was in this condition because of their elder brother.

Lucian was about to fight the king to get to the trembling doctor outside when a faint and weak voice called out. "Lucian... listen to them." The voice was so small, but his hearing was so sharp he recognized whose it was. He froze, his breath catching as if the world itself had stopped spinning. Was it real? Had she really spoken just now, or was it another cruel trick of his restless mind?

His head slowly turned in her direction. Relief surged through him like a tidal wave, threatening to knock him off his feet. The emotions that coursed through his body when he saw her bright blue eyes looking toward him with warmth and a faint smile on her pale face were indescribable. He walked away from the king, almost in a trance, and strode toward his wife.

For days, he had lost count of the many doctors he had brought to check up on her when there had been no improvement in her condition. From the human doctors to the werewolf doctors residing in Nazia kingdom, he had killed three of them in his state of anger when they kept telling him that there was nothing they could do about her condition. She had lost too much blood for them to be able to treat. They told him it would only be a miracle if she survived it because it was beyond them. Three of the doctors who had said that had died at his hand.

Ave had told him that she was not weak and that she would heal, but not even the wound in her arm, which he’d caused, had healed in the days she was unconscious. The sight of her in such a condition tore at his very heart and soul every day he had to look at her. He was so helplessly lost that he didn’t have control over his emotions and actions.

She had healed him, but she hadn’t been able to do that to herself. He had told her to never try to heal him with her blood or anything, but she’d risked her life to do it. And as stupid as he was, he had sucked her almost dry of blood. No one knew just how much he despised and blamed himself for her condition.

Nobody knew just how much, in the past five days, he’d had to endure watching her like that. He had lost it this morning when King Talinor said no other doctors would come to check on her again after he’d killed three of their best doctors. Lucian didn’t care. He was ready to kill more people if they would tell him things he didn’t want to hear about her condition. Did they have any little idea just how much she meant to him? He was never going to accept that she might die. And he had made it known to King Talinor that if his wife died, they would all go down to the grave with her.