Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 264: Get away

Ave didn’t know for how long she had been asleep, but when she woke up, her entire body was sore from sleeping in one position and numb from the cold as the window had been left wide open since the day she was brought here. Her throat felt dry, and her stomach growled repeatedly as she had not been given food nor water.

She was tied up like some animal; not even an animal deserved such treatment. No one had come to her again since Edward had whipped her. Outside and inside the room had been as quiet as it could be, with the only sounds being the occasional howling of the wind outside the window. Apart from that sound, she heard nothing else.

She tried to use her powers again, but nothing was working—not even the healing or killing spell she had memorized. Whenever she tried to use it, it was like something was holding it back inside her. And now that she thought about it, she couldn’t help but think perhaps they had done something to her so she wouldn’t be able to use her powers; not that she even knew how to use it.

The day went by yet again with no one coming. She could do nothing but watch as the day turned into night through the window. She was drifting in and out of sleep when she heard something.

Her eyes flew open at the small noise outside the door. It was like someone was trying to turn the doorknob, but realizing it was locked, they left as their footsteps faded. Who could it be? She wondered as she stared at the door with her head tilted upward. When the footsteps faded, everything went silent again.

Perhaps it was a maid passing by, she thought as she relaxed her head back. Edward and Caelan had not had any trouble opening the door when they came to her, thus it couldn’t be any of the people who had kept her here.

She was about to drift into sleep yet again when the sound came from the door again. This time, she heard the frantic rustling of something before the lock clicked and the door was cracked open.

Ave’s eyes widened at the sight of the woman who came in.

It wasn’t only her presence that surprised her but the state she was in. Her blond hair looked like a bird’s nest on her head, and her blue eyes mirrored her weariness. She looked to have aged more than normal since the last time Ave had seen her. And she stood by the door, regarding Ave in surprised disbelief, like she hadn’t expected to find her in the room.

Consort Seraphina closed the door behind her as she saw the state Ave was in.

She had not expected to find Ave or anyone in the room when she felt suspicious of what Elara and her brother were hiding in this part of the palace that many guards were guarding the quarters.

Seraphina had been turned into Elara’s handmaid the moment Caelan was crowned, and she had heard Edward reporting something to her after coming from here, while he coughed out blood like he had been poisoned. She couldn’t help but get curious to know what could have hurt the bullheaded man here.

She had pretended to be cleaning, and from how the guards hadn’t stopped her from venturing to this part of the palace—probably because they believed she couldn’t do anything to help what they kept captive in one of the rooms—she had walked around opening doors one after the other until she finally got to the locked one.

When Seraphina was young, she was a master at picking locked doors, but her marriage had killed all of her mischievous youthful acts. She had simply walked away through the side where the guards were so they would see her leave, and then she’d walked back in through the secret corner of the quarters and came back to open the door with her hairpin.

Impressive, wasn’t it? Only for her to find out that there was nothing special that could have poisoned Edward in the room but a tied-up Selene.

"How are you here?" Consort Seraphina questioned as she walked to the bed, bewildered.

She’d heard that her children had been taken by the second prince—they had escaped to who knows where—and though Seraphina hadn’t shown it, she had been glad. Her son would be safe from Caelan and the Empress, and her daughters wouldn’t go through the same fate as Thalia had.

However, now that she found Selene tied up in chains, she couldn’t help but worry if her children were also tied somewhere around the palace.

Ave snapped back to her senses after taking in the clothes the woman was wearing and also realizing she had nothing to do with those who had chained her up. She was dressed in maid’s attire; she couldn’t have had hands in what Elara was doing.

"You look terrible..." Seraphina gasped, her voice faint as her gaze fell on the blood staining Ave’s chemise and the dark bruises marring her thighs. Her hands shook as she clasped them against her mouth, her wide eyes brimming with horror. "How did you end up here? Who did this to you? And where are my children? Are they here too? Are they..." Her voice broke, and she swallowed hard before whispering, "Are they chained up as well?"

She stumbled closer, the sight of the bruises almost too much for her to bear. God, whoever had inflicted this cruelty was utterly heartless! Seraphina might not have liked the girl before—resenting her for reasons she could barely remember now—but seeing her like this, broken and bleeding, stirred something deep within her.

"Your children are not here. Don’t worry; they are safe where they are..." Ave assured and watched as relief washed over the woman’s face, but she still looked pale while staring at her thighs in horror. Ave could tell from the pain alone that her injuries were not minor, and the whip must have torn through to her bones.

"Elara took you to threaten the second prince into surrendering, didn’t she?" Seraphina asked quietly, as that could be the only reason Elara would take Selene as captive and torture her like this.

The Empress would never be at peace until she killed the Emperor’s other sons as they were a threat to her son’s life and the throne. The bitch had never failed to taunt her about how she would soon kill Orion and give away her twin daughters to men willing to provide Caelan with support in exchange.

Ave couldn’t tell consort Seraphina the main reason the Empress had taken her hostage, thus she nodded to her question.

Seraphina sighed deeply. "No wonder I keep hearing everyone talking about a war about to happen. I heard them saying the second prince was going to invade the palace very soon, and the Empress plans to kill him. I thought they were just baseless rumors since he wouldn’t be stupid to come back here after leaving, but I guess he has a reason to come."

Ave’s eyes widened at those words. The Empress hadn’t only taken her for the powers she possessed but also because they wanted to use her to get to Lucian as well. Why hadn’t she thought about that?!

With those thoughts, Ave asked Consort Seraphina a few questions and realized that the Empress knew the second prince was in the capital now. She had more than a thousand soldiers at her beck and call, and they were all prepared for war.

If Lucian were to come to rescue her, he might be walking into his death. She couldn’t possibly allow that. If he was in the capital already, she had to help him by hiding herself and making sure the Empress and her brother wouldn’t use her to weaken Lucian. If she couldn’t fight, she could at least make sure she wouldn’t be used as his weakness.

She’d seen in so many movies how the villains would use the hero’s wife to make him surrender; however, she refused to be that kind of wife who would allow them to weaken her love. They’d messed with the wrong couple, and she’d make them play hide and seek in a way that they would regret.

"Lady Seraphina, can you do me a favor? I need to get out of these chains right now. If you can find the keys to the lock of the chains," she said as she looked up at the woman desperately.

Though she had never been on speaking terms with the woman in the past due to her arrogance, she could tell the woman had been through many challenges in the past few weeks that had shaped her into a more sensible person. The air of arrogance around her had diminished, replaced by a naturally weary look, like that of someone who worked three jobs and never rested.

Seraphina blinked twice before she glanced towards the thick locks around the chain keeping them to the bedpost. "I believe I can try unlocking it with my pins like I did the door," she said as she walked to the lock with the pin in hand.

Ave watched and waited patiently as the woman tried to unlock the weird lock on the chains, but even after minutes passed by, the locks did not unlock. She gave up on a fifth try and groaned.

"My pins are too thin for the locks. But if I can sneak out and in again, I might be able to get a thicker pin. Wait here; I’ll be right back."

Ave rolled her eyes when Seraphina told her to wait here, as if she could move anywhere. She hoped the woman knew what she was doing and wouldn’t get caught before coming back.

"Be careful!" Ave called out to her after she stepped out of the door, and when it closed behind the blonde woman, she started counting down from hundred, hoping Seraphina would come back for her.

She had been wondering why the Empress hadn’t used other methods to force her into unsealing whatever they wanted and get it over with so she could get rid of her. It turned out she had other plans to kill Lucian first and had kept her here as a way to trap him. However, Ave wasn’t going to allow that for as long as she lived.

She counted from a hundred to twenty slowly when she heard the door open and Consort Seraphina returned in a hurry, panting heavily. "I am too old for all this!" she complained under her breath as she walked up to the bed with a box of different kinds of pins in hand. She began to struggle with the locks again.

"Are there many men outside keeping watch?" Ave asked calmly as she turned her head to see what the woman was doing while hoping in her heart that the pin would unlock the locks this time.

"There are a lot of them surrounding the premises, but Elara didn’t keep men at the door of the room probably because she believes you can’t escape anyway even if you managed to leave this room. You—I got it!" Seraphina exclaimed when one of the locks finally came off.

Ave pulled her hands out of the chains and quickly sat up on the bed as Seraphina moved to the chains on her ankles. She couldn’t believe the woman had somehow managed to unlock it. For the first time since she had been taken, she beamed as she looked at the fourth consort in a new light. The woman focused on twisting her pins into the locks on her ankles to unlock them, sweating slightly despite the freezing cold in the room.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Ave asked curiously as she tried to stretch her sore arms before the chains on her ankles would be unlocked.