Reincarnations Part 1

There had never been such a summer ball in Harrowick Palace. The food was exquisite, the music glorious and the dancing quite divine, but tonight Elizabeth was not in a mood to socialise, though the ladies of the royal court flocked and milled and cooed like well-bred birds, their skirts billowing, their high voices spreading gossip and rumour and speculation like something infectious. Therefore she threaded her way through the throng, slipped unnoticed from the banqueting hall and retired early to her chamber, sliding with some relief out of her square-necked velvet gown with its tight-fitting bodice, before unfastening her necklace and dismantling the elegant coils of her hair. Her scalp ached from the meticulous plaiting and pinning, and she gave a little purr of delight as the tension disappeared and the golden-brown waves tumbled over her white shoulders. Then she froze, hearing laboured footsteps echo on the stone staircase. She was under the sheets before her husband reached the door.

He entered clumsily but quietly; evidently he thought she was already asleep, which might play to her advantage. She half-closed her eyes. The candles flickered, filling the room with quivering shadows. Elizabeth sighed inaudibly, turning her face into the pillow. The earl stank of drink. She heard him grunting as he pulled off his boots and undid his breeches with fumbling, drunken fingers. There was a moment of silence. Then he clambered into bed beside her, his heavy arm snaking around her girlish waist, beringed fingers caressing the modest rounds of her breasts. His breathing grew faster; she felt his other hand slide down to his already firm manhood, rubbing, moaning, pleasuring.

Not tonight, thought Elizabeth, staring neutrally into the semi-darkness, careful not to let her fear and disgust show. Not tonight. Please…

Without warning the earl took her by the shoulders and forced her onto her back, staring helpless and pleading up at him. He pressed his sweaty weight upon her until she felt she was suffocating, choking in his stale stench. Gasping, she pushed uselessly at his thigh and he slapped her across the jaw with casual violence.
“Wife,” he admonished. “Be still.”

Elizabeth’s lips trembled as she caught the cruel iron glint in his eye, his face flushed with lust. He pinioned her legs wide with his own and forced his way inch by agonising inch into her private, innermost place. Shame burned within her, more unbearable the further he advanced, his hot hard lips all over her shoulders, her breasts. Elizabeth cried aloud as she felt something inside her fourteen-year-old self break. Blood trickled, warm and wet, down her thigh. In terror she flung her body back and forth like a rabbit caught between the jaws of a wolf, trying to shake herself free, but he held her fast, groaning as her tender flesh rubbed against his own, his scent strong. The tension grew yet greater, an agonising tightness. Screaming, the sheets tangling around her, Elizabeth fought as if possessed. Startled, he let go of her arm suddenly and one hand flailed towards his face, fingers curled into a claw.

Five hundred years in the future, a girl called Elena Melrose lay in a trance before a shattered mirror, shards of glass embedded in her hand, and no idea who or where she was.