Chapter 1 - Not my bed

This is not my bed. My bed is perfectly soft, forms to my back, and has jersey sheets on it. These are… silk? I think? Maybe satin? Either way, they are slippery, and I don't like it. My pillows are wrong, too. I have five. Four that cocoon my head and one that is bigger than me that I hold tight and squeeze between my thighs to keep the loneliness at bay.

This bed is too hard. And there are only two pillows. How the hell am I supposed to sleep with two pillows? It certainly doesn't belong to Amy, either. She hasn't let me sleep in her bed since she got married. And her couch has weird lumps that dig into my side. So… I'm in a stranger's bed? That seems wrong. We did… a lot of shots, yeah, but Amy would never let me go home with anyone drunk. She's good like that. Did we end up at a hotel? Jesus, just how many shots did we do? I joked about 50 - one for each agent that declined me - but there was no way we got there.

With a yawn, I finally cracked open my eyes and lifted my arm. We were tracking progress so… that's funny.

My arm is clean.

I should have… at least 5(?) tally marks. The marker trick is fool proof. A mark of pride. One tally for one shot. Even if the ink smeared, there should be something.

I bolted upright. Did Amy clean me?

The thought sent shivers down my spine. I'm not even sure why. She's bathed me before. Gotten me in the shower when I was too drunk or too high to move and covered in my own sick. And she was sober last night, so it wouldn't be unreasonable. But why… why does the thought of being bathed make me sick?

My observations of the bed proved weirder. Not just silk or satin sheets, but a thick duvet as well. The material was almost scratchy, like the bedding at a cheap hotel only worse. I'd been on a tour of Mount Vernon when I was in high school. The bedding in those rooms… felt like this. Around the poster bed hung thin white curtains. No. Not just thin, lace. These were lace curtains. Pretty ones, too.

I pushed them out of the way to get a view of the room around me. The room matched the ancient bedding. It's practically a museum display. Across the room sat a mirror.

And the face looking back at me - wasn't me.

I screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed some more.

The volume must have caught people's attention, because not 30 seconds into my throat-tearing practices did 2 maids and a young lady come running. The maids tried to ask me what was wrong. At least, I assume they did. I didn't actually hear them. At the time I was still screaming my lungs out. But the young lady who accompanied them, she found a way to get my attention despite the volume.

She clamored onto the bed and straddled my lap, taking my face in both hands and forcing me to look directly at her. She then proceeded to shout into my face.

"CARRIE! CARRIE! You're home now! You're safe! It's alright!"

It wasn't the grip on my face nor the words of assurance that got me to stop screaming. It was my name. My name. In a stranger's body, in a stranger's room, in a place I didn't know, she called my name.

That was enough for me to look properly, to actually see the woman before me. She had a beautiful face. The kind that only famous actors have. Angular and harsh, but still soft enough to be delicate. Her clear, fair, skin was complimented by rich, dark hair, falling about her shoulder and down her back in gentle waves. But the most captivating part of her was her eyes. Clear, bright, and as pink as her soft lips. Under her left eye, three freckles sat in a perfect triangle. And I realized that this woman was less of a stranger than even Amy.

"Lila… Delmont."

The misguided villain of the novel I wrote.

"Have you calmed down any?" Her voice was different than I imagined it. Kinder.

"I… I don't know." Was I calm or just too shocked? Seeing Lila certainly grounded me, but it was simply far too insane to be real. Lila Delmont, the eldest daughter of Count Delmont, and a minor villain of Intertwined, my unpublished novel. She was the would-be fiancee of the would-be Crown Prince, having been in engagement talks for several years. However, the talks are cast aside when Kardarch managed to defeat Printh, and end a bloody 50 year war. The peace treaty included the marriage of Lithia, Printh's third princess to George, the first prince of Kardarch. The marriage was considered a disgrace, and used to strip the first prince from his right to inherit the throne.

Scorned of the future she was raised for, Lila ends up falling prey to the Prince's brothers. They fuel her jealousy and xenophobia and use her to attack the couple. First, she is manipulated to merely defame Lithia, but eventually her actions escalate to assault and attempted murder, encompassing both the prince she once loved and the woman she grew to hate. Her efforts are, however, entirely fruitless, serving only to strengthen both the bond between and the reputation of the couple. Meanwhile, Lila falls further and further, abandoned even by the brothers and left for a cult to scoop in and convince her to be the sacrificial vessel to a demon lord. Even that plan fails. Lithia's immense raw magic rips a hole in the reality of the world, and the prince's armies manage to force the demon lord through it.

Lila was a villain, but her story was still meant to be a tragic one. I wrote her as an "almost". She was almost a princess. Almost a friend. Almost a threat.

I even gave her a scene where she meets Lithia, neither knowing who the other is. And they get along wonderfully, and they could have been close. But the fates were against them.

One agent had the gall to call that scene "cliched".

"It's okay not to know," Lila maneuvered herself so she was seated beside me on the bed, pulling me to lean against her. "After what you went through, no one would expect you be calm."

"What I went through?"

The grip on my shoulder tightened for an instant. "Those damn barbarians. They dared to attack my sister and the king wouldn't even let us send our house knights after them."

Did she just say sister? Oh. Oh no. No no no. Fuck. Lila's sister was only part of her back story! I didn't even bother to give her name! She's suppose to die before the beginning of the novel, painfully and brutally at the hands of retreating Printh troops. (You see, Lila's sister's death fans the flames of her xenophobia, and is one of the reasons she can never accept Lithia.)

Fuck me! First I get sent here, now I'm going to die horribly?

"Carrie?" Lila put her hand on my cheek. "My sweet?"

"Yes?" My voice cracked as I spoke. I'm sure my fear and confusion showed plainly on my face.

"Oh I'm so sorry," she pulled my face down to her shoulder and held me tight. "How insensitive of me. I shouldn't have even brought that up. I'm just-" she pulled back and I saw tears forming in her eyes. "I'm just so glad you're awake."

"How long was I asleep?"

I certainly never wrote anything about her sister falling into a coma or anything. Lila froze, taking a moment to search for something in my eyes. "Do you really not remember?"

I shook my head.

She nodded. "That's for the best then." Her smile was pained, but genuine, "A blessing to be found in this hell."

"What?"

"Well, there's no way to hide it from you, even though I want to." She took a deep breath, "You were attacked."