Page 114 of Stolen Omega

Zelena

I sit on the bed, thinking about the kitchen, and the woman with the warm, welcoming voice. When I close my eyes, I can almost see her face. I know her voice. I remember it. Her name doesn’t feel like it means anything to me, but the sound of her voice plays on a loop in my brain, until my memory conjures an image of a pale-skinned woman with long, jet-black hair and a sweet smile.

She’s so pretty, and she could almost be a real-life Snow White, if her lips were red instead of their natural pink. I still don’t know who she is, but I feel like I was the little girl she was talking to.

I was the one waiting for ‘him’, whoever he was.

It’s so strange. I’m starting to think I had a past life that’s bleeding through to this one because someone else knew about it. I don’t know why it’s happening, and I don’t know who I was in that other life.

I get up off the bed, leaving Ryder on the pillow.

Everything in this room is so familiar. Something in here must be the key to unlocking who I used to be. I just have to find it.

“The past isn’t the place to find answers,” I warn myself out loud, repeating the phrase that was like a mantra my mother used to get me to be quiet whenever I asked what I was like when I was little.

I’d always thought she’d had no time for me then, but what if it was because I was traumatized after the kidnapping? No parent would want to re-live something so awful. I bet I didn’t remember my younger days in that different house because my mind was trying to protect me from what happened, by hiding memories from me.

It’s completely possible I lived in a different house when I was really young. I know my parents worked hard to get to where there are. They don’t like to talk about what it was like before they made their fortune.

They would never tell me if we lived in a more modest place before we moved to the mansion in the woods between Cressidan Grove and Cressidan City.

Maybe they wouldn’t talk about it if I went through something traumatic there, too.

I remember being kidnapped. I don’t remember coming back home.

Clearly, I got back, somehow.

It’s pretty messed up that I don’t remember. That I didn’t remember anything about it until it was happening again.

Oh, God. I hope it’s not the same men who took me back then.

I don’t know what they did to me. I don’t know why they took me.

Considering it was traumatic enough for my brain to wipe it from my memories, I don’t think I want to know what happened back then.

It happened. It’s in the past. I’ve buried it deep. It doesn’t need to resurface.

I move to the door to the room and try the handle.

It’s locked again. So, apparently, I’m not allowed to move freely from the bedroom to the kitchen.

Whoever took me is controlling what I experience, and when.

I probably shouldn’t make the mistake of falling asleep.

And I should definitely find a weapon.

Soft, cuddly unicorns are hardly much use against full grown men, unless I’m trying to stuff the cute toy down someone’s throat, I guess. Whatever she meant to me when I was a kid, clearly I moved on when my family moved to the mansion.

My parents got me a real piano then, and I began horse riding at Cressidan Grove stables.

I didn’t need toys anymore. I had horses to look after, and musical instruments to master.

I left all this behind a long time ago, and it doesn’t need to be dredged back up now.

I go through the closet and the drawers, searching for something sharp or heavy.

Vague recognition of some of the clothing makes me pause, but I ignore the feelings that touching those items give me and I keep searching.

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