The Toast

Seraphina POV

One second I felt myself dying, the next I saw myself standing in a venue. There was the sound of violins being played around me and for a split second, I thought I was in heaven but once I looked around me, I realised that wasn't the case.

I was in one of those events where people that pretend to like each other attend to mingle but something about my surroundings felt and looked familiar.

Looking down at my right hand, I saw that my fingers were wrapped around the stem of a champagne flute and it was at that moment I realised that I had been reborn five years into the past.

There were no restraints on me, I was no longer perceiving the smell of bleach I had gotten used to back at the hospital and for a second I almost shed a tear but then, I saw my sister looking younger and more radiant lifting her own glass across from me with a smile I now knew was a lie.

"To my dearest sister and Best friend, Seraphina." She said,

I had heard those words before and I had listened to her call me her sister while cuffed to my bed as I held all the anger in my chest which had nowhere to go.

It had somewhere to go now.

I didn't gasp nor did I drop the glass. After five years of being watched by doctors and nurses, I had understood that people's perception of you mattered a lot.

It wouldn't take a lot for me to be branded a crazy person so I intend to make sure I don't go through that humiliation this time around.

So I smiled the same practiced smile I had worn at family dinners as my eyes drifted behind Evelyn in search of my parents.

I had already known Evelyn was a liar in my last life. I had learnt that the hard way when I watched how she treated me and acted around me.

But it was the years I'd spent digging through old hospital records, chasing down a toxicology report a lawyer had buried for me, that told me something Evelyn never once bothered mentioning back then.

My "sudden collapse" at this very gala, the one my parents had called a fainting spell and later pointed to as the first sign something was wrong with me, hadn't been sudden at all.

A private lab report I'd paid a small fortune for years later had confirmed it: there was a compound in my system that night, non-lethal, built to mimic the onset of a cardiac episode. I hadn't understood what it meant back then but I understand it perfectly now.

The wine wasn't meant to murder me. This was just the very first step in her plan to ruin my life over the course of five years.

Killing me tonight won't make it possible for her to take everything that belongs to me.

I already knew how this ended but I didn't know how many people were put in place before I took a sip of this wine but I was going to find out.

"Sera, are you alright?" She asked as she came close to me, her voice one of concern.

"You look pale."

Beside her stood Julian who held her by the small of her back not mine and I couldn't help but laugh internally.

I struggled to believe it when Evelyn told me my fiance was a simp for her but seeing his action in public, I couldn't imagine how he acted with her in private.

I looked at him now and I didn't need anything to confirm what I already knew. Evelyn had told me herself, years from this exact night, cuffed to a bed while she laughed about it. Every word of that confession matched the way he stood there now, hand on her back and eyes on nothing but her.

I had thought he was deceived by Evelyn just like everyone else but all these while, he knew what he was doing.

"I am fine." I replied, making sure my inner thoughts weren't visible on my face.

"It isn't everyday you have a loving sister give a toast like that." I said with a disarming smile.

From the smile on her face, I could see that what I said pleased her greatly. She probably thought she still had me where she wanted me.

"We are all here for you sis." She said, "Drink up."

Everyone was watching us, our parents were watching somewhere near the dessert table already in admiration of the student they had raised.

The same parents who signed every document my sister had given them in my past life without a word.

Somewhere, someone who I had yet to recognise was watching too but I didn't know it yet.

In my last life, I had trusted my sister so much so I drank the champagne without a second thought but after what happened before I died, I'd be a fool to repeat the same mistake.

I lifted the glass, the crowd leaned in with Evelyn and Julian watching with rapt attention then my heel caught the hem of my own gown.

Using that opportunity, I let my ankle roll and then I let a small gasp escape from my lips as the glass of wine flew from my fingers in a wide glittering arc.

It landed perfectly on Evelyn's bodice, the wine staining it like a wound.

For once, the ballroom went silent and even the violinists froze mid-stroke