Rebirth17 min read
Alive Again in a Heiress's Body
ButterPicks11 views
I woke in river water and the world felt wrong and right at the same time.
"Where am I?" I kept my eyes half-closed and tasted mud and metal on my tongue.
A cold, slick head coiled over my wrist. "You're not alone," it seemed to say.
I scrubbed water from my face and stared at my hands. They were clean—small, pale, a city woman's hands, not the scarred, callused hands I remembered. Memory slammed into me all at once: a battlefield, a blast of heat, the smell of burned grass; then my last, helpless thought—why didn't I save them?—and then the blank.
"So I'm alive?" I whispered. The voice wasn't mine. It was higher, sweet, spoiled. It belonged to Elise Cook.
A green snake lifted its triangular head and flicked out a ruby tongue. It pressed against my wrist and shivered. My heart squeezed in a strange, grateful way.
"You didn't die," I told the snake. "Good. You shouldn't have died for me."
It curled tighter and nudged my palm. I realized the snake was my benming gu—the old life had left a thing of power with me. The truth of it warmed some foggy corner in my head.
Footsteps crunched on the bank. I slid ashore and climbed up, hair slick and muddy, and heard voices.
"Elise, we've been looking everywhere!" a smooth male voice called.
I turned and looked. He was clean and composed and annoyingly handsome: narrow nose, slight smile, an actor's features. He wore pale designer jeans and a white T-shirt that showed his arms. A man followed him—stocky, worried, and clearly his manager.
"Fox?" the man with me gasped. It was like he'd found his lost trinket. "You fell?"
I blinked. Memories fell into place: the old Elise, the one who had ruined everything—she chased Fox Pierce, chased attention, had been reckless. She had a stepmother who smiled in public and schemed in private. She had a husband—someone cold and precise who ran a family empire—Fleming Winter. She had married into power and then used that shelter to be a spoiled girl. She had been cruel. She had been alive with selfishness.
I looked at Fox Pierce. He smiled the way men smile when they know they are loved. "What happened?" he asked, fanning worry. "Are you hurt?"
"Just fell off a slope," I said, blinking and trying to mimic exact tones. "I came looking for you because you didn't come home." The words felt like a costume but they fit.
"That's terrible." He shook his head and then softened. "I was worried sick. You're okay then." He reached as if to touch my hair.
"You look… tired." I studied him. He looked like someone who'd had his hands in many people. The old Elise had cynically loved that.
"Elise," he said to the manager, "I'm fine. She's fine." He smiled at me. "Don't run off like that again."
I didn't bother to play the old Elise's usual pleased game. I stared at him like he was a joke. "You have a snake on your shoulder," I said.
He stiffened. A small sapphire-black snake sat on his T-shirt, eating the warmth of his skin. It slithered into his collar and then into his back. "Help—get it out!" he shouted, eyes wide, the giggling play gone. He tried to take it off and could not.
I had an idea that tasted dangerous. "Kill it," I said.
He blinked like he'd been led into a trap. "How—"
"Just—punch it. Hard."
"Punch it? Are you insane?"
Before he could answer, I hit him in the belly. Hard. His breath left him in a ragged sound; he doubled over. "Oof!"
"Is it better?" I said, concerned. "Do you feel better?"
"What—" His face twisted. "Stop!"
I hit him again, then again. The manager, panicked, lunged in. The snake darted, finding gaps and shadow, moving like cold glass under skin. Every time someone hit the right place, the snake twisted and surfaced. Eventually, Fox Pierce was wailing and the manager dragged him to the car, leaving me on the roadside.
They took him away. I watched the expensive car move off, windows glossy, and felt something sour in my mouth. He would be the kind of man who would ruin girls, then pretend he hadn't. He would stand in interviews and call them friends. If he had been willing to play games with my predecessor—if he had been willing to leave her behind on a slope and laugh—he would not survive being unmasked by me.
The mansion of the Winters was a glass and stone hush. The gate read silence and power. I crossed the threshold, but the keypad rejected me. "Password incorrect."
I tried again. The numbers blinked red. The old Elise had used the code to barricade walls; apparently someone had changed it. I did what the old Elise would never do: I climbed.
I knew the patrols. I knew the cracks in the routine. I slipped up the balcony and into the house and fell through a window into a room that smelled vaguely of camphor. Light snapped on and a man stood in the doorway.
"Elise?" He stared like the sight of a ghost. Fleming Winter looked composed until he didn't—his face lifted in a flicker of shock that made my skin prickle. He was as clean as marble, almost inhospitable. He wore a robe; water beaded at his collar from a bath. His eyes found me and narrowed.
"You're a mess," he said and that single, flat thing felt like judgement. "You know the rules."
"I—" I wrapped myself in an expression of innocence I hadn't practiced. "I forgot the password. I came through the window."
"Why would you do that?" He asked it, not looking at me so much as he looked past me. "Are you trying to be embarrassing?"
"Don't throw me out," I said, deciding to play helpless like the old Elise—except I wasn't helpless. "Please. I don't remember things lately."
"You're implying you're possessed?" He looked at me as if I'd invented the idea.
Suddenly, the manager I had seen earlier burst in, flustered. "Sir, there's someone at the front gate. They say female guest—"
Fleming Winter's face turned lean and colder. "Dismiss them."
"Sir—" The manager stammered, "there was a woman who climbed in the window—"
"Throw her out," Fleming said.
"Fleming—" I dropped to my knees and clung to his leg. I was visceral and absurd and raw. "Please. I made a mistake. I won't run away again. I promise. Don't be so unforgiving. I can't—"
He looked down and something were rusted and ancient clicked in his face. He was used to being obeyed and to giving orders. My contact with him was a dangerous, warm jolt.
"Get off me," he said finally, a muscle in his jaw doing something cruel. He lifted me—like a rag doll—by the back of a chair and started for the door.
"You can't," I said, and I do not know if I meant it to him or myself. "We are married."
"Not now," he said. "The divorce papers were delivered yesterday. From the moment you crossed that threshold yesterday, you are not my family." His voice cut like rapped knuckles.
I panicked. My heart slammed—this body was supposed to be for something else entirely. "But—"
He tightened his grip. I swung my legs up and wrapped them firmly around his waist. He steadied himself and froze. For a moment we were close enough to hear the other's breath.
"You take your weight off," he warned.
"Don't make me fall," I squealed, hugging his neck. For the first time in years I felt ridiculous and small, like a child holding a stranger's shoulders. But I also felt something else: the raw, electric possibility of getting what I wanted.
He breathed through his teeth. "If you drop, you'll be out," he said flatly. He had me in a bind; he had always had the power to unmake me.
"I won't," I promised because lying was simple.
He flung me down into a chair and walked away. "I told the household: once your divorce is official, you are gone."
"Is that a threat?" I asked, my tone not the one I planned. It came out small.
"Is that a question?" He turned, coolly inscrutable. "You forget that in my life, rules matter."
The next hours were a mess of me trying to find a password, of managers wringing hands, and me trying to wrap my head around a million small sayings. The house was full of empty rooms and servants who blinked like they saw a ghost. I tried to be the old Elise for them because it was comfortable to mimic, but the guts of me had something else to do.
Later, at breakfast, Fox Pierce's image flashed on the TV and the news crew gushed about his charity work. I saw red on their faces—they wanted to believe a pretty lie more than anything else. My phone lit up with a text from my stepmother, "Are you at the villa? I have a dress for you."
I answered: "On my way."
Elisabetta Hu's face was glossy and sweet when we met in a neutral café. Her voice cooed. "You okay, darling? I heard the divorce is in process."
"Yes." I said. "I have one thing to say: I'm tired of being judged."
"Darling," she said, covering my hand. "You should keep your spirits up. Come out with me this afternoon. We'll go shopping."
"You and Fox were—" I started, then realized I was letting rage smooth into spite.
"Stop," she said. "We must be careful." Her hands tightened. "Don't make us look bad."
I smiled a different smile. "I like Fleming now."
She blinked like she'd been slapped. "What?"
"He's handsome. He has money. He keeps his house respectable. He smells good."
"Elise, you're not serious."
"I am," I said.
She checked her manicure like it offended her. "Don't play games. Let me handle this. Let me get him on our side."
"Get him on your side," I replied. "You mean—"
"Pleasure, sweetheart," she said. "No, no abrasions. I mean comfort and care. Men love care."
I smiled and left. Her smile as I walked away was a drawn map of a trap.
She wanted Elise to fail for reasons I couldn't fully make out yet. But I began to see details like threads: a pattern of alliances, of whispered words, of people who had everything to gain by my ruin.
Later, at a bank, I tried to cash the card my stepmother had pressed into my hand. The teller raised an eyebrow and asked for documentation. My stepmother's card had the name Elisabetta Hu attached to it. "One of our major clients—" the manager said and smiled real big. Then someone in the staff came in with a rumor: "That's Mrs. Winter outside."
The manager's smile did what manager's smiles did; it bowed to power. But a young teller—pale and bitter—smirked. "Some girls pretend all they have is what they don't," she said under her breath. Two security guards stood. They moved like raccoons.
"Give it to me or call the law," I said.
"Ma'am," the manager said. "We must verify the account holder."
"Isn't this your bank? Our family manages accounts here," I retorted. He squirmed.
"Prove your identity," he said. The room closed. A crowd of low murmurs leaned in. I felt a tide of anger, old and sharp, rise.
At that moment, the door opened and I looked up and froze. Fleming Winter walked in. He didn't storm; he simply walked with the calm, smooth forward motion of a man who has every sinew trained to hold the room.
"What's the bother?" He asked.
"Someone is impersonating your wife," one of the tellers said, openly snide.
Elisabetta's face flushed a paper red. "No, no—" she began.
"Is this the lady?" the manager asked.
I lifted the card and said, "This is the card my stepmother gave me. I need to withdraw."
He hesitated. A crowd sniffed. "Do you have ID?"
"Yes." I showed it, and they saw the official name. I watched the faces in the room shift. A young clerk whispered to another and then the floor manager's smile collapsed; he said, "Our apologies—"
"Apologies?" I said loudly. "I am not here for your apologies. I am here for what belongs to me."
Fleming's gaze landed on me. For a second his face gave nothing. Then he said to the manager, "Return the funds. Open a VIP withdrawal."
"Yes, Sir."
They did it—but not before the teller who had smirked spat, "You don't belong here."
Something in me snapped. I let out a laugh like a small animal. "You think I don't belong here because I'm pretty? You think I can't be both pretty and entitled? You think I can't be more dangerous than you imagine?"
The bank staff got red and furious. They pushed me and I pushed back—and then walked out with cash. Fleming followed me all the way to the car.
"Why did you come?" I asked.
"Because my bank was harassed," he said, like that was explanation enough. He added, softer, "Because I don't like how people shame my house."
"You were the one who said divorce," I murmured. "You made the divorce official."
"If a woman is dangerous," he said, "it is a given to remove her."
"Then why did you help? Why didn't you let them throw me out?"
His face softened, and then went back to stone. "Because I prefer to know who stands where."
This would be the new rule of our engagement: I would make allies; he would not trust anyone easily. I wanted him to trust me. I wanted him to need me. So I began to act in ways surprising to our household.
I took the snake out and let it coil. I began to find pockets of my new power—hints that the old Elise had been laughed at, but I was not the same. I knew how to talk to bugs now. The small things—an insect's fear, a spider's route—were clearer to me than the gossip of the parlors.
When the servants started whispering that I had "gone soft" or "gone mad", I smiled and gathered them in the kitchen. I made a plan. We started a petty scam—by which I mean I stole from their petty little shelves, replaced their poison jars with harmless herbs, and when their traps failed, I was there as rescuer. They were too surprised to be suspicious.
Then the first real conspiracy happened. A maid, glib and cruel, snuck into the pantry. She had her own agenda—money tucked away in envelopes. She whispered with a scratchy, practiced voice, "We have a rightful complaint, these people take everything but never give back."
"Shut up, static," I said, loud enough for all to hear. "You talk too much."
She laughed and said a thing that unrolled like a rope: "Elise comes back and plays saint. She will burn this house down with her friends."
"Is that what you think?" I asked. I reached for a wooden box by the wall and dumped it onto the counter. The room smelled of old incense. Inside was a small, ragged doll wrapped in dark cloth. It had a pale head and embroidered marks.
The maid screamed. "That's a curse! Burn it!"
"Is it yours?" I asked.
She blinked. "No."
I looked at Fleming. He had been watching. There was a strange tightness in his mouth. "Is this true?" he asked.
"Who brought it in?" I asked.
"She said she didn't do it." The maid's voice threatened to sound like a prayer.
"Don't lie," I told her. "The things that hide in your pockets speak louder than your lies."
Everyone looked guilty. It didn't matter what they'd done. They had conspired. They had an alliance. I lifted the doll and threw it into the brazier. Smoke hissed and curled and the doll blackened.
Fleming staggered as if a faraway chord had struck his spine. He breathed like he'd run.
"Don't play with fire," he said.
"It was placed to burn you first," I said. "I only took it out without telling anyone."
His face was suddenly a map. He asked, "Who benefits?"
I looked him in the eyes and said, "Someone close."
His hands closed into fists. "We'll find them."
The next morning the maid who had laughed was hauled off. She stammered and denied, then begged, then fell silent. The household's murmur became quieter.
Then I did something no one expected: I saved the ill man at the hospital. My "father"—Rohan Carter—had been listed in bed, his veins black as night, a finger permanently curled. The doctors had said it would be days. I sharpened a blade and cut my hand. I mixed herbs and blood and my benming gu swam like a small, green faith over the wound. I pressed the snake to his skin and called the names of old remedies.
"Stop," the nurse gasped.
"He's dying," I told Fleming when he barged in and stared like thunder. "He needs something else."
"Do you know what you are doing?" He demanded.
"I do," I said.
I put my hands on the man's chest and felt the insects under his skin like a nest. They were feasting on his blood. I dipped the snake's head in the wound. The insects surged and then sank like a tide. The man moaned, and then his breathing eased.
Fleming stood with his arms hanging like he had no idea what power he had in his hands until that moment. "What did you do?" he asked, awe thin-sliced.
I smiled and said, "I took out the curse."
He looked at me as if a new gear had been found in a clock. "You did this?"
"Yes." I shrugged. "Now he'll live a bit longer."
At the hospital, I felt the pull of something deeper. I had been told I would go back to my old valley and curse the world. But here was a different valley—silk ties, marble halls, and people who chose poison because it was cheap.
At a charity gala that week, the city elite gathered beneath crystal chandeliers. Fox Pierce and stepmother Elisabetta Hu were seated together on the dais, smiling at reporters. Their smiles were a thin film over teeth that had been sharpened.
I walked up and asked for the microphone.
"Excuse me!" The MC blinked like a startled animal. "This is—"
"This is the moment we are looking for," I said, voice clear. The room stilled like the surface of a pond after a stone falls. "I'd like to speak a little truth."
Fox Pierce laughed low and indulgently. "Elise—"
"You've been pretending to be hurt. You've been pretending to be faithful. You've been pretending to be generous." I turned to him. "But you are a man who uses women."
Fox's smile stuttered.
"You've been collecting favors and compensation for favors," I said. "You were part of the plan to drag my name through poison and make me the 'spoiled wife' so others could sneak their schemes into the dark." My voice cracked and then hardened. "Elisabetta—your 'kindness' has a price. Your sister's husband is dying. You have been placing curses inside the estate to make him weaker, to take the Winter's assets. You have been distributing money to actors and gossip to secure your net."
Laughter thawed into a dangerous hush. Jewelry blinked; cell phones raised like small exclamations. "What are you saying?" Fox demanded, his face growing pale.
"Show them," I said.
A valet wheeled over a laptop I had ordered earlier in secret. I inserted a disk and hit play. The screen filled with a private conversation. Fox's voice cooed and promised; Elisabetta's voice tasted like money. A checklist scrolled across the screen: bribes, placements, shell companies. Names that meant power were next to other names that smelled of dirt. The room let out a shocked hiss.
"No—this is fake," Fox cried. "This is editing! You planted this to embarrass us!"
"Is it fake?" I asked Fleming. He had stood at the room's edge, expression low and tight. I watched as his face clouded and then cleared into the most dangerous sort of calm. "Check the bank transfers," I said. "Check the accounts."
Reporters were already on their phones. Cameras flashed. The crowd crowd-swayed between incredulity and hunger.
Elisabetta's eyes hardened into ice. She leaned forward and smiled, sudden and venomous. "You have no proof. You arrogant—"
"—woman," I finished.
"I will see you in court," she huffed.
"No," I said. I had one more trick. "You won't."
I had quietly asked Fleming's legal team to overlay one of his charity accounts in public records for the last six months. I had also asked a few people on the outside—the ones who owed me small favors in other lives—to plant a reporter. Phone pings and the rustle of telephones became a thunderclap. The room turned into a net: someone recorded Fox's panicked calls; others scanned transaction numbers. The scandal that would have been a neat hush was now a live, bleeding wound.
Elisabetta's face shifted: smug, then sharp, then stranger—she began to panic. "This is slander," she cried, but her voice could not hold.
Fox went through changes: "I'm an artist!" he cried. "I'm being set up!" He tried to shove away reporters who wanted soundbites, but his hand trembled.
People leaned in. A billionaire couple who had been kindly to him stood, faces like granite, saying, "We need to check this."
Then came my moment. I climbed on the small stage and looked out. "This charity is for the sick," I said. "But part of your gifts have been thefts from other people." I made a small gesture. "I bring witnesses."
From the fringe of the room, a small flock of my trained bugs drifted into view. They were tiny things, barely visible: a shimmer of flight. I had trained them to follow commands. They flew up to the dais and settled. As they alighted on the shoulders of Fox and Elisabetta, they exuded a smell—not painful, but memorable. The guests recoiled; some screamed.
"Get them off!" Elisabetta yelled. She swatted at her shoulder and the insects climbed into the folds of her dress like black embroidery.
The room fell into a hum of film and shutter. Security lunged. The maid who had planted a doll earlier had tears in her eyes. Cameras fed the scene to the internet. The elite froze.
Then I spoke the truth in a simple, cruel way: "You all see now," I said. "You tolerate poisons hidden as kindness. You let men like Fox Pierce play with women and call it romance. You allow the rich to rob the weak and then call it charity." I let my voice rise. "You applaud at galas as if your conscience had no weight."
Fox's face was changing. He went from cocky to frightened to hateful to pleading. "I'm not the only one!" he said. "I was paid! I was paid to be with her! I didn't know—"
"You knew," I said. "You took the checks."
Elisabetta's hands clawed at the pearls on her neck. Photographers shuffled forward like a pack, hungry. Their shutters were a machine.
Her voice trembled. "I—people—it's a mistake. I can explain."
"Explain to the millions who will see this tonight." I spread my arms. "Explain to the donors who thought they were feeding hospitals while you fed gatekeepers."
She lunged toward me, fingers like talons. "You—"
"—are done," I said. "Because the truth is sweeter than your smiles."
Her face folded into different expressions like being punched by light: first denial, then a thin fury, then pleading. "Please," she said, voice breaking, "I didn't mean—"
"Meaningless," the room echoed. People began to mutter. "Out," someone said. "Call the cops," someone else said. Someone started recording on their phone and a dozen instant videos were live.
Pelting words came from every direction. There were colleagues of Fox—men who had once smoothed his career—who stood in a circle. "We can't have this scandal," one whispered. The cameras continued to chew.
Finally Fox sank to his knees. He didn't kneel out of remorse; he did it because he knew he had been cut loose.
"Don't," he begged. "I can fix it. I'll talk to them. I'll bribe them—"
People in the room shifted away, some clapped, some hissed. I keep thinking of the rule: bad men must be made to lose more than money. I wanted them to taste collapse in public, with every bit of their pride stripped.
Elisabetta dropped to her knees beside him. "Please," she said, voice cracking into gravel. Her perfectly coifed hair stuck to her temples. "I won't—I'll return the funds. I'll pay fines. Please—"
"No." I wasn't malicious; just all I had left was the need to make things fair. "You'll stand up. You will admit that you placed curses."
"I didn't!" she screamed.
Her face went through a loop: smug, shocked, denied, bargaining, then collapse. Her hands went out to me—"Forgive me," she said. "Please—"
The crowd gasped. Some were stunned to see her crumble; others had long suspected. The social cameras flooded. The charity event became a tribunal. Officials in dark suits read out numbers; lawyers made notes; reporters shouted for statements. A hundred people recorded the moment; ten thousand reposted; millions watched online by midnight.
She crumpled into a heap and called out my name like a prayer. "Elise! Please! You're ruining me!"
I watched the justice of daylight unfold: the older man who funded her looked away; the donors walked out, clutching purses and reputations. Fox's managers dragged him up and away; the cameras swarmed. A famous columnist whispered into a mic, "I always thought something was off."
They were humiliated on a scale that would not be forgotten. They begged. They were filmed. People online invented nicknames that would stick to them like tar.
"Please!" Fox cried into a camera, voice thin. "I'm sorry!"
The crowd's reaction was a combination of delight and judicial hunger. Elizabeth Hu tried to plead for leniency. "It was meant to secure the family," she said. "I meant no real harm."
"Your 'no harm' destroyed a life," I replied, not as a queen but as someone who had seen a village burn.
At the end of that night, Fox and Elisabetta had to stand and recite apologies made of paper and legal counsel. They were banned from social events, their endorsements canceled. Public shaming did all the furious work the law sometimes takes years to perform: their staffs left them; those who had smiled at them for an empty seat turned away. The cameras recorded every shaky moment of their plea; the internet made the memory constant.
For three hours they went through the stages: smugness; confusion; denial; frantic bargaining ("I'll pay"); bargaining rejected; humiliation; begging; collapse. The crowd's reactions became a chorus: some hissed, some applauded, some filmed, some cried. A child clapped and an hour later would unknowingly make a meme.
"Please," Fox croaked, tears cutting tracks down his cheeks. "I'll do anything."
"Anything?" I said, cold as I could afford. "Make public everything you've hidden. Return money. Tell the truth about who paid you. And when you stand at rehab centers, say my name and tell the truth."
They crumpled and agreed because they had nothing left. The law would chew them later, but tonight the world chewed them first. It tasted like salt and relief.
After this, the house felt different. People gave me strange looks: respect, fear, calculation. Fleming watched like a general watching a new weapon. His eyes were quieter. There was less of that hard line between us. He didn't smile. But he started to ask for my counsel in small matters, and that built a bridge.
Days went by and I kept digging. I learned to use small things to get answers: a cup, a scent, a bug's flight. I learned that the world in a mansion was a web of favors, and it had threads I could tug.
When my "father" Rohan Carter woke up from his stupor three days later, he grabbed my hand and said, "Who are you?"
"I'm Elise," I said, and didn't add the rest. He gripped me like a small boy.
"Don't die on me," I said aloud.
That night, in the quiet between his breaths and the monitors, Fleming came into the room and stood watching me with hands folded.
"Thank you," he said simply.
"You're not the soft kind," I said.
"Nor are you," he returned. His hand brushed mine for a moment, and I felt grounded like a vine finding a branch.
I thought of the little serpent, asleep against my wrist. It tucked closer as if it had decided something—we had both found a line to keep.
The empire had teeth; my enemies would regroup. But the world had also seen their faces. Power stamps its footprints, and mine were small and new and sharp. I would not let old predators hide with pretty smiles anymore.
"Stay with me tonight," Fleming said once.
I looked at him, the man who had married an heiress and kept his empire cold and unbroken, the man who had once told me flatly that the divorce had started. "Why?"
"Because a war is starting," he said. "And you, Elise, are a weapon worth keeping."
I smiled. "Because you're small-minded, careful man, you want me near to watch me burn out."
He only looked and didn't answer. His hand found mine again. I realized the strange truth: I had entered this life to be a different creature. I would save lives and take names. I would be cruel and just, confusing and dangerous. The snake on my wrist was not just a creature; it was a promise.
And that night, as the mansion sank into silence, my palm warmed its scales and promised the same.
The End
— Thank you for reading —