There were no signs of struggle in the room so that meant that no one came to kidnap her. It wasn’t like anyone could or would break into my mansion anyways. Security was so tight that it allowed absolutely no unauthorized entrances...as well as exits...
“Oh, no. Where is Lady Diana?!” Jenna exclaimed from behind me.
“Did she say anything to you?” I asked emotionlessly.
“She...just told me that she needed to rest...” Jenna replied softly.
So, she didn’t want to be disturbed. Great.
“Where are you going?” Jenna asked with clear urgency in her voice.
“Stay away from here and do not alert anyone else,” I instructed calmly.
I walked the short distance from the foot of her bed toward the balcony where the night breeze still swept into the room. One glance downward gave me the answer to almost every question that I had in mind. A flowery bedsheet had been cut and tied with ugly knots into a long rope with one end tied to the railing of the balcony. I scoffed at the ridiculousness of the idea that Dahlia had come up as a way of escape. The easiest part of her escape was just the start of getting out of the mansion itself. Then came the harder part of finding her way to the outer walls and the gate. Finally, the hardest and virtually impossible part was climbing the wall or escaping from one of the gates.
I couldn’t help but wonder how far she could get...before she ended up killing herself in the process...
“Why? Shouldn’t we all help to find her?” Jenna asked before letting out a frustrated sound.
“No...I’ll find her...” I replied without turning to face her as my hand gripped the railing.
And when I find her, I’m going to kill her...
“Wait!” Jenna called from behind me, but it was already too late.
Unlike the clumsy climb that Dahlia must have gone through to get to the ground, my descent was cleaner and much faster. I felt the wind in my ear for a brief moment as I jumped from the balcony down onto the soft grass of the garden below. I heard Jenna screaming somewhere in the background and felt frankly quite amazed that she wasn’t yet used to something like this by now.
“Oh Lord! Are you ok? Why did you suddenly jump down like that?!” Jenna shrieked from the second floor.
I knew very well that Dahlia was stubborn, but I didn’t count on her being stupid as well. That meant that she probably did not try to escape in broad daylight. The sun had just set so she couldn’t have gone very far.
...
**Dahlia’s point of view**
Seriously, I honestly thought that the exit was this way. I was quite confident in the location of my room in relation to the main entrance of the mansion. That meant that if I jumped from the balcony of my room and proceeded into the garden and took a right and went around, then I would somehow end up at the exit gate.
“Arghh...seriously...” I muttered to myself as I tried to keep my panic at bay.
I thought that the most challenging part of my escape would be climbing from the balcony down into the gardens without breaking my leg in the process. It turned out to be much harder than I had imagined, and I figured out that my arms were truly out of shape and lacking in strength. I managed to use the rope that I made to lower myself down slowly for a bit before I fell the remaining of the way down.
Thankfully, I landed on my butt, and it didn’t hurt so much. I did end up with some cuts on my arms from the branches and leaves that they brushed against during my fall, but it was nothing major. The joy of finally feeling the grass beneath my feet as I stood up made me immediately forget about all the pain. It did occur to me before making the climb down from the balcony that I might not make it outside the walls of the estate. The entrance gate was clearly guarded but I still harbored hope that I could find the wall and find a way out.
Perhaps I could climb it?
Regardless, I decided to take deal with each problem as they come. The immediate problem that I had right now wasn’t figuring out how to climb the wall to escape to the other side, the real problem was that no matter how far I walked, I couldn’t quite locate the wall that marked the end of Bradon’s territory.
At first the garden was nothing more than a well-tended and decorated garden with warm orange lights lighting up the pathways; however, the more I progressed deeper into the garden, the more I felt like I was wandering through a forest. Well-tended flower bushes turned into large and tall trees while clearly paved pathways simply disappeared. Soon, I found myself wandering in a forest and it was getting darker and darker.
“Where am I?” I whispered to myself.
It never crossed my mind that beyond the garden would be a forest instead of simply a wall that I had to climb or a gate. Now that I was far away from the lit path of the garden, there wasn’t any light, and I could barely see ahead of me. My legs froze in place as my body refused to take another step forward. I could sense my fear rising up inside of me, and I had to admit that I was not a big fan of the dark and deep forest.
“Stop freaking out...” I muttered to myself.
That was when I started to notice the howling sound of the wind and the coldness of the night air. The wind hissing through the woods stirred the leaves and made spooky sounds that reminded me of a haunted house movie that I had seen a long time ago when I was a kid.
Suddenly, I thought I heard a sound of something moving...
--To be continued...