Chapter 1
Prologue
The rain pouring from the sky for days showed no sign of stopping. Perhaps because the world outside the rain-streaked window was so blurred, my reflection in the glass appeared unusually sharp today.
In just these past few days, my face had grown noticeably gaunt, and my once vibrantly curling golden hair had become conspicuously dull and lifeless. My clear, ruby-red eyes, which had once resembled precious gems, had long since lost their spark.
As I gazed at the mirror-like pane, a sigh laced with self-mockery escaped my lips without me realizing it.
How had I become so wretched without even noticing?
“Haa…”
As I exhaled, a puff of white breath formed in the air. The cold palace, with no fire lit, was bitterly chilly.
The only warmth came from the teacup touching my fingertips. The golden-yellow tea emitted a sweet, honey-like fragrance.
It was poison.
I glanced at the knight standing silently beside me.
“Ar.”
He looked at me steadily with eyes that held not even a grain of emotion. Even so, he didn’t urge me to drink the tea quickly.
Ar, who had remained by my side even after more than a dozen knights had left. He was the one who had spent the most years with me in this palace.
I barely managed to move my reluctant lips.
“I’m sorry… Ar.”
“What is there to be sorry for, Your Highness?”
“Because I… have no power…”
“It is not Your Highness’s fault. It is my own inadequacy that prevents me from protecting my lord, so please retract those words of apology.”
His response was utterly textbook, delivered in an equally textbook tone, but somehow that made my heart ache all the more fiercely.
He was an upright and steadfast man.
Someone who, despite his talent, was mistreated because he had no connections.
A knight who would lose even the hard-won position of guarding a princess, and who would have to live bearing the dishonor of failing to protect his lord.
And worse, a hapless knight who would have to rot away his talents while carrying the shame that the lord he served had been a traitor.
I looked out the window again. The persistent drizzle had momentarily subsided.
At that moment, the voices of the maids drifted in from outside, piercing through the poorly insulated door.
“Why is she dragging this out so long? Ugh, it’s freezing.”
“Shh, she’ll hear you. Lower your voice.”
“Let her hear? She’s going to die anyway.”
A surge of tears threatened to spill over.
In truth, I’d vaguely known it all along. That they weren’t my people. From the day when my maids started being replaced one by one, and the new ones began treating me with increasing insolence.
But the truth I’d desperately tried to ignore, not wanting to believe it, now clawed viciously at my ears.
“I thought being a maid to royalty would be a golden opportunity, but it turned out to be a rotten one, huh?”
I stared at the now-cold yellow teacup and reflected on the past.
How utterly foolish I’d been.
My father had been murdered by my uncle, who coveted the crown prince’s position. But due to various adult circumstances, the throne passed to my aunt, who had a slightly stronger claim to legitimacy.
Then my uncle framed my aunt, who had ascended as empress, for the murder of the crown prince and his wife—his own crime. After that, he approached me amiably, urging me to avenge my father. I, in my stupidity, believed him without question and betrayed my aunt.
That had been my uncle’s scheme. This time, without dirtying his own hands with blood, he aimed to eliminate the empress and brand me a traitor in the process.
And so, I was swept back and forth in the midst of that blood-soaked struggle for the throne.
The result was this cup of golden poison now in my hand.
I grasped the already chilled teacup and twirled it around. A whirlwind of gold swirled inside the cup.
The rain had stopped.
Just as I was about to bring it to my lips, Ar seized my wrist. This man, so principled that he had never once laid his bare hand on me, a princess.
“Your Highness. It’s not too late.”
For the first time, his voice trembled.
“…”
I gazed steadily into his deep blue eyes. They held a tumult of emotions.
I knew what he wanted to say to me.
‘Flee.’
I shook my head.
“If I try to reclaim what’s mine, I’ll have to witness a great deal of blood. And the first blood spilled would be yours.”
Ar pressed his lips tightly shut.
The crime of failing to obey the new emperor’s order to witness the traitor’s final moments. The crime of allowing a rebel to escape.
In that process, the truth would matter not at all. Even if the truth came to light, a knight from commoner origins, with no presence or backing, would simply be forgotten in everyone’s memory.
“You… must live on.”
What good would it do to step over his blood to ascend, when so many others’ blood was already meaningless? My aunt’s blood already pooled so deeply beneath my feet that it haunted me in nightmares every night…
“A long time ago, you told me that everyone lives with secrets.”
It was what he’d said back when I first met him, as I tried to hide the fact that I was royalty.
At the time, he was an apprentice knight, and I had snuck out, skipping my history lesson without my aunt knowing.
He had been quietly cleaning the eerily silent training grounds all alone, and I had slipped in secretly only to get caught by him.
When he demanded I reveal my identity, saying I shouldn’t enter without permission, ten-year-old me replied in the most royally haughty tone, “My identity is a secret, so don’t ask.”
Back then, he had chuckled softly and said that everyone has secrets, so he wouldn’t pry.
“Did I?”
He pretended not to remember, even though he must have known. I’d brought up that incident countless times, laughing uproariously, so there’s no way he could have forgotten, even if the memory had faded.
“I suspect you have a secret too.”
That’s why I could never forget his voice from that moment. The intuition that he, too, must have a secret.
“It’s nothing important.”
“If that’s the case, then tell me that secret in our next life.”
Without lingering regret, I brought the teacup in my hand to my lips and took a mouthful of the sweet golden liquid inside.
I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed with a gulp.
Fire erupted within me. A horrific pain, as if my insides were burning away, consumed my entire body.
But from my melted throat, not even a scream could emerge.
A bitter, salty taste filled my mouth.
A fishy surge rose in my throat, wave after wave.
As I clutched my neck and chest, retching violently, Ar pulled me into a tight embrace. His pristine white knight’s uniform stained red.
“Please… do not forgive this humble servant.”
Something sharp and cold pierced the nape of my neck.
Finally, my eyes drifted shut.
“This disloyalty, I will repay with my life…”
How much time had passed? After what felt like an eternity, my closed eyes opened.
I’d clearly drunk the poison, so why wasn’t I dead? Was I alive? If so, my uncle would have found some way to kill me again, wouldn’t he?
Judging by the warm temperature, the soothing pale green wallpaper that was easy on the eyes, and the high ceiling, this wasn’t the cold palace. I could feel soft, plush fabric enveloping my body.
Could it be that Ar had taken me and fled? If so, perhaps this was the mansion or villa of some noble loyal to Grandfather, one of the few who had survived.
A moment later, someone approached me.
Grandfather? The very same Grandfather I’d only ever seen in portraits. He had passed away when I was young, leaving me with scarcely any memories of him. Had he come to greet me in the afterlife?
So, I really am dead. Where is Aunt, then?
Surely, I’d see her soon in the afterlife. When I flashed a bright smile at Grandfather, he returned it with a beaming grin of his own.
“Our Melly doesn’t even cry anymore after waking up!”
I wiggled my hands. They felt brimming with strength, hardly believable for someone who had just downed poison in one gulp. I reached out toward Grandfather. But then—what?
Something was wrong with my hands.
What in the world…?
It took me a mere tenth of a second to realize what was off. I let out a startled cry right then and there.
“Waaah!”
What was wrong with my hands?
They were… they were baby hands!
Soft, chubby, and tiny.
A perfect match for the small, plump body of a child. This was me in my childhood.
As I flailed about, the silk wrapped tightly around me felt surprisingly heavy. My legs, too, refused to move as I wanted.
“Uhh, uwaa!”
The sensation of my tongue and lips was so unfamiliar that I could barely make proper sounds. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if the poison had melted my tongue, but then what were these tiny hands?
Grandfather, who I assumed had come to meet me in the afterlife, began to fuss anxiously. Suddenly, he stuck out his tongue and shook his head wildly with a comical expression.
“What’s wrong with our Melly, hmm?”
G-Grandfather?
When I stared at him in shock without responding, he called out in a flustered tone.
“Nurse, Nurse, come here! What’s wrong with the child?”
The nurse hurried in and scooped me up in her arms. Her face came close to mine in an instant.
But why did she look so young? No, more than that—hadn’t she died? I was certain she had died. She’d been caught up in the bloodbath my uncle unleashed, wrapping herself around me as I was exiled to the cold palace. She was dragged away, covered in blood, and I’d heard nothing of her since. I’d assumed her lifeless body had been hauled off, already a corpse.
Yet the nurse before me now looked at least ten years younger, her face free of any scars.
“Babies sometimes wake up startled from bad dreams,” she said. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty.”
Baby? What baby? Me?
“Waa?”
My thoughts were a jumbled mess, and all I could manage was a feeble, deflated sound. I wanted to say something, but my unfamiliar tongue refused to cooperate.
Meanwhile, Grandfather peered down at me lying on the bed, shaking a rattle.
“Ohh, did you get scared, little one? Did my sweet baby wake up startled, hmm?”
So, this was… Back when I was alive, the servants had said Grandfather was stern, stubborn, and utterly devoid of mercy.
But what was this? This overwhelming dissonance, this spine-chilling incongruity—what was I supposed to do with it?
“Uuu!”
In the midst of my confusion, I spotted a calendar hanging in the room.
Imperial Year 703. What? 703? That was when I was three years old.
In that moment, it all clicked into place like puzzle pieces: Grandfather, alive again; the rejuvenated nurse; my infantile body; the calendar. My mind began to make sense of it all. But as soon as it did, my mental state shattered once more.
I’d gone back in time!
How had this happened? What was going on? God, care to explain? Please!
Why did you send me back to the past?
My life was absolutely miserable, you know? And you want me to live it again? Are you insane?
I never wanted to return to that cesspool—no, that sea of blood.
Or did I do something terribly wrong?
But God never answered my pleas, and so I was granted a second life.
* * *
