Chapter 2

***

“Blasted blonde hair. Blasted blue eyes.”

“You're not the end, Sez. I'll find every last one of you with blonde hair and blue eyes, and I'll kill you all.”

Rayton’s ice-cold words were still ringing in her ears.

‘Bastard, do you think I asked for it?’

Sez thought it wasn’t fair at all. She never wanted to have blonde hair or blue eyes. She was just born that way.

‘Moreover, I didn’t do a thing! Yeah, sure I couldn’t help Rayton but I was already having a hard time dealing with what was on my own plate!’

To Sez, Rayton’s actions were beyond justification.

What has she done wrong?

Was she really that bad that she didn’t even deserve to keep her head on her shoulders?

“My shouuu...lder?”

She opened her eyes wide.

The first thing she saw was a familiar chandelier.

One so old and rusty that even a gentle breeze would make it squeak.

After looking up at the ceiling blankly for a while, Sez jerked her upper body. It was her room.

The only difference was the carpet and floor.

There weren’t any bloodstains on it, nor the dead bodies of her maids.

She had seen this exact same scenery all the time... before Rayton staged a coup.

She fumbled her fingers around her neck almost as a reflex.

“It’s... still on my shoulders?”

While it was a strange thing to say, her neck was indeed attached to her shoulders.

She couldn’t believe it.

The feeling of the ice-cold blade slicing her delicate skin and severing her neckbone was still vividly in her memories.

“Was it a dream?”

She murmured to herself dumbfoundedly. Was it really just a dream? All of it?

She couldn’t shake off the fear no matter how long she clawed at her neck. She had to find a mirror. The blonde girl stretched her legs and got out of bed.

However, her feet failed to meet the floor.

“Wha- kyahhh!”

Sez let out a squeal as she fell from the bed.

Her knees hit the floor and hurt like hell, which meant she wasn’t dreaming anymore.

She limped her way up to the mirror and was astonished.

“What in the holy hell...?”

A strange version of Sez was staring right back at her.

Her blonde hair and blue eyes were the same, and her neck was intact, but the problem was...

She looked younger.

Way too young.

“Your Royal Highness! Is something troubling you?”

She snapped her head as someone called out to her all of a sudden. It was her lady-in-waiting, Runa.

“R-Runa...”

Sez was on the brink of crying, looking at her lady-in-waiting.

“My goodness. Your Royal Highness, did you have a bad dream?”

Runa slowly reached out to hold Sez gently.

The young girl held Runa’s shoulders tight, burying her head in the crook of her neck. It really was her.

“Your Royal Highness?”

Runa called out to Sez again, feeling the young girl tremble. Sez didn’t move. She just wrapped her arms around Runa tighter.

Runa was dead. She remembered the day clearly.

It was a few days before Sez’s 17^th birthday.

An accident, they said.

Runa was hit by a stagecoach on her way back from visiting home.

It hurt Sez deeply since she was more of a mother to Sez than Yerna.

“Runa...”

“Oh, Princess... It seems you had a nightmare.”

‘Yeah, that was one hell of a nightmare...’

Sez looked up at Runa with her eyes widened in shock.

If it wasn’t a dream, then it could mean only one thing.

She had traveled back to the past.

“Uh, Runa... how... old am I?”

Runa answered in a small voice, seemingly puzzled by her question.

“You’re turning 12 this year.”

“So, it is...” Sez murmured. She now understood why Runa was still alive.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Your Royal Highness? I’d better call the physician.”

‘Oh, Runa. My beloved Runa. You were always overprotective over me, calling physicians whenever I sneezed.’

The maid’s love made her sniffle.

“You don’t have to. I’m really okay.”

“Your Royal Highness...”

“I mean it! I just had a bad dream. That’s all.”

‘One nasty dream’, she told herself, remembering the blade that bit her neck off.

***

Runa checked on her more than five times before finally leaving the chamber.

Sez, being left alone at last, had some time to examine her younger face. It almost felt alien to her. She was 17 years old when she met her demise and now, she was 12 again. She must have traveled back around five years.

Five years.

Which meant she had five years left to change the future.

Rayton must have been 18 years old now, as he was six years older than her. Sez tried her best to remember how he was at that age.

Nothing came to mind, however, since Rayton and Sez didn’t have many chances to meet each other. It was even hard to meet once a month.

She had only glanced at him for a fleeting moment and they’d never had a conversation while in the same room.

Sez never left her chamber while Rayton...

“...Was in the library,” Sez spoke aloud to herself.

Now she remembered.

She was quite the bookworm back when she was 12, for a rather simple reason.

She had nothing else to do.

She didn’t get along with her frosty mother and her half-brothers and sisters always wanted to torment her. There was no one else left to come and visit her.

That was why she had never left her chamber, reading tons and tons of books.

Rayton must be a similar case.

There was not much else children could do to escape from reality, especially in the palace where they couldn’t leave at their own will. Nobody and nothing are not so different, after all.

Runa usually brought the books for her, but one day around this age they went to the library together.

That’s when she saw Rayon.

She thought he looked gloomy, with his fringe so long that it covered his eyes.

She remembered his eyes glowing red as blood the moment their eyes met.

It was the only interaction she had with him.

As soon as Runa saw Rayton, she was terrified and dragged Sez to hide behind her back, as if she thought looking at his eyes or face would cause something terrible.

It wasn’t just Runa’s character.

Everyone in the palace acted the same way. Not only the royal blood but the servants and maids.

They didn’t even dare to look him in the eyes.

While Sez wasn’t blatantly avoiding him, she didn’t act in goodwill toward him either. In fact, she couldn’t have cared less about him.

She was already knee-deep in her own problems and couldn’t afford to think about others.

Well, she was before…

‘I’ll survive, no matter what it takes.’ Sez reminded herself. Sure, it would be best if she could stop the entire massacre, but she wasn’t motivated to do so.

Everyone in the palace was mean to her, sometimes she wondered if they even knew her father was the emperor.

She learned how to ignore the bullying slowly but surely as she grew up, but the miserable feeling that came with it didn’t dissipate easily.

Yerna wasn’t any better.

She never loved her daughter in the first place.

After Sez turned 17, she schemed to marry her off to a rich duke who was practically an old goat.

Well, she thought it was more like she was being sold rather than married. No one was there to protect her.

To the emperor, she was just one of his many offspring, and he had zero regard for his daughters.

Sez made up her mind that she would strangle herself before marrying a 50-whatever-year-old man who had sons and daughters of Sez’s age.

Lucky for her, the very night she made up her mind that she’d rather throw herself out a window than suffer being the wife of such a man, some unexpected news arrived. The duke had died of a chronic illness.

Although she sighed in relief, Sez’s gut told her that she was out of luck.

Who knows what kind of character her mother would bring next?

They could be 70 or 80.

It was Yerna who kickstarted Sez’s plan to run away from the palace. Since Runa was gone, there was no reason for Sez to stay there anymore.

Though, it was all in vain when her head got chopped off.

Sez was planning to utilize these five whole years to survive, anyway.

She wasn’t sure if Rayton would still stage a coup as he did in her previous life, but she thought it wouldn’t hurt to earn his favor.

At least it would boost her odds of surviving the night.

Sez jumped up from her seat.

Fortunately, Runa wasn’t there.

She swept up a pile of borrowed books in her arms and crept out of the room.

First of all, she had to meet Rayton.