Chapter One
Lady Alicia Vermillion
I’d never really put much thought into what it felt like to die.
After all, at the age of twenty-six, I’d not had much reason to. As far as I was concerned, I had a long life left to live, so the prospect of dying wasn’t something I lingered on.
Until I actually died.
It wasn’t even my fault. All I’d been doing at the time was sitting in my car at the red light on the crossroads, grumbling to myself about my ratbastard of an ex-boyfriend who’d had a change of heart and wanted me back, when a pair of headlights blinded me as they hurtled towards me.
The last thing I heard was the skin-crawling screech of metal being crushed as my car was shoved back into the bus that was behind me.
Then… I woke up here. In this strangely ornate bedroom that resembled the ones I’d seen when reading historical webtoons. You know the type—extravagantly panelled walls, a four-poster bed, antique style sitting area in front of a large fireplace.
Something right out of Bridgerton and the like, basically.
More than that, there was a blonde-haired woman in a black and white maid’s costume calling me ‘Lady Alicia’ through her tears.
I’d barely been able to comprehend my situation before a stout man who looked like he was on the run from the Vatican had been dragged into the room and cast a light over my body before proclaiming me healthy but in need of rest.
And, somehow, over the last week, I’d managed to piece together what the bloody hell had happened to me.
My body had died in that car crash, but my soul hadn’t.
For whatever reason, my soul had taken over someone else’s body—that of Lady Alicia Vermillion, a character from one of my favourite novels in my past life.
I thought this was only something that happened in books and movies, but I had enough tiny bruises over my body from all my pinching of myself to prove that this was really happening.
I’d been given a second chance at life.
The only problem? I wasn’t the main character in the book this world was from. Even worse, in the novel The Second Life of Lillia, Lady Alicia Vermillion is the villainess who taunts the main character, Lady Lillia de Armand, after Alicia’s husband falls for Lillia at first sight.
More than that, Alicia is accused of poisoning Lillia, and after the Crown Prince announces his intention to marry Lillia, Alicia is sentenced to death and beheaded.
I’d already died once at the age of twenty-six.
It wasn’t something I wanted to repeat.
Thankfully, along with the original Lady Alicia’s memories, I had all of mine from my past life as Alicia ‘Allie’ Montgomery, complete with that of the book’s plotline.
I didn’t know much about Lady Alicia’s life from the novel, but if I combined what I did know with her memories, then maybe I could change her fate.
Ahem.
My fate.
We were one and the same now.
“What are you thinking about, my lady?”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to being called that.
“Ah.” I turned to Bella, the maid who’d been crying when I woke up.
She was Lady Alicia’s personal maid—well, my personal maid.
She didn’t appear often in the novel, but from what I remembered, she was Alicia’s only ally both before and after she was forced into the arranged marriage that started her downfall.
“Are you feeling unwell, my lady?” Bella asked, setting a cup of tea down on the table in front of me. “Shall I call for a doctor? Perhaps a pries—oh dear, I always forget we can’t do that.”
I waved my hand. “No, no. I was just lost in thought for a moment. Thank you for the tea.”
Bella’s brown eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my lady. I’m so glad.”
“Bella, stop crying. I’m fine, aren’t I?” I smiled softly at her, picking up my handkerchief from the table so I could dab at her cheeks. “I’m still a little tired, but that’s all.”
She sniffed. “I can’t believe you almost died.”
“Mm.” I tucked the handkerchief into her hand and turned my attention to my tea. “Wipe your tears.”
I wasn’t sure the original Alicia hadn’t died.
There was no other explanation as to why my soul had ended up here.
She hadn’t been able to use magic, and while she’d resorted to underhanded and petty ways to piss off the heroine in the book, she’d never resorted to a magical means of hurting her.
She didn’t seem the type to do any hinky-dinky soul-swapping black magic nonsense, and honestly?
The Alicia I knew of had been kind of self-absorbed, so I couldn’t imagine her wanting to live as anyone else.
After all, the reason she’d died in the book was because she’d been unwilling to give up her husband and thus her position as Grand Duchess.
She was far more the type to turn back time to get revenge with her own two hands.
Yes.
I was almost certain that the original Alicia had died.
Right after her half-sister had pushed her down the stairs.
An incident that hadn’t happened in the book but existed very clearly in my memories.
“My lady?” Bella waved her hand in my face. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I blinked at her. “I think I’ll rest for a while, Bella. Can you clear this tea away? I’m sorry, especially after you went the lengths to make it for me.”
She didn’t bat an eyelid as she cleared my almost untouched tea. “Not at all, my lady. It’s important that you rest enough. Would you like me to wake you for dinner?”
“What time is it?”
“One-thirty.”
“If I’m not awake by five-thirty, bring my dinner to my room, even if it wakes me.” I got up from the table and walked over to my huge bed, perching on the edge of it. “Please make sure nobody disturbs me.”
“Of course, my lady.” Bella swiftly closed all the curtains in my room, then wheeled out the tea tray, pausing only to bow her head before she shut the door behind her.
I flopped back onto the bed and blew out a long breath.
It wasn’t a lie. I was exhausted—but not because of the accident. I was simply drained from this new life of mine.
It sounded ridiculous given that I was the pampered eldest daughter of a marquess, but waking up in possession of the memories of two people wasn’t as fun as books made it sound.
Especially not this body’s memories. It was an endless stream of abuse and hatred from my new stepmother and half-siblings, and those memories were exactly why I hadn’t yet left my room.
I feared leaving and being subject to that same abuse.
I didn’t have to be a doctor to know that it wouldn’t be a good thing in my weakened state.
Knowing that the reason I’d ended up here was because Sophia Vermillion had tried to kill the original soul was a tough pill to swallow.
No. She had killed her. There was no way other my soul could have found its way here otherwise. I didn’t know much right now, but something in my gut told me I was right.
Which meant there was no way back to my original world for me—neither would Alicia’s soul come to reclaim her body.
I was Alicia; Alicia was me.
I also knew one other thing.
I knew how I was destined to die.
At least how I was supposed to die in the original story.
In all the reincarnation novels I’d read like this, the heroine was always afraid of changing the original story, but I harboured no such fears.
I was going to change the original story.
In fact, the story was already changing.
The novel hadn’t covered too much about Alicia’s life given that she was a side character destined to die, but she’d never died or even almost died at the hands of her family.
They hadn’t had the best relationship from the vague insight readers had been given into her life, but abusive to the point of death?
No. That hadn’t been the case.
Which meant the world I had come to had to be different from the one I knew of.
Of course, that didn’t mean things couldn’t divert back to the original path. I couldn’t control the actions of others, so the route to my death could still be the same if I didn’t try to change the things around me.
The first thing I had to do was not marry Kalon, the Grand Duke of Stein, also known as the Beast of the Battlefield for his cold, almost tyrant-like demeanour during the Great War.
He was a man known not to take prisoners and would kill traitors and miscreants on the spot, whether it be a battlefield or a ballroom, and that was exactly how the empire had conquered five neighbouring countries in a little over eighteen months.
He was the eldest son of the Emperor and the first, late
Empress, but had been all but ostracised to the northern territory of Stein after the war due to the influence of his stepmother, the current Empress.
That was how his younger brother had ended up as Crown Prince, too.
I’d drooled over Kalon in the novel—everyone loved a fictional red flag, after all—but if I married him in this life, that red flag would become my death flag.
If my father, Marquess Vermillion, was able to arrange my marriage to him before I could find my own husband that would fit his expectations, then everything would become so much harder for me.
Hmm.
Maybe I needed to jot down what I knew in case I forgot it. I couldn’t trust that my memories from my past life would remain intact as I lived this one, and I had to document them before everything became too entangled.
I got up from my comfy bed and walked over to the desk, opening one single curtain to allow enough sunlight to filter in. After locating an empty notebook in the drawer, I dipped my fountain pen into the inkpot and started writing.
In the book, Alicia died solely because of her love for Kalon.
Their marriage was wholly political, but that was perfectly normal in this world. Indeed, arranged marriages weren’t exactly foreign in my twenty-first-century life, either, but this was a setting I’d consider historical in its society.