– 1 –
In a very dark sleepless night, when I was about to climb into a carriage to travel to the Darkus Empire, my father approached me.
“We’re going to the Darkus Empire for your wedding.”
His voice was low and hushed as he hugged me tightly.
“Yes, don’t worry too much. Father.”
I replied, trying to smile brightly.
“We must leave now, Father.”
My brother Luke urged us. After what seemed like an eternity, my father finally broke the hug.
I told Luke to come to the Darkus Empire on the day of my wedding, but he insisted that he had to protect me, and stubbornly joined our departure group.
In the end, four of us, including me, a coachman, a maid, and Luke. Got on the carriage for the departure to the Darkus Empire.
Leaving my father all alone behind in a deep concern, the carriage finally began its journey towards the borders of the Darkus Empire.
* * * *
The carriage began to vibrate heavily.
After traveling on the paved roads of the capital city of Everen, the carriage had suddenly left the outskirts of the city and has entered a dirty muddy road.
‘How long had we been traveling on this dirty road?’
“Whoa!”
Suddenly, the sound of the coachman pulling the reins of the horses was heard and then the carriage stopped.
‘What’s going on?’
For some reason, I had a bad feeling about this.
“What’s going on?”
Luke asked the coachman through the window of the carriage door.
“There seems to be something ahead, Your Grace.”
“What do you mean there’s something….”
Before Luke could finish his sentence and address the coachman’s concern,
‘Bang!’
The door of our carriage suddenly swung open.
“!!!!!!”
It was a knight in his full uniform, and I knew who that person was.
Rajiv, the deputy leader of the royal soldiers and the Knight who was serving the Prince as his personal guard.
“What are you doing!”
Luke shouted.
But as soon as the imposing figure behind Rajiv appeared, Luke closed his mouth.
It was the Crown Prince, Calix.
For a moment, the carriage was filled with silence.
It was Calix’s overly calm voice that broke the silence.
“Kailyn, where do you think you’re going? on this dark night?”
“Your Highness….”
‘I wasn’t going anywhere, I was running away from you. But it seems that the escape route has already been blocked.’
The moment I saw Calix’s face through the open door of the carriage, I knew it.
‘My escape plan to the Darkus Empire had failed.’
I was already been captured by him.
“Where on earth are the son and the daughter of Duke Brockburg going in a middle of night like this?”
Calix asked, tilting his head slightly, his tone was both sarcastic and was filled with genuine curiosity.
‘Are you asking because you really don’t know?’
‘You already knew everything, and you have purposely come here to catch me red handed like this!’
“I’m going to the Darkus Empire for my sister’s wedding. Please stop obstructing our way.”
Luke said, fearlessly.
Well, it’s not something Luke wouldn’t say.
On the surface, I was really just leaving a little earlier than planned for the sake of getting married.
But knowing that Calix was the kind of man who would kill me for being obsessed with me, I was nervously anticipating how Calix would react to Luke’s bold statement.
However, to my surprise, Calix showed no significant change in his expression to Luke’s response.
He simply mumbled as if pondering over Luke’s words.
“……Going to the Darkus Empire for a wedding…….”
Despite the same impassive demeanor, his face seemed noticeably colder than before.
The coldness was so chilling that I shivered without even realizing it.
He then again questioned Luke lightly, as if it were a matter of choosing what to eat for dinner.
“Lord Lukeford, make your choice. Will you engage in a duel with me here right now to win Kailyn, or will you quietly and peacefully relinquish her?”
Once again, my body trembled.
What kind of choice is that, isn’t it blackmailing?
Since I was already caught by him, there was no real choice to begin with.
But without the slightest hesitation, Luke rose from his seat in the carriage, his left hand clutching the scabbard and his right hand clutching the hilt of his sword.
Is he out of his mind?
He’s going to get himself killed!
Watching Luke’s determination stunned me, Calix spoke in a calm, almost languid tone that I couldn’t tell was meant to be persuasive or mocking.
“I think it would be a better idea to hand over Kailyn gracefully rather than uselessly pulling out a knife here and having your sister see her brother die. I don’t want to kill you in front of
her either. If she were to faint from shock, it would hurt my heart too much.”
It would hurt his heart if I fainted?
‘The nerve of this man who wants to stab me with a sword!’
But it was clear that, as ridiculous as it sounded, Calix meant every word he said.
That he didn’t want to kill my brother Luke, that he would be hurt if I fainted. Yet, despite all that, he could still kill Luke.
However, Luke seemed to be far from the older brother who wavered to protect his younger sibling in the face of Calix’s overwhelming skill and threatenings to kill him.
“Your Majesty the Crown Prince! Kailyn is only leaving to marry the man of her choice. Your Majesty has no right to prevent that! If you won’t make way for her, I’ll have no choice but to
do so with my sword!”
Luke, now is not the time to talk like that! He can really kill anyone!
In front of a person with the ability and determination to kill anyone without ant fear, even Luke’s imaginary courage for his younger sister was nothing more than a mere offering of his life for her.
At Luke’s words, Calix’s eyes glowed with a fierce and dangerous light.
“The man that Kaylin wants?”
Hearing the anger in his voice, my eyes instinctively turned to Calix’s left hand.
His left fist was balled up, the tendons were bulging fiercely.
No!
Don’t make him angry!
Going to the Darkus Empire is already a failure anyway.
“Luke!”
I called my brother, who was trembling with anger.
But Luke still glared at Calix and refused to budge.
“Brother, please don’t do that.”
I grabbed Luke’s hand that was touching the sheath and pulled him towards me, saying as if I were begging.
Luke still had no intention of backing down at all.
Calix’s gaze moved to my hand holding my brother’s hand.
I felt a strange chill in his eyes. I quietly released my grip on Luke’s hand.
Only then did Calix’s gaze move to Luke’s face.
He then gave a brief nod.
“What I want is Kailyn, not your life. Don’t act recklessly, Luke.”
“!!!!”
Luke?
At that moment, my eyes widened in surprise.
It wasn’t the content of Calix’s words that startled me.
It was the way he addressed my brother.
He clearly called my brother not by his formal title, Lord Lukeford, but simply ‘Luke’.
Just like when he was a boy, when he used to play with Luke.
Luke seemed momentarily taken aback by the way Calix had called him.
In the midst of risking his life for his sister, memories of their childhood seemed to have softened Luke’s resentment, even just for a moment, as he recalled their shared past.
I didn’t know why Calix suddenly called my brother ‘Luke’, whether he was trying to change Luke’s mind, or if he did it unconsciously.
Whatever Calix’s intentions were, it wasn’t a bad situation for Luke’s heart to waver at that moment.
So I stepped into that gap.
“Luke, I’m really okay. I’d prefer if you didn’t fight with His Highness. Please. Okay?”
Having already shown a slight wavering at being called by his childhood name, ‘Luke,’ Luke finally softened his stance towards Calix, seemingly in response to my pleading words and
actions.
Luke seemed to have passed the point of recklessly lunging at Calix.
I turned to Calix, trying to remain as calm as possible.
“I’m giving up on going to Darkus, and I’m going to return to the Duke’s manor. If you don’t trust me, you can watch us until we turn the carriage around and return home.”
Calix remained silent for a moment, perhaps he was pondering at my words.
Besides me, Luke was still grunting, but he was no longer saying anything.
Calix, then broke the silence.
His gaze fixed on me as he called out loudly to his knights.
“Lady Kailyn Brockburg’s carriage is returning to Duke Brockburg’s residence. The lady will become the Crown Princess of the Everetian Empire, and will be escorted everywhere by the Knights of the Crown from this moment forward!”
‘!!!!!!’
Crown Princess of the Everetian Empire?
Hah…….
How can it be like this!
In the end, you’re just obsessed with me.
You never did that when I asked you to love back then…
Why are you doing this now?
I felt a new wave of frustration at his incomprehensible behavior.
But I couldn’t just wallow in despair.
I had less than a year to live before I was killed by the sword of the Crown Prince who was now obsessed with me.
I had to start all over again and find a way to survive without dying.
* * * *
It was about an year ago that I possessed the body of Kailyn, who was a princess of the Everetian Empire.
There were two candidates for the Everetian Empire’s throne.
One was Crown Prince Calix, the son of the former Empress, and the other was Duke Leon, the son of the current Empress.
One of the two would become Emperor, and the other would have to preserve his life from his brother who became Emperor.
They were like typical stepbrothers in a romance novel.
Although currently, Calix held the position of crown prince, now that it had been over ten years since the current Empress took the position of the former Empress, the Emperor remained strictly neutral.
What Crown Prince Calix had was skill.
On the other hand, Duke Leon, had the backing of the current Empress’s family and a bunch of noble families she had brought into her fold with her influence.
But the Duke Leon had one more decisive thing…. and that was Kailyn Brockberg.
He had the support of the only daughter of the powerful and the most influential Duke Luctine Brockburg. She possessed wealth, power, and beauty.
That lady’s name was Kailyn Brockberg.
She was the person I had possessed currently.
She was loved by both the Crown Prince and the Duke at the same time, unfortunately she was in love with the Duke Leon, not the male lead, the Crown Prince.
Risking her life for her love, Kailyn joins the plot against Calix for the Duke Leon.
But Calix is the male lead to begin with.
Of course, it is Calix who kills all the rebels and becomes Emperor.
Kailyn cries out this when she is caught by Calix after failing to commit a rebellion.
“I’d rather die than be your Empress, Calix! Just kill me already!”
‘Kill me?’
Wow, she has got a lot of nerve.
What kind of rebellion are you doing?
Who the hell is the author?
Yeah….
Me….
I wrote that.
Ridiculous enough, that’s the scene I wrote right before I died.
I wrote the scene where the male lead stabs Kailyn to death, and then I got hit by a car while leaving the cafe. And I was possessed by Kailyn!
Why did Kailyn get stabbed to death by the male lead?
No matter how much I thought about it, there was only one reason.
Our names are the same.
Kailyn, Kim Lynn.
Kailyn’s nickname is Lyn. My name is just Lynn.
It’s exactly the same.
Following my habit of often changing the real-life names of characters in novels, I named them something like that.
No, I never thought I’d be possessed, let alone killed by a car!
I died at the age of 24 in this life, and Kailyn gets stabbed at the age of 24 too.
Parallel theory.
The age of possession was twenty-two.
Still, they said there was no law telling me to die, and I still had two years left before I died as I wrote in my novel.
In order to avoid dying, I had to change the plot of the novel in which I would die within those two years.
I’d have to throw away the decade-long love affair between Kailyn and Duke Leon, and have to pretend loving the male lead, Calix, and supported him.
If she did that, she wouldn’t be killed by Calix’s sword because she was not involved in any treasonous plot, and she wouldn’t be killed by Calix’s sword because she was in despair over her love for Duke Leon.
It was a simple but solid survival plan with no complications involved.
If only the male lead hadn’t become strange.
Thank you for the translation!❤️