TWQTFA CH 02

Deep into the night, Leah quietly opened the door to her bedroom.

A middle-aged man with ash-gray hair, who had been waiting outside the door, bowed his head. He was Kasim, the captain of the royal guard.

Leah and Kasim quietly slipped out into the corridor.

Thanks to Kasim knowing the guards’ patrol routes by heart, they made their way to the sanctuary deep within the royal palace without being noticed by anyone.

“We’ll watch from here.”

Leah settled into a secluded spot from which they could see the entrance to the sanctuary.

Some time later, someone approached the two royal guards stationed at the sanctuary.

Kasim frowned. It wasn’t time for a shift change, and the person wasn’t dressed like a soldier coming to take over their post.

‘Hmm?’

As Kasim watched the two guards leave with that person, the crease between his brows deepened.

“Not yet.”

Leah whispered.

Kasim almost rushed out to confront them, but restrained himself.

Not long afterward, someone else was approaching.

Her slender figure was almost boyish.

She looked around in front of the sanctuary before taking out a key and unlocking the door.

Kasim frowned again.

The key that locked the sanctuary was kept in the royal palace treasury and could not be taken out without the king’s permission.

The moment the woman opened the door and stepped inside, Leah spoke.

“Now.”

The two of them rushed forward.

As Leah opened the door and entered, she shouted,

“Stop, Neria!”

The woman turned around in surprise.

The veil covering her head slipped down, revealing her familiar hair and face.

Neria staggered backward with a flustered expression.

She bit her lip tightly, then gripped a crystal dagger and ran up onto the altar in the center of the sanctuary.

Above the altar floated a round orb about the size of a human head, emitting a soft glow.

Neria raised the dagger high with both hands.

Just before she brought it down on the orb with all her strength, Leah reached out her hand.

‘Stop her!’

A powerful gust of wind summoned by the spirit struck Neria.

“Eek!”

Neria’s body was lifted into the air for a moment by the force of the wind before she tumbled down from the altar.

Leah kicked the crystal dagger far away, then grabbed Neria by the collar and pulled her upright.

“How dare you.”

Fierce hatred burned in Leah’s eyes.

At the same time, her heart was cheering.

How long had she yearned for this day to come?

“How could you!”

With blazing eyes, Leah struck Neria’s cheek mercilessly again and again with all her strength.

“Ah! Aah! S-Stop!”

Smack! Smack! Smack!

Blood flowed from Neria’s nose, staining the collar of her clothes red, and her face quickly swelled.

Even as Leah realized the cruelty within herself that took satisfaction in another person’s pain, she could not stop her hands.

It was only after Neria lost consciousness that Leah finally stopped.

“Haa… Hah.”

Perhaps she had been holding her breath while striking Neria, because her ragged breathing came rushing out afterward.

Kasim stood there with a dazed expression.

‘P-Princess?’

He had known Leah since she was a child.

The kind and gentle princess who seemed like the heroine of a fairy tale suddenly felt like an entirely different person.

“Sir Kasim.”

“Yes, yes, Princess!”

Without realizing it, Kasim straightened into attention.

“This is treason. The criminal attempted to destroy the kingdom’s holy relic.”

Leah searched through the unconscious Neria’s clothes and found a signal flare. She smiled coldly.

After destroying the holy relic, Neria would have climbed the tower and fired the signal flare. The enemy forces waiting outside would then have scaled the walls and invaded the royal palace.

No.

That had already happened once.

Never again would she allow that tragedy to repeat itself.

“She tried to call the enemy into the royal palace. You are a witness, Sir Kasim.”

Kasim nodded with a solemn expression, maintaining his upright posture as he took a whistle from inside his clothes and blew it.

A deep, heavy note echoed through the surroundings.

Soon, people would wake and lights would be lit throughout the royal palace.

Leah looked down at her reddened palms before clenching her fists tightly.

Nella’s voice echoed in her ears.

⌜You have one chance. I bet everything I had on this.⌟

‘You did it, Your Majesty!’

Her tightly clenched fists trembled. Exhilaration, relief, fear, and countless other emotions were all tangled together inside her.

⌜The moment you prevent the destruction of the holy relic, a new timeline will begin. A new crisis will come.⌟

‘Yes, Your Majesty. I know. Today is not the end. It is only the beginning.’

She could not afford to settle for having saved her brother, her nurse, Penny, and all the other people precious to her today.

She had to protect them.

The mastermind behind the downfall of the Zephyrus Kingdom.

The culprit who had stolen away all of Leah’s hopes.

And the enemy of Nella, King of Nortia.

Enoch, the future emperor and the current First Imperial Prince.

Preventing his ascension to the throne was Leah’s greatest goal now that she had returned to the past.

King Aren of Zephyrus ordered a thorough investigation, and the full truth was soon uncovered.

Behind Neria stood the former queen, Jaran.

The members of Jaran’s faction who had participated in the conspiracy were also exposed one after another.

Aren was deeply shocked.

Without him even realizing it, his kingdom had been rotting from within.

“Your Majesty. The Princess requests an audience.”

“Send her in.”

Aren, who had been sitting at his desk, raised his head.

His eyes were bloodshot from barely sleeping for several days.

“I simply cannot understand it, Leah. Why would the former queen do such a thing?”

Aren had treated his stepmother with the utmost respect.

He had given her a residence in the eastern part of the royal palace and provided her with more than enough funds to maintain her status.

He had also cherished her two children as though they were his own siblings.

“I know the reason.”

“What?”

“Rami isn’t Father’s biological child.”

Aren’s mouth fell open.

Youngest Prince Rami had been born after the former king’s death and was his posthumous child. He was five years old this year.

“The holy relic won’t respond to Rami.”

Members of the royal family had to receive the blessing of the holy relic before their seventh birthday.

Until then, Jaran had used her grief over losing the former king as an excuse to postpone the blessing ceremony.

If the former queen’s infidelity were exposed, she would be expelled from the royal lineage, and no one would accept her after she had been disgraced.

That was why Jaran had tried to use outside forces to kill Aren and place her young son on the throne.

Once she seized power, there would always be some way to escape the consequences.

Aren let out a long sigh, buried his face in his hands, then lifted his head.

“Did your prophetic dream tell you that as well?”

“…Yes.”

Leah concealed the fact that she had lived through another lifetime. Instead, she claimed that she had received a divine revelation through a prophetic dream.

She did not want him to know about the painful life she had lived after Aren’s death.

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but we should confirm it.”

He turned to his aide and spoke.

“I will take Rami to the sanctuary this afternoon. Prepare everything.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Leah descended into the underground prison.

“Neria.”

Neria, who had been curled up on the wooden bed in the corner of the cell, immediately sprang to her feet and rushed over.

She gripped the bars and burst into tears.

“Sister. Sister, please get me out of here. I—I only did what Mother told me to do. I couldn’t have destroyed the holy relic. I would have failed, and nothing would have happened to the kingdom.”

‘No. You succeed. The thousand-year-old Zephyrus Kingdom falls because of what you did.’

“Did you really think betraying your country would allow you to become the Imperial Prince’s consort?”

Neria’s eyes trembled.

“W-What are you talking about, Sister?”

“The Imperial Prince isn’t so idle that he would sneak all the way into this distant desert kingdom just to win you over. The man you met was nothing more than a mere errand boy. And when things went wrong, he had already run away.”

“…He was truly a refined and kind man. He was wise and honest. There’s no way he would have deceived me.”

Leah gave a derisive snort, and Neria’s expression twisted.

“You must pay the price for your foolishness. The next time you leave this place, it will be to see the sunlight for the last time.”

Leah turned away coldly.

When she heard Neria scream, “Aaaah!” Leah slowly looked back.

“You always looked at me with those eyes. You smiled hypocritically and pretended to be kind, but you despised me in your heart!”

Neria clutched the bars and screamed.

Watching Neria glare at her resentfully through her tears, Leah let out a hollow laugh.

All because of that.

Such an insignificant reason—jealousy and inferiority.

“I see. So that’s how it was.”

Was she the only one who had thought of them as sisters?

Leah turned away again.

Even when Neria desperately called after her, her voice sounding almost like a scream, Leah did not look back this time.

Neria and Jaran were executed.

It was also revealed that the five-year-old prince was not the former king’s child.

Those who had to die were killed, and those who could be spared were spared.

Aren publicly announced that Princess Leah was the hero who had saved the kingdom from crisis.

As they sat drinking tea in Aren’s private sitting room, he spoke.

“It is all thanks to you.”

“You trusted my words and made your decision quickly. You were the one who took care of everything, Brother.”

“It is indeed thanks to you. Do not belittle your own contribution. That is a royal command.”

“Yes…”

Aren looked at Leah with pride before his expression grew solemn.

“We removed the rotten branches, but the roots are the real problem. I don’t know if we can afford to provoke the Empire with our own strength.”

Leah set down her teacup and spoke.

“Brother. There is one thing we need to make absolutely clear. The mastermind wasn’t the Empire.”

“Not the Empire?”

“It was Enoch, the First Imperial Prince.”

“Leah. Isn’t that basically the same thing?”

“It’s different. More precisely, the First Imperial Prince acted on his own. He used us as sacrifices so that he could establish achievements and strengthen his own position. The Emperor was not involved.”

Ever since the day Leah had told him that she had received a divine revelation, Aren had been looking at his younger sister, who seemed somehow changed.

She still smiled often, but it was no longer the innocent, carefree smile of the princess he had known before.

Her eyes were hard, like a piece of flint polished by countless hardships and suffering.

It felt as though he was no longer looking at a young sister he needed to protect, but at someone who had endured the weight of life herself.

“Brother. You need to face reality. We aren’t prey valuable enough for the Emperor to go out of his way to hunt.”

Aren sighed and nodded calmly.