Chapter 1 (1/2)

Translator: Key

Proofreader: Potato

1. An Evil Woman Feels More Comfortable with a Villain than with the Prince.

”There's no need to have mercy on such a wholly wicked woman.”

Even after hearing the emperor's condemning words, Lilith didn't cry. She had clearly loved him, but those feelings were set ablaze and turned her to ash.

”Do you have any last words?”

”No.”

Born as the only daughter to the Detroi Duke family, she lived an easy life with everything in her grasp. She had the highest honor of being called the Empire's first lady with the most remarkably beautiful looks. Not once did she doubt that she would someday become the Empress.

However, due to the birth of the Empire's Saintess, she was deprived of everything. The honor of being the Empire's first lady was given to the Saintess instead.

In the face of the Saintess' praiseworthy pure and graceful charm, her flashy and lascivious looks were put to shame.

But the thing hardest to bear was the Emperor abandoning her.

She loved the Emperor. She hadn't been pretending to like him because of their engagement; rather, her feelings for him were completely sincere.

However, the Emperor fell in love with the Saintess at first sight, and immediately announced the annulment of their engagement. He then proceeded to make his marriage to the Saintess public.

The absolute earthly Emperor, and the Saintess who descended from the Heavens. The people were all greatly enthusiastic over the beautiful pair.

All except for Lilith, of course.

She wished for the Saintess who deprived her of everything to die.

Because of this, she took any and every opportunity to formulate plans to cleverly torment and drive the Saintess astray. However, the Saintess remained steadfast, while Lilith slowly lost her rationality.

Ultimately, she asked for her father's cooperation. The Detroi Duke family wasn't originally an innocent household, so it was possible to receive their a.s.sistance in kidnapping the Saintess.

And at last, in order to finally kill the Saintess, Lilith raised a poison smeared knife.

But stabbing the Saintess didn't go as easily as she'd hoped.

Just how did I end up like this?

In her brief moment of hesitation as she raised her head, she was detained by the knights the Emperor sent. It seemed like the ending of a villain in a novel.

At the realization, Lilith began to feel regret for the first time. But it was far too late by then.

”Drink it before I put in in your mouth myself.”

”I wouldn't do something so tedious.”

Dying at the mere age of twenty-five was terribly early. But it was only after everything had occurred when she realized it had been her own fault.

So Lilith drank the poison the prince handed her without a shred of hesitation. That's right. She clearly drank it, and yet—.

”Lilith! Didn't I tell you to clean my room, too?”

Why she was stuck in her current situation of scrubbing the floors, she didn't know. Lilith glared at the guiltless floor while thinking about the absurd outcome of her situation.

I wanted to atone for my sins, but this isn't exactly how I wished to go about it?

Lilith had thought it would all end in death, only to wake up in the body of a certain n.o.ble's daughter. However, even though she was a n.o.ble's daughter in name, her circ.u.mstances were no better than that of a poor servant girl's.

Her words about turning into ashes had only been a figure of speech. She'd never dreamed that she would actually end up covered in ashes due to tending to the kitchen's fireplace.

”I'll just bear with it.”

Lilith, who had acceded to her stepsister's nagging, started cleaning the floors again wordlessly. That's right, I committed many bad deeds and should be punished for them. But this is—

”There's no way I can put up with this!”

I'm mistreated by my stepmother and will end up getting married to an abusive baron! There's no way I could possibly accept this.

———————

Lilith knew of her own future because of a book she read in her past life.

What was the t.i.tle? ⟨Kalix's Crazy Love⟩, was it?

The sole reason she dared touch such an immaturely t.i.tled book was because it had the name of her beloved Emperor. And surprisingly, her name also made an appearance.

The Lilith in the book was a young n.o.ble lady born to the Delfila Earl family. She was merely a side character meant to raise the male lead's charm factor, and therefore only showed up a few times, but Lilith was greatly annoyed by the pushover who shared her name.

If your stepmother mistreats you, then you should obviously get revenge, so why are you just sitting there and taking it silently? If your husband beats you, it wouldn't be enough even if you paid it back tenfold, so why are you crying like your life depends on it?

Lilith, who was greatly absorbed in the life of the character who shared her name rather than the heroine, closed the book in anger. She never read the ending and threw it away.

If I'd known it'd be like this I would've paid closer attention.

Lilith, who had just drank poison, opened her eyes to meet a shabby room. Out of habit, she went to pick up the mirror she kept next to her as she did every morning.

”Why is this so filthy?”

The filthy mirror had gold only on its corners; it wasn't even remotely similar to the gold-rimmed mirror she used daily. But what was more incredible was herself inside the mirror. Right now, she wore a shabby maid outfit that she would throw out 100 out of 100 times if given the choice.

”What's with this piece of straw.”

Her face remained the same, but other than that, nothing else was similar. If that wasn't bad enough, the maids' clothes she was currently wearing were in worse condition than the ones she'd used her entire time while imprisoned.

The dress she had worn then was the disheveled one she had been captured in when the Emperor's army arrived.

What's more, the small room she was lying in had no bars. This meant that it wasn't a prison, yet it still had a strangely prison-like atmosphere.

It was quite cramped and narrow, with a window barely the size of a palm. The entirety of the room was made up only of a creaky bed and tiny worn dresser.

”...Did I drink sleeping pills instead of poison?”

She clearly remembered that the Emperor gave her poison to drink, and yet Lilith remained alive and intact.

She put down the seemingly unreliable mirror and fumbled with her own face. The proof of her being alive was in her warm skin.

Did they change the punishment from death to banishment?, she thought while blankly pinching her cheeks. She had awoken in a room meant for sinners, and although it was the most plausible possibility, she had a hunch that that wasn't it.

It was obvious that there would be no time to look after one's skin in prison, so feeling the elasticity of her cheek as she pinched it shocked her greatly.

Even excluding that, there were too many strange things to count. The wound she'd gotten on her shoulder when the Emperor came to rescue the Saintess had, for some reason, disappeared, and the hair that had been chopped short when she had been dragged away was now flowing down to her waist.