Annabella’s perfect life shattered in an instant — all because of something she was never meant to see.

“Why are the two of you…”

The woman her husband Alexis held in his arms, teasing and caressing without a care in the world, was none other than Annabella’s own half-sister. Delilah.

In a secluded corridor at the far end of the palace, the two of them kissed without a shred of shame — Delilah’s petticoat hitched up, her garter belt brazenly on display. The moment Annabella laid eyes on them, her heart lurched into a broken, stumbling rhythm.

“Ah, so you’ve finally noticed.” Alexis didn’t so much as pause, his hand still threading lazily through Delilah’s hair. “See? I told you we’d get caught if we did this here.”

“But Your Highness said the thrill of it was what you liked.”

“I only said that because it’s you.”

Annabella couldn’t begin to comprehend what she was seeing. What she was hearing.

“But…”

Alexis pulled Delilah closer and dragged his lips along the line of her throat — all while holding Annabella’s gaze.

“Perhaps I ought to show this dull little statue what real love looks like.”

“Oh, what would be the point?” Delilah laughed softly. “She’d never understand. Sister has always been so terribly rigid.”

“True enough. A pretty face and nothing more — a woman who hasn’t the first idea how to please a man.”

Who in the world could be expected to bear such humiliation?

Annabella was the eldest daughter of House Lates, raised from childhood with the strict discipline befitting a young noble lady. When she was named a candidate for Crown Princess at the age of ten, her education had grown even more demanding — while other children ran and played freely, she had spent her days mastering imperial court etiquette. Every lesson, every sacrifice, had been in service of one purpose: to be worthy of the man who would one day be Emperor.

And that man was now holding her half-sister in his arms, mocking Annabella with every word and touch.

“While Sister performs her role as the model Crown Princess…” Delilah’s smile curved like a blade. “I’m the one actually keeping Your Highness warm. Isn’t that rather the better arrangement?”

Annabella’s nails drove into her palms. Years ago, when Delilah had appeared claiming to be her half-sister, Annabella had treated her with nothing but kindness. Nothing but kindness.

“How could the two of you… how could you…”

Was this what it felt like when the entire world collapsed? She couldn’t even form the words.

“Exactly as your clever little sister said.” Alexis’s voice was perfectly at ease. “You will be my model Crown Princess. And Delilah will embrace me as a woman.”

A killing impulse flared through her.

“Two sisters, each devoted to me in her own way — House Lates truly runs deep with loyalty.”

The smear of red lipstick at the corner of Delilah’s mouth. Alexis’s hand smoothing over her garter belt. None of it should have existed. None of it should have been real.

“You needn’t worry.” Delilah’s tone was almost sweet. “I have no intention of coveting what belongs to Sister. I simply wish to live at His Highness’s side — treasured as his mistress. That’s all.”

Alexis curled a strand of Delilah’s red hair around his finger, looking for all the world as if he believed her.

“Isn’t it lucky, though?” Delilah continued. “That someone as cold as Sister happens to have a younger sister willing to step in and fill the role?”

Her smile brimmed with triumph.

“You suffered a miscarriage not long ago, didn’t you? You really ought to take better care of yourself. Rest well. After all — I’m here.”

The moment Annabella met those red eyes, something inside her knew.

“It was you…”

A soft, delicate laugh. Heh.

Yes. She had been wrong.

“And His Highness… together with you…?”

Delilah — perhaps. But Alexis was the child’s father. He should never have.

“Your Highness… surely what I’m thinking isn’t…”

“Sister.” Delilah’s voice was light, almost playful. “I am His Highness’s beloved little cat. A good, obedient cat who wouldn’t harm a soul without permission.”

And then it surfaced — the memory of Alexis’s face when he had visited her chambers after the miscarriage. That flat, indifferent expression. The rote words of consolation, as though he had felt nothing at all.

“Even so… how could Your Highness do such a thing? How could you bring harm to your own child?”

The baby had been lost the very moment she’d learned she was carrying it. But if that poor child had died by its own father’s design — what was she supposed to do with that? How was she supposed to go on living?

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course you don’t, Your Highness. You know nothing.”

The moment news of Annabella’s pregnancy had spread, the Duke’s household had sent Delilah to the palace under the pretense of helping her sister. That was when it had all begun. Everyone had understood what her stepmother intended when she sent Delilah — dressed and adorned to full effect — to the imperial palace. Everyone, it seemed, except Annabella.

“I see… so that’s how it was…”

Some despair doesn’t break a person so much as simply drop them where they stand — and always, cruelly, in front of the very last audience they would ever choose.

Annabella’s legs gave out beneath her. She slid down against the wall and could do nothing but lean there, staring up at the two of them with whatever remained of her composure.

“My, it looks like Sister has had quite a shock.”

She held their gaze. It was all she could manage.

“You were always so kind to me, Sister.” Delilah’s tone shifted into something almost conversational. “But honestly? I found it insufferable. All that saintly goodness — it disgusted me.”

If only I could tear that laughing mouth apart.

“That’s enough for today. If the Crown Princess collapses without warning, it creates complications for court affairs.”

“My, how very thoughtful Your Highness is.”

Alexis pressed his lips to Delilah’s forehead with a deliberate, audible kiss — as though he wanted to make absolutely certain Annabella saw it.

In that moment, her world came apart completely. And from the wreckage rose a fury that burned not only for herself, but for the child she had lost.

“How dare you… how dare you take my child—!”

She ripped the pin from her hair — sharp as a blade at its tip — and lashed out.

But—

“Ah!”

The pin drew blood from Alexis’s cheek. He had stepped in front of Delilah.

“…Did you just attack me?”

He pressed his fingers to his face and pulled them away. A vivid red line cut across his pale cheek.

“How dare you? Those words belong to me. How dare a woman like you — a mere concubine’s get — mar the face of the Crown Prince of this empire?”

Even now, even in this moment, Delilah was pressed against his side, blotting the blood away with her handkerchief.

“Send for the royal guard and the imperial physician at once! The Crown Princess has lost her mind and cut my face!”

She should have gone deeper. She should have finished it.

But Annabella’s body was too weak, too wretched to have done even that. The helplessness felt like a curse.

“Confine the Crown Princess for committing an act she should never have dared!”

It did not take long at all before Annabella found herself locked inside a dark little room — not a single thread of light to find her.

“I don’t think I’m going to leave this place alive.”

The darkness of the room seeped into her, hollowing her out from the inside. When the cold set in, they wouldn’t even provide firewood enough to keep her warm — and so the coughing sickness came.

“So at least the two of you should go while you still can…”

When Annabella had been confined, her head lady-in-waiting Hilda had volunteered to follow her mistress into captivity.

“Please don’t say such things. Have I not sworn my loyalty to you for the rest of my life?”

But no matter how steadfastly Hilda served her, there was precious little either of them could do as prisoners.

“What good is a vow, when it comes to this.”

The cough never improved. It only worsened. No matter how desperately Hilda pleaded with the guards, a brazier was never brought to them.

“I… I was…”

Annabella’s voice had grown so faint it hardly seemed to belong to a woman of twenty-one.

“What was I… even for…”

Those words became her last.

What was any of it… for…

Twenty-one years old. Far too young, and far too lovely, to wither away like that.

***

When she opened her eyes, familiar curtains drifted in the breeze, and there — hung where it had always been — was the portrait of her mother, the one she had missed so terribly and for so long. Her bedroom. The Duke’s estate.

‘This is my room… at the manor…’

Had it all been a dream? No — could something that vivid, that visceral, truly be a dream?

Annabella threw off the bedcovers and crossed to the vanity, studying her reflection carefully. She was at the very tail end of nineteen. The face that looked back at her — fresh, refined, quietly lovely — bore no trace yet of suffering.

“Why am I… here?”

She looked down at the back of her left hand. The burn scar — the one from a hot candelabra just before the wedding ceremony — was gone. Not faded. Gone entirely.

“Could it be… does that mean… am I really…”

Every detail pointed to the same impossible answer.

“I’ve come back… in time?”

It was nearly impossible to accept. Magic still left its traces in the world, yes — but something like this was not supposed to be possible.

And yet the face looking back at her from the mirror, unblemished and clear, and the unscarred back of her hand — both screamed the same thing over and over. She had returned to a time before she had ever become Crown Princess.

“They say if you wish for something desperately enough, it will come true…”

Annabella let her unmarked hand fall to her side. Just then, a knock sounded at the door, and Hilda entered carrying the morning wash basin.

“My, why are you up so early?”

Hilda was, by birth, far too well-bred to be working in a noble household — but she had shared a deep bond with Annabella’s mother, and had appointed herself Annabella’s nursemaid from the time she was a small child, caring for her ever since.

That face, too, was untouched by shadow. As if she had never witnessed a single moment of her mistress’s ruin.

“Goodness… miss, are you crying?”

Thump. Thump. Her heart beat unevenly. Her eyes burned — and then the tears came, spilling over before she could stop them. When Hilda drew her in, the weeping only broke open further, past all containing.

“Hilda…”

“Oh, now. What’s all this? You’re nineteen already, my dear.”

Annabella had become Crown Princess at twenty.

“What is it, truly? Shall I send for the physician?”

At that, Annabella shook her head firmly.

“I had a dream. A truly horrible dream…”

Hilda was patting her back when her hand stilled in midair. Annabella’s nightgown was soaked through with cold sweat.

“What on earth did you dream about… No, never mind. A dream is only a dream — try to calm yourself now. Everything is all right. Isn’t it?”

Hilda could say that, knowing nothing. Annabella’s heart knew otherwise. But perhaps the relief of weeping herself empty in someone’s arms had spent the worst of it — the tears had stopped, at least.

And seeing Hilda like this — healthy and bright-eyed and whole, not the gaunt woman who had shared her confinement and suffered alongside her — loosened something tight in Annabella’s chest.

“Hilda. What is today’s date?”

“Hmm… next week brings us into March.”

There was no time to feel relieved. Annabella’s birthday fell in March — the day she would formally turn twenty, and with it, be invested as Crown Princess.

In other words — nothing had begun yet.