Page 8 of The Fifth Life of Alicia
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.
Marquess Vermillion saw his self-absorbed eldest daughter as nothing more than a pawn to use for his own interests and married her off to Kalon, strengthening his ties with both the Imperial Family and the Grand Duchy of Stein, a self-governing territory within the empire.
All to trade in magic stones and gain yet more money and power.
Mind you, that was why Kalon himself had agreed to the marriage. It was hardly one-sided—the Vermillion Trading Group were experts in magic stones, and the more magic stones that Kalon mined from the Stein mountains, the more money that was in his pocket.
As far as marrying Alicia off went, her bloodline was exceptional. The Vermillions were an old, powerful family, and her mother had been the first daughter of a once-renowned dukedom who’d once wielded divine power.
In layman’s terms, she was more than acceptable for the Crown Prince himself as a future Empress candidate, never mind a prince who was sidelined like Kalon was.
Ugh.
My modern-day brain was never going to get used to thinking about women as property. The very thought of how little power I possessed as a woman in this world sent a shiver down my spine.
There was little I could do without the permission of my father and, later, that would be the case for my husband, especially as a member of the nobility.
In the book, after moving to the northern territory, the spoilt and snobbish Alicia fell in love with Kalon, although her affections were one-sided. Despite her best efforts to make him notice her, he wasn’t interested in having any kind of close relationship with his wife, thus making their marriage as unhappy as humanly possible.
Reason two for me not to marry that handsome bastard.
The book began approximately six or seven months after their wedding, at the Imperial Family’s annual autumn harvest banquet. That was where Lady Lillia de Armand made her belated debut and, with her innocence, caught the attention of both Kalon and his younger brother, Crown Prince Torin.
It’s also where Alicia’s hell began.
After that, the book dove into a love triangle between the three. From the readers’ perspective—and thus Lilla’s—Lillia was genuinely torn between the two brothers, but Alicia’s point of view was that she was using Kalon to make Torin desire her more. Alicia hated how Lillia seemed to be toying with her husband’s emotions, and the snobbish side of her disliked the other woman for being the daughter of a countryside baron with no real power.
In short, she was jealous that Lillia had managed to capture Kalon’s attention when she, his wife, was unable to do so, despite all her best efforts.
Alicia proceeded to make Lillia’s life difficult in high society, and because the story was told primarily from Lillia’s point of view, Alicia was painted as a cruel villainess who would leave no stone unturned in her attempt to get rid of the sweet, innocent Lillia.
Alicia’s story ended when she was accused of poisoning Lillia via a maid she’d snuck into the de Armand townhouse. During her trial, Torin announced his intent to marry Lillia, meaning Alicia’s only possible sentence was that of death.
In this world, that was usually at the hands of a guillotine.
I had no intention of getting my head chopped off, that was for sure.
Not to mention that I was always of the opinion that Alicia had been set up. Who’d done such a thing to her wasn’t something I’d considered—after all, there were plenty of people who disliked her for her behaviour, but that was beside the point.
I’d hated the author for not making Kalon feel anything for Alicia. Although Alicia’s backstory wasn’t told in full, the reader knew that she hadn’t had a happy childhood—much like Kalon himself. They’d both grown up without their mothers and had been ridiculed by their fathers’ second wives, and I’d desperately wanted those two hurt souls to find solace in one another through their shared pain, but it wasn’t to be. In the few key scenes that were written from Kalon’s point of view, all we saw was his dislike for his wife and his deep desire to divorce her so he could pursue Lillia in earnest.
Personally, I’d always thought Lillia was a bit of a bitch for entertaining a relationship with a married man. From that perspective, Alicia’s hatred of her was entirely justified.
Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t liked that Kalon had feelings for a woman who wasn’t his wife, but at least he’d cared and tried to end his marriage. He’d tried to do the right thing when he could, even though Alicia had been stubbornly holding on.
Not to mention mistresses were common andlegalin this society. If Kalon had tried to take one, there wouldn’t have been anything Alicia could do anyway.
Lillia hadn’t given two hoots because she’d disliked Alicia, and the only reason she’d disliked Alicia was because she was married to Kalon in the first place. A part of me had always thought that Lillia had desired Kalon more than the Crown Prince, but the allure of the crown was too much.
