Page 7 of The Fifth Life of Alicia
“My lady?” Bella waved her hand in my face. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I blinked at her. “I think I’ll rest for a while, Bella. Can you clear this tea away? I’m sorry, especially after you went the lengths to make it for me.”
She didn’t bat an eyelid as she cleared my almost untouched tea. “Not at all, my lady. It’s important that you rest enough. Would you like me to wake you for dinner?”
“What time is it?”
“One-thirty.”
“If I’m not awake by five-thirty, bring my dinner to my room, even if it wakes me.” I got up from the table and walked over to my huge bed, perching on the edge of it. “Please make sure nobody disturbs me.”
“Of course, my lady.” Bella swiftly closed all the curtains in my room, then wheeled out the tea tray, pausing only to bow her head before she shut the door behind her.
I flopped back onto the bed and blew out a long breath.
It wasn’t a lie. I was exhausted—but not because of the accident. I was simply drained from this new life of mine.
It sounded ridiculous given that I was the pampered eldest daughter of a marquess, but waking up in possession of the memories of two people wasn’t as fun as books made it sound.
Especially not this body’s memories. It was an endless stream of abuse and hatred from my new stepmother and half-siblings, and those memories were exactly why I hadn’t yet left my room. I feared leaving and being subject to that same abuse. I didn’t have to be a doctor to know that it wouldn’t be a good thing in my weakened state.
Knowing that the reason I’d ended up here was because Sophia Vermillion had tried to kill the original soul was a tough pill to swallow.
No. Shehadkilled her. There was no way other my soul could have found its way here otherwise. I didn’t know much right now, but something in my gut told me I was right.
Which meant there was no way back to my original world for me—neither would Alicia’s soul come to reclaim her body.
I was Alicia; Alicia was me.
I also knew one other thing.
I knew how I was destined to die.
At least how I was supposed to die in the original story.
In all the reincarnation novels I’d read like this, the heroine was always afraid of changing the original story, but I harboured no such fears.
I was going to change the original story.
In fact, the story was already changing.
The novel hadn’t covered too much about Alicia’s life given that she was a side character destined to die, but she’d never died or evenalmost diedat the hands of her family. They hadn’t had the best relationship from the vague insight readers had been given into her life, but abusive to the point of death?
No. That hadn’t been the case.
Which meant the world I had come to had to be different from the one I knew of.
Of course, that didn’t mean things couldn’t divert back to the original path. I couldn’t control the actions of others, so the route to my death could still be the same if I didn’t try to change the things around me.
The first thing I had to do was not marry Kalon, the Grand Duke of Stein, also known as the Beast of the Battlefield for his cold, almost tyrant-like demeanour during the Great War. He was a man known not to take prisoners and would kill traitors and miscreants on the spot, whether it be a battlefield or a ballroom, and that was exactly how the empire had conquered five neighbouring countries in a little over eighteen months.
He was the eldest son of the Emperor and the first, late
Empress, but had been all but ostracised to the northern territory of Stein after the war due to the influence of his stepmother, the current Empress.
That was how his younger brother had ended up as Crown Prince, too.
I’d drooled over Kalon in the novel—everyone loved a fictional red flag, after all—but if I married him in this life, that red flag would become my death flag.
