THCF 02

Chapter 02

Deep in the night, Lea quietly opened the door to her bedroom.

A middle-aged man with gray hair, who had been waiting in front of the door, bowed his head. He was Kasim, the Captain of the Royal Guard.

Lea and Kasim quietly left the corridor.

Thanks to Kasim knowing the guards’ patrol routes by heart, they headed toward the sanctuary deep inside the royal castle without being noticed by anyone.

“We will watch from here.”

Lea settled down in a secluded spot where she could see the door leading into the sanctuary.

After some time, someone approached the royal guards guarding the sanctuary.

Kasim frowned. It was not the time for a shift change, nor was the person dressed like a soldier who had come to take over the shift.

‘Hmm?’

As Kasim watched two guards leave their posts together with that person, his brow twitched.

“Not yet.”

Lea whispered.

Kasim almost rushed out to shout at them, but he held himself back.

It was not long before someone else was coming.

Overall, the person had a slender build that looked like a woman.

She looked around in front of the sanctuary door, then took out a key from her clothes and opened the door.

Kasim’s brow twitched again.

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

As soon as the woman opened the door and went inside, Lea said,

“Now.”

The two of them ran forward.

As Lea opened the door and entered, she shouted,

“Stop, Neria!”

The woman was startled and turned her head.

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

Neria stepped back with a flustered expression.

Neria bit her lips tightly, then grabbed the crystal dagger and ran onto the altar in the center of the sanctuary.

Above the altar, a round orb about the size of a human head was floating, giving off a soft light.

Neria raised the dagger with both hands.

Just before she drove it down into the orb with all her strength, Lea stretched out her hand.

‘Stop her!’

A strong gust of wind created by the spirit struck Neria.

“Eek!”

Pushed back by the strong wind, Neria’s body was lifted into the air for a moment before she rolled down from the altar.

Lea kicked the crystal dagger far away, then grabbed Neria by the collar and pulled her up into a sitting position.

“How dare you.”

Intense hatred burned in Lea’s eyes.

At the same time, her heart was cheering.

How long had she wished for this day to come?

“How could you!”

With blazing eyes, Lea put all her strength into slapping Neria’s cheek again and again without mercy.

“Ah! Ahh! S-Stop!”

Slap! Slap! Slap!

Blood flowed from Neria’s nose, staining her collar red, and her face became badly swollen.

Even while realizing her own cruelty and the pleasure she felt from another person’s pain, Lea could not stop her hands.

Only after Neria fainted did Lea stop beating her.

“Haa…… ha.”

Perhaps she had been holding her breath while hitting her, because her heavy breathing came rushing out afterward.

Kasim stood there with a half-dazed expression.

‘P-Princess?’

He had watched Lea since she was young.

The kind and gentle princess who seemed like the heroine of a fairy tale felt like a completely different person at this moment.

“Sir Kasim.”

“Yes, yes, Princess!”

Kasim instinctively straightened into attention.

“It is treason. The criminal tried to destroy the kingdom’s sacred treasure and—”

Lea searched through the unconscious Neria’s clothes and found a signal flare. She then gave a cold smile.

After destroying the sacred treasure, Neria would have climbed the tower and fired the signal flare. The waiting enemy forces would then have climbed over the walls and invaded the royal castle.

No.

It had already happened once.

That tragedy would never happen again.

“She tried to call the enemy into the royal castle. You are my witness.”

Kasim nodded with a firm expression, still standing straight, and took a whistle from his clothes and blew it.

A deep, heavy sound echoed through the surroundings.

Soon, people would wake up and light the fires throughout the royal castle.

Lea looked down at her red and swollen palm, then clenched her fist tightly.

Nella’s voice echoed in her ears.

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

‘We did it, Your Majesty!’

Her tightly clenched fist trembled.

Joy, relief, fear, and countless other emotions were mixed together.

⌜The moment you stop the destruction of the sacred treasure, 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 become complacent here.

She had to protect the elder brother, nanny, Penny, and all the precious people she had saved today.

The mastermind behind the fall of the Zephyrus Kingdom.

The culprit who had taken away all of Lea’s hopes.

And the enemy of Nella, King of Nortia.

The future Emperor and the current First Prince, Enoch.

Stopping his ascension to the throne was the greatest goal of Lea, who had returned to the past.

Aren, King of Zephyrus, ordered a thorough investigation, and the whole truth was revealed.

Behind Neria was the former Queen Jaran.

Jaran’s forces who had participated in the conspiracy were also revealed one after another.

Aren was deeply shocked.

Without him even knowing, the kingdom had been rotting from within.

“Your Majesty. Princess Lea requests an audience.”

“Let her in.”

Aren, who was sitting at his desk, raised his head.

His eyes were bloodshot from barely sleeping for the past several days.

“I really don’t understand, Lea. Why would the former Queen do such a thing?”

Aren had treated his stepmother with great care.

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

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

“I know the reason.”

“What?”

“Rami is not Father’s biological child.”

Aren’s mouth fell open.

The youngest, Rami, was the former king’s posthumous child. He was five years old this year.

“The sacred treasure will not respond to Rami.”

Members of the royal bloodline had to receive the blessing of the sacred treasure before their seventh birthday.

Until then, Jaran had delayed the blessing ceremony under the excuse of mourning the loss of the former king.

If the former queen’s adultery was revealed, she would be expelled from the royal family line, and no one would accept her after she was disgraced.

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

Once someone gained power, there would always be a way to escape punishment somehow.

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

“Did the prophetic dream tell you that too?”

“……Yes.”

Lea hid the fact that she had lived through one more lifetime.

She told him that she had received an oracle that allowed her to see prophetic dreams.

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

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, but we should confirm it.”

He turned toward his aide and said,

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

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Lea went down to the underground prison.

“Neria.”

Neria, who had been curled up on the wooden bed in the corner of the cell, suddenly stood up and ran over.

She grabbed 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 sacred treasure. I would have failed, and nothing would have happened to the kingdom.”

‘No. You succeed. The Zephyrus Kingdom, which had lasted for a thousand years, falls because of what you did.’

“Did you really think that betraying the country would allow you to become the imperial prince’s wife?”

Neria’s eyes shook.

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

“The Imperial Prince isn’t so free that he would sneak all the way into this distant desert kingdom just to seduce one woman. The man you met was just a messenger. And when things went wrong, he already ran away.”

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

Lea snorted as if mocking her, and Neria’s expression twisted.

“You have to pay the price for your foolishness. The day you leave this place will be the last time you see sunlight.”

Lea coldly turned away.

When she heard Neria scream, “Aaaah!” Lea slowly turned around.

“You always looked at me with those eyes. You smiled falsely and pretended to be kind, but inside, you despised me!”

Neria grabbed the bars and screamed.

Looking at Neria crying as she glared at her with resentment, Lea let out a hollow laugh.

All because of an inferiority complex.

Such a trivial reason.

“So that’s how it was.”

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

Lea turned away again.

Even when Neria desperately called after her, sounding almost like a scream, Lea 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 announced that Princess Lea was the hero who had saved the kingdom from the crisis.

While drinking tea after calling Lea to his private reception room, Aren said,

“It is all thanks to you.”

“You believed me and made a quick decision. You were the one who took care of everything, Brother.”

“It is thanks to you. Don’t lower the value of what you did yourself. This is a royal command.”

“Yes…….”

Aren looked at Lea with pride, then spoke with a serious expression.

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

Lea put down her teacup and said,

“Brother. There is one fact we must make clear. The mastermind is not the Empire.”

“Not the Empire?”

“It was Enoch, the First Prince of the Empire.”

“Lea. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No. More precisely, the First Prince did it on his own. He tried to use us as sacrifices to strengthen his position by gaining achievements. The Emperor was not involved.”

Since the day she had said that she had received an oracle, Aren had watched his younger sister, who seemed somehow changed.

She still smiled often, but it was no longer the innocent and carefree smile of the princess she used to be.

Her eyes were hard, like a piece of flint that had been worn down by countless hardships and suffering.

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

“Brother. You must face reality. We are not prey that the Emperor would bother taking the trouble to hunt.”

Aren sighed and calmly nodded.