Chapter 12: The Female Lead(4)

The cold wind passed through the window that night before I went to sleep. From where I slept, I could only see the curtain blowing along the wind.

The things that happened that day overwhelmed me like the storm that sunk me into the deep sea.

Knowing what would happen next brought me no sense of ease. Even before sleeping, I needed to calculate my move. What did I miss, what should I do, What should I avoid, I always thought of that. But there was still a limit to what I could or couldn't do.

One of them was winning the trust of someone. Of all the novel's characters, I wanted to bring Flynn to my side.

But a trust for less than a year couldn't win the trust of fifteen years even the sky would fall down the next day.

'It is what it is.'

+++

Marinette covered her blanket as she fell asleep. Emerging from the shadow was the shiny knife attached to the one who got into Marinette's room earlier.

He stood at the end of Marinette's feet. Her blanket couldn't cover her cold feet. That man ignored the owner of the room and invaded her property in the bed drawer.

After he got what he was ordered to look for, he escaped through the way he entered. But he didn't get far from Marinette's room. With his knight suit, he was able to walk inside the Mortel duchy without any suspicion, he walked to Marinette's floor.

At the end of that floor was his master's room.

"Give it to me."

"What do you need it for, lady Diana?"

"You don't need to know, Flynn."

Diana waved her right hand to signal Flynn to leave her room while she arranged the tea set on her table.

But Flynn didn't leave right away. While his hand was still attached to the doorknob, he asked Diana, "Will your plan hurt Lady Marinette?"

Diana closed the tea box and gave him so response. She stared at him to make sure he knew his place.

A servant shall know his place, a servant doesn't need to understand their master's plan. All they need to do is to serve. That's what a servant made to do. 

Diana didn't need to say all that because Flynn left right away.

The light shone through the gap between the door and the floor. Diana stepped on the light to the hidden board that she flipped on her wall.

"Saintess Irene...she and I weren't much of an enemy back then...but I have to bring her down for my plan."

Diana dipped the feather in the red ink and crossed Irene's name on the board. Irene was the third name she did that to. The first one was Marinette, and the second one couldn't be recognized anymore because the red covered that name.

There were a lot of names and dates on the board. Under each name, Diana wrote their detail, their fate, their past, and their potential to be an ally or enemy. 

All of the things she wrote connected to one name in the middle of the board, the name Richard de Anastasia, the crown prince of the empire.

"Will he intervene?"

[Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well.]

The thought occurred in her mind as she stared at Richard's name. The voice and blood that came out of the speaker's mouth stayed crystal clear in her mind no matter how much she tried to forget it. 

She panted on the ground because of the terrible pain she experienced just by recalling the unpleasant memory.

But through experiencing that pain, she gained another memory.

[Memory Magic: Memory Transfer]

She leaned against her bed with her head facing the ceiling as she was waiting for the transfer to be completed.

After a while, she stood up and walked back to the table. Diana opened the drawer and pulled a book underneath the decoy in her drawer.

She wrote the memory she recalled earlier.

-132/143 pieces of memory, Irene revealed the first oracle on 1 August. The oracle stated, [The present shall change, the past will repeat, the loop finally ends.]

'The past will repeat?'

[Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well.]

[Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well.]

[Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well.]

[Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well.]

[Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well.]

[Your prince charming, he betrays you.]

[Your prince charming, he betrays you.]

[Your prince charming, he betrays you.]

[Richard never loves you.]

Diana couldn't go to sleep that night. She put her palm on her face to cover her tears from falling onto her secret diary. The bed looked like a torture device to her. The torture device was the first memory she recalled.

There was a saying that said that you would see the thing that killed you in your past life. And that saying was indeed true for Diana.

"I won't let the past repeat."

+++

"Your prince charming, I hope he treats you well."

Staring into my eyes, Marinette fell into her pool of blood.

"Marinette!!! Marinette!!!"

My vision became blurry when I saw that face turned expressionless in front of me. Even on her worst day, she never looked like that. She was the only person who smiled at her brother's funeral.

I called the guard to give me the key. I rushed into Marinette the moment the door opened.

But she already passed away even before I could hold her corpse. 

"Don't die...don't die like that...live...live...come back, Marinette...this is not the death you deserve...please..."

One moment, I was mourning for Marinette. I was naive that I couldn't see what I had been losing so far.

My father, my brother, the Mortel dukedom, Aurora, everyone that stayed by my side...they all met a terrible fate. Among all the people I lost, Marinette was the only one that I forced a terrible fate on.

After Marinette's death, by the new emperor's order, the guard took me to a place even worse than hell.

For the sin of killing Marinette, they buried me inside the dirt full of maggots. They fed me milk by tying the bucket of milk on top of my head above the ground and pouring it down one drop at a time.

I screamed and begged for mercy while the maggot was making holes all over my buried body. The milk dropped on my tongue as I screamed, but I spat it out because I had grown tired of it after a week. 

I didn't even know if I lost energy or not because I couldn't move my body. I could only move my head. With my body in the standing position underground, the pain of not being able to sleep got to me.

Even if I tried to sleep, the milk wouldn't let me. It would wake me up in every drop.

The only person who came to visit me in that abandoned room was the person who filled the bucket of milk. Every three days they visited me, I always expected the person to be different, but my expectations always failed me. 

On week 3, after asking for help countless times from that person, I asked them, "Was what I did that wrong...for him to never visit me once...?"

"Lady Diana...the emperor took his life that night."

"What...?"

"The late emperor Richard wasn't the one who sent you here, the new emperor did."

"Why...??!!! Why did he take his life???!!! I...I..."

It seemed like that bucket wasn't needed after all. The millions of maggots that started from hundreds weren't patient enough to wait for the milk.

I became numb to the pain of maggots coming in and out of my ear, and how it crawled all over my eyes and entered my nose. If I could look in the mirror, half of my face would be already in the maggot's belly.

I died.

It wasn't like I didn't know. But I tried to fool myself. If I pretended not to know, then I wouldn't be hurt.

But it still hurt. My heart broke to pieces. Richard was everything to me, but I was never his everything, Marinette was.

The mark I saw on Marinette's tongue on the floor was the mark Richard promised to give me on the day of marriage.

The day that he delayed until the execution of Marinette finished, but the day of Marinette's never came. Despite the council and the citizen's opinions, he always found an excuse to delay her execution.

That mark was the ultimate spell of the light magic.

+++

Two types of Light magic's ultimate spell:

[Light Magic: A Life for A Life.]: to cast the spell is through a true love kiss.

The one who receives the true love kiss will not die until the caster lets them die.

-Requirement: True love of the caster

-Condition: A minute of that person's life equals an hour of the caster's life

[Light Magic: Eternal Love]: to cast the spell is through a true love kiss.

-Requirement: True love of both parties

-Condition: A minute of that person's life equals a minute of the caster's life.

To be continued...!