TWQA 02

Chapter 2

Late at 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 slightly. 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 palace without being noticed by anyone.

“We’ll watch from here.”

Lea found a secluded spot where they could see the door leading into the sanctuary.

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

Kasim frowned. It was not the time for a shift change, and the person was not dressed like a guard coming to take over a shift.

‘Hmm?’

As he watched the two guards leave with that person, the area between Kasim’s eyebrows 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.

The person had a slender build that looked like a woman’s.

She looked around in front of the sanctuary door, then took out a key and unlocked the door.

Kasim’s brow twitched again.

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

As soon as the woman opened the door and entered, Lea said,

“Now.”

The two of them ran toward the sanctuary.

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 confused expression.

She bit her lips tightly, then ran up onto the altar in the center of the sanctuary while holding a crystal dagger.

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

Neria raised the dagger with both hands.

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

‘Stop her!’

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

“Ahh!”

Neria’s body was pushed back by the strong wind. She was lifted into the air for a moment before rolling 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.”

Fierce hatred burned in Lea’s eyes.

At the same time, her heart was cheering.

How long had she wished and wished for this day to come?

“How could you!”

Lea slapped Neria’s cheek repeatedly with all her strength.

“Ah! Aah! S-stop!”

Smack! Smack! Smack!

Blood flowed from Neria’s nose and stained her collar red, while her face quickly became swollen.

Even though Lea knew how cruel she was being and felt pleasure from another person’s pain, she could not stop her hands.

Only after Neria fainted did Lea stop hitting her.

“Haa… Hah.”

She must have been holding her breath while beating Neria, because her heavy breathing finally came rushing out.

Kasim stood there with a half-dazed expression.

‘P-Princess?’

He had watched Lea grow up since she was a child.

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

“Sir Kasim.”

“Yes, yes. Princess!”

Without realizing it, Kasim straightened into an attention stance.

“This is treason. The criminal attempted to destroy the kingdom’s sacred artifact…”

Lea searched through Neria’s clothes and found a signal flare. She smiled coldly.

After destroying the sacred artifact, Neria would have climbed the tower and fired the signal flare. Then the enemy forces waiting outside would have climbed over the walls and invaded the royal palace.

No.

It had already happened once.

That tragedy would never happen again.

“She tried to call the enemy into the royal palace. You are a witness, Sir.”

Kasim straightened his posture and nodded with a serious expression. He took a whistle from inside his clothes and blew it.

A deep, heavy sound echoed throughout the area.

Soon, people would wake up and light up the royal palace.

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

Nella’s voice echoed in her ears.

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

‘I 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 artifact, a new timeline will begin. A new crisis will come.⌟

‘Yes, Your Majesty. I know that too. Today is not the end. It is only the beginning.’

She could not become complacent here.

She had to protect the older 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.

Enoch, the future Emperor and the current First Prince.

Stopping his ascension to the throne was Lea’s greatest goal after returning to the past.

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

Behind Neria was the former queen, Jaran.

The members of Jaran’s faction who had taken part in the conspiracy were also uncovered one after another.

Aren was deeply shocked.

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

“Your Majesty. Princess Lea wishes to see you.”

“Let her in.”

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

His eyes were bloodshot after barely sleeping for several days.

“I really do not understand, Lea. Why would the former queen do this?”

Aren had treated his stepmother with great care.

He had given her a residence in the eastern part of the royal palace and provided her with plenty of money to maintain her status.

He had also cared for 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 artifact will not respond to Rami.”

The members of the royal family had to receive the blessing of the sacred artifact before their seventh birthday.

Until now, Jaran had delayed the blessing ceremony by using her grief over losing the former king as an excuse.

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

That was why Jaran had tried to borrow outside forces, kill Aren, and place her young son on the throne.

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

Aren let out a long sigh and covered his face with both hands before raising his head.

“Did your 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 is not that I do not believe you, but we should confirm it.”

He turned to his aide and said,

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

“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 got up and ran toward her.

Neria 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 would not have been able to destroy the sacred artifact. I would have failed, and nothing would have happened to the kingdom.”

‘No. You succeed. The thousand-year-old Zephyrus Kingdom falls because of what you did.’

“Did you really think betraying your country would make you the Imperial Prince’s Crown Princess?”

Neria’s eyes trembled.

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

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

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

Lea gave a mocking snort, 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 looked back.

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

Neria clung to the bars and screamed.

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

All because of something as small as an inferiority complex.

“So that was it.”

Was she the only one who thought of them as sisters?

Lea turned away again.

Even when she heard Neria desperately calling after her like a scream, this time Lea did not look back.

Neria and Jaran were executed.

It was also revealed that the five-year-old prince was not the former king’s son.

Those who had to die were killed, and those who deserved to live were spared.

Aren publicly announced that Princess Lea was the hero who had saved the kingdom from the crisis.

While having tea with Lea after calling her to his private reception room, Aren said,

“It is all thanks to you.”

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

“It is thanks to you. Do not lower the value of what you did yourself. That is a royal command.”

“Yes…”

Aren looked at Lea proudly before speaking with a serious expression.

“We removed the rotten branches, but the roots are the problem. I do not know if we can provoke the Empire with our own strength.”

Lea put down her teacup and said,

“Brother. There is one thing we must make clear. The Empire is not behind this.”

“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 acted on his own. He tried to use us as sacrifices to strengthen his own position by gaining achievements. The Emperor was not involved.”

Since the day Lea had told him that she had received an oracle, Aren had been looking at his younger sister, who seemed somehow changed.

She still smiled often, but it was no longer the innocent and carefree smile of the princess he had known before.

Her eyes were hard, like a piece of stone polished by countless hardships and suffering.

It felt as if 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 need to face reality. We are not prey that the Emperor would bother to hunt.”

Aren sighed and calmly nodded.