Chapter 1: I Died

“Liliana Florencia Thorn, for the crime of bullying Holly, my true love, I hereby annul our engagement, strip you of your status of Saint, and sentence you to immediate death.”

I am ashamed to say that my reaction to that rather scathing declaration was not what one would expect. As a lover of villainess storylines, I was enraptured by those words and eagerly awaited the continuation of this condemnation event. However, the story did not continue. The villainess made no plea of innocence, and the man standing atop the balcony said nothing more. Instead, he merely stared at me with hatred in his eyes until I remembered that he was, in fact, my own fiancé, Leo Hendrickson Passio the 42nd, crown prince of the country of Deus. Furthermore, rather than exiling me to some faraway province or marrying me off to some hated noble who I would later learn secretly had a heart of gold, I was instead about to be executed on that very spot.

It was at that point that I began to freak out, which was quite justifiable, if I do say so. I had never been particularly diligent in my noble training, despite my high status. However, I doubted that any noble woman could remain calm in such a situation, although some of them may have handled it better than I did. Rather than properly defending myself from the ridiculous charges that were being laid out before me, I instead rambled incoherently for several minutes. Also, if I’m being entirely honest, I was too busy panicking to actually hear what most of the charges were, so my ramblings really were little more than nonsense.

Unsurprisingly, this did little to pacify the outraged prince, so I instead searched the room for allies, but instead found only strangers looking back at me. At this point, I would love to say this is the kind of story where I was transmigrated to this world right at this very moment and hadn’t yet had the chance to meet anyone, but sadly, that was not the case. I had been reborn into this world as a baby, and though I had initially forgotten my past life, all those memories came crashing back when I was six years old. I had then spent another twelve years in this world, with the last six being spent here at the Royal Academy. I had plenty of time to make friends, but alas, my social anxiety had followed me across worlds.

Rather than spending time with my classmates, I preferred returning to my room once classes were done and enjoying a nice book. Of course, there were some faces I recognized in the crowd. As the daughter of a duke, I was mandated to attend certain events, namely, tea parties with other high-ranking nobles, both for the sake of gathering information and making connections. However, those were formalities that I dreaded with every fiber of my being, so I seldom came off as particularly friendly. Still, even if I had been the nicest person in the world, I knew better than to expect anyone to speak up on my behalf when silence offered them far greater benefits.

While the Kingdom of Deus had an unusually strong obsession with passion and love stories, such that killing someone who interfered with your “true love” was technically legal, I knew that not even they would allow someone like Holly, the prince’s mistress, to become queen. If the prince grew bored with her, as he had with me, she would be replaced relatively easily with a more suitable choice. However, if that did not occur, she would still be removed by whatever high-ranking nobles believed they could benefit from her disappearance. Thus, so long as my execution continued without incident, each of the other dukes would have the chance to marry one of their daughters into the royal family.

Honestly, the idea that such a girl would be accepted as queen was simply laughable, but as that thought crossed my mind, I was suddenly struck with the urge to hit myself repeatedly for not seeing the signs sooner. Holly was the naive and boisterous illegitimate daughter of a count. She had been raised as a commoner and was only brought into her father’s family and allowed to attend the Royal Academy this year because it had been discovered that she had a high proficiency for healing magic. From there, her lack of proper manners and unusual antics had annoyed her classmates and charmed the prince, who often spoke of her on our dates. Looking back, it could not have been more obvious. She was the heroine of this story, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, that made me the villainess.

Seriously, though, how was I supposed to be the villainess here? I had never once bullied Holly or even realized that the prince found her to be anything more than mildly amusing. However, any defense I might have made crumbled to pieces when I looked down and realized that I was standing at my graduation party in a deep red dress, with a black fan in my hand, and with my long blonde hair fashioned into drill curls. For the love of all that is good and holy in the world, how had my otaku soul actually allowed me to wear drill curls to this party? Sure, they were a traditional style for my family, but by wearing them, I had completely sealed my fate.

I looked up at the balcony above the dance floor, where the prince and his entourage now stood. Holly was held tightly in his arms with a truly indecipherable look on her face, though I suspected that she was overjoyed that her plan to frame me had gone off so well. To the prince’s right was Roman, high priest of the Church of Eros and son of its current pontiff. Meanwhile, to his left was Aster, high priest of the Church of Logo and son of its current pontiff. Finally, behind the prince stood his ever-loyal guard dog, Atlas, the son of the current royal knight commander.

As sad as it was to admit, those four (Holly not included, obviously) had been the closest thing to friends I had at the academy. However, more concerning than that in the moment was the realization that I had missed such obvious tropes. What were the odds that the sons of three of the most important figures in the kingdom were all the same age and attending the academy together? Actually, it was worse than that. Despite being only eighteen, Roman and Aster had already secured positions of power within their respective churches. These were technically inherited positions, but it was all still utterly ludicrous and only made sense if they were intended to be capture targets for the heroine. Any of them could have fallen for her and provided a wonderful life in whatever epilogue this story offered. However, her place in the prince’s arms indicated that she followed his route. Alternatively, the presence of all four men on the balcony could also be taken as a sign that this was the harem ending.

However, as I tried to decipher how close the other three men were to her, the prince raised his hand and pointed it at me. He had been speaking this entire time, but my obsession with identifying tropes had kept me from hearing anything he said, and I doubted he was in the mood to repeat himself.

Once more, I desperately looked around for some other trope that could save me. Maybe there was some foreign royal who had fallen in love with me from afar, or maybe the prince’s brother had a crush on me from childhood and would steal the throne to save me. Unfortunately, there was no hope to be found in those delusions.

The Kingdom of Deus was an incredibly isolated country, with the Duke of Stalks being the only one allowed to negotiate with other countries and their merchants. Thus, there was no foreign prince, or any other kind of foreign noble, to save me, and even if there had been, I doubted they would have stood a chance against Prince Leo. As the crown prince, he wielded divine magic. No spellcaster, no matter their proficiency, could hurt him or stand against him, not even his brother.

Nobody could beat him, and nobody could save me. As golden light erupted from his hand and quickly reduced me to ash, I offered up a silent prayer of thanks that my death was at least painless.