Tiara… Even her name was cute, unlike “Pride,” a rough, overbearing name suited for the villain of the story. I teared up just thinking about her, but that was wrong, so very wrong. My little heart simply couldn’t take the waves of emotion, and soon I was desperately sniffling, trying to keep the snot and tears inside me. I would become the wicked final boss—and Tiara would become the heroine.
During every single route in the game, Pride died at the hands of the main characters. Even the “bad” endings simply had Tiara or a love interest take Pride’s place. No matter how I looked at it, I was doomed. Moreover, I deserved it. Tiara and her love interests were good, honest people. I wouldn’t dare cheat my way to a bad ending with my past-life memories. By the end, Pride was so completely evil, she deserved nothing better than death. As much as I loved the game, I certainly wasn’t a fan of Pride when I played ORL in real life. Fans of the love interests especially hated Pride, and some of that hatred seeped into me now.
I lashed out at the table beside my bed, frustrated to find myself in the body of someone I detested. A maid jerked at the sound of the kick and the table rattling.
“Oh… I’m sorry,” I said.
Shoot! It’s things like this that’ll add up to make me the wicked queen…
The wide-eyed maid simply straightened out the table. “There’s no need to apologize,” she said stiffly, shooting me nervous glances out of the side of her eyes.
Well, no surprise there. Pride—or, I suppose, I—didn’t hold back at all with the maids. I’d fired many and even threatened some with death if they displeased me. Of course, Father intercepted all my attempts to punish them. The normal Pride would have sent the table flying across the room and screamed at the maids to fix it at once, but I couldn’t act out like that, not while retaining my memories of my previous life. I didn’t want to be like that Pride. I couldn’t be like that Pride. In the game, Pride used precognition to torment the love interests and allow tragedies to unfold, but I wanted to take a different course. If only I knew more than just the existence of my sister. If only I knew about my father’s—
“Ah!”
I leapt out of bed with a gasp. The maids all spun toward me. Even the guards outside the door rushed into my room. A flurry of voices asked me what was wrong, but I brushed them all aside.
“Where’s Father?!” I said.
“His Royal Highness just left to inform Her Majesty of today’s events,” a maid informed me.
This is bad! At this rate, he’ll…
“Stop him right now!” I ordered. “He can’t get on that carriage!”
“But Her Majesty is here at the residence, so I don’t believe he’ll need to take a carriage.”
It was no use. The maid, stuck here at my bedside, didn’t realize the queen’s plans might have changed.
I rushed to the window, sticking my head out to view the sprawling garden below. A single carriage sat parked before the house. My father approached it alone, preparing to go see my mother. Contrary to the maid’s assertion, Mother was back at the main castle attending to urgent business, and that was precisely where Father planned to go.
No! He can’t take that carriage!
“Father!” I screamed.
He froze, but then he simply waved up at me.
No, I’m not saying goodbye!
I’d intended to warn him, but he carried on, blissfully unaware. I couldn’t just go on yelling for him not to board the carriage. He’d think I was a kid throwing a tantrum.
In that case…
I placed my foot on the windowsill and leaned out past the frame. Father’s pleasant smile melted into raw fear. My room, the room of a firstborn princess, easily rose higher than an average house. A fall would be fatal.
“Your Highness?!” the maid behind me blurted. “Stop that at on—”
“Stay back!” I said. “It’ll be your head if you stop me!”
I lifted myself up to stand on the windowsill. If I lost my footing, I’d plummet to the ground. The wind gusted against me, sending my long hair streaming behind me. I could hardly breathe aside from panicked sips of air.
“Get down from there, Pride!” Father shouted far below, his face twisted with terror.
Well, I definitely got his attention. Thank goodness.
I steadied myself by clutching the posts and forced down a deep breath.
“Father!” I yelled down to him. “You can’t board that carriage! It has a broken wheel, and you’ll get into an accident before you can speak to Mother!”
Even from a distance, I could see him blinking in confusion. For the second time today, I’d shocked him with one of my pronouncements.
I hardly got the words out before one of the guards grabbed me and yanked me back into the room. But back outside, my father’s voice rose as he demanded someone inspect the carriage’s wheels.
Crisis averted. Now I can relax a little.
This time, at least, I thwarted the events of the game. In ORL, Pride’s father boarded the carriage to rush to the queen and inform her of Pride’s newly awakened precognition. But the carriage collapsed, gravely injuring him. He survived only long enough to tell the queen of Pride’s gift with his dying breaths. Somehow, Pride never foresaw her father’s accident. Not in the game, at least. Here, where I knew the whole story, I could save him. It was truly a blessing.
The guard loosened his grip when he realized I wasn’t resisting. I turned, relieved, but yelped when I saw a maid curled up on the floor in tears. Everyone else stood frozen around her, their faces pale and bloodless. Only that one guard seemed capable of speaking.
“Are you hurt, Your Highness?” he asked me.
Before I could answer, an older maid stepped in front of the one crying on the ground. She fell to her knees at my feet.
“P-please, Your Highness, forgive her. She has nowhere else to go, so I beg of you, please show her mercy.” She trembled as she apologized over and over before me.
Whoops. Might’ve overdone it there.
I should have known better than to throw around threats, even in the heat of the moment. The maid apparently believed I really would have her executed for trying to stop me in the window. I was the crown princess, after all. Everyone around me was at the mercy of my whims. Once again, Pride’s selfish whims, my selfish whims, had caused so much pain.
“I’m…”
I wanted to apologize, but the more I thought about it, the more my head spun. Even the guard who’d pulled me away from the window must have been bracing for some sort of punishment, yet he’d reached out to protect the precious daughter of the queen anyway.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I said.
Perhaps the emotions were just too much for an eight-year-old’s body. Something reached into my chest and squeezed all the air out of my lungs. I burst into tears before I could stop myself. The guard and maids all looked on in bewilderment as I sobbed before them, babbling out tear-thickened apologies.
From the eighteen years of experience I’d gained in my past life, I knew just how much fear power could instill in others and just how much grief could come from having that power used against you. More than anything, I wanted to engrave these facts into my mind for the ten remaining years of my life, so that I would never forget or abuse this authority I’d woken up into.