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Chapter 1
Prologue: Flame and Flight
My life was, for the most part, perfect.
As the head of the western nobility, a member of the proud mage family Baltress, a duchess, and the Empire’s betrothed Crown Princess.
A woman who had it all: a dazzlingly brilliant background, unparalleled talent in magical alchemy, and a beauty so rare it was said to appear only once in a millennium.
That was me. By name, I was Irene Baltress.
However, in a certain book, ‘I’ was described as follows:
Greedy, authoritarian, and arrogant. Her specialties are tyranny and her hobbies are stalking and luxury. A pitiful and vicious woman loved by no one… it said.
‘Perfect life, my ass.’
I finally realized it.
I had been reincarnated into some romance novel I’d read in my previous life.
I, Irene Baltress, was the villainess character who, obsessed with unrequited love, would eventually meet her ruin.
Possessing a romance? Reincarnated as a villainess? All good, I get it.
But why did the memories of my past life have to come back now, of all times?
“I-Irene Baltress…! Heh, you… cough!”
I’ve already done it.
Clang!
Throwing down the sword clutched in my hand, I looked down at the man collapsed before me. Blood gushed from his pierced left chest, but I felt no particular pity.
“How… pant, could you… ugh, me…!”
Cheshire Vladys Hilvarcia.
His disheveled blonde hair and bloodshot blue eyes.
This man, still handsome even as he lay dying, was the Crown Prince of the sole Empire, my fiance, and the male lead of this godforsaken world.
And just moments ago, he had notified the tiresome villainess of their broken engagement, and as payment, got himself stabbed.
“Damn it, huff, Irene…!”
Oh dear.
“Since my head already aches, please be quiet, Your Highness.”
It looks like he’ll soon breathe his last, but Cheshi won’t die.
‘Probably? There’s no way the male lead would die so pathetically, right?’
With my mind reeling from a shock that felt like the world had turned upside down, I thought calmly.
How did it come to this?
Well, the beginning of the incident was like this.
Cheshi betrayed me. In an excessively insulting way.
Lately, he had been courting fervently, like a man with nothing to lose.
When it was revealed that the object of his affections wasn’t me, his fiancee, but my stepsister, the Saint who had descended after a hundred years, the capital and high society buzzed with excitement.
Naturally, my honor became a laughingstock.
The moment I saw even cheap gossip rags mention the Duchess of Baltres, I felt an anger so profound that, for the first time in my life, I could barely control my own body.
It was so immense that I did the crazy thing of mounting a horse in my indoor dress.
“Let’s just call off the engagement, Duchess.”
Cheshi, whom I had chased all the way to that remote northern villa and finally met, spouted such nonsense the moment he entered the drawing-room.
I held back, once.
“This is an engagement that has lasted for a full ten years. To unilaterally break a promise with Baltres like this—”
“Ah, if it’s Baltres you’re worried about, don’t. I will marry Lishi de Baltres instead.”
It was such nonsensical bullshit I couldn’t believe it even hearing it with both ears.
‘He’s going to trample my honor and marry her?’
I knew well that Cheshi was thrashing about, caught up in his first love, which had come late.
This cold, irritable man only ever looked at her with eyes so hot and sweet they seemed about to melt any moment.
I wasn’t so numb that this fact would hurt me anew. However, I was angered by his attitude, which showed he couldn’t care less about my plummeting honor and future.
But since he was the Crown Prince, I held back a second time.
“Did she agree to marry you, Your Highness?”
“Ha! Are you thinking of using the broken engagement as an excuse to harm Lishi?”
“…I heard you caused a scene at Lishi consecration ceremony? It seems your tyranny no longer knows time or place.”
In Cheshi frosty gaze, I could clearly see undisguised contempt.
I held back a third time. Thankfully, my voice came out smoothly without wavering.
“I was just asking if she had accepted this marriage herself.”
“She will accept soon. Provided you accept this annulment quietly.”
On Cheshi cold, stern face, speaking as if passing judgment, I could find no trace of the boy I had once loved.
“I love you, Your Highness. Perhaps even more than you love Lishi.”
Was it really love?
Maybe it was obsession, as he once disparaged.
But for the sake of what I had to give up to stand by his side, and for my honor, it was certain I couldn’t back down like this.
“So I cannot accept it.”
“I’m sick of your love talk, Irene Baltres.”
Cheshi snapped, his murderous intent now undisguised.
“Can’t you understand the annulment? Why don’t you look at yourself? Seems even Baltres is tired of shielding your misdeeds.”
“I have done nothing to dishonor my name.”
“How shameless. And here Lishi is worried about you.”
Ah, that truly angelic Lishi.
Ever since she was registered into the Baltres family, everything around me went awry.
Cheshi , who, even if it was a loveless political marriage, had at least shown me courtesy, transformed into an arrogant man who refused even to enter a ballroom with me as his partner.
My brother, who wasn’t affectionate but had at least shown familial respect, developed improper feelings for his stepsister at some point and began treating me like a pest.
‘Why? Because she’s a Saint blessed by God?’
Whether I did something or not, I was often perceived as tormenting the Saint out of jealousy.
“His Majesty the Emperor has approved the betrothal between me and Lishi.”
Cheshi spoke as if pronouncing a sentence.
“…So I never had any right to refuse from the beginning.”
“Lishi merely wanted to respect your feelings. The engagement with you is terminated.”
It was an excessively unjust act, but I was no longer surprised. Biting my lip to suppress its trembling, I finally exhaled the breath I had been holding.
“…Baltress won’t stand idly by.”
“It seems you haven’t heard yet. The Duke of Baltres has also accepted.”
Thud.
On the annulment papers Cheshi tossed before me, the seal of Baltres was clearly stamped.
Crimson ink imbued with magic.
The crest of a two-headed serpent embracing a tree.
“Didn’t I tell you not to worry about Baltres?”
‘…So Father chose to cast me aside.’
If Lishi, the Saint, were to marry into the Imperial family anew, the messy Imperial scandal involving the two duchesses of Baltres and the young duke’s illicit feelings for his stepsister could be neatly tidied up.
What did Father gain from the Imperial family in exchange for discarding me?
Territory? A mine? No. Perhaps the permit for the reconstruction of the Magic Tower?
Whatever it was, this was a death sentence. I could no longer endure it.
“You broke your promise… not to betray me.”
“Are you threatening me now?”
Cheshi sneered coldly.
With cold fingertips, I idly traced the edge of the table. He hadn’t even offered me a cup of tea.
The northern villa in the white snowfields, built for Lishi, who was said to have never seen snow in her life. Their cozy private space and time.
Here, I was merely an unwelcome intruder.
“It seems I am the only one who can protect my honor. So I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I…”,
Even at this moment, I still love Cheshi.
Which is why…
“I have no choice but to kill you.”
I felt surging, torrential magic and a painful heat gather in my heart.
BANG!
It was over in the blink of an eye.
The table vanished, shattered, and in its place, a white rapier formed from magic materialized in my hand.
Once, long ago, wanting to share a common point with Cheshi, I had lightly learned swordsmanship. A form exactly resembling that sword was now in my grasp.
A sensation like a typhoon raging through the magic circuit in my heart. A sharp pain, as if gouging my heart, followed.
A horrified Cheshi seemed to shout something, but I couldn’t hear him. Even the pain gradually faded into the distance.
There was no hesitation.
“Farewell, Your Highness. I’ll follow you soon, so don’t feel too wronged.”
Phew!
Having completed the magical calculation, I simply drove the white blade in. He was a well-trained knight, but with his aura core paralyzed, he accepted the attack without resistance.
And at that moment.
“Wow, I guess I’m really reading this messed-up novel again.”
The memories of ‘another me’ came flooding in like a torrent.
A novel titled <The Saint Doesn’t Want to Be Loved>.
An R-rated, angst-ridden, reverse-harem tagged mess of a emotional melodrama, a story about the saintly heroine suffering among insane male leads, just like the title suggests.
As you might expect, that heroine is Lishi, and standing tall among the many male leads, firmly claiming the main spot, is Cheshi…
But what use is remembering all this now?
Staring blankly at the unconscious, blood-soaked Crown Prince, a deep sigh involuntarily escaped me.
“Ha… I’m going crazy.”
