I Don't Want This Bad Ending

After gaining consciousness for about three days, Evelyn received a letter and immediately rose from her bed.

"What is it, Lady Evelyn? Do you need anything?" Sheila asked as she immediately saw the change in her Lady's expression.

"Prepare the carriage, I need to go back to my place." Evelyn said as she stood in front of her mirror.

"Yes, Lady Evelyn." Sheila quickly left the room,

Evelyn went inside her dressing room and when she left the room what welcomed her was Cabel standing beside the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Since when did you come?"

"Not long ago… I knocked but no one answered. I got worried so I opened the door… I'm sorry..."

Evelyn smiled when she saw how worried and sincere Cabel was when he was apologizing.

"It's fine, you did it because you're just worried but don't do that again you're a Duke you don't want rumors flying around that you barge into a maiden's room."

Cabel smiled as he stride towards Evelyn's direction. 

"Yes… I'll keep that in mind… but you didn't answer me. Are you going somewhere, Eve?"

"I need to go and see Elise."

Cabel immediately crumpled his brows when he heard the reason for Evelyn's sudden outing.

"Why?"

Evelyn ignored him and was about to leave the door and pass by Cabel when a hand held her.

"What?"

"You really…"

"What?"

A sigh escaped Cabel's lips before he answered her.

"I'll come with you…"

Evelyn smiled and Cabel escorted her towards the carriage where the two left for Priscilla street where Elise was secretly imprisoned.

***

In the underground prison at her mansion in Priscilla street, Evelyn immediately left for the basement where the entrance to the dungeon was located, along with Cabel as a witness for the initial investigation.

The underground cell was guarded with the Light Legion as a precaution and some of the Shadow Knights of Cabel was also there to have a twenty-four hour shift in case that something like ambush happened.

As Elise heard steps that were slowly coming near her place, Elise abruptly woke up as if she was waiting for visitors to pay her a visit. 

"Where is she?"

"She's inside the cell..."

"There's no problem, right?"

"There's none, her powers were sealed so there's nothing that she could do...she only sleeps."

"...hmmm."

Cabel and the positioned guards stationed at the cell made Elise recall that she was captive and was now rotting in some underground prison.

"Ha!" Elise gave a mocking laugh when she recognized the voice.

The moldy, musty, and rustic cell that was usually enveloped in darkness could only lighten up when the flare that came from the torch that was hanging against the unfinished wall touched the space that Elise was in. She expected that she would get visitors soon but unexpectedly laughed at her situation when she learned who first arrived to look at her misery.

"What are you doing here?!" Elise could not help but grit her teeth and lash out at the person who appeared in the dark.

"You're awake?"

Slowly raising herself from the cold ground, Elise sluggishly blinked her heavy lids as her ocean eyes peeks and saw a hazy silhouette to her vision.

Evelyn saw the kind of situation that Elise was in and thought to herself that...'If I didn't recover my memory, I would be the one in the prison with the look of hatred and madness.'

Elise was covered in dirt from head to toe. The once silky pink hair became tangled with grease, there was also a cut in her lips as if water had never touched her lips even once. The bruise on her wrist and ankle and some other parts of her body was an apparent result from her struggling to release herself from the chains. The once polished nails of hers also became cracked with hints of blood as scratched the floor with her hands.

'If Elise just stayed put and let fate do its work then maybe she will be crowned as the future Queen of this kingdom like how the original story ended. If she didn't selfishly do all those things then maybe she would not have ended up in this situation…' Evelyn thought to herself.

As Evelyn learned that Edickart's letter arrived with a royal seal stamp on it, she knew that she could not delay the hand-over of Elise to the royal guards. So, she decided to immediately get back to her mansion and asked questions that have been bugging her ever since the Temple incident.

Evelyn remembered how Elise blurted the word "heroine" from her mouth…

[... Whatever happens I'm the heroine of this world and whatever I do no one will win against me! But you won't understand this because you're just an extra meant to make me shine!]

Elise emphasized that everything will move according to her actions and she looks like she was convinced at the thought as she would be victorious.

Elise was so certain at that time that Evelyn came with the possibility that she was also like her. That is why Evelyn would like to know why she would conspire with Ishid and go down the road of ruin.

'But is there really a need to ask? Would everything change once I learned the truth?' Evelyn pondered.

She knew that whatever things she learned that may connect to her old world, there was no certainty that she could go back.

'And besides… Do I really need to go back? What would I do once I got back?' Evelyn asked herself but then got cut-off when Cabel called her.

"Eve, are you alright?"

Evelyn only nodded her head in response and looked at Elise again as she recalled that she didn't have much time to question Elise.

After the search in the Temple of Light, the royal knights of Edickart, confirmed that there was a practice of artificial black mana in the underground of the temple.

'They said that the evidence was enough for all the higher ups in the Temple to be executed on the spot as well as some of the nobles that came to sponsor the experiment…'

The documents that they found along in the underground ground would give enough work for Edickart to do for a while once he sat on the throne.

"Are you here to laugh at me? Go ahead and do it…" Elise haughtily gave her remark which made Evelyn come back from her thoughts.

"I'm not here to laugh at you… I'm just here to ask you a question."

"And what's the point of asking me when you already achieved what you want? What? If you're here then it means that bastard Ishid didn't succeed in plucking that heart of yours… I told him that it would be better to kill you right away when you were alone that night at the hunting festival..."

Clang! The cell shook and made a sound as Cabel closely held the iron bar when the words that he heard rang inside his head.

With gritted teeth, Cabel lashed out. "What did you say?! Should I kill you right now, so that dirty mouth of yours would not open again?!"

Cabel was enraged as the words spoken by Elise replayed inside his head, he wanted to snap her thin neck right away when he remembered what they planned that day, if Evelyn didn't execute her plans to escape he would really lose her to them.

"Cabel… stop." He reluctantly stopped himself when he heard Evelyn's voice and composed himself again. 

And as if Elise didn't got affected by his remarks, she casually watch Cabel and smirk.

"You really are something, Lady Evelyn…"

Clang… the chain in Elise's feet and hands moved and resounded in the small cell that she was in as she positioned her body to sit in the moldy ground and face the direction where Evelyn was, Elise's piercing gaze focused on the shape that was at the other side of the iron bars.

"How did you seduce those men that were supposed to be mine? How?! They're supposed to shower me with everything! So why?!" Elise screamed while Evelyn just looked at her.

"What do you mean shower you with everything?! Do you think someone will be interested in a woman whose heart is as dark and dirty as this cell?!" Cabel interrupted.

"Shut up! You don't know anything! I was supposed to be the main character! I was supposed to have a happy ending at the end of my story!!"

Evelyn then began to understand and learned the truth, she was not the only one who knew about this world and how she was supposed to die. She doesn't know how Elise knew but she's sure that Elise knows the truth as she speaks of the title of the novel book where the supposed contents should have been followed by this world and how Elise was supposed to be the main character of the novel. So, she let Elise run her mouth.

Clang… Clang…!

Elise abruptly moved her feet and was about to approach the bars when she was held back by the chains that chained her feet and hands.

"This is all your fault! This world was made for me! You're supposed to die at the guillotine while all the men will bow down to me and give me everything that they had. I was supposed to have my happy ending in this world but why?! Why are you alive?! Because of you everything was a mess. Die! You should die!!!"

Clang! Clang!!!

"Die! Die, you bitch! You should die!"

Elise was so mad that her face was so far-off from the angelic face that she was known for.

"You will not get what you want from me… hah! Just because I'm behind bars you think I will obey whatever you ask me? It's not like I'm getting free even if I do that! Pweh!"

Evelyn just watched how Elise hysterically screamed inside the cell before she opened her mouth.

"You think that this world revolves around you? But what to do? This world was not the novel that you think... "

Elise stopped resisting the chains and looked at Evelyn with pure shock in her face.

"How… how did you…"

"You're not the only one who read romance novels…"

Evelyn stared straight at Elise's eyes before she told Cabel to leave.

As they climbed up the stairs Elise started to laugh and while they further walked to leave the prison cell the quieter it got until the laughter of Elise was no longer heard.

Inside the carriage, Cabel glanced at Evelyn with a deep look of curiosity. However, Cabel knew that he already knew enough secret about Evelyn that he thought it would be better to asked later when her mood become better.