When I opened my eyes, I woke up under the stars. I stared at the night sky above me in confusion. White flakes were dropping out of the sky at a steady rate, with occasional specks dancing over in the wind and kissing my cheeks, before melting away against my skin.

Dimly, I was aware that my body was cold. How long had I been lying out here? Minutes? Hours? Days?

I couldn't recall. My memory was blurry.

But there was one thing I was sure of.

It never snowed in the city.

With a splitting headache, I tried to sit up. At first, my body refused to respond. With an initial panic, I quickly calmed myself down and tried wiggling my fingers. The cold must've made my senses weird, because it took a while for feeling to return, and when it did - it felt unusual.

After ten minutes, I had worked myself into a sitting position. That was when I noticed the simple fabric I had covering my tiny body.

Tiny.

My mind froze.

Slowly, I raised my hands. My brain refused to process what was right in front me.

A child's hands.

Before I had time to process the shock, there was the sound of a door slamming and I jumped.

"I found her!" Someone called. Footsteps sounded behind me and before I could even understand what was happening, I had been picked up and a woman cooed at me.

"She's so cold! How long has she been out here?" She called behind her, while holding my whole body in her two hands.

"I don't know." A male said approaching us from the open door. "After they put the cloth over her face, she just disappeared."

There was a silence.

"...you don't think...she understands?" The woman whispered, looking at me with pity.

What was going on?!

The man brushed it off. "No way, she's only, what, two? Three? There's no way she knows what death is yet. She probably thinks her mother is going to return any minute."

He looked at me with a weary smile, sadness in his eyes.

My mind was foggy. Was I dreaming? Was that what this all was? Some strange purgatory I had to endure before I entered the afterlife?

"So young." The woman murmured, and I noticed the strange cap she wore. It looked like a maid's cap that they wore in old medieval books. "Does she have any other family? No one will take her with eyes like that. If Elyse hadn't..."

The man reached over and suddenly took me out of her arms, and stared at me directly in the eyes. He shivered. "I can't have those eyes staring at me all the time, they'll bring bad luck I tell you. Lucky they're sending her to the father."

"They found him?"

He shook his head. "Not really. Some man in a cloak came, claimed he worked for her father."

Then they both looked at me with apprehensive eyes. "Perhaps it's for the best. We'll get no business with eyes like that."

The man nodded. "He paid cash too. Quite a hefty sum. The master was quite pleased. Sold her off just like that. I had a feeling he was going to sell her to the nouveau rich families looking for cheap slaves anyway."

Slavery? Did I hear that right?

The man then began walking inside towards the light. "We'll have to get her ready so she can leave soon. The sooner we send her off, the sooner the master stops freaking out over the curse of the crimson eyes. I've had enough of holy water to last me a life time."

The maid nodded empathetically.

"Leave her to me."

-

When I woke up in the moving carriage, my mind was clear. Everything had literally come to me in a dream.

Call it providence.

Despite being so confused with what was happening around me, the moment the maid had dressed me up and said my name, it all came rushing back. Edythe de Villanova.

The moment I heard that name, memories of my past life then suddenly roared through me at such an intensity that I immediately blacked out. It was while I slept that I recalled everything in perfect clarity.

I was inside the world of a novel. And the name of the novel was:

Eleanor Mare.

The book was literally named after the main protagonist. How unfortunate for me.

Especially considering that I was the villain.

My head stung when I thought of future events and...

My ultimate fate.

Almost unconsciously, I touched my neck. I didn't want to die again.

Once was enough.

Yet here I was, at the very beginning before the official novel even began.

Seventeen years early.

My mind went back to when I had first woken up here, out in the freezing cold. My body had been numb. My blood turned to ice at the next thought.

Had she died?

Had I been reborn just to refill empty shoes?

What kind of sick twisted fate did I have? To die in one world, only to be reborn in another in which I knew I would die even earlier than I had lived to in the previous? Back on earth, I had at least made it to twenty five.

Now, I would barely make it to adulthood.

In silent platitude, I became lost in my thoughts as the maid had me in some makeshift wicker basket on the seat beside her. I wasn't too sure if she realised I had woken up yet. If I had been any average two year old, I would have made some noise by now.

Instead, I used this time to formulate my plan.

How would I face this demon?

The book had described the Edythe's father as pure evil. A devil. A man who would be Emperor if not for his demonic heritage. Yet, with this heritage came even greater power. A power not even the Emperor himself could appose. He was a chaotic, independent variable.

That meant he was dangerous.

As my basket swayed back and forth with the movement of the carriage, I tried desperately to think of ways that I might survive.

Could I run away?

No, I could barely walk, let alone run.

I would have to wait until I was stronger. But that meant surviving my first meeting with him.

And that was only hours away.

In the book, it only ever slightly touched on Edythe's background, without providing too much insight. It was, after all, a novel about Eleanor. Edythe was merely a side character.

A pawn made to make Eleanor to stand out. As every villainess did.

If memory served me right, Edythe first meets her father when she is two, after the death of her mother only days before. She was young, innocent, and only wanted the warmth of her father.

Yet that was not to be.

Kael de Villanova.

The man who would be my ultimate demise.

Before Edythe met her father, she had never known what her last name was. Yet this was not unusual in this society. To hold a surname in this society, you needed the power and wealth to make it happen. In other words, to have a surname, it most likely meant that you were nobility. So naturally, after Edythe had heard people refer to her as a De Villanova, when asked by Kael if she knew who he was, she had answered with an innocence that became her downfall.

"Papa!"

Upon hearing that, it said in the book that he became enraged and immediately threw her into the east wing, an abandoned part of the Villanova Palace, tended to by few servants, where she was completely forgotten. Apparently, it said she remained their for seven years, before she finally saw her father again for the first time at the age of nine.

My stomach churned at the thought of facing this man.

All I had to do was make it out of our first meeting alive, and after that, I could plan my escape.

Scrunching up my tiny palms on my blanket, I became stupefied over how little strength I had. Really, it was amazing that despite being so small, I had such coherent thought. Was this the power of reincarnation?

It made sense, if I had the knowledge of this books events, it meant that it might be possible to change the future.

"Ah, you're awake."

Surprised at the sudden noise, I glanced at the maid.

She was looking at me sorrowfully.

"May the goddess of luck smile upon you and keep you. May her face shine down upon you, that you may grow up to be a woman kindness and grace."

Was she praying for me? Or was it a blessing normally spoken in this society? I didn't know.

Her eyes were still uneasy as she looked at me. "Be strong Edythe. Your mother was kind, but I'm afraid with eyes like yours, it may be difficult. It is a shame you did not inherit your mother's bright, beautiful green eyes..."

It seemed as if she forgot what was she was going to say, but then I caught her whisper. It was so quiet, I thought I may have been imagining it.

"Rather than the eyes of the devil."