Page 4 of Revert (The Royal Chronicles #4)
Panic prickled beneath my skin. I forced a light laugh, even as my mind raced, too muddled for the intricate calculations this dangerous charade required.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to catch up on correspondence.
The injury came from trying to open a stubborn wax seal and my letter opener slipped. ”
She raised a skeptical brow, but must have realized her questions had pushed the limits on the liberties she was allowed and didn’t press further—even an imprisoned princess remained royalty and deserved respect, until the crown ordered otherwise.
Once I finished dressing, a maid arrived from the kitchens carrying my breakfast tray, and Liora resumed her work, gathering my blonde hair into a carefully plaited coil in a bun atop my head.
I curled my hands around the porcelain teacup, letting the warmth seep into my fingers, still marveling that I could feel anything after my experience with death.
The familiar scent of the tea that I’d drunk every morning since my arrival wafted upward in soft curls of steam, the citrusy flavor edged with bergamot soothing against my taste buds.
I struggled to untangle myself from my nightmare’s lingering tendrils and settle into the rhythm of my routine.
The automatic gestures further grounded me: I was Princess Bernice of Myrielle, betrothed to Crown Prince Castiel of Thorndale.
Yet the title felt strangely distant, as if I were mimicking a life I no longer fully believed was mine.
Hoping for a distraction, I set down my tea and turned my attention to the silver tray of freshly arrived correspondence.
I lifted the top envelope and tried to concentrate on the duties that my unsettled thoughts couldn’t avoid, but the moment I broke the seal and my eyes landed on the heading, my confusion returned in a rush.
13 Luminar .
My heart thudded as I stared in disbelief at the date, two entire months earlier than the present.
Today should have been 10 Solstice , mid-summer.
The letter trembled in my hand as my mind scrambled for a rational explanation, my fingers tightening around the letter in an effort to ground myself, crumpling its edges.
I looked up at Liora. “Pardon, but is it possible an old letter got mixed in with today’s post?”
She paused mid-braid, a crease forming between her brows. “No, Your Highness. I brought them directly from the steward’s hand myself. This one arrived just this morning with the rest.”
Her voice was steady, but I caught the flicker of unease, the terror at the possibility of having made a mistake. In this palace; even the smallest error could have dastardly consequences, for both of us.
As tempted as I was to verify the truth I already feared, I couldn’t risk it. I forced an apologetic smile. Don’t do anything to arouse suspicion . “No need. I’m still rather shaken from earlier. I must have misread the date.”
She nodded, visibly relieved, but not without suspicion. Her eyes lingered a heartbeat too long before she returned to her task.
I turned back to the letter, forcing my fingers to still. As much as I wanted to unravel this perplexing mystery, this wasn’t the place, not with Liora watching and guards stationed just beyond the door, while I remained trapped within a court where every shadow was reported back to the king.
Two missteps in one day were more than enough, especially when I couldn’t be sure who among the staff might be the king’s spies…if anyone could be trusted at all. Until I understood what was happening I needed to remain composed, vigilant, and cautious about where I placed my trust.
I struggled to still my shaking as I returned to the stack of letters.
I excused the first incorrect date as a clerical error or from some forgotten backlog of correspondence, but these efforts to manufacture a plausible explanation crumpled when I opened the second letter, then the next, and another still, all bearing dates in the same date range two months in the past.
My pulse stuttered as a plausible explanation gradually began to take shape, one that lay entirely outside the bounds of reason, and yet I couldn’t ignore the string of strange errors, evidence aligning into a pattern before my eyes that pointed to an impossible possibility.
Had I somehow…been pulled backward in time? The thought was absurd, but so was the scar from a wound that had never happened, and the vivid memory of my own death.
A headache pulsed behind my eyes, muddling every attempt at reason.
I fought to push through the haze clouding my mind to force my thoughts into some semblance of order.
Whatever had happened between the moment I supposedly died and the moment I awoke had left my memories in disarray, as if they needed time to settle.
I tried to sift through them—unpacking moments, arranging details, carefully matching feelings with facts—searching for any inconsistency that might reveal the truth of whether I was truly in the past, what had changed…and what had not.
Most memories blurred together, indistinct and shifting, but one rose clearly through the fog. My gaze drifted to the books arranged on my desk, lingering on the journal nestled among the tidy stack.
I waited until Liora excused herself, then carefully checked every corner of my chamber to ensure I was truly alone before crossing the room and pulling back the heavy tapestry near the corner.
My fingers found the groove in the stone behind it—loose, just enough to give.
I removed the stone and reached into the hollow behind it.
I had discovered this hidden cubby a few months after I had been brought to the Thorndale palace following the finalizing of my engagement with the crown prince.
The journal adorning my desk was a decoy, kept meticulously up to date in the rigid, impersonal style expected at court. I maintained it for the spies that I had no doubt regularly searched my chambers, hoping they’d never think to look for the real journal hidden elsewhere.
In that true journal, I recorded everything: my secret suspicions, the subtle signs of betrayal, the coded truths of the mission that had brought me to Thorndale under the guise of marriage.
It held not only the details of my assignment, but the private thoughts and feelings I didn’t dare voice to anyone, as there was not a single soul in this court I could fully trust. Its pages were my only confidante.
Fingers trembling, I opened it, searching for the entries of the past two months that should be there…
but they had vanished. I flipped to the front, then to the center, in case the pages might have come loose.
But there was no evidence of severed edges indicating that the pages had been torn out. Nothing.
My hands shook as I turned the pages to the entry I distinctly remembered penning last night as I worked through the final details of the information I had painstakingly gathered.
I could still hear the scratch of the quill, the pressure in my fingers from holding the pen too tightly, the racing thrill of believing that I was finally about to succeed after all these years.
I had concluded with the ciphered words: “The moment has finally come. Tonight, I make my move.” They too had disappeared, leaving only a blank page, as if the words had never been written at all.
I strained to still my shaking, but my body felt hollow as I slowly lowered the journal.
This concrete and non-manipulatable proof in my own handwriting made it impossible to deny the reality of my circumstances any longer.
One or two coincidences could be dismissed, but I couldn’t have dreamt the entire past two months of my life.
Which meant the only other explanation…was that I had lived them.
Rather than die, I appeared to have gone back in time.
Thinking the words didn’t make sense, as if I’d scrambled them in the wrong order. I pressed my hand to my head, the pressure sharpening into a stabbing ache. My knees buckled as the world tilted around me and I collapsed into my chair.
Was this truly the past? Such a fact seemed like an impossibility, even for a land where magic existed as a rare commodity hoarded by the crown.
But the how was irrelevant; all that mattered was that I was here—alive and with full knowledge of what would transpire…including the sword stabbed through my heart from the man I was to marry. Anger and hatred surged as I clutched the journal tighter.
This time, I would not be caught unaware. This time, I would not fail, but do whatever it took to finish the mission, to stop the coming betrayal, and to survive.
However impossible, I had been given a second chance, and I would not waste it.