Second Female Leads' Playbook

I was contemplating how I should spend my fifth life. 

Yes, my fifth life. I was living out the same life for the fifth time. I had experienced burning to death, guillotine, hanging and being stabbed to death. And all my tragic endings were related to one person, my stepsister Rachelle. 

Today was the day Rachelle's mother married my father, Duke Augustine. It was the end of my pampered heiress life. After experiencing everything for four times, I knew I was not the loved pampered heiress I thought I was. I was just a tool. A tool to connect two of the most powerful families on the continent. 

Father did not love me. If Rachelle who was more docile, more beautiful and more well-tempered could replace me, then so be it. With Rachelle as a comparison, I was just a disappointment. Someone who was known to have a bad temper, an airhead who only knew to spend money. As time went by, I was just someone who brought disgrace to the family. They would have disowned me if their pride allowed them to. 

I had been a childish, spoiled heiress through and through in my first life. I had looked down on Rachelle, I thought she was just a silly country girl with no manners. She would never be comparable to me. She would even make me look superior. I had been childish like that. But I was wrong, I was the one acting as a stepping stone for Rachelle and her bright future ahead. 

Rachelle had perfect manners and temperament as opposed to my well known bad temper. Rachelle was a beauty whereas I was just someone with pleasing features. Rachelle had more talents in magic than me. Rachelle shone in every aspects while I shivered in her shadows. 

This was not what I had expected. I was not supposed to be the one hovering in the shadows. My pride could not take that. I had been brimming with envy. When even my fiance fell for Rachelle and told my father he would like to marry Rachelle instead, that was the final straw. I became the evil villainess in every romance story. 

Looking back, I knew it was childish and not worth it. What I was doing was just a pathetic joke to Rachelle. 

But did I deserve the way I met my death? To be burnt alive on a stake in front of everyone? Did you know how painful it was to be burnt? Did you know how it felt to smell the way your skin and tissues turning to ashes? Did you know the despair of knowing your life being burnt away bit by bit?

I never harm anyone physically. It was all just angry words and hysterical fits like every pampered spoiled heiress who threw their tempers. The worst I did was trying to cheat in an attempt to win her in a magic duel. I was silly really. That's how I fell into the trap of one of Rachelle's suitors and ended my tragic life. And started this never ending hell. 

I learned from my previous deaths. I decided to avoid Rachelle and her strings of suitors at all cost in my third life. Rachelle was like the protagonist in a story. The gods were all on her side, as well as the strings of suitors who would do whatever Rachelle told them to do or hinted them to do. I lived the longest that life. In my quest to avoid Rachelle at all cost, I ran away from home and smuggled across the sea to the continent and hid in various countries such as Cregan and Arerin. The countries on that continent feared people from my continent because our powers were different. 

After seven years, I thought I could finally stop hiding in fear in a foreign country. I thought I could return to my home country. I had planned to settle in a tiny villa in the country side. As soon as I had bought my tiny villa, I was captured. I had been told my father whom I had not been in contact with for years was planning treason all along. And I must be helping out my father in secret. 

As for my dear stepsister who had been the perfect daughter to my dear father all throughout the years, of course she knew nothing of that sort! She was as pure as snow! She was innocent! I had been told that my punishment got even worse in the attempt of slandering the sacred Empress Rachelle. As expected of the evil stepsister who bullied Rachelle. I had no idea how I became the evil stepsister when I ran away as soon as Rachelle entered the scene. I was hanged. 

I threw away my own pride in my fourth life. I could no longer bear this never ending reincarnation. I thought if I could die nicely like normal people, the torture would end. I pretended to be the best sister. Whatever Rachelle wanted, I gave it to her. I was even her best friend. I threw away myself in the process, I was just a puppet doing all of Rachelle's biding. It all ended when a devastated lady, whose childhood sweetheart dumped her for Rachelle, came rushing into our tea gathering in hysterics with a knife. Rachelle had hidden behind me just in time and I was stabbed. I never saw it coming, I had been busy serving Rachelle tea. I could not even utter a protective spell. 

Thinking back to all my failed attempts to live, I had little hope for my fifth life. 

That was when Sarah rushed into the room and cried, "They have arrived, Lady Odette!"

I should stop lying on my bed. I should start facing my fifth life.

Let's make this life my last.. Let's die for real this time.