The Crown I Will Take From You - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 2

Ch 1.

Someone was shaking her.

“Are you conscious, Your Highness?”

Medeia blinked her eyes. It was a blank face as if someone had absorbed all expression from it.

The maid flinched and trembled at her doll-like appearance devoid of any vitality.

“Your Highness? Are you listening to me?”

A reflection appeared in the mirror placed on the table.

Vividly shining green eyes. A gently rising forehead and a smoothly curved nose bridge. And charming lips with a rosy hue.

There was a girl standing at some point between child and woman.

Medeia mechanically lowered her head to look at her own arm.

‘There should be scars left by magical beasts here…’

The countless wounds she had received during expeditions had no trace left. Far from scars, white and smooth skin gleamed.

‘Is hell this vivid? It’s not like I’ve become young again.’

The past. Her body stiffened at the sudden thought that came to mind.

“Peleus?”

“Pardon?”

“Is he alive?”

Peleus, Medeia’s brother and the King of Valdina, had died because of her.

Because she stole the Philosopher’s Stone and Valdina’s barrier collapsed.

A horde of magical beasts that came rushing in black waves covered the entire country.

Her brother died while holding back the surging magical beasts.

It was when Medeia was in the midst of fighting for the throne for her husband in the Empire.

Only then did Medeia realize what role the Philosopher’s Stone played. Why the magical beasts that swarmed across the continent had never been able to cross Valdina’s border.

“What do you mean, of course he’s alive.”

At the maid’s words, Medeia shot up.

“Where is he?”

She had to see Peleus.

Not the corpse that was only half left after being torn apart by magical beasts, but him alive and whole.

“Dea, don’t think of coming back. Valdina is no longer a protected land.”

“I don’t resent you. Just live. That’s enough.”

Her only family, who worried about his foolish younger sister until the end.

“Where are you going? How can you see someone who’s on the battlefield?”

The maid caught Medeia as she suddenly stood up and staggered.

“Battlefield?”

“Don’t you remember that either? They said you hit your head when you fell from your horse…”

“We’re still at war. The conquest isn’t over yet, right? He’s still alive.”

The rambling questions sounded more like talking to herself than actual questions. The maid shook her head.

“This won’t do. I’ll call the court physician.”

It was when the maid let out a sigh.

“No, I need to confirm it with my own eyes.”

Medeia suddenly got up from her seat and rushed out.

“Your Highness! Where are you going!”

The maid hurriedly chased after her, but only the empty corridor greeted her.

“This is terrible!”

The pale-faced maid ran out in panic.

* * *

Valdina Palace Basement.

Light illuminated the secret place permitted only to a select few bloodlines.

Medeia, who had descended to the very bottom of the spiraling staircase, pushed the stone wall with all her might.

The door opened as cold air stung her nose.

The altar in the center brightly shone with light. No, actually it was light pouring out from the national treasure placed on the altar.

“It’s still… here.”

The national treasure that protected Valdina’s territory, the Philosopher’s Stone.

Beyond her trembling fingertips, the cold chill of the raw stone wrapped around her hand.

Medeia buried her face against it. Transparent tears poured down along the smooth surface.

“I need the Philosopher’s Eye. Uncle said if you bring that, he’ll keep his promise. He said he’d hand over the throne.”

Jason had asked King Peleus of Valdina for the Philosopher’s Eye but was flatly refused.

But Jason eventually got his hands on it.

Because Medeia, the king’s sister, loved him.

“Help me, Medeia. I’m the rightful heir to the Kazen Royal Family.”

“If I become Emperor, you’ll stand beside me, and our child will rule the Empire. Medeia, surely you don’t want our child to grow up without parental protection like you did?”

“I love you, Medeia.”

Blind affection and.

“Sister Medeia, His Grace the Grand Duke is suffering so much. If only he had the Philosopher’s Stone, he would be complete.”

“The Philosopher’s Stone is just a national treasure in name only. You can return it later. It’s just borrowing it temporarily. If relations between our countries improve, Peleus will understand you later too.”

“We’re all saying this because we’re thinking of you.”

She fell for the sweet persuasion.

Come to think of it, the prelude to tragedy began from that moment.

In her past life, the Philosopher’s Stone that young and ignorant Medeia stole was shattered into pieces and buried separately in the barriers along Kazen’s border.

‘The Emperor hastily broke it apart because he was afraid I might ask for it back.’

Medeia gritted her teeth.

“I’ve… come back.”

With the national treasure so perfectly intact before her eyes, how could she not believe it?

That God had granted her final wish!

“Ahahaha! Ahaha!”

Mad laughter burst out.

“O Valdina Ancestors, gods and spirits who protect this land.”

She bowed and kissed the foot of the altar. The gentle radiance from the Philosopher’s Stone enveloped Medeia.

“I won’t act foolishly again.”

I won’t waste this opportunity you’ve given me.

Medeia raised her head.

Her clear eyes flashed bright blue above her pale complexion.

“Claudio.”

All the glory given to her uncle’s family would lose its luster.

“Jason.”

The brilliant crown Jason desired would be taken away.

“I have returned.”

The prophecy that had returned for one lifetime shone ominously.

* * *

Medeia emerged from the dark underground passage. Her tears had long since dried up.

‘That maid said I fell from a horse earlier.’

Even in distant memories, there were moments that remained vivid. The painful memories that made her life more miserable were particularly like that.

The cursed princess. The incomplete one. The child who brings misfortune.

These were all epithets that followed Medeia.

The former King of Valdina met a wandering dancer during war, fell in love, and made her his queen.

There was much talk about her origins, but no one dared to envy the queen.

He loved his wife so much that he would even accompany the queen to battlefields.

His son Peleus also roamed battlefields following his parents, but his daughter Medeia remained in the palace because she was too young and it was dangerous.

<I miss you so much. Please come see me.>

On Medeia’s seventh birthday, she couldn’t bear it and wrote a letter.

For their beloved youngest daughter, the late king and queen answered without hesitation that they would come to see her.

However, enemies harboring poison from consecutive defeats lay in ambush and attacked the couple on their return journey.

In the end, all that reached the land of Valdina were the cold coffins of the couple.

The kingdom fell into chaos.

When it became known that the king had met with disaster on his way to see his young daughter, people blamed Medeia as the starting point of the tragedy.

“It’s because of you! If only you hadn’t called them! You killed my son!”

At the king’s funeral, the Queen Mother grabbed not her eldest son’s coffin but her young granddaughter, screaming before fainting.

Peleus also immediately went back to the front lines as soon as he inherited the throne. For the boy who hadn’t even reached adulthood to restore the army that had lost its leader and was falling apart.

In that chaotic process, young Medeia was left alone and neglected.

The Queen Mother hated her granddaughter, her brother was constantly on the battlefield, and there were no maternal relatives to protect her either.

It was her uncle, the Regent, and his family who extended a hand to her as she struggled in loneliness.

To the princess in name only, they were sweet and kind.

Medeia became their puppet, moving as they told her to, as they wished.

Not knowing that her uncle’s strengthened power was targeting her brother.

‘How foolish I was.’

Kind lies and cunning schemes.

Medeia saw neither the truth nor sincerity.

“Mom, Dad, everyone left me because of me, didn’t they?”

The image of her young self crying alone, consumed by loneliness and guilt, seemed to overlap with the desolate palace corridor.

But it was different from then.

Medeia was a strategist who had made Jason emperor through arduous expeditions and the empire’s succession struggle.

So she could grasp the full scope of her uncle’s scheme at a glance.

‘Around seventeen, I went to a tea party and fell from a horse.’

A tea party and a fall from a horse.

Two utterly incompatible events had occurred that day.

If the maid Neryl hadn’t thrown herself to save her, she would have died with a broken neck.

‘But after that, Neryl left the palace.’

When she woke up, Neryl had already departed.

“She said she’d die first serving a powerless royal and left.”

“Neryl said she’d never come back. She said anywhere would be better than this pathetic place.”

Feeling betrayed, Medeia forgot about Neryl afterward.

But now, her reason told her this incident wasn’t simply just that.

‘She wasn’t the type to leave so silently.’

Now that she had returned to the past with a second chance, the first thing Medeia needed to do was establish a secure sanctuary.

She couldn’t fight alone in this palace surrounded by enemies on all sides.

‘If Neryl had been by my side.’

If even one person who could watch her back and be completely loyal to her had remained, her previous life wouldn’t have been so arduous.

“Did you hear? Right now Jena is beating up one of the maids from the Princess’s Palace.”

Just then, a group of servants passed through the corridor. Medeia quickly hid herself.

“Do you know who? That girl! The oddball who gave up her knight title and entered the Princess’s Palace on her own.”

“My goodness, that girl? What did she do wrong? She was the only one who worked properly there though.”

“She was always so upright that she got on the Maid Supervisor’s bad side. She’s been waiting for just one slip-up, and now she’s planning to get rid of her completely using Her Highness’s fall from the horse as an excuse. She’s having Jena punish her.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. She saved Her Highness, didn’t she? Everyone saw it.”

“If the Maid Supervisor says so, then that’s how it is. If she says to hang it on your nose, even an earring becomes a nose ring. Who among the people working in the palace now could go against that woman’s mood? Gasp, Your Highness?”

The servants were startled by the figure that suddenly blocked their path.

“Where is that place?”

Medeia’s voice settled over the cold corridor.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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