If things could have been different... I wouldn't wish for things to end up like this either.
Jia Li plunges the knife into the crown prince's chest, their body still intertwined in an embrace. There was no retaliation and when she looked up at his face there was none of the anger or contempt she had expected to see. Instead, up until his last breath the crown prince still had on the same warm smile, gentle and tepid.
Jia Li holds the still warm body in her arms, allowing herself to take a good look at his features. Soft silver hair, gentle brows, the skin now too pale and the lips too bloodless. Although she had known from the beginning that this was the ending, she still felt a sharp tinge of remorse and the unpleasant, unfamiliar feeling of regret grew by the seconds.
If... if only they had met earlier in life would they have been happy? Jia Li laughed at her own wishful thinking.
Getting onto her feet, she walked steadily, step by step towards the door. When she was in front of it, she took one last look at her prince, eyes sad and whispered as if answering her own question, "I'm sure we would have."
Too bad in this life she didn't belong to him. Too bad in this life she can never properly be with him.
Back straighten and eyes once again firm, Jia Li pushes open the door and steps outside into the grandly decorated palace hall.
There were specks of blood across her delicate face and her pale blue dress was stained with bright crimson. The few servants that were in the hall all stared at her.
Jia Li threw the bloody dagger onto the floor with an intentional flamboyant flair, making a sharp clinking noise.
"His Highness the Crown Prince is dead." Her voice was cold, sending chills down the dumbfounded servants. "I killed him."
Nobody moved for a long time, the first to react was a maid who had shrieked out of fright. Her scream broke everyone else out of their daze and soon there were many loud and frantic calls for the guards.
Jia Li stood calmly through this and when the palace guards roughly restrained her, she lets them do as they please. One of the guards was the crown prince's personal knight, a fellow who had always been kind and courteous to her.
"Princess Annabeth! You... it couldn't truly be that you're the one that assassinated His Highness?"
Jia Li looks up at him from her restrained position and smirked. "You're not mistaken. It is indeed I who had personally droved the knife through his heart."
The knight clenched his fist tightly until his knuckles turned white. "How could you when you clearly knew of.... his feelings towards you..."
At this, Jia Li was irritated. She locked eyes with him and said in an even colder tone, "So? What of it?"
The guards led her away and Jia Li followed, gladly, not bothering to see the knight's expression.
In the prison cell were a lone bed and a narrow window letting in pale moonlight. Jia Li sat on the bed, not particularly caring about her situation or the dirty room.
A light footstep accompanied by candlelight stopped in front of her cell. It was a man, sombrely handsome with a chiseled face.
Jia Li went towards the man and knelt, gently kissing his white-gloved hand through the bars. "Master."
The man revealed the tiniest hint of a smile. "Still so stubborn. Didn't I tell you to call me father?"
Jia Li lowered her head and didn't answer.
The man sighed. "Well, still you did a remarkably well job tonight. I commend you."
Jia Li still said nothing and only nods.
"Jia Li, are you prepared to do what you must?"
Without hesitation, Jia Li repeated what she had countless times before, her voice was bearly audible but was filled with tired determination. "My life is lived for you only and will naturally only end when you will it only."
Every single word of this vow drips with a painful truth but Jia Li had never been one to be uncomfortable with unpleasant things.
The latest rage of execution-style was death by beheading. Public execution was treated a free form of entertainment, so when people heard that the former princess was going to be executed for killing the crown prince, everyone showed up to watch the show.
Jia Li's hair was cut short, uneven strands of black swaying in the wind, baring her white neck. She was still wearing the same dress, the blue silk stained with blood marking her as the murder. Climbing onto the platform where the guillotine stood, she saw the king, old and feeble. So near death that perhaps he'll be joining her soon in hell.
Placing her neck onto the cold metal, the executioner cuts the rope. With a sickening thud, her blood spilled, mixing with his.
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All around her was a cold and wet feeling. Was this the sensation of lying in your own pool of blood? What happened? Didn't she die?
Jia Li opened her eyes but was blinded by the strong rays of light and had to quickly close them again. Trying again, Jia Li opened her eyes slowly to give them time to adjust.
The first thing she saw when she had opened her eyes was a blue sky free of any clouds. Jia Li looked around her and found that she was in a shallow river. The back of her head ached and there were swelling with traces of blood when Jia Li pressed her hand against it.
Jia Li suddenly paused as she looked at her hand covered with blood. However, it wasn't the blood that made her pause but rather the appearance of her hand...
Was it always this small?
Jia Li looked in the reflection of the river's water. Black hair, blue eyes, chubby white cheeks... the face was very cute but.... it wasn't hers.
Jia Li wasn't sure how she had become another person but after thinking about it, she decided it didn't really matter. What's important is that she wasn't dead and had to do something about the head wound unless she wanted to die again.
She took off the red outer coat that she was wearing and used it to stanch the blood. Judging from her hight and small limbs, her body right now was quite young, probably around the age of 11. The clothes that she is wearing looks like it was from the Eastern Empire. The material was expensive looking and the embroidery was elegant, her family must be quite rich. Someone like her is probably some foreign young miss from an affluent family. What is she doing here alone in a river?
Jia Li got out of the water and wrung her clothes as dry as she could. She was in a forest but not a deep one, she can faintly hear the sound of a town or a city not far ahead.
Walking towards the clearing of the forest took longer than Jia Li anticipated, when she finally did reach it, she was surprised by what she saw.
There were no people dressed in gowns or suits. Everywhere were people in traditional eastern clothing and the buildings were built in unfamiliar manners.
Jia Li revised her previous guess. Not only did she switched body, but she also wasn't even on the same continent anymore?
Jia Li saw a woman pass by and approached her. "Um Auntie, do you know where this is?"
The middle-aged woman was about to ignore the child in front of her but changed her mind after seeing her expensive clothing. "This is Gold Spring City, child are you lost?"
Jia Li shook her head and ask again. "Auntie are we in the Eastern Empire?"
This time the woman gave Jia Li a weird look. "Child, what Eastern Empire ya? Look at you dressed so expensively, can't your family afford you a good tutor? We're in the Sky Empire obviously."
Jia Li's head went blank for a moment. Huh? What Sky Empire? Jia Li walked around aimlessly as she digested what she had just learned. It turns out she was wrong again. She wasn't just a continent away, she was in an entirely different world...
⊙_⊙
An entirely different world???? Where's the logic in that???