“How can she be so lovable?”

“She’s like an angel.”

“Her genes must truly be remarkable.”

Whitney regained consciousness to the sound of people conversing. She had clearly been in a traffic accident.

When she came to her senses, Whitney was gone, and unfamiliar women were looking down at her.

‘…Where on earth am I?’

“Poor little miss, I’ll watch over you in place of the late madam as your nanny.”

“Even though His Grace the Marquis is cold-hearted, he’d surely be captivated if he just saw the young miss’s face, but he doesn’t come to see her even once. How indifferent…”

Marquis?

As words that seemed to come straight out of a novel were exchanged, Whitney made a sound, wondering what was going on.

“Abu.”

‘Huh? Why did my voice come out like that?’

Whitney stretched out her hand in surprise.

Then she saw a tiny hand reaching towards the air. The joints were too short and small to be called a hand.

It was the hand of a newborn baby.

“Oh my! Has our young miss woken up?”

The woman who had called herself the nanny hurriedly stopped talking at the baby’s babbling.

As time passed, Whitney realized that the small baby in the cradle was herself.

‘Is this reincarnation?’

For some unknown reason, Whitney seemed to have been reborn in an era that was clearly not the Republic of Korea where she had originally lived.

And through the conversations of the nanny and maids, she was able to learn a lot of information.

A week had passed like that.

Click. Whitney turned her head at the sound of the door opening.

She thought it might be another chatty maid. However, contrary to her expectations, the heavy footsteps that approached were not those of a maid.

‘Who could it be?’

Her curiosity was short-lived.

The newcomer spoke in a dry voice.

“Is this the child?”

Eventually, a shadow fell over Whitney, who was in the form of a newborn baby.

“Yes, Your Grace. Isn’t the young miss very pretty?”

Gray hair and eyes devoid of any color. Though none of his features stood out, perhaps due to the man’s deep features, he exuded a mysterious aura.

Just as Whitney was about to open her mouth at his strikingly beautiful appearance.

“Adeline Credion, that’s the child’s name.”

Severus Credion. The man never held his daughter, born of his own blood.

He merely left the name the child would be called by and departed immediately.

‘Credion?’

That day, Whitney gained a new name.

Having never had parents in her past life, Adeline felt little emotion towards the indifferent marquis.

She only pondered where she had heard the familiar surname Credion before.

Thus, Adeline, born as the only daughter of the Credion marquis family, learned as she grew up that she had been born in the Soltarius Empire.

‘The Soltarius Empire.’

The familiar-sounding empire name and the sense of déjà vu from the familiar family name.

Soon, Adeline was able to understand the identity of this uneasy feeling.

She recalled seeing it in that very romance fantasy work she had been reading just before ending Whitney’s life.

And only after realizing that she had been reincarnated into that web novel she had only read the introduction of, did she remember.

Whitney, who had reincarnated as Adeline, was.

‘The daughter of the Credion marquis family.’

The 3rd fiancée of the mad crown prince.

And a minor character in that crazy novel who would meet an untimely death at the hands of her fiancé at the tender age of 24.

* * *

The marquis family was not a prestigious noble family from the beginning.

After the previous Count Credion passed away, the current Marquis Severus became the new head of the family, and the family was elevated to a marquis house.

Suddenly advancing to the center and wielding enormous power, now there was no one in the empire who didn’t know the name ‘Credion’.

For generations, the people of the Credion marquis family had cold gray eyes.

Though their eyes were so frigid they could freeze onlookers, people unanimously declared:

They must be descendants of angels fallen to earth.

Not only nobles but also commoners knew of their beautiful appearance to the extent that there was no one who didn’t know of it.

This was true not only for Marquis Severus but also for his only daughter and heir, Adeline.

This life was wealthy and of high status.

Moreover, she had inherited the marquis’s outstanding looks. It seemed she had it all.

But Adeline was always anxious.

The passage from the novel that had caught her eye just before she died.

Despite being from the notorious marquis family, she would end her life at the tender age of 23 as a minor character among minor characters. She knew this was her future.

Not knowing the overall content of the novel, Adeline was very uneasy about that one passage she had seen just before dying.

“I can’t die like this.”

Adeline began to prepare to avoid the future that might actually happen.

She had no intention of staying in the marquis family knowing she would die.

If need be, she planned to leave the marquis family and live alone, and in preparation for that, she began to build her personal assets.

Being her second life, it was easy to use the abundant money to create personal funds.

Adeline steadily saved money by using her allocated allowance and expensive accessories.

Meanwhile, she tried to understand the worldview of this novel.

To do so, she wrote down what she remembered from the comments she had seen in her past life.

People cursing about how the crown prince could be the male lead. If the one who kills Adeline in the future is really the male lead crown prince.

‘I must avoid engagement with the crown prince at all costs.’

Not all the comments she had seen came to mind.

But among the numerous comments, there was one that stuck in her memory.

□□□□□□(xxxx* * *) Even if it’s a remote village, how can there be no one staying at the duke’s villa? Does it make sense for an injured duke to die from excessive bleeding? No matter how I look at it, the male lead is the duke, if the duke dies, it’s a dog-eat-dog novel.

Although the ID was blurry, this person’s comment was a bit unusual among the countless curses aimed at the crown prince.

That person speculated that the male protagonist was not the crown prince but the duke.

‘The duke in this novel is……’

There was only one. Duke Torpeo.

Adeline decided to believe that comment.

If there was a possibility that the duke was the male protagonist of this novel, she thought that if she saved the duke, her own life might change as well.

Her predicted death in the novel was on her 24th birthday.

Adeline had people watch over Duke Torpeo until she received a marriage proposal.

She didn’t know when the day was that the duke would be dying in the villa.

She believed that it would be enough to just have people protect the duke’s safety.

But life didn’t go according to Adeline’s plans.

A week after her late debutante ball at 23,

Perhaps because Adeline’s beauty couldn’t be hidden.

The crown prince’s second fiancée died in a mysterious accident, and a month later, the fateful letter arrived.

* * *

The marquis had been indifferent to Adeline from the moment she was born until now.

He never cared how much Adeline spent or what she did.

Even during dinner time, the only time they faced each other, they only shared the space without any meaningful conversation.

And that was still the case now that Adeline had become an adult.

In the dining room where only the clattering of tableware could be heard.

The marquis and Adeline sat facing each other across the long dining table. The atmosphere between them was so bleak it was hard to believe they were father and daughter.

Today was no different from other days. It was when Adeline was quietly continuing her meal.

“Adeline.”

It was Marquis Credion who first broke the silence.

“Yes, Father.”

Their eyes, which hadn’t met once since entering the dining room, now locked.

Adeline swallowed hard upon seeing the marquis’s expressionless gaze.

“A marriage proposal has come from the imperial palace.”

Adeline dropped her utensils at the news of the marriage proposal she thought she would only receive at 24.

Like a broken machine, Adeline muttered to herself.

“Th-that can’t be.”

A proposal from the crown prince? Why now when the proposal was supposed to come a year later?

Adeline’s eyes trembled aimlessly.

However, the marquis, seemingly unconcerned with Adeline’s reaction, simply held out the proposal.

“His Highness the Crown Prince wishes to be engaged to the Credion family. The engagement will be at the end of this month. Prepare accordingly.”

With these words, the marquis wiped his mouth and left his seat.

‘Why has the proposal come now?’

There was still a year left until the expected time.

Adeline sighed.

Seeing the marquis telling her to prepare, it seemed her opinion on this engagement was not important.

Probably the imperial family and the marquis had already discussed this in advance.

She couldn’t die like this.

What kind of new life had she obtained?

The proposal was mercilessly crumpled in Adeline’s hand.

Before she could even save the duke, Adeline herself was about to cross the Jordan River.

Adeline made up her mind.

‘Right, let’s run away for now.’

If she waited, the duke might come to the villa injured.

So, if she fled now and hid her body in that villa, wouldn’t she eventually encounter Duke Torpeo?

That was the best plan for now.

Thus, feeling as if death was approaching right before her eyes, Adeline hurriedly packed her bags and fled in the night.