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"Mielle, why don't you punish Annie by slipping these seeds in her tea?"
In my first life, my stepsister Mielle manipulated me to try and poison her. Of course, I was caught and executed. Mielle planned it and framed me all along. In the moment my head was severed from my body, my salvation came to me. A shining gold hourglass rippled in the air before me and turned over. I returned to my youth, with the chance to relive my past and change my fate.
"Oh, yes, Sister Aria ... er, Lady Aria! That will be so much fun!"
For revenge, I enticed Mielle to betray the kingdom and even try to kill her own father. But my revenge wasn't complete even when my enemy was sentenced to death by beheading. I wanted Mielle to suffer like I suffered, so I saved her from death and made her my servant. Now, her own hand would poison the one person who still loved her and she would die in the same despair I knew.
Ah, Mielle ... you don't know yet that your brother will drink your delicious tea. I hope you'll put in a lot of poison.
My faithful maid, Annie, sat at my side at my informal garden-party. I had ordered Annie to bully Mielle without mercy. Grateful to me for saving her head, this caused Mielle to trust me and agree to spike Annie's tea as a 'joke'. I packed Mielle off to walk all the way back to my manor on an errand just before my surprise guest arrived: Mielle's brother, Kain.
He would enjoy Mielle's tea. He swung the sword to kill me in my first life.
I sipped my own tea. Cream and sugar and a strong berry taste, which I liked very much. After growing up poor, I preferred my tea to taste like tea and not like water with leaves barely dipped into it.
Berries. How I liked berries. I squashed berries. One of Mielle's maids, who contributed to my death in her past life, was named after that fruit. I'd seen to it she met her end and along with her fell Mielle's surrogate mother, Emma, who'd raised her from a baby. Mielle became one step closer to losing everything.
One step closer, and now ...
"Your sister made this tea, Kain," I said. I pushed him the cup. The liquid shook and slopped in it. Why was I so clumsy? I practiced etiquette hard after I turned back the hourglass. I saw Kain raise the tea to his lips and laughed at my victory.
My laugh was too loud, too long. Like my old laugh, as a ragged child who didn't know the least thing about proper behaviour. Kain's head cracked into tiny triangles before my eyes, then pushed itself back together again. I laughed louder.
Oh ... I finally thought, dazed. Something had gone wrong with me - something very bad. I could fix this. I reached for my precious hourglass. I would turn back time five minutes and redo whatever had gone wrong.
A hand reached out to stop me touching it. Was it a mouse's hand? I still couldn't stop laughing. I looked up at Mielle. Naughty Mielle. She was ordered to go back to the manor! But she didn't for some reason ...
"Help me lay her on the grass," Mielle ordered her brother. "Annie, run for help." Against my will, the siblings forced me down.
I was alone with my worst enemy. All the while, I saw tiny triangles and squiggles rise and fall and bubbles that never existed pop and shatter in the air.
"Thank you for giving me the idea to slip a hallucinogen in your tea, dear sister," Mielle said. Hatred underlined her gentle and graceful voice. "It's what you accused me of before. But I never took hallucinogens. I saw what you and Prince Asher did that night."
My blood was ice in my veins. Mielle held me back more strongly than I thought she could. She was only thirteen when I turned back the clock the first time, a little girl. She was older now and she'd had to work hard and build muscle since becoming my servant. My eyes felt shadowed by a film of tears. The drug clouded my vision.
"I watched you carefully," Mielle said. "This clock gives you power over time. I know you've used it a thousand times. You probably dumped water on my head, slapped me over the face, stuck needles in my skin. Then turned the clock back five minutes so it never happened. Haven't you been doing all that?"
I have, I thought. When my hatred of Mielle became too much to bear, I'd take a petty revenge on her then turn back the hourglass.
"I think some memory of everything you've done lingers in me. Maybe it's written inside my skin even when you change the clock. Maybe it's only what I would have done in your place," Mielle said. "You shouldn't have shown me your powers. When you and the Prince disappeared before my eyes, that was when I figured it out."
My fingers still scrabbled for my hourglass. I didn't want my powers to desert me now. Perhaps there was time for me to fix all my mistakes, and decapitate Mielle properly the next cycle.
My power activated when ... when I was near death. Perhaps I was near death now ...
"Ever since I saw you I hated you," Mielle said. "I saw a whore and her whore's brat come to my manor and steal the place of my mother. You had no right to look happy. I wanted to kill you from the first moment onwards."
I know, I thought. Mielle gloated much the same thing to me when I was executed.
"The bloodline power is said to only activate in near death situations. Did I succeed in killing you the first time, sister? I'm sure you turned back the clock with full knowledge of how my plans would play out. That was how you changed from a gutter-brat into the Prince's lover," she spat at me.
Mielle was always smart, I thought to my hallucinogen-enhanced self. She'd been sheltered, so it seemed like she was only book smart, memorising poetry without knowing anything about the real world. I used to think I was stupid compared to Mielle, until I went back in time and put effort into learning.
Had Mielle's suffering, too, caused her to learn a new way of thinking?
I gasped. My breath was growing short. But I knew my special ability would activate to save me. I had a gift and power over time -
"How much of your lifespan will it cost this time, sister Aria?" Mielle asked. "Everything has a cost, after all. Use your powers, and become an old hag long before your time. What a dilemma."
It was true. Using my powers to torment Mielle in small ways, I'd found myself growing to look more like my past self than my physical age. Mielle must have deduced why I grew so fast back then. Of course it wasn't just petty torments. I used the hourglass to gain power, learn about my past, gain wealth and revenge.
Now fiery rills of pain shook my body and I could barely breathe.
"It was not only a hallucinogen. You poisoned me as well," I gasped.
"Yes. It tastes like berries," Mielle confessed. "My Emma taught me well. I hope I get to see her again, when you and I travel back in time once more. She was like a mother to me. I loved her as much as a black-hearted woman like me can love anyone. Did I poison your dear mother the first time, so that you revenged Emma for me? Yes, I see from your face that I did. I'm glad I murdered the whore."
Mielle poisoned my mother and faced no justice for it. Here and now, my mother still lived, but I knew better than to expect any help from her.
My lips crackled away into small triangles. Something stirred within me. I reached for the power that shone deep inside my green eyes.
"You kill my mother ... I have Emma beheaded. You kill me ... I destroy you, sister ... " I said. I spat blood into Mielle's face and laughed at its spatter over her pale skin. I took her hands in mine and would not let go in my death grip.
Mielle bowed her head. Instead of trying to escape me, she cupped my palms in her hands. "So it will always be. Let's call it an endless waltz between us. One villainess never quite eliminates the other. We are well matched, holding each other with a dagger pierced through both our bodies. We slay each other and all those close to us. Which of us will be the first to kill on the next, Mielle or Aria? I don't believe that it matters at all. Again and again, we choose vengeance over anything else. Time trips over and plays itself out and up and wide and down and all over anew."
I drew Mielle closer to me. Light sparked all across my vision.
"Dance with me, sister.
Let's go back again."