First things first: Do not trust my memory.
I beelined for the desk in the corner of the room, sitting down and making good use of it. I didn’t know about the rest of humanity, but I had an abysmal memory. I’d misremembered dates, times, and flipped the order of events. Edwin used to despair, carting around a notebook with a full daily planner to keep me on task.
Right now, I couldn’t entrust any of this to Edwin, so I had best make a written record to adhere to or I’d risk misremembering things. Or worse, forgetting something.
Two blank journals, likely meant for my convenience, sat on the desk, and I immediately pulled the green one to me.
Big goals first.
1.Edwin
That went without saying, really. Every major regret in my life tied back to Edwin. I must somehow get him to fall in love with me. If I failed a second time, then this life of mine had no point. Edwin must always be my priority. I had failed to make him the first priority in my previous life, and like hell would I repeat my mistake. That said, the second goal was something I needed to fix immediately.
2.Prevent the demon portal from opening and therefore the demon war from happening.
If I could do that, then there’d be no need for a war we were ill-prepared to fight. I still didn’t know who had opened the portal—or how—to begin with. It had been a mystery I’d never solved. I’d go straight to the portal first thing after officially becoming a prince and reinforce the seal before stationing guards there. I was absolutely not fighting the war a second time.
3.Prevent me being king.
I’d chosen to return to this particular time for several reasons. In part—a large part—because I’d met Edwin on this day. However, there were also certain political reasons.
I was not, technically, royalty yet, though as one of the many bastards sired by the previous generation’s second prince, I was of the bloodline. My sire—I refused to call him father—had impregnated my mother and seemingly a dozen other women without care or responsibility. (Considering how old he’d been at the time of my conception, I was surprised he’d managed atall.) He’d allotted a certain amount for my living and educational expenses, and when I’d turned fifteen, all money had stopped. Presumably because I was deemed old enough to take care of myself at that point.
Fortunately, my mother’s family were businessmen, owning a couple of small but successful stationery stores. I’d learned the business at my grandfather’s knee, and at age fifteen, I’d taken over.
Then I’d expanded, branching out into not just paper and stationery but pens. Art supplies. I grew the company and rebranded it into King’s Paper, a name now known even in other countries.
I’d lost my grandparents some two years ago and my mother as a teen, so my maternal line was pretty much dead aside from me. My father’s side had largely ignored me up until I started making waves in the commercial world. I hadn’t thought to reach out and join the royal side of my family until my cousin, King Patrick, had approached me with an offer: join them as an adopted prince.
He hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart, of course; royalty didn’t operate that way. Rather, he’d needed at least one of his children to be good at ruling the country. The eldest prince was a reprobate, the second prince fixated on studying medicine and nothing else, and the princess set to marry and leave the family. King Patrick had wanted a prince who could help one of his sons rule or, as a last resort, rule himself. Out of all the bastard children from the previous generation, I was the only one with the right skill set who wasn’t as old as or older than King Patrick himself.
The idea had appealed in a few ways. One, I knew how awful their first prince was and refused to let the man become king without someone at his side to keep him in check. He’d destroy the country for sure. With me in the right position, I couldprevent him from doing the truly stupid things. Two, wielding influence as a royal meant I could handle the social injustices I’d witnessed but been powerless to do anything about. I didn’t want my country, my friends and neighbors, to live in a declining empire. No one wanted that. This was a way for me to curtail that dark future.
Also, I didn’t enjoy being alone in the world. I’d thought, perhaps, that joining the family would give me siblings and parents again. A naïve hope, since it certainly hadn’t turned out that way. Mostly because the king and queen were, in fact, horrible parents who had handled my coming into the family in exactly the wrong way.
They’d pushed an agenda from day one. Within three months of my adoption, they’d started discussions about making me king, which had alienated my adoptive siblings immediately. I’d never been able to reverse our strained relationships.
I didn’t blame everyone for forcing me to become king. The three legitimate children of the royal family had not been great contenders for the throne. King Patrick and Queen Beatrice had utterly mismanaged their kids. They’d overly indulged their sons and hadn’t paid enough attention to their daughter. Honestly speaking, they’d had a good candidate—Helena, the youngest. She’d always been a bright, well-intentioned person. Given any kind of training, I think she’d have made a good queen. One for the history books? Well, not sure on that, but she’d have made a decent ruler. She’d been overlooked because of her sex. In my opinion, gender had to be the stupidest reason to exclude anyone.
Now, Helena’s older two brothers? They were a wash. Crown Prince Victor was too busy running up gambling debts and getting women pregnant to do anything worthwhile with his life. Royce would rather be holed up in a lab away from people than deal with politics.
Ooh, come to think of it, I should support Royce. In the future, he’d come up with a cure for salence, which would save a lot of lives, so giving him a supportive boost would be excellent.
I filled the page to the back side and started a list of minor goals. Supporting Royce fell under that heading.
I should get Helena out of her engagement, too. Her first marriage had been a disaster. No reason to make her repeat the heartbreak. I’d arrange it so she could marry her second husband—theirs had been a happy marriage.
Come to think of it, avoiding the political marriage I’d been trapped in needed to be my next immediate goal. Done right, I might be able to wiggle out of it altogether years before the match even occurred to Queen Beatrice.
I tapped the edge of the pen on the paper, thinking hard. Hmm, yes, I needed to safeguard myself first and foremost. Queen Beatrice—my soon-to-be adoptive mother—fancied herself a matchmaker. Only, she was quite horrible at it. Not a single marriage she had matched in my previous life had lasted more than a year. My coronation had been followed up with a political marriage that had been a mistake from its conception.
I would not be doing that again.
The adoption contract shouldn’t have been finalized just yet, so I could sneak in two clauses. First, they could not make me king. Second, they could not in any way, shape, or form influence my choice of spouse. If I got those clauses into place, I should be safe from the major machinations that had ruined my life the first go-around.
And if I wasn’t king, but instead the support to the ruler I was always meant to be, then I could back Helena and maneuver her onto the throne somehow.
All right, major goals sorted. I flipped the page and started on a timeline. We’d survived three major disasters—one of which was coming up shortly, sometime in the next six months.
