Prologue

I want to make something very clear, out of all the young women the world could have chosen to be sent into a fantasy novel world – I should've never even made it to the short list.

A good choice should've been a girl who had no attachments to Earth, who was filled with longing to escape her old life for a new one. Yet instead the gods chose me, a girl with kind parents, caring friends, and dreams of who I could be.

Then the gods stole my life.

"In exchange for a new life with parents who could better provide for you, a life where you may pick from a handful of handsome men to be your husband, a life free from the burdens of your old life – we ask but one thing from you."

They stole everything I had ever loved dear, and played the cruelest, stupidest trick on me.

"All we ask," they had smiled. "is that you carry on the role of Forte Rothwell. She who was once a wicked woman who'd torment any lady who so much as looked at her betrothed, the first Prince of Soleil, to death. We know you know her heart true, for you have read about her. We will see you make her a good person, for you are perhaps the only person left in the world who cares for her still."

So I picked up a random story about transmigration one day, so maybe I liked the villainess, maybe I felt sympathy for her – because I knew this best: it is that humans are never born cruel.

Cruelness is something that is taught and learned, it is not inherent from birth.

Any shred of doubt I had on that fact was immediately destroyed the minute I was reincarnated into her 5 year-old body.

Forte was abused by her parents who demanded nothing but perfection from her. They demeaned her time after time again, telling her she would never be anything if not the wife of the prince. I faced the brunt of this abuse every morning, while every night I searched for the real Forte in my dreams. I hoped I could hear her somewhere, hoped that she was still in there somehow – convince her to have strength and that life was worth living. Because I didn't want to keep doing this anymore.

To my dismay, it seemed she had vanished without a trace.

I wondered if she died some mental death, some form of cosmic passing. Who wouldn't though? Her life was a living hell. Even if her parents covered up her bruises with pretty clothes, even if they boasted about their daughter's intelligence in public to cover up their insults at home, and even when there were indeed five eye-catching men in all the kingdom Forte would love to be with.

There was so much pain in her life and so much empathy I had for her, so I decided that I would make all her dreams come true. I would give that little girl who gave up her life at 5 everything she could have ever wanted. It wouldn't be a house, it wouldn't be riches, and it wouldn't be revenge.

I would give her a choice.

I would give her the choice to choose any of the five men to marry, I would make them all love Forte. I would raise money to give her the ability to run away and live independently if she wanted. I would create plans for her to disappear into the night without a trace, without taking a single dime that I had raised for her.

And I did, I did all that.

Now all that was left was to call Forte back into this body and for me to finally depart, to return to my own family.

But the road to getting what you want is never easy, is it?