**

  Authors note: An unreliable narrator tells the story. Remember, no one is a saint here. We will get Antonia's POVs but not for a while, for reasons you will soon see. This is a redemption story, but the path will be full of pain. Romance will be the slowest of slow burns...but don't worry about it too much. :>

  **

  Heaven was a cold and dark pce. Every breath he took felt like ice shards were piercing his lungs. The searing thirst he felt as the poison ate away his life came back with a vengeance.

  He thrashed in sheets, he was lying on a bed, feeling wet and cmmy all over his body. Sweating, he was sweating buckets, but the chill in his bones said otherwise.

  He cwed at his throat desperate for the burning to stop, trying to tear out a scream. But all that came out of his vocal cords were choked sounds of some wounded, dying Neverbeast.

  Thunder struck outside the window, illuminating the dark of his chambers. He bolted forward, eyes wide open, as the mighty sound tore through his confusion.

  His throat still burnt, but he noticed he was breathing in air.

  Cold, swampy, rotten air, but air nonetheless.

  'Dead people do not breathe.'

  Another bolt of lightning struck outside the window and this time, he got a good look around the chamber he was in. His throat grew drier.

  It was like seeing a ghost of a long-lost friend. Familiar, yet terrifying.

  He was in his own chambers. The chambers he slept in when he was a kid. In the mansion he escaped as soon as he could, in the very pce he had returned when all hope seemed lost, in the pce where he had been murdered.

  He opened his mouth and this time a scream came out.

  ###

  It was as if the entire mansion had suddenly come to life at the sound of his screaming. Lights were lit everywhere he could see. He could hear hurried footsteps rushing across the corridor between his cries. He could hear nervous whispers gathering outside his door.

  They didn't dare come in until he had tired himself out with all the screaming and had id down on his sheets, whimpering, curled like a babe.

  "Young master?"

  He recognized the soft voice of the Head Maid of the mansion. It was the same voice that had crooned lulbies when he was a child and spun scary tales when he grew too adventurous.

  "Did you, perhaps, have a bad dream?"

  A dream, oh how sweet would it be, if he could ugh everything off as just a dream.

  'Sarina, do you know they killed me? Right here in this mansion? Do you know that when I died, no one was there beside me? All of you were dead or had deserted me.

  You, especially, showed great enthusiasm in vouching for my ruthless ways before the court. You always did have a penchant for remarkable words. That day they had felt sharper than any spear that had pierced me.'

  But right now, her voice was softer than a petal, like a warm bnket with the promise of refuge.

  He hated her, hated every goddamn useless, hypocritical servant that worked at this mansion.

  But right then, he had just come back from the dead And he felt lonely, so terribly lonely.

  So when he looked at them with eyes moist with tears, hatred was the st thing they saw.

  "Why is it so dark outside?"

  ###

  "A storm, young lord, not to say dawn is still an hour te." The head maid looked awfully concerned at his docile manner.

  "Should I bring some heated milk with honey? Stirred with crushed nuts, a dash of rose water?"

  The young lord looked like she had just suggested she bring him the Elixir of heaven, his face full of yearning and disbelief.

  When he spoke, his voice cracked in half.

  "Yes, I would like that. I would like that very much."

  The head maid's heart clenched at how pathetic her young lord appeared. He turned sixteen just a week ago, but the person in front of him looked like a frightened d of ten.

  That was about the age he picked up a sword and stopped pestering her for stories.

  With a sharp look, she sent away all the gossiping fools that had gathered at the young master's door. It would be a nightmare working them tomorrow, seeing none of them would get a wink of sleep after this fiasco.

  "Jeza, Maribelle, bring new, warmed sheets for the young master. Hubert, go find a cook and tell him to prepare a gss of milk the way the young master likes. And the rest of you, off to bed. I don't want to be hearing any yawns in the morning."

  As she left the room, she could have sworn she heard a soft chuckle coming from the young lord.

  'By Raputa,' she swore by the patron God of knowledge and good health, ' I must still be half asleep.'

  "Sarina."

  She froze outside as she heard the young master.

  "What day is it?"

  Was he nervous? He had seemed rather carefree and excited all the time before, counting the days till it came. She wondered if he had been suppressing his fear and whether that had something to do with today's nightmare.

  "The day of Evantha, two cycles in the fiftieth year of Dumas. A week to go before the knight-ranking examination "

  "...I'm sixteen years old...?"

  Whatever wraith had visited him in his dreams!

  Sarina decided it was time she left the young master alone in his thoughts.

  ###

  He sat down, shocked and fbbergasted until the head maid had gone away. He pulled his hair by a fist to see if he was indeed alive and awake.

  It was impossible.

  He was alive. And he was back in time. Before the knight-ranking exam, before the twin wars, before the Great Betryal.

  Just, not before he met that bitch Antonia...

  Still, such a miracle! That too on the day of Evantha, mistress of death and the afterlife!

  He could start over again! He could take revenge!

  A giddy feeling grew in his belly until he was giggling with sheer excitement.

  This time, it would be different. Antonia would die. Lilliana would be his to love and embrace. The north will burn.

  And maybe, just maybe, he won't die alone.