System Cheated Me: Slaughtering the Palace

Seven years of work. And when it was done, she said one thing about me. "She's useful to have around." So the System refused to send me home. That night, I killed her.

Seven years ago, something dragged me into this world. The System offered me a deal. Help the heroine take the crown as queen, and I could go back to where I came from.

I wanted to go home. I said yes. So I became her best friend.

I nudged things along until the night the Crown Prince took a blade and went into the water, and she was the one who pulled him out.

They fell for each other on the spot and swore themselves to each other. After that I worked. Seven years of it. Every single day. I got her into the palace.

I cleared every obstacle out of her path. I put the crown on her head.

Chapter 1 It started when the truth came out about who the Crown Prince really was, and she was moved into his household as his lowest mistress. I came with her as a maid.

We ground it out year after year. I fed her every idea she ever had, and she climbed. Mistress, then junior consort, then a consort of the new king after he took the throne.

This year I finally got my hands on something the High Consort couldn't explain away, and Camille took the crown. I skipped the coronation.

I sat in her rooms and shook with how close I was to going home.

She came back in the queen's robes with her whole face lit up. "Marlowe, you don't have to come to these things," she said. "I'd rather you stayed here in the Queen's Wing.

It puts my mind at ease." Seven years of the same face in front of me. I had her collar in my hands and I didn't want to let go of it. After tonight I'd never see her again.

I stepped up to straighten her collar. "Camille, when I go home, I'm going to miss you…" Her eyebrows pulled together. "Home? Marlowe, is the palace not good enough for you?

You're head lady's maid of the Queen's Wing. I've gotten used to having you. Why would you go back to that little town?" My hands stopped on her collar. "And one more thing.

I'm the queen now. You shouldn't say my name like that." She gave me a look. The look people give the help. "Marlowe. Know your place." I dropped my eyes so she couldn't read them.

Then I went down on my knees and bowed my forehead to the floor. My body knew the motion by heart. "Forgive me, my lady. I overstepped." She hummed through her nose.

An apology from the floor, and that was that. "All right. Get up." She flicked at a sleeve that had nothing on it to flick. "It's my day today. See to the arrangements.

The king is coming tonight." Then she turned and left. I stayed down on the floor until her shadow was gone from the doorway. Only then did I stand. Power is a wonderful thing.

Seven years of it, and there was nothing left of the girl I knew. The Camille from Ridge Hollow. The Camille who swore we'd be friends for life.

She was the queen now, and she snapped her fingers at the people who used to be her whole world. I let my face go cold and spoke to the System. "Let's go.

There's nothing here worth staying for." It answered inside my head, flat as ever. [Sorry. Host has not met the objective. Please remain and complete the task.] The silence went on.

Then I heard my own voice, and it was shaking. Chapter 2 "What… what does that mean?

You said if I helped her take the crown, I could go home." The answer came back with no feeling in it at all. [The heroine of this world still requires the Host.

Completion standard not met.] "So what you're telling me is, as long as Camille wants me around, I never go home." Then what were the last seven years for. Seven years of that.

Funny. In the Crown Prince's household I fought the other mistresses. I fought the junior consorts. In the palace I fought the consorts, and then I fought the High Consort herself.

Last one to bed, first one up. Her food, her clothes, the incense in her rooms. Every single thing passed under my eyes and through my hands first.

I took a girl who burst into tears the second anything went wrong, and I carried her all the way to the crown.

And now the task wasn't finished. [The High Consort is watching for an opening. The Second Consort is dangerous. Both are obstacles to the heroine.

Host will continue to assist until the little prince takes the throne.] "And if I don't?" I had never once talked back. That one question shut it up.

It took a while. [Then Host remains here forever.] Is that right. If I couldn't go home, what was I doing in this brutal, backward world? I wasn't from here.

I was an educated modern woman. If I had never seen the light, I could have lived in the dark. That's the part it never understood. I stopped talking to it.

I got up and started on the arrangements for the king's visit that night. It thought I'd come to my senses. It sounded pleased with me. [Good.

The heroine's wishes are the highest law in this world. Keep her happy and you will go home one day.] Night came fast. Camille and Damien arrived arm in arm.

The table was buried under the dinner spread. The two of them wanted to eat alone, so they waved everyone out. I went last.

I shut the doors on all of them and walked back to her side. She looked over, puzzled. "You can go. The king and I don't need anyone tonight." I didn't say anything.

The dagger came out of my sleeve so fast the air moved. I put it in Damien's chest. He never saw it. It went in clean. Blood came out of him in a hot sheet and washed down my face.

I pulled the blade back and put it in him again. Again. Seven or eight times before my arm decided to stop. Camille hadn't moved. Her mouth was open. Nothing came out of it.

She got half a breath in to scream. I brought the blade back across her throat. Her eyes were round and wide, and in them I could see my own face, a face out of hell.

Then she went down slow. The alarm went off inside my skull. [WARNING. WARNING.] My ears rang. Then it came back screaming. [You killed them.

You killed the male lead and the heroine.] "What? Isn't it obvious? I'm blowing off some steam." It must have forgotten. When I got dropped into this world, I picked a cheat power.

Unlimited saves. Chapter 3 The cheat power wasn't the System's to control. Any time I wanted, I could start over. Early on I used it constantly.

I'd watched The Tudors so many times I could say the lines along with the screen, and I'd read a dozen palaceintrigue novels on top of that. All theory. No practice.

When Camille and I first landed in the Crown Prince's household, we had nothing. No family behind us, no one who owed us a favor, no skills, no tricks. Boxed in from every side.

Squeezed by everyone above us. We couldn't do a thing right. Every step was a minefield. And the heroine of the story can't be the villain, can she. So all of it came to me.

All of it went through my hands. After a while I didn't need the cheat power anymore.

I started thinking three moves ahead, and every plot and every knife stopped at my back instead of hers. I put the dagger into Camille twice more because it felt good.

Then I dropped onto a stool. Reload. Time slid back to the moment she waved the servants out. All that ice was gone. It chattered nonstop inside my head. I didn't care.

For the first time ever, I muted it. This time I didn't stay. I bowed and withdrew with everyone else. My face was normal. Under it, nothing was.

I needed time to put myself back together. And time to think about how I wanted to kill her the next time. My body clock hauled me up on schedule the next morning.

I'd expected to lie awake all night. Instead I slept better than I had in years. A new queen means a banquet.

As head lady's maid of the Queen's Wing, the whole thing was mine to run. Red lacquered screens split the hall into an inner room and an outer one.

The musicians sat behind them where they couldn't see the guests. All anyone heard was strings and flutes. Every consort in the palace came except the ones too sick to walk.

Damien was there, so the High Consort and the Second Consort smiled through their teeth and said all the right words about how happy they were.

A few rounds in, the color was up in everybody's face. The Second Consort was the prettiest woman in the room, and she rose to take the king a cup.

Simple enough plan, if I had to guess. Steal him back to her own rooms in front of everyone and show the new queen up while she was at it. She made it halfway up.

Then her legs went out from under her. I stood behind Camille and watched them go down, one after another. My face never moved.

Every one of them had made me kneel at some point in the last seven years. Not one of them could stand up now. I'd lit the incense before the first guest arrived.

There was enough paralytic powder in it to drop the room. It didn't feel like enough. So I put some in the food too. I'd taken the antidote hours earlier.

Every maid, every attendant, every last one of them went soft on the floor. Their mistresses went down with them. The music kept coming from the outer hall.

I took out my dagger and my feet felt light. Time to start collecting heads. When I finished, my clothes were past saving. Red all the way through.

Chapter 4 The System sounded like a chicken with a hand around its throat. It screamed for a while. After that it went very quiet.

Nobody in that hall could make more than a thread of sound. Whimpers. Someone cursing me under what was left of their breath. All of it soaked into the noise of the room.

Every small scream got up off the floor and was swallowed whole by the music. I whistled while I ate dinner in there. I burped, smiled, and hit reload.

Everything rewound in front of me in fast little jumps, so I shut my eyes. Motion sickness. That's the best way I can put it.

When I opened them, I was back at the start of the day, planning the banquet. Camille was in the middle of telling me to spare no expense.

She looked at my blank face, and whatever she meant to say next died. Her hand went to her chest. Sweat came up on her forehead. I'd almost forgotten.

After a reload, people I'd taught a lesson to lost the memory but kept the fear. They could never explain it. They just had it.

I found that out with Lady Halloway, back in the Crown Prince's household. The Crown Prince was fond of her.

Her father was newly high up in the government, her mother's family had money, so she had position and cash and she threw both around.

Every so often she came looking for Camille just to knock her around a little. That winter I put Lady Halloway in the lake. More than once.

Two lessons in, she started shaking whenever she saw me. No more schemes. Very well behaved after that.

These days she lived in a side wing of the palace, ranked as low as a lady can be ranked. Camille had the same look on her face that Lady Halloway used to get.

Because I hadn't only opened her throat. I'd taken her heart out too. The royal physician came and found nothing.

He said Her Majesty had been working too hard lately, wrote out a tonic, and left. After that she didn't want me running the banquet. She handed it to another maid. Fine by me.

I went back to my room and lay down. Odette got the job and floated around like she'd won the lottery. Finally, one thing where she came out ahead of me.

She was in my doorway inside the hour. That look. Years of that look. The maid who thought she was the best in the palace, always one step behind the country girl from nowhere.

She'd hated me for a long time, and she'd been tripping me up in small ways for just as long. The fire came up behind her eyes, and I smiled. Nothing on my plate today.

I might as well play with her. A while later, I reloaded to the moment she walked up to me