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**I Ended Up Living Next Door to My Ex-Husband**
Rebecca Twins.
Cedric's ex-wife. An extraordinary woman who, had he been capable of it, would have driven him to tears.
She was a supporting villain — her face barely glimpsed at the novel's opening, and only then in service of 'Camilla,' the story's true villainess, who had once been her own maid.
Why does she only appear at the beginning?
Simple: early in the novel, Rebecca is forced to divorce Cedric and locked away in a high tower.
*Even as a supporting villain... by my standards, she was more unhinged than the actual evil Camilla.*
Rebecca's obsession with Cedric defied comprehension. Possessive to the point of madness, she needed to know everything about her husband — every movement, every conversation, every glance. She despised anyone who came near him, regardless of gender or station. In short, she was a fanatic of the highest order.
Her obsession reached its peak over one thing: she wanted a child with Cedric. A desperate, consuming desire for a deeper bond to tie him to her. But Cedric, long since suffocated by her fixation, refused every advance.
So Rebecca found another way.
She summoned a warlock, killed a half-blood demon, and offered it as a sacrifice — all to compel Cedric into agreeing. When the act was discovered, the fallout was catastrophic.
The wife of the Grand Duke of Twins — a man who was, in many ways, the sovereign of the half-blood demon world — had murdered one of their own and used the body in dark ritual. Whatever mercy Cedric had still harbored for her vanished the moment he learned the truth.
Rebecca was forced into divorce and imprisoned in a windowless tower, fading from the story until its second half.
*Wouldn't it have been better if it ended there?*
It didn't. Camilla, the novel's true villain, continued her campaign of cruelty against the heroine Lobelia — and Duke Bold, Rebecca's biological father, aided her every step of the way. When that collaboration was finally exposed, Cedric's rage became something else entirely.
In the process of punishing Camilla and Duke Bold, he uncovered that Rebecca had been assisting them long before her imprisonment. Convinced that she had orchestrated everything from the tower in a bid to reclaim her title as Grand Duchess, Cedric added her name to his list of the condemned.
*What a disaster — barely appearing in the novel, spending the whole story locked in a tower, and still ending up on the wrong end of everyone's wrath.*
When I actually put myself in Rebecca's position, I couldn't help but feel a flicker of injustice. In a way, it was inevitable — she was Duke Bold's daughter, and she had helped Camilla before her imprisonment. The sparks were always going to land on her.
"Whoever holds a grievance against Rebecca," Cedric had announced, "I will not fault them for seeing to her punishment personally."
The moment those words were spoken, half-blood demons swarmed the base of her tower.
They tore the walls apart, launched flaming arrows, and hurled curses into the stone. Rebecca's laughter — broken and strange — drifted down as the fire took hold. Her last words, her face melting in the flames.
Even now, the memory raised the hairs on my arms.
*"Ha... hehehe... Cedric... he's mine... forever... mine... heeek—"*
That passage had been the author's clearest illustration of Rebecca's pathological obsession. Around the novel's midpoint, Lobelia — still unaware of the full history between them — had worried that Cedric might never truly let Rebecca go.
Cedric's response had been immediate.
"If heaven and hell are real, I intend to go to heaven. Because that woman is certainly in hell."
In short: to Cedric, Rebecca was a woman he hoped never to encounter again — not even in death.
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It had been two days since I'd found myself alone in an unfamiliar world.
It still didn't feel real. But I had no more room for denial. I had fallen into a novel — this novel, one I'd been reading for months. I knew its plot, its characters, its ending.
The story centered on Lobelia, the female protagonist, who one day stumbles upon her wicked friend Camilla in the arms of her own husband, Henry.
*Just like what happened to me. Before the possession.*
But the cheating couple in the novel had been far more brazen than mine. They hadn't just betrayed Lobelia — they'd eventually tried to kill her when she refused to quietly disappear.
Lobelia fled, eventually reaching the forests of the Demon World, where she encountered Cedric — already divorced from Rebecca by then. The Grand Duke of the North: a half-blood demon, powerful, magnetic, and entirely invincible.
*Lobelia had started as a mere count's mistress. She ended up the wife of the Northern Grand Duke. Some people really do hit the lottery.*
Their meeting led to Lobelia becoming a tutor for Cedric's younger sister, Bianca. From there, slowly and beautifully, love bloomed.
*But why me? I witnessed my husband and my best friend, too. So why am I possessing a supporting villain? Not even the main villainess — the obsessive mad dog in the tower?*
The injustice settled over me like a wet coat.
Rebecca spent the bulk of the novel quietly imprisoned while the main characters fell in love — and in the end, she burned to death because of someone else's crimes. Crimes she hadn't even committed in this timeline yet.
*God, I'm furious.*
I downed the glass of champagne I'd asked for earlier in a single swallow, then stared up at the ceiling. No — past the ceiling. Past the gilded plasterwork and the vaulted stone, straight at whatever divine authority had decided this was funny.
*Wasn't that a bit much? Where exactly did the coin I threw into that fountain go?*
I exhaled, tried to release the indignation, and sank back against the sofa cushions.
"Another glass of champagne," I called out.
Sunlight still poured through the tall windows. A perfectly pleasant afternoon, for all the good it did me.
*I might end up dying in a burning tower someday. The least I can do is drink expensive wine while I still can.*
I bounced one leg anxiously and waited. I needed the alcohol. I needed something to blunt the sharp edge of my panic and convince my body that everything would be fine.
Ten minutes passed. The maid I'd sent didn't return.
"It really shouldn't take this long," I muttered to no one in particular.
At the sound of my voice, every maid in the room flinched simultaneously. A few tried to avoid my gaze with the studied casualness of people pretending they hadn't heard. Their faces had gone carefully blank, shoulders rigid.
Understandable, really. Rebecca had never been gentle with the staff. Any slip, any perceived slight — her jealousy and cruelty had been indiscriminate.
*Best not to make eye contact with a crazy dog.*
I lay back and waited.
This castle was absurdly oversized. It probably took ten minutes just to walk to the wine cellar.
Then, quite suddenly, an idea arrived like a thunderbolt.
"Wait — why didn't I think of this sooner?"
I sat up so fast I startled two of the nearby maids.
*I just have to divorce Cedric. Before he forces it on me. Before the tower. I initiate it myself.*
If I ended the marriage on my own terms, my usefulness to Camilla would evaporate. Without me as a resource or a pawn, Duke Bold would have less reason to seek her out. The alliance between the two villains would fracture naturally. And without that alliance, Cedric would have no reason to despise me — or none beyond what Rebecca had already done.
*And if I'm the one who walks away first, there's no possible way he could later believe I was scheming from a tower to reclaim my title. Because I'd have given it up freely.*
It wasn't a perfect plan. But it was a direction. That was more than I'd had two days ago.
The next step was figuring out where exactly in the timeline I'd landed.
*Cedric and I are still married. Camilla — my maid, the true villainess — has just left on a month-long solo vacation.*
Right now, somewhere on that trip, Camilla was secretly meeting with Henry, Lobelia's husband, and kindling the affair that would eventually set the entire plot in motion. Lobelia herself wouldn't discover the truth until long after they returned. The novel began with that discovery.
*Which means I'm well before the story even starts. I have time.*
That was a gift I hadn't expected.
The sooner I initiated the divorce, the better my position. And once it was finalized, if I conducted myself with restraint — caused no further scandal, made no threats — there was a reasonable chance Cedric would show leniency when Duke Bold and Camilla's schemes eventually collapsed.
*He might even spare me entirely.*
I allowed myself a small, cautious optimism.
And the financial angle wasn't nothing, either. I looked around the room. Gold trim on every border. Artwork that cost more than most people earned in a lifetime. Wardrobes of silk and velvet and jewels that caught the light like small captive suns.
All of it the wealth of the Twins Grand Duchy. And Cedric wasn't a petty man. If I asked for a divorce, he would give me one — and he wouldn't cheap out on the settlement just to spite me.
*This is considerably better than divorcing a man who made ten million won a year after five years of marriage.*
No tower. No fire. A generous alimony, a comfortable estate somewhere pleasant, and the freedom to live exactly as I chose.
*Rebecca Twins: wealthy, beautiful, and single.*
I caught my own reflection in the gilt-framed mirror across the room. Shining red hair. Fine, elegant features. Pale skin, a slender figure, and eyes that were perhaps a little sharp — but still lovely, all things considered.
*Plenty of money, a great face, and still young. The divorce isn't a tragedy. It's a starting point.*
I had spent years believing that happiness meant building a life beside one person, growing old in the same house, loving the same man every day. I had believed it right up until I watched my husband and my best friend in a hotel corridor, laughing at a joke I would never know.
That belief was gone now. I had no interest in replacing it with another version of the same vulnerability.
*After the divorce, I'll do exactly as I like. No obligations. No sacrifices. Just me, and whatever brings me joy.*
Responsibilities? Expectations? Self-abnegation?
*Absolutely not.*
I would spend every coin of that alimony on myself. Travel, pleasure, comfort, freedom. Starting the moment I walked out of this castle.
*It all begins with the divorce from Cedric.*
There was one loose end, of course. The original Rebecca's fate hadn't been sealed only by Cedric's proclamation — the half-blood demons' hatred had been building for years, their resentment sharpened by her callousness and her refusal to show remorse after the sacrifice incident.
But I had no intention of harming anyone. And without that recklessness, without that cold cruelty in the years to come, perhaps their hatred would have less fuel to burn.
*I'm not going to sacrifice anyone. I'm not going to sneer at them from a tower window. I just need to leave quietly and stay out of everyone's way.*
I set the worry aside.
*A seaside mansion for the alimony settlement? Garden parties with an ocean view every weekend?*
The corner of my mouth was just beginning to curl upward when a shadow fell across the table in front of me.
I looked up.
A maid stood there, champagne glass balanced on a silver tray, her face the color of fresh plaster.
"Y-Your Highness," she managed. "The champagne you requested..."
She couldn't have been older than nineteen. Her hands were shaking visibly, knuckles white around the edges of the tray. She was doing her best to keep the trembling contained, but it wasn't working.
*She's terrified.*
I watched her with a detached sort of sympathy. She took one step forward, then another — and then, inevitably, the glass slipped from her damp fingers.
*Clink.*
Crystal shattered against the marble floor. Champagne splashed across the hem of my dress in a pale, fizzing arc.
The maid froze.
For a moment she simply stared at the broken glass, her expression cycling through disbelief, then horror, then something approaching religious dread. When her eyes finally rose to meet mine, the color drained from her face entirely.
"Ha—" A sound escaped her that wasn't quite a word. "Hehe—"
Her whole body began to shake. And then, slowly, two small protrusions pushed up through her hair.
Horns. Actual horns.
"What—" I leaned forward slightly. "Are those—?"
The maid's hands flew to her own head, patting at her hair with the expression of someone who had just discovered a second nose. The moment her fingers found the horns, her face shifted from white to a distinctly greenish shade of blue.
Around the room, every other maid abruptly remembered they had somewhere else to be. They filtered out in a quiet, practiced mass exodus, eyes fixed on the middle distance.
*Where is everyone going?*
I was still blinking in confusion when the young maid dropped.
Both knees hit the floor at once. She pressed her forehead nearly to the marble.
"I'm so sorry, Your Highness! It was an accident, I swear — please, *please* don't cut off my horns!"