I Refuse to Be Executed a Second Time

Atop the execution scaffold, Ella Walker looks back on the first half of her life. Her engagement to Prince Gil was forcibly annulled-handed over to her stepsister, Isabella Walker-she was banished to a remote region already rotten to the core, and to crown it all, held responsible for a riot that erupted there and put to death. Ella meets her end still carrying the despair of having had not a single ally. Yet somehow, she finds herself cast back in time-reborn ten years into the past. Given a second chance, Ella makes up her mind: this life, she will live bound by nothing-just watch. To that end, she willingly cedes the position of Prince Gil's fiancee to Isabella and, as lord of the remote region before it rots to its core, drives one reform after another to success-this time beginning a life of happiness different from her former one. Yet the guillotine of fate refuses to lift from the nape of Ella's neck, driving the blades of all manner of hardships into her. Can Ella escape the looming fate of execution and seize her happiness...?