The Author's Guilt
Lloyd Rosewelly opened his eyes to silk sheets that cost more than his previous life's entire apartment.
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
The ceiling above him wasn't water-stained plaster but hand-painted frescoes of angels and roses. The bed wasn't a creaky twin mattress but a four-poster monstrosity that could sleep five. His hands—he lifted them slowly, watching fingers that were too small, too soft, too *aristocratic*—weren't the calloused hands of someone who'd typed 500,000 words of villainess fiction on a dying laptop.
These were the hands of a child. Specifically, a ten-year-old noble brat.
More specifically: Lloyd Rosewelly, older brother and future enabler of Millicent Rosewelly, the villainess whose descent into cruelty he'd crafted with meticulous, coffee-fueled spite at three in the morning.
"Oh no." Lloyd sat up. The room spun. Nausea clawed up his throat—not from the reincarnation, but from *memory*.
He'd written her destruction in excruciating detail. Every humiliation. Every betrayal. The way the heroine would frame her for poisoning. How the Crown Prince would look at Millicent—*Mimi*, everyone called her Mimi—with disgust as he personally tore the Rosewelly crest from her dress. The slave collar snapping around her throat in the final arc.
He'd been so proud of that tragedy. Readers had cried. They'd praised his "unflinching portrayal of consequence."
They didn't have to wake up as her brother.
Lloyd threw off the covers and stumbled to the window. Outside, the Rosewelly estate sprawled in manicured perfection—rose gardens, marble fountains, hedge mazes. Beyond the gates, the capital city glittered in morning sun. Somewhere in that city, pieces were already moving. The heroine was probably perfecting her innocent smile. The Crown Prince was being groomed for kingship. The plot machinery he'd built was grinding forward.
And in the nursery wing, just down the hall, was a five-year-old girl who didn't know her own brother had written her damnation.
A knock at the door made him flinch.
"Young master?" A maid's voice, cautious. "Lady Millicent is asking for you."
Lloyd's chest constricted. He'd written Mimi as cold. Calculating. A child sociopath in the making who'd grow into a monster. But that was before—
"Tell her I'll be there shortly," he managed.
The footsteps retreated.
Lloyd looked at his reflection in the window glass. Ten years old. He had maybe eight years before the Academy arc where everything went wrong. Eight years to dismantle a plot he knew every beat of.
Eight years to save his sister from himself.
"Crown Prince," Lloyd whispered to his reflection, "I'm coming for you."
But first, he needed to see her. Needed to confirm the horrible suspicion that had been building since he woke up.
He needed to see if the real Mimi was anything like the monster he'd created.
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