Astelle Arclaire woke to silk too soft to be hers.
For a long moment, she didn't move. Not because she was savoring the warmth, but because the ceiling above her was wrong.
A painted dome of pale blue and gold filigree, cherubs holding garlands, the kind of expensive nonsense that existed only in museums and power.
Her tongue tasted faintly of bitter herbs.
Okay. Either I'm dreaming, or I'm dead, or—
A bell chimed somewhere beyond the heavy curtains, a delicate sound that carried a command with it. Footsteps answered. Light pressure at the door, then a woman's voice, practiced and careful.
"Milady? It is nearly the ninth bell."
Milady.
Astelle's fingers tightened on the blanket before she could stop them. The skin was pale. Smooth. There was a faint crescent scar along the knuckle of her right index finger, the kind you got from a needle slipping.
And on her left hand—
A ring.
A thick band of dark metal set with a stone so deep it swallowed the candlelight. It sat heavy on her finger, weighty enough to feel like a sentence.
Her breath caught.
No. No, no, no.
Memory surged in two streams that refused to merge.
One was hers, late-night reading, scrolling chapters with the brittle fascination of watching a carriage wreck in slow motion.
The other was not hers, perfume cloying in ballrooms, a sharp laugh at someone else's expense, the intimate knowledge of which servants flinched quickest.
Astelle Arclaire.
The infamous villainess.
Not the "secretly misunderstood" kind. The kind readers loved to hate. The one who wore cruelty like jewelry and called it taste.
I'm in her body.
The door opened without waiting for permission. A maid stepped in with a tray and eyes lowered. She had the posture of someone trained to take blame before it was assigned.
Astelle pushed herself upright, movement slow so she wouldn't betray how badly her hands were shaking.
The maid's gaze flicked up, just once, and stopped.
Not on her face.
On her eyes.
The maid froze so completely the tray trembled in her hands. Her lips parted as if the word milady had gotten stuck somewhere in her throat.
Then her gaze snapped down again, too fast, too panicked.
Of course. Astelle Arclaire didn't need to raise her voice. People were afraid before she spoke.
"Open the curtains," Astelle heard herself say.
Her voice was… different. Lower than her own had been. Smooth, like silk dragged over a blade.
The maid obeyed quickly, too quickly, nearly tripping as she yanked the curtains apart. Daylight spilled across the room, revealing carved furniture, velvet chairs, a mirror taller than a person, and a crest worked into the bedposts: a stylized crown split by a thorned vine.
A crest Astelle recognized.
Not Arclaire.
Valecrest.
I'm not in my family's estate.
Her stomach dropped with the slow dread of someone stepping onto the next page they remember too well.
The maid set the tray down with meticulous care. "Would milady prefer tea or—"
Astelle's gaze caught on the maid's hands.
Bruises and yellowing on the wrist.
Old.
Her chest tightened, not from romance, not from pity, something sharper. In the novel, Astelle was a storm that blew through the servants like leaves.
This isn't a fresh start. I'm arriving mid-disaster.
"Your name," Astelle said, and watched the maid's shoulders stiffen.
"E-Edith, milady."
Edith's voice shook. Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor. She was trembling now, but not the way someone trembled around cruelty.
It was… confusion, threaded with fear.
Like she'd seen something that didn't fit.
Astelle forced herself to breathe. Think. Do not panic. Panicking in a story like this didn't get you comforted. It got you used.
I have one advantage. I know what happens.
In the original plot, Astelle Arclaire was married off to the kingdom's most dangerous man, an "arrangement" framed as punishment and alliance at once.
A political marriage meant to chain two ambitious houses together and keep them from tearing the throne apart.
Astelle was supposed to hate it.
He was supposed to ignore her.
They were supposed to destroy each other slowly.
And at the end—
He dies.
The villain's execution was a spectacle. Public. Inevitable. The heroine's victory wore a clean white dress and a steady smile, while the crowd cheered for justice as if it were entertainment.
And Astelle?
Astelle's ending depended on the version. Sometimes exile. Sometimes poison. Sometimes a quiet death was treated like a mercy.
The ring pulsed with cold certainty on her finger.
Married. Already.
Not engaged. Not courting. Not "I can avoid him."
She was already wearing his name on her hand.
Astelle looked at Edith. "How long have I been awake?"
Edith blinked at the unexpected question, then answered cautiously. "Only a moment, milady."
She hesitated, and then, quietly, as if she didn't mean to, she added, "Your eyes…"
Astelle's skin prickled. "What about them?"
Edith flinched as if she'd spoken treason. "N-Nothing, milady. Forgive me."
Astelle nodded once, forcing calm into her posture. "Good. Then nothing has happened yet today."
Edith's confusion flickered again. "Milady…?"
Astelle slid her feet to the floor. The carpet swallowed the sound. Her nightgown, too fine, too thin, whispered against her skin. She felt exposed, not in an embarrassing way, but in a tactical one, like wearing no armor into a room of knives.
She stepped toward the mirror.
The face that stared back was not hers.
Astelle Arclaire's beauty was the kind that made people resent her even before she spoke. Dark lashes. Sharp cheekbones. A mouth shaped for scorn. Hair—
White.
Not ink-dark like her own memories might have preferred, but exactly as it had been described.
White, spilling over her shoulders like snowfall. White as winter silk, unyielding as frost. She remembered the line clearly.
Her skin looked almost unreal in the morning light, pale porcelain, the sort of loveliness the narration had once compared to "marble shaped for worship or execution."
Every detail matched.
Every cruelly deliberate feature.
This was Astelle Arclaire of The Lily and the Crown.
Which meant—
This wasn't a dream.
Her stomach dropped.
Her gaze lifted slowly.
And her breath faltered.
Her eyes were wrong.
In the novel, Astelle's eyes had always been red.
Not metaphorically.
Red.
"Crimson as spilled wine."
"Burning with quiet fury."
"The mark of the viper of House Arclaire."
They were infamous. Commented on more than once. A symbol of her temper and her ambition.
But the eyes staring back at her now were not crimson.
They were gray.
A smoky, unsettled gray, like storm clouds gathering before lightning. The color shifted faintly as her pulse quickened, darkening at the edges as panic crawled up her spine.
Uncertain.
Unstable.
Not anger.
Not fury.
Fear.
Astelle leaned closer to the mirror, studying the unfamiliar shade as if it might correct itself under scrutiny.
It didn't.
The gray deepened with her breathing, reacting to every spike of confusion and dread.
So this is what Edith saw.
Astelle exhaled slowly and forced her shoulders to relax. The color lightened a fraction, still gray, but steadier now.
All right.
This is a world where nobles glow with divine blessings and mages bend fire with their hands. A slight discrepancy in eye color is hardly the strangest thing happening today.
Magic world.
Strange things happen.
She straightened, smoothing her expression into something composed.
Red or gray, story or not—
She was still standing in Astelle Arclaire's place.
And that mattered more.
The ring glinted.
Her vision narrowed.
Okay. Rule one: Don't play her role. Rule two: Don't get killed for refusing to.
"Edith," Astelle said, turning away from the mirror, "where is my husband?"
Edith's breath hitched.
Oh. That word was a weapon in this house.
"My—my lord is in the council chamber, milady. He returned before dawn."
Before dawn. That meant he'd been out doing what the book called "shadow business." Border reports. Quiet bribes. Secret meetings that kept the throne's foundations trembling.
He's already moving.
Astelle's mouth went dry, and the gray in her eyes seemed to deepen with it, darkening the moment fear found her throat.
In every version, he was dangerous. Not because he shouted. Not because he hit. But because he listened. Because he remembered. Because he could walk into a room and make everyone else feel like they were standing on a collapsing bridge while he remained steady.
The villain.
And now, her husband.
Astelle reached for the robe hanging near the bed and wrapped it around herself, tying it tightly as if it could hold her together.
"Have a message sent," she said. "Tell him I require a private audience immediately."
Edith hesitated. "Milady, my lord—"
Astelle fixed her with Astelle Arclaire's reputation, borrowed like a cloak.
And as the firmness settled into her voice, a ember-red shimmer faintly came to the edges of her eyes, thin as a blade, brief as a heartbeat.
Edith's head snapped up despite herself.
She saw it.
Her face went white.
"Immediately," Astelle repeated.
Edith bowed fast and fled.
When the door shut, the silence pressed in. Somewhere beyond the walls, the estate breathed, distant footsteps, servants' murmurs, the faint clink of cups.
Astelle flexed her fingers.
This is insane. I should tell someone. I should—
She remembered every villainess who hid the truth and later paid for it. In stories like this, secrets metastasized. They became evidence. They became leverage in someone else's hands.
And she remembered the man she'd married in the book.
If she was going to confess to anyone—
It had to be him.
Because he would understand the language of impossible information.
And because if he didn't…
…he can kill me before lunch.
A knock came, softer this time, as if the person on the other side didn't believe he needed permission but offered it out of habit.
The door opened.
He entered his room without having to claim it.
Tall. Broad-shouldered, but not the bulky kind of strength, leaner, efficient. Dark hair tied back at the nape. A black coat fastened high at the throat, immaculate despite the hour. Gloves in one hand. The other hand was empty, which was more unnerving than if he'd been carrying a sword.
His eyes were a shade too light to be comforting. Steel, edged with something colder.
Lord Cassian Valecrest.
The villain who died at the end of the book.
Her husband.
He looked at her as if taking inventory, not admiring. Assessing.
But this time his gaze stopped where Edith's had.
On her eyes.
A pause, tiny, controlled, nearly invisible.
Then his gaze slid away as if it had never happened.
"Astelle," he said, voice even. "You requested me."
Hearing her name in his mouth made her spine go stiff. It sounded like ownership. Not affectionate, not cruel, simply factual.
"Yes." Astelle forced herself to meet his gaze. "Close the door."
Cassian did. The latch clicked softly, sealing them into privacy.
He didn't ask why.
He didn't offer small talk.
He waited.
That was worse.
Astelle swallowed. Her heart thudded hard enough to bruise.
Do it now before I talk myself into cowardice.
"I'm going to say something," she began, and her voice threatened to wobble. She steadied it. "And you're going to think I'm either lying, mad, or attempting some kind of elaborate political maneuver."
Cassian's expression didn't change. "All three are plausible."
Fair of him to say considering the character of Astelle.
Astelle took a breath. "I woke up this morning with memories that are not Astelle Arclaire's."
A pause.
Cassian's eyes sharpened fractionally, like a blade finding the line between armor plates.
"I have memories of another life," she continued. "A different world. A different name. I remember reading a story—" She hesitated. Optional, you idiot. You could stop here.
But the truth had momentum now.
"—a story where this world exists as a book."
Silence, heavy as a closing gate.
Cassian studied her for a long moment.
Then, very calmly, "You expect me to believe you've been… possessed by a reader."
"I don't know what the correct term is," Astelle said, heat rising in her face, "but yes."
Her cheeks warmed, and with it, a faint hint of color stirred in the gray of her irises. Not red. Not yet.
A subtle lightening at the center, like smoke thinning.
Cassian's gaze flicked there again, brief as a blink.
He did not laugh.
He did not call for guards.
He stepped closer, slow, controlled, and stopped just far enough away that she could still breathe.
"Prove it," he said.
Astelle's mouth went dry again. Of course. He wasn't offended. He wasn't frightened.
He was interested.
"What kind of proof do you want?" she asked.
"Information," Cassian said immediately. "Something useful. Something you couldn't know. Something only I know."
Astelle's mind raced through the book like flipping pages with shaking hands.
There were scenes. Small details readers loved. A scar. A habit. A secret meeting place. But which were safe to say? Which would get her killed for knowing?
She chose the least lethal.
"In chapter—" she stopped herself, coughed, and tried again. "In the story, you have a scar behind your right ear from a childhood fencing accident. You conceal it by keeping your hair longer on that side."
Cassian's gaze held steady.
Too steady.
Astelle's blood went cold, and as fear tightened, the grayness of her eyes seemed to mute, turning almost black, like ink.
Then he lifted a gloved hand and, with a slow motion that felt like permission and threat at once, tucked a strand of hair behind his right ear.
The scar was there. Pale and thin as a whisper.
Astelle exhaled shakily.
Cassian let the hair fall back into place. "Continue."
Astelle forced herself not to let her voice tremble. "You never drink wine at court functions. Only water. Because you don't trust the palace kitchens. And because the last time you drank something offered at a royal banquet, you were ill for three days and your physician was paid to call it 'a seasonal fever.'"
A flicker, tiny and unmistakable, crossed Cassian's face.
No surprise.
Recognition.
Astelle's fingers tightened on the belt of her robe. "You keep a ledger hidden behind the third stone in your study fireplace. It contains—"
"Enough," Cassian cut in, soft and sharp.
Astelle stopped instantly, heart hammering.
He stared at her with a kind of stillness that felt like standing beneath a guillotine, waiting for the rope to tighten.
Then he spoke quietly. "If you're lying, you're extraordinarily informed."
"I'm not lying," Astelle whispered.
"Then you are either a miracle," Cassian said, "or a weapon someone has placed in my home."
He tilted his head slightly. "Which do you think you are?"
Astelle met his gaze and answered honestly.
"I don't know," she said. "But I know this: you die."
Cassian's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"In the original story," Astelle said, words stumbling over the horror of speaking it aloud, "you're executed publicly. The crowd cheers. The heroine stands with the crown prince. They call it justice."
Cassian's face did not change, but something behind his eyes moved, like a door opening into a room no one else was allowed to see.
"How," he asked, "do I die?"
Astelle swallowed. "Beheaded. After a trial that is—" She shook her head. "Not fair. Not clean. Your allies abandon you. Evidence appears at the perfect time. Witnesses you never met give testimony that somehow aligns."
Cassian's silence stretched.
When he finally spoke, his voice was measured. "When?"
Astelle hesitated. "Not immediately. There are… steps. A border crisis. A scandal at court. A betrayal—"
"Whose?" Cassian asked, fast.
Astelle's pulse spiked.
If I name the betrayer, I change everything. If I don't, I'm useless.
She chose the truth that mattered most.
"I can tell you," she said carefully. "But I need you to understand something first."
Cassian's gaze didn't blink. "Speak."
Astelle drew a breath. "I'm not Astelle."
His eyes hardened. "You wear her face."
"Yes," Astelle said, and the word tasted like guilt. "And her ring. And her reputation. And her marriage vows."
Cassian's expression stayed composed, but she felt the air in the room tighten as if the estate itself leaned closer to listen.
Astelle continued, voice low. "In the story, she is not… kind. She is not reasonable. She's written to be hated. She makes choices that lead to ruin."
Cassian's mouth curved, the faintest shape of a smile. "And you believe you will do differently."
"I don't want to be a character," Astelle said, and surprised herself with the intensity in her voice. "I don't want to be a role someone else already decided. I don't want to be the villainess that makes the heroine look good."
As she said it, truly meant it, the black in her eyes steadied again, deep and clean, but not empty anymore.
Severin noticed.
This time he didn't pretend he hadn't.
His gaze fixed on her eyes for a heartbeat, as if confirming something he'd suspected since he entered.
Then he looked away, controlled as ever, but not unchanged.
Cassian regarded her for a long moment.
Then he asked, quietly, "Why tell me?"
Astelle's throat tightened because he was dangerous. Because she was afraid. Because if she didn't, she'd die alone.
Because, in every version, he lost because he fought the story without knowing it was a story.
"Because you're the only person who will understand what it means to be trapped inside an ending," she said.
Cassian's gaze sharpened, like she'd struck something true.
He took one step closer.
Astelle didn't retreat, but every nerve in her body screamed.
He stopped within arm's reach. Not touching and not threatening. Just close enough to remind her that he could.
"You claim you know the shape of the world," he murmured. "That you know the turns ahead."
"Yes."
"And you claim you are not Astelle Arclaire," he continued. "Yet you stand in her place."
"Yes."
Cassian's eyes traced her face with cold precision, then returned to her eyes.
"Then," he said softly, "tell me what you want."
Astelle's pulse thundered.
What do I want? To survive. To stop him from dying. To stop me from dying. To stop the story from forcing us into roles.
She chose the simplest truth.
"I want us to live," she said. "And I want you to rewrite your ending."
A pause.
Then Cassian's smile appeared again, small, dangerous, and real this time.
"Us," he repeated, tasting the word like he was deciding whether it was bait or bond.
Astelle held her ground. "Yes."
Cassian looked at her ring, at his ring on her finger, then back up.
"All right," he said. "If you are a liar, you will regret speaking to me."
Astelle didn't flinch. "And if I'm telling the truth?"
Cassian's voice went very calm.
"Then you are the most valuable thing that has ever walked into my life."
Astelle's stomach twisted.
He lifted his hand, slowly, giving her time to pull away, and touched the ring on her finger with the tip of one gloved finger. Not her skin. Just the metal.
A claim without tenderness.
A promise without comfort.
"Tell me," Severin said, eyes locked on hers, "who betrays me."
Astelle breathed in, feeling the story's spine creak beneath her words.
And began to choose which page to tear.