I woke up with a headache and a dead woman's memories.
Not my memories. Hers.
Lady Elena Verwood. Twenty-three years old. Married to Duke Cedric Verwood of the Northern Duchy. Known for three things: her temper, her vanity, and the way she threw a teacup at a maid last Tuesday.
I knew all of this because I had read about her.
Last night. On my phone. In a novel called The Duke's Frozen Heart.
She was the villainess. The obstacle. The "foolish first wife" who existed only to make the sweet, gentle Saintess look better by comparison. Readers hated her. Comment sections called her annoying. A waste of pages.
Chapter 47 was her death scene.
Fever. Abandoned West Wing. The Duke doesn't attend the funeral.
I remember scrolling past it without much thought. Finally, I'd thought. Now the real romance can start.
And now I was her.
I sat up slowly in a bed that was far too large, in a room that smelled like lavender and dust. Silk sheets pooled around my waist. A fire crackled weakly in the hearth. Morning light bled gray through tall, narrow windows.
No phone. No charger. No notification from a System telling me my "quest" had begun.
Just silence.
And the weight of knowing exactly how this story ends.
---
I found the diary in the drawer of the writing desk.
It was bound in dark leather, the pages worn soft at the edges. The handwriting inside was sharp and slanted—the kind of penmanship that pressed too hard into the paper.
Day 412 of Marriage.
He spoke to me today. Three words. "The dinner was adequate."
I broke a vase. He didn't notice.
Day 430.
That woman came again. The one with the golden hair and the soft voice. Rose. Even her name is gentle. She looked at me like I was a smudge on a windowpane. I told her to leave. She smiled. He took her side.
Why does he always take her side?
Day 501.
I threw a teacup at Mila. I don't know why. She flinched. I felt powerful for exactly one second. Then I went back to my room and cried until my ribs ached.
He didn't come to check on me.
He never comes.
I closed the diary.
My chest felt tight. Not with guilt—not exactly. More like... recognition. I had read these entries as comedy in the original novel. The author framed them as the ravings of a petty, jealous woman.
But reading them now, in her handwriting, in her room, they didn't feel petty.
They felt like someone drowning and screaming for a lifeline no one would throw.
And I was supposed to be her.
No. I was her.
---
The door opened without a knock.
A maid entered—young, brown hair pulled back tight, eyes fixed firmly on the floor. She carried a tray with a teapot and a single cup. Her hands trembled slightly.
"Mila," I said.
I hadn't meant to say it. The name just came out, pulled from Elena's memories like a splinter.
The maid—Mila—flinched. Actually flinched. Her knuckles went white around the tray handles.
"Good morning, Your Grace," she whispered. "I've brought your tea."
She set it down on the bedside table without meeting my eyes. Her movements were quick and precise, like a prey animal navigating a predator's den.
The tea steamed. Chamomile. Sweetened.
I stared at it.
In the novel, Elena died of a fever. It was framed as illness. Tragic but convenient. The author spent exactly two paragraphs on it before moving on to the Duke's grief over losing his chance with the Saintess.
But I was in her body now. And I could taste something wrong in the back of my throat—a faint bitterness that hadn't been there when I first woke up.
"Who prepares my tea?" I asked.
Mila froze by the door. "The... the kitchen staff, Your Grace."
"Who specifically?"
"I don't—" She swallowed. "I only deliver it. I don't know who prepares it. Please don't—"
Please don't throw it at me.
She didn't say it. She didn't have to.
I looked at the cup. Then at Mila's trembling hands.
"I'm not going to throw it," I said quietly.
She didn't look relieved. She looked confused, like I'd just spoken a language she didn't recognize.
The silence stretched.
Then I asked the question that had been burning in my throat since I opened my eyes.
"Where is my husband?"
Mila's gaze dropped even lower. "The Duke is in his study, Your Grace. He... he asked not to be disturbed."
Not disturbed by anyone.
Or just not disturbed by me.
---
I didn't drink the tea.
I poured it into the pot of a dying fern near the window when Mila left. The plant would probably be dead by morning. A fitting tribute.
Then I stood in front of the tall mirror in the corner of the room and looked at my face for the first time.
Lady Elena Verwood was beautiful. Of course she was. Villainesses in novels are always beautiful, because it makes their ugliness of character seem more dramatic.
Dark hair, loose around her shoulders. Pale skin. Gray eyes that looked slightly too large for her face, like she hadn't been sleeping well. A small scar on her jaw—not mentioned in the novel. A detail the author forgot or didn't care to include.
I touched the scar. It was smooth and old.
How did you get this? I wondered. What else did the novel leave out?
No answer came. Just my reflection, staring back at me with someone else's eyes.
I took a breath.
Sixty days.
I had sixty days until the fever took me. Sixty days until the Duke sighed in relief and the Saintess moved into my rooms. Sixty days until I became a footnote in someone else's love story.
No System. No second chance. No handsome knight promising to save me "this time."
Just a cold tower, a cup of poisoned tea, and the slow, creeping realization that I had already lost before I even woke up.
I walked to the writing desk. Picked up Elena's pen. Opened her diary to a fresh page.
And wrote:
Day 1.
I remember the exact page where I die.
Page 47.
I'm on Page 46.
---