I did not sleep that night. Not one single minute.
I lay in that ridiculous four poster bed, silk sheets pooled around me like something out of a hotel ad, and stared at the stone ceiling until the shapes in it started to blur. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face. Green eyes. That mischievous almost smile. The whisper right against my ear.
"I can hear you. Everything."
The bed was too soft. The pillows were too fluffy. Everything about this life felt wrong in a way that had nothing to do with luxury and everything to do with the fact that none of it was mine.
I checked the system screen every few minutes out of pure anxiety. Eighty eight days. Counting down whether I was ready or not.
At some point exhaustion won and I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, sunlight was pouring through the window and someone was knocking.
"Young master. Breakfast is served. The Duke requests your presence."
I groaned into the pillow. "Tell him I’m sick."
A pause. Then, carefully, "Young master, the Duke said you would say that. He said if you are sick, he will call the family physician. And the physician is very thorough. He checks everything."
I sat up so fast my head spun. "I’m fine. Ten minutes."
I dressed in black, because apparently that was the only wardrobe option available to a villain, and looked at myself in the mirror one more time. Same pale skin, same sharp jaw, same cold eyes. I looked like I had not slept in a century, which, functionally, was true.
The dining hall was enormous. Long table, crystal chandeliers, gold plates that probably cost more than my old rent for a year. The Duke sat at the head reading a newspaper and did not bother looking up.
"Good morning, father."
He grunted, which I was starting to understand was his version of a warm welcome.
I sat as far down the table as physically possible. A servant set a plate in front of me, eggs, bacon, fresh bread, fruit, and none of it appealed to me even slightly.
The Duke folded his paper. "I heard you spent the entire evening in your room."
"Yes, father."
"Lady Seraphina asked about you."
My heart did something embarrassing. "She did?"
"She said you looked pale. I told her you are always pale. That is your natural state." He raised one eyebrow like he was daring me to react. I did not.
Then he dropped the real news like it was nothing. "The western delegation is staying the week. We are hosting a ball tomorrow night. You will attend. You will dance with Lady Seraphina."
I nearly choked on my water. "Dance? With her?"
"Are you deaf? Yes. Her family controls trade routes we need. Be polite. Do not embarrass me."
I wanted to argue. I had several excellent arguments ready. But you did not argue with the Duke, not on day two of a new life you barely understood.
I spent the rest of the day pacing my room like a man walking off a hangover that had nothing to do with alcohol. I pulled up the system menu out of boredom and desperation, and found a section called Inner Voice Settings.
"Inner Thought Broadcast. Status. ACTIVE. Range. Fifty meters. Recipients. Heroines only. Cannot be deactivated at current level."
Fantastic. So I was stuck broadcasting my every unfiltered thought to any heroine within fifty meters, indefinitely, with no off switch. Whoever designed this system had clearly never had an anxious thought in their life, or they had, and this was punishment for it.
I tried practicing control in front of the mirror. Thinking about boring things. The weather. The color of the carpet. It lasted about four seconds before my brain wandered straight back to green eyes and that whisper against my ear, and I gave up entirely.
The ball arrived faster than I wanted it to.
I stood in front of the mirror in a black suit, hair pulled back, looking like exactly the kind of man who would smile while ruining your life. The ballroom itself was staggering, chandeliers dripping with candlelight, music drifting from a corner, the whole room humming with perfume and wine and the particular kind of laughter rich people use to prove they are enjoying themselves.
I found her almost instantly. Blue dress. Hair pinned up. A small diamond at her throat. Laughing at something a noble had said, her laugh landing like a string of bells across the room.
My chest did the thing again. The traitorous, inconvenient thing.
Stay away. This is the girl who gets you killed.
The Duke was already steering me toward her before I could finish the thought. "Lady Seraphina. My son, Ethan. He has been looking forward to dancing with you all evening."
I had not, but I bowed anyway, because apparently that was my whole personality now.
She turned, eyes lighting up. "Lord Ethan. I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me."
"I would never forget you, Lady Seraphina."
Inside my skull, the chaos started immediately. "Oh no, she’s wearing blue, blue is literally my favorite color, why is she wearing blue, stop staring, the Duke is watching, everyone is watching, say something normal, something boring, do not look at her mouth."
Her lips twitched. "Shall we dance?"
I offered my hand. She took it, warm fingers curling into mine, and led me to the center of the floor where the crowd parted like they had done this a hundred times before.
The music started slow. I placed a hand at her waist, terrified, certain I would step on her, and somehow my feet remembered steps my brain had never learned. Ethan Blackwood, whatever else he had been, apparently knew how to dance.
She leaned close enough that her lips almost touched my ear. "Your thoughts are very loud, Lord Ethan."
I stumbled. She caught me without missing a beat, grip far stronger than her delicate frame suggested.
She laughed softly. "Relax. I told you. Your secret is safe."
"Safe. What does safe even mean. Is this a game to her. Why is she so close, why does she smell like lavender and honey, stop thinking about her lips, think about the economy, think about literally anything else."
"Was that a question or a statement?" she asked, eyes bright with amusement.
"I have no idea," I admitted. "I’m a little confused right now."
"Confused is good," she said, spinning us in a slow circle. "I like confused. It is honest."
We kept moving, the rest of the ballroom fading into a blur of color and candlelight. There was only her, only the warmth of her hand, only the impossible fact that she could hear every ridiculous thought crashing through my head and had not run screaming yet.
Then her expression shifted, the teasing melting into something quieter. "Ethan."
"Yes?"
"I can hear everything." Her voice dropped, gentle now. "And I do not think you are a villain."
I stopped moving entirely. The music kept playing without us. "What?"
"You are scared. Confused. Trying to survive." She squeezed my hand. "That is not a villain. That is a person."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. My brain, for possibly the first time in my life, had nothing to say.
"Just keep dancing," she said softly. "We will talk later."
Somehow my legs obeyed even though my mind had completely shut down. The song ended. We bowed, curtsied, the crowd offered polite applause, and I retreated to the edge of the room where I grabbed a glass of wine off a passing tray and drank the whole thing in one go. It burned. I did not care.
Across the room she glanced back at me and winked.
My head was spinning in a way that had nothing to do with the wine.
The system flickered in the corner of my vision. "Heroine opinion updated. Seraphina. Current status. TRUSTING. Warning. Emotional attachment detected. Deviation from original timeline confirmed."
I closed the screen without reading further. I did not need a system to tell me something had shifted. I could feel it, warm and terrifying, sitting right in the middle of my chest where the countdown used to be the only thing living.
Eighty six days left. Something hours. Something minutes.
And now, apparently, something else. Something I had absolutely no idea what to do with.
This was not the story I remembered anymore.
This was something entirely new. 😅
She fell asleep before I did, or maybe she just returned to her own room, I honestly could not remember which by the time my head hit the pillow. What I did remember was the wine glass still in my hand, empty, and the way my heart had not slowed down even an hour later.
I set the glass on the windowsill and sat there a while, watching the last few carriages roll out of the courtyard below. Guests leaving one by one, laughter fading into the dark.
Eighty six days. I kept repeating the number in my head like it might change if I said it enough times.
It did not change. But for the first time since waking up in this body, I was not entirely sure I wanted it to.
I climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling until sleep finally, mercifully, took me.