I did not sleep well again.
Kael has been notified. Those four words kept replaying in my head like a broken record. He knew. About Seraphina and me. And now he was coming to see for himself.
I lay in bed staring at the stone ceiling, which by now had started to feel less like architecture and more like a tomb I was renting by the night. Seraphina had said we would survive together. Nice words. Warm words. But the protagonist had the entire story bending in his favor, and I had nothing but a countdown and a pair of hands that had never held a sword.
I got up before sunrise, gave up on sleep entirely, and stood at the window watching mist curl off the gardens below. Everything looked peaceful. Calm. A lie, obviously, because the whole world I was standing in was built on someone else’s plot outline, and my death was the ending they had already written.
There was no summons that morning. No breakfast call. Just an unsettling quiet that made the estate feel like it was holding its breath.
I ended up in the library, a massive room stacked floor to ceiling with old leather bound books that smelled like dust and secrets. I pulled up the system screen out of habit.
"Status update. Protagonist Kael has entered the territory. Estimated arrival, six hours. Objective. Avoid direct confrontation."
Six hours. That was something. A buffer. Time to think, to plan, to figure out how to survive a conversation with the hero of a story I was actively ruining.
The library door creaked open less than two hours later. A servant poked his head in, looking apologetic already. "Young master. A visitor. He is asking for you specifically."
My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "Who?"
"Says his name is Kael. From the northern province. Claims to be an old friend of Lady Seraphina’s family."
Two hours. Not six. The system’s estimate had been generous, and Kael had apparently decided punctuality was another one of his hero traits.
I walked to the main hall on legs that did not feel entirely like my own. Marble floors, tall windows, more dead ancestors glaring down from their portraits. And standing in the center of it all, back to me, was a tall figure with golden hair catching the light like he had been personally lit by the sun for dramatic effect.
He turned before I even reached him. Broad shoulders, sky blue eyes, the kind of face that novels described as devastatingly handsome without a hint of irony.
"Ethan Blackwood," he said, smiling. "I have heard so much about you."
"Have you," I said, forcing my own smile into place.
"Indeed. Lady Seraphina speaks very highly of you. Says you are an excellent dancer."
Inside my head, the panic started immediately. "He knows, he definitely knows, that smile is doing way too much work, he’s going to challenge me to a duel or worse, why am I still standing here smiling like an idiot, RUN, actually just turn around and run."
"Are you alright, Lord Ethan? You look pale," Kael said, tilting his head like he was studying a puzzle.
"Just tired. Long night."
He stepped closer, close enough that I caught the scent of his cologne, something clean and woodsy. I stepped back on instinct, and his smile flickered just slightly.
"Do I make you uncomfortable?" he asked, voice mild, eyes not mild at all.
"No. Just surprised. Was not expecting visitors."
"Lady Seraphina invited me. Said the gardens here were beautiful. Wanted to show them to me."
The gardens. The same gardens. The same pond where we had fed fish and I had cried about instant noodles and she had held my hand like it meant something.
"She invited him there too. Is she keeping him close on purpose, protecting me somehow, or am I just an idiot reading meaning into everything."
Kael watched me a beat too long, like he was trying to read something on my face that only heroines were supposed to hear. "Tell me, Lord Ethan. What do you think of the lady?"
The question landed like a trap because it was one.
"He’s testing me. He wants to see if I’m a threat. I cannot tell him the truth, cannot tell him I think about her more than I should, cannot tell him she makes me feel like an actual person instead of a character waiting to die. Play it cold. Play the villain. That’s what the story wants from me."
"Lady Seraphina is a guest of my family," I said, voice flat. "I treated her with courtesy. Nothing more."
Kael studied me a moment longer, then smiled again, warmer this time, or at least performing warmer. "Of course. Apologies if that seemed intrusive. I am protective of her. She is like a sister to me."
A sister. Not the story’s obsessive suitor. Something had already shifted, and I could not tell if that was good news or a different kind of danger entirely.
The main doors opened before I could figure it out. Seraphina walked in wearing green, hair loose, and her eyes moved from me to Kael and back again, quick, assessing.
"Kael. You are early."
"Could not wait to see you, Sera," he said, and the nickname landed somewhere uncomfortable in my chest, small and sharp, something I had no right to feel and felt anyway.
She hugged him, easy and familiar, the hug of old friends. Then she looked past his shoulder at me, eyes searching. "Ethan. Are you okay?"
"Fine. Was just heading back. Things to attend to."
I turned to leave because staying felt unbearable, watching them together, pretending my chest was not doing something complicated and unwelcome.
"Ethan." Her voice stopped me at the door.
I turned back. "Yes?"
She stepped closer, Kael watching, unreadable. "Join us for tea this afternoon. Please."
"She wants me there, even with him watching, even with everything on the line. Saying no feels like the smart move. Looking at her makes saying no impossible."
"Alright," I said. "I will be there."
She smiled, bright enough to make the whole overcomplicated mess feel briefly worth it. "Good. Three o’clock."
I walked away before I could change my mind, and behind me I caught Kael’s voice, low. "He is interesting."
And hers, quieter. "He is more than that."
I did not catch anything after that. I was already halfway down the corridor, heart pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with fear anymore, or at least not only fear.
The system flickered as I reached my room.
"Protagonist Kael. Current opinion of you. SUSPICIOUS. He has noted your behavior around Seraphina. Investigation likely. Proceed with caution."
I closed the screen and sat on the edge of my bed, staring at nothing.
Eighty four days left.
And now the protagonist of this story was watching me, sharp eyed and patient, exactly the way a hero watches something he has not yet decided is a threat.
I had a feeling that decision would not take him very long.
I sat there for a long while after the door clicked shut behind me, replaying the whole conversation in my head like I could rearrange the words into something less dangerous.
He called her Sera. She called him more than interesting. Neither of those things should have mattered as much as they did.
I got up eventually and splashed cold water on my face from the basin, trying to shake loose the tight feeling that had settled behind my ribs since the main hall. It did not work. It rarely did.
There was still an hour before tea. An hour to figure out how to sit across from the protagonist of a story I was actively wrecking, drink something warm, and pretend my hands were not shaking under the table.
I paced instead. Back and forth across the stone floor, boots echoing louder than I wanted them to. Every version of the conversation I imagined ended badly. Kael asking a question I could not dodge. Seraphina’s face caught between the two of us, unable to choose a side without giving something away.
"Maybe I should not go," I said out loud, mostly to hear it in my own voice instead of just my head.
The system, unhelpfully, chose that exact moment to flicker back to life.
"Objective reminder. Maintain neutral relationship with protagonist. Recommendation. Attendance advised. Absence may increase suspicion."
Of course. Even hiding was the wrong move now.
I changed into a fresh shirt, dark green instead of black for once, some small act of rebellion against a wardrobe that seemed determined to keep me looking like a funeral guest. It did not make me feel braver. It made me feel slightly more human, which at this point I would take.
I checked my reflection one last time before heading out. Same pale face, same sharp jaw, but something behind the eyes looked less lost than it had two days ago. Whether that was progress or just exhaustion wearing a different mask, I could not say.
The corridor outside was quiet, sunlight slanting gold through the tall windows, dust drifting lazily in the beams. Somewhere below, servants were already setting out tea in the garden, porcelain clinking softly against silver trays.
Three o’clock was coming whether I was ready or not.
I took a breath, straightened my shoulders the way I imagined the real Ethan Blackwood might have, cold and composed and completely unbothered, and walked toward the stairs.
Whatever happened at that table, I told myself, I would figure it out the way I had figured out everything else since waking up in this body. One terrified, overthinking step at a time. 🍵