The night was cold and the corridors were empty when I finally gave up pretending I could sleep.
Sleep had stopped being a reliable thing days ago. I lay in bed running Kael’s words over and over in my head, his voice so light and casual while he asked about Lily like he already suspected the answer was a lie.
She was unwell. Sent away for her health. It was a long time ago.
Nobody in this story had ever cared enough about Lily to ask a second question. Until now.
I sat up, checked the system screen out of habit. Eighty three days. Something hours. Something minutes. The number blinked steadily like it had nowhere else to be.
If Kael was already digging, I needed to dig faster. And there was only one place in this entire estate where digging might actually turn up something real.
The library.
I dressed quietly, black clothes swallowed easily by the dark, and crept through the corridors like a man who had done this before, even though I very much had not. Every creak of the floorboards made my heart jump into my throat. The estate at night felt different, bigger somehow, full of shadows that seemed to lean a little closer than they should.
The library door opened without a sound. Moonlight spilled through the tall windows, catching dust particles drifting lazily above rows and rows of leather bound books. I moved toward the back, where the family records were kept, old ledgers stacked and forgotten like nobody had touched them in years.
I pulled one down. The handwriting inside was old fashioned, looping, hard to read in the dim light. Births. Deaths. Marriages. I scanned page after page until I found the name.
Ethan Blackwood. Born. That was me, or the body I now wore.
And below it, Lily Blackwood. Born. A note scrawled in the margin, small and almost illegible.
Sent to St. Mary’s Convent. Age twelve. Reason. Undisclosed.
Undisclosed. Not sickly. Not weak. A word chosen carefully to hide something instead of explain it.
I kept flipping, searching for anything else, any letter, any mention, any thread I could pull. There was nothing. It was like she had been erased from the family record entirely, one clean cut, no loose ends left behind.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
I spun around so fast I nearly knocked the ledger off the shelf. My heart slammed against my ribs.
Kael stood in the doorway, white shirt loose, hair messy like he had just woken, but his eyes were sharp and completely alert.
"Lord Ethan," he said. "What are you doing here at this hour."
"I could ask you the same thing." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Could not sleep. Saw a light." His gaze flicked to the ledger still in my hands. "What are you reading."
"Nothing important. Old family records. I was curious about my own history." I closed the book slowly, deliberately calm.
"At three in the morning."
"I told you. Could not sleep."
He studied me a long moment, then smiled, thin and knowing, nothing warm in it at all. "Curious about your sister, perhaps."
My blood went cold instantly. "What."
"Lily. The one sent to the convent." He walked toward the window, back to me now, moonlight outlining his shoulders. "I did some research before coming here. The Blackwood family has many secrets, Ethan. But your family is not the only source of information in this kingdom."
"He knows. He actually knows something. What did he find, how much does he know, I need to figure out what he knows without giving away what I do not know myself."
I kept my voice flat, deliberately bored. "My sister is not important. She left when we were children. She is practically a stranger to me."
Kael turned, eyes catching the moonlight in a way that made them look almost silver. "Is that what you tell yourself. Or is that what they told you."
I said nothing.
He stepped closer, close enough now that I could see the faint scar along his jaw. "I found something interesting. Your sister was not sent away because she was sick. She was sent away because she saw something. Something she was not supposed to see."
"What did she see."
"I do not know yet." His smile sharpened. "But I intend to find out. And I think you already suspect something, Ethan. You are just too afraid to say it out loud."
"He is playing a game, trying to pull something out of me, but I do not know anything either, I am just as lost as he is pretending to be, maybe more."
I stepped back, putting distance between us. "I do not know what you are talking about. My sister is irrelevant to anything happening here."
"Liar." The word came out soft, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "You are a terrible liar, Ethan. It shows in your eyes. The fear. The confusion. You want the truth as badly as I do. And when you find it, you might not like what it costs you."
He walked past me toward the door, pausing there just long enough to add, "Goodnight, Lord Ethan. Sleep well."
Then he was gone, footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving me alone with the ledger still clutched in my hands and my heart pounding loud enough to fill the entire silent library.
The system flickered, unwelcome as always.
"Protagonist Kael. Current opinion of you updated. THREATENING. Kael is actively investigating your family’s secrets. He knows something about Lily. Recommendation. Find Lily before Kael does. Time is running out."
Time was always running out. That was the one constant in this entire nightmare.
I returned to my room, but sleep did not come, not really. I lay there watching the ceiling until the black sky outside slowly turned grey, then pink, then gold. By the time the sun was fully up, I had not slept a single minute, and my whole body felt like it belonged to someone else entirely, which, in a very literal sense, it did.
Breakfast was a quiet, tense affair. The Duke discussed trade routes in his usual flat tone. Kael nodded along politely, giving nothing away. Seraphina kept glancing at me across the table, worry written plainly in her eyes, though she said nothing in front of the others.
I could not meet her gaze. Not with Kael sitting right there, watching everything.
After breakfast I escaped to the gardens, needing air, needing space to think. The morning was bright and calm, birds singing somewhere in the hedges, completely indifferent to the mess unraveling around me.
"Ethan. Wait."
I turned. Seraphina was walking toward me, green dress catching the light, worry still etched across her face.
"What happened last night," she asked, stopping close enough that only I could hear her. "You look terrible."
"Kael caught me in the library. Looking through the family records." I kept my voice low. "He knows something about Lily. He said she was sent away because she saw something she was not supposed to see."
Seraphina’s face went pale. "Saw what."
"He would not say. But he is investigating. He as good as told me he intends to find out before I do."
She grabbed my arm, firm, decisive. "Then we cannot wait any longer. We go today."
"Today. Seraphina, we do not even have a plan."
"We have a plan." Her eyes were bright, certain. "My family has connections at St. Mary’s. My aunt is a benefactress there. I can get us access. We say we are visiting her. It is a completely reasonable excuse, nobody will question it."
"She is putting herself on the line for this. For me. For a stranger wearing a villain’s face."
"Why are you doing this," I asked quietly. "Helping me, I mean. You barely know me. I am supposed to be the villain of this whole story."
She tilted her head, something soft settling into her expression. "Because I see you, Ethan. Not the mask. Not the role everyone expects you to play. I see the person underneath, and that person is worth helping."
Something cracked open in my chest, something I had been holding shut since the moment I woke up in this body. Before I could stop myself, I pulled her into a hug, arms wrapping around her without permission from my brain.
She stiffened for half a second, then relaxed completely, arms circling around me in return, her head resting against my chest. I could feel her heartbeat there, steady, calm, entirely real.
"We need a real plan," she murmured after a moment, pulling back slightly to look up at me. "Kael is watching. Your father is suspicious. We cannot just vanish without a reason that holds up."
"You already have one. Your aunt."
"The convent is three days away by carriage. If we leave at dawn tomorrow, before anyone is awake, we could be there by evening the day after."
"Your aunt. Is she actually elderly, or is that just a convenient story."
Seraphina grinned, mischief flashing across her face for the first time all morning. "She is sixty two. That counts as elderly enough for our purposes."
I laughed despite everything, a real laugh, the tension in my chest loosening just slightly. "Alright. Dawn tomorrow."
"Pack light," she said. "Bring only what you need."
"I barely have anything to begin with."
"Good. Makes this easier."
She started to walk away, then stopped, turning back to face me one more time. "Ethan."
"Yes."
"Be careful today. Kael is not a bad person, not really. But he is determined, and determined people convinced they are the hero sometimes do terrible things without noticing."
"She is warning me. She is protecting me before we have even left. I do not deserve this kind of loyalty, but I am going to try to be worth it anyway."
I nodded. "I will be careful. Promise."
She smiled, soft and warm, and walked back toward the estate, her dress swishing quietly against the grass.
I stood there a long moment, watching her go, the countdown still ticking somewhere in the back of my mind, eighty three days now, falling steadily whether I was ready or not.
For the first time since waking up in this world, though, the fear sitting in my chest had something else beside it. Something that felt dangerously close to hope.
Tomorrow we would leave. Tomorrow we would start looking for answers that might change everything I thought I understood about this story, about my family, about the villain I was supposedly always meant to become.
Tonight, though, I just needed to survive one more day under Kael’s watchful eyes without giving anything away. 🌙