There are three things you should know if you ever transmigrate into a web novel like this one.
One: Academy tea tastes like dirty water with petals.
Two: the crown prince, the hero the entire kingdom cheers for, has an ego so massive that even the throne room cannot contain it.
And three: the woman I love will be beheaded and then burned at the stake before the school year is over.
If I had to choose, I would have chosen not to transmigrate at all.
My name is Dariel Elcronne. Three months ago, I was a literature student paying my way through college with two part-time jobs. I was coming home one night, exhausted, reading the web novel The Throne of Ashes and Thorns on my phone. Tenth reread, to be exact. Then, I got hit by a truck.
Yes. A truck. The classic one. The very same one that carries off thousands of poor bastards every year in this genre. It wasn't even an extravagant truck. Just a standard model, as common as I was.
Now I am trapped inside that novel, and the character I transmigrated into is as relevant as a pebble on the road.
I am the villainess's fleeting love interest. My function in this story is to die, to give her a reason to lose her mind, and to start her villainous deeds.
I have spent three months trying to change that fact. The same amount of time I have spent hopelessly in love with the woman destiny wants dead.
"Stop staring at me."
Her voice left no room for a reply. Lianza D'Tariel was sitting on the other side of the library table, writing with her quill steady between her fingers, her back so straight that you could use it as a ruler.
Her gaze was fixed on her notebooks.
"I'm not," I lied. "I'm watching those little birds singing in the tree outside the window."
"…The window is to my left and in front of me."
"I like your profile."
The quill stopped. Her garnet eyes met mine over the book. To the rest of the world, these eyes exuded pure disdain.
But I saw what others did not.
A brief hesitation on her lips before answering. A split second in which her ice mask thinned.
"Do you want me to gouge an eye out?" she asked.
"Only if you do it with your own hands."
"Tch."
She returned to her writing. I stayed right where I was because she was the only thing in this world worth staring at without blinking until your eyes burned.
Every couple has their "favorite place in the world." Ours was the library at seven in the morning, fifteen minutes before the first bell rang.
The only corner in all of Earolden where Lianza could let her guard down, where she did not have to be the strong-willed girl with the off-putting attitude that everyone feared. Here, she was just someone who read too fast and underlined the same lines three times, determined to never forget them.
Lianza D'Tariel. The one who would become the great villainess of The Throne of Ashes and Thorns. The one who, according to the novel, was an irredeemable harpy who ended up at the stake after poisoning her family to seize the throne.
But the novel lied.
It does not tell you that harpies have nightmares too. That their hearts beat just the same, and that they have to walk around with a dagger under their dress and another under their pillow, just in case, while they sleep… That their voices break into tears when they think no one is listening.
Of course, I know this because I have heard it. Through the wall separating our rooms, in the dead of night, where only the distant howl of a stray dog and the chirping of crickets are present, when the castle is adorned by flickering lamps swaying in a gentle breeze, she stifles her crying so much that only a faint sniffle through her nose can be heard.
I had been on the other side of that wall for three months now, being present, without her knowing, during every one of those sniffles, earning dark circles under my eyes as a reward that I wore like a medal, and wondering what kind of sadistic author writes a villainess without giving her someone who genuinely loves her.
"Ardwyn arrives today," she said without looking up.
She said it with the same nonchalance that a cook has while chopping vegetables. However, I noticed how her fingers gripped her quill so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
"I know."
"You know?" Her voice turned firm. "Then you'll know that my father told me the prince has a surprise for me. And honestly, I expect the worst."
"Everything will be fine."
"Your words give me no comfort or certainty, Dariel Elcronne."
"But my actions will."
She looked up. For a moment, her eyes seemed to moisten. She blinked and, as she always did with her feelings, buried them.
"You're an idiot," she whispered.
"Probably."
She stood up and gathered her books in a way that made it abundantly clear that she did not care that she was in a library.
"Go secure our seats. Do not do anything stupid before I arrive. I need my personal bodyguard alive for when everything starts."
By the time I opened my mouth to reply, the door had already closed behind her. She left me with a silence that weighed more than the ice mask she must be wearing in the hallways.
I stayed seated a moment longer. There was a note left with half-cut letters; I touched it with my fingertip.
I already knew what was going to happen. I read this web novel every day, on my way to or from work or while studying. I knew every page by heart, every event, and every single death.
Ardwyn would arrive today. Later, the novel's heroine would show up, tripping down the stairs. The prince would catch her, and thus, their story would begin. Then, he would start paying more attention to her, to her virtues, to how much she had learned during her time in Mayorka… until he finally realized he loved her… and with that love, he would seal the villainess's doom.
It was predictable. Cruel. To my fortune, it was avoidable if I played the hand of cards I was dealt right; a hand that, truth be told, was not the best.
But I would manage.
I stood up and walked into the hallway.
Mayorka was exactly as described in the novel: bathed in white marble, with paintings of past headmasters and students who had performed great deeds, their names immortalized in those frames. Windows let in a yellowish light that, combined with the white marble, gave the academy a very distinctive tone.
Nobles circulated in closed circles, speaking in hushed tones, and exchanging smiles that did not reach their eyes.
It was the kind of smile that you know is fake the second you see it.
Imagine the most beautiful slaughterhouse in the world, bathed in white gold and the finest haute couture silk fabrics. That was Mayorka. I knew it because I had read it and because I had seen it during these three months. Every noble here spared no expense in sacrificing pawns to defeat the king.
I walked toward the main hall, mentally reviewing this year's school calendar. The prince was arriving today. Then the protagonist would appear. The gears would start turning, and Lianza would be crushed by their teeth.
However, this time Dariel Elcronne, the least relevant character in the story, a filler one at that, knew what happened and when it happened.
I sped up my pace. The hallway was emptier than usual. Strange.
A sudden feeling of being observed washed over me. It came from somewhere.
I stopped.
I looked back. Nothing. Ahead. Empty. Above. Just the vaulted ceiling with paintings of angels and mythological creatures.
I rubbed the back of my neck, wondering which part of the novel a character had felt something similar. It lacked logic. I was sure that I would remember it.
This must have come from somewhere else.
But from where?
I considered all possible situations. What was watching me? Until my mind reached a dark conclusion: What if the thing watching me was not human?
I kept walking. Faster.
As I made my way to the hall where Lianza was waiting for me, the feeling of being watched only grew stronger.
However, the events of this novel were changing. And it wasn't me doing it…