My lungs burned, screaming for a air that wouldn't come. The last thing I saw wasn't the faces of my killers, but the glint of the streetlamp on the puddle next to my head. The last thing I felt was the cold, rough asphalt against my cheek.
The first thing I felt was suffocating softness.
My eyes flew open, gasping a breath that was sweet with perfume and devoid of the coppery tang of blood. Not asphalt. Silk. A canopy of crushed violet velvet swam into view above me.
I shot up, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. My hands—pale, slender, and adorned with perfectly manicured nails that weren't mine—clutched at the duvet. The room was a masterpiece of opulent bad taste: gilded furniture, huge portraits of a blonde, haughty woman, and enough frills to choke a horse.
This wasn't my apartment. This body wasn't my body.
A memory, sharp and terrifying, ripped through the fog of panic. A book. A fantasy novel I'd read to escape my own dreary life. The Rose of the Capital. And the woman in the portraits… the woman whose body I now seemed to be wearing…
"No," I whispered, the voice a melodic, unfamiliar sound. "No, no, no."
I was Seraphina de Winter. The villainess. The conniving, jealous socialite who made life hell for the kind-hearted protagonist, Lily, all for the love of the Crown Prince. And for my crimes, I was destined to be publicly humiliated, stripped of my titles, and… executed.
The phantom sensation of a blade kissing my neck made me scramble from the bed, stumbling on legs that were too long, too graceful. I caught my reflection in a massive, ornate mirror.
Staring back at me was a woman crafted from porcelain and gold. Waves of honey-blonde hair, eyes the color of a summer sky, and features so sharp and beautiful they looked cruel. I was beautiful. I was a nightmare.
The door to the bedroom burst open. A maid, her face pale with panic, curtsied so low she nearly toppled over. "My Lady! You're awake! Thank the heavens. There's… there is news."
The plot. It was already in motion.
"What is it?" I asked, my new voice straining to sound like it owned the world.
"It's the Crown Prince, my Lady," the maid stammered, refusing to meet my eyes. "At the royal ball last night… he publicly declared his affection for Lady Lily. He said… he said your relentless pursuit was an embarrassment to the crown."
The words were a physical blow. This was Chapter 3. The public denouncement. The beginning of the end. The gears of the novel's plot were turning, and I was tied to the tracks.
A cold, sharp clarity cut through my terror. I had one advantage. I knew the story. I knew every character, every twist, every doomed side plot.
And one character, more than any other, represented a possible escape route. A man so powerful, so isolated, and so destined for his own tragic end that his story ran parallel to the main romance. A man who could offer a shield, if I could somehow convince him to hold it up.
Lysander Blackwood. The Cold Duke of the North. Feared, respected, and destined to succumb to the hereditary madness that claimed all the Blackwood men, dying alone in his frozen castle.
But that was later. Now, he was here. In the capital. And there was a ball tonight.
The plan formed in my mind, desperate and insane. It was the only move on the board.
Hours later, I stood at the edge of the glittering ballroom, wearing a gown of deep emerald that Seraphina would have chosen for its audacity. The whispers followed me like a toxic cloud. I ignored them, my eyes scanning the crowd, hunting.
And then I saw him.
He stood apart, a pillar of darkness in a sea of pastels and jewels. Lysander Blackwood. He was taller than I'd imagined, with broad shoulders tapered to a lean waist. His hair was the color of raven's wings, his face all sharp angles and severity, as if carved from winter itself. His eyes, the cold grey of a stormy sea, surveyed the room with utter indifference. The air around him was frigid, a bubble of silence and fear.
This was it. My only chance.
I didn't let myself think. I didn't let myself feel the paralyzing fear that this man evoked in every sane person present. I just moved.
I walked straight through the crowd, which parted before me like I was a plague carrier. I didn't stop until I was standing right before him, breaking the frozen circle of space everyone else respected.
His cold gaze lowered to me, devoid of recognition or interest. I was just another nuisance.
I swallowed the lump of pure terror in my throat, curtsied low because it was what one did, and then I met his eyes. I poured every ounce of my modern-day will to live into my new, sky-blue eyes.
My voice, when it came, was surprisingly steady, a miracle that belied the tremor in my soul.
"Your Grace," I said. "I propose a mutually beneficial arrangement."
I paused, the words hanging in the frigid air between us.
"Marry me."
The silence that followed was not merely an absence of sound. It was a physical force, thick and heavy, pressing in from the glittering ballroom around us. The music from the string quartet seemed to falter and die. A hundred conversations choked off mid-sentence. I could feel the weight of every horrified, scandalized, and gleeful stare fixed upon us.
The Duke did not move. His expression did not flicker. It was as if I had spoken not a world-shattering proposition, but a comment on the weather. His storm-grey eyes held mine, and in their depths, I saw not anger or amusement, but a simple, cold assessment. As if I were a peculiar insect that had just landed on his sleeve.
Then, the barest fraction of a change. A single, dark eyebrow twitched upwards. It was the only sign that he had heard me at all.
His voice, when it finally came, was low and precisely modulated, each word a chip of ice. It carried no heat, only a promise of frostbite.
"Lady Seraphina," he said, and my name on his lips sounded like a condemnation. "The capital's theatrics have finally stripped you of what little sense you possessed. Seek a physician, not a husband. Least of all me."
He made to turn away, a dismissal so absolute it was more cutting than any insult.
This was it. The moment I became a footnote in his story—the madwoman who briefly annoyed him at a ball. The moment my path led back to the executioner.
"No!" The word burst from me, sharper and more desperate than I intended. I took a half-step forward, into that forbidden circle of his personal space. The cold emanating from him was not metaphorical; it was a genuine chill that raised goosebumps on my arms. "It is not theatrics. It is a business proposition. You require something I can provide."
This stopped him. He turned back fully, his gaze now genuinely intrigued in the way a hawk is intrigued by the twitch of a mouse in a field below. "And what, precisely, could the Crown Prince's discarded... interest... possibly provide me?"
He was trying to goad me, to make me lose my composure and reveal this as a emotional ploy. I clung to my modern mind, to the facts I knew.
I lowered my voice further, forcing him to lean infinitesimally closer to hear me. The scent of frost and sandalwood washed over me.
"In three days' time, a trade delegation from the southern mines will arrive to renegotiate your iron contracts," I whispered, the words from Chapter 17 of the novel spilling from my lips. "They will offer terms that seem fair, but the scales they bring are rigged with Selene Ore. It masks the true weight, shorting your shipments by twenty percent. You will agree, and your forges will run short by winter's end, weakening your position ahead of the spring border skirmishes."
I paused, letting the impossible specificity of the information hang between us. His icy composure didn't crack, but it solidified. The idle curiosity was gone, replaced by a focused, razor-sharp attention. I had his complete and utter focus, and it was terrifying.
"How could you possibly know that?" he asked, his voice deathly quiet. The noise of the ballroom seemed to fade away entirely. We were in our own frozen world.
"That is my value," I said, meeting his gaze without flinching. "My foresight. My information. In return, I require your name. Your protection. A marriage of convenience that shields me from the... political realignment... currently happening in this court."
He understood immediately. He knew of the Prince's denouncement. He knew I was being thrown to the wolves.
For a long moment, he simply stared at me, his eyes searching mine for any hint of deception. I saw the calculations whirring behind them, the weighing of risk against potential gain. My life hung in the balance of that silent math.
Finally, his hand shot out, not to strike me, but to capture my wrist. His grip was like a manacle of ice, firm and unyielding. Without a word, he turned and began to walk, pulling me through the stunned crowd.
He didn't stop until we were on a secluded balcony overlooking the moonlit gardens. The cold night air was a shock after the stuffy ballroom. He released my wrist as if it burned him and turned to face me, his back to the stone balustrade, blocking any escape.
"Explain," he commanded. The single word was laden with absolute authority.
"I can't," I said, rubbing my wrist. "Not in any way you would believe. All you need to know is that my information is accurate. Test it. Wait three days. See for yourself."
"And if you are wrong?" he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper that was more dangerous than any shout.
"Then you annul the marriage. I am no worse off than I am now." It was a lie, and we both knew it. If I was wrong, my humiliation would be complete, and my fate sealed even faster.
He took a step closer, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something in those glacial eyes. Not warmth. Never warmth. But a dark, intense fascination.
"If I agree to this farce," he said, his voice so low it was almost a vibration in the air between us, "there will be rules. You will be a ghost in my house. You will speak only when spoken to. You will offer your... foresight... without games or hesitation. You will be a useful asset, not a clinging wife."
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
"And most importantly," he continued, leaning in so close I could see the impossibly dark ring around the grey of his irises. "You will never, ever lie to me. The moment I discover a falsehood, the moment your information proves false, our deal is void."
He paused, letting the threat settle in the cold air.
"And you will wish the executioner had found you first."
A shiver that had nothing to do with the evening chill raced down my spine. I had walked into the wolf's den and offered him a deal. Now, I was staring into the wolf's jaws.
What had I just done?