She pushed herself away from the river and sat back on the muddy ground, hugging her knees to her chest for warmth. The velvet dress was heavy and soaked, and a deep chill was beginning to set in. She had to figure this out. She closed her eyes, forcing her mind past the immediate terror and into the archives of her memory, searching for every detail she could recall from the book.
"Okay… Zarlina Terkini," the name felt alien on her tongue. "Why were you out here? From what I recall, the book never mentioned you wandering in a forest."
She racked her memory, sifting through the main plot points. The heroine, Elara, discovering her powers. The male lead, Elias Marlowe, fighting to protect his family. And Zarlina, the villainess, constantly scheming to ruin Elara's life out of jealousy over the male lead's affections among other things. You know, normal villainess stuff.
But this… this didn't fit. Zarlina's schemes were always petty, and set in ballrooms and high-society galas, not in the middle of nowhere.
Kemmy dug deeper, trying to recall the subplots, the character histories, the little details the author had woven into the book. And then, it hit her. It wasn't in the main story. It was in the supplementary material the author had released online a little while before she released the lifelike portraits, the side stories that filled in the gaps in the book.
Her stomach dropped.
"Oh… oh shit," she whispered.
The memory came flooding back with clarity, and it was as a lightbulb had gotten lit in her mind. A few weeks before the novel's main timeline began in the second book, Zarlina had orchestrated a plan to humiliate the heroine, Elara, at a prestigious charity event. The plan was simple: spike Elara's drink with a potent drug that would leave her disoriented and easily manipulated, then arrange for her to be found in a compromising position.
But the plan had backfired spectacularly.
In the chaos of the party and in typical main character plot armor, the glasses were switched and it was Zarlina who drank the spiked wine. The drug was stronger than she'd anticipated, and her memories of the rest of the night were a complete blur. When she woke up the next morning, she was in a hotel room she didn't recognize, and the stranger she had spent the night with long gone.
Heh. Karmaa.
Weeks later, the consequences of that night became terrifyingly clear. She was pregnant.
Horrified, Zarlina had no idea who the father was. She was the adopted daughter of the powerful Terkini family, a family that valued reputation above all else. An illegitimate child with an unknown father would be the ultimate stain on their name. Desperate, she tried everything she could to get rid of the pregnancy. She tried herbal remedies, dangerous concoctions, some witch's potions, anything she thought could work, something that did not involve the hospital. But nothing did. The foetus, as Kemmy now recalled with a grim sense of irony, was described as being incredibly tenacious.
The baby had clung to life with a stubbornness that was almost frightening.
Kemmy's chest tightened.
Eventually, her adoptive parents found out. The Terkini family, obsessed with reputation, with appearances, their reaction was swift and merciless. She was disowned, her accounts frozen, and she was thrown out of the house with nothing but the clothes on her back.
The clothes on her back being a ball gown that she had worn to a party, Zarlina was utterly useless.
This Zarlina, who had known nothing but privilege and power all her life, was left with nothing. Her reputation was shattered, her future in ruins. Broken and utterly alone, she used the last of her money to take a taxi as far away from the city as it would take her, to this very forest.
Her destination: nowhere. Her purpose: to disappear.
She had intended to kill herself.
But instead, she had fainted from stress and hunger. The cold had seeped in. And her heart had simply… stopped.
And that's when Kemmy's spirit must have arrived.
"You poor, stupid girl," Kemmy breathed out, a strange wave of pity washing over her for the woman the villainess was supposed to be. Kemmy would never agree with Zarlina's cruel methods or her obsession with the male lead, but her end was undeniably tragic. Her heart ached with a strange, terrible heaviness. For all her cruelty, for all her schemes, Zarlina's ending had been pitiful. Thrown away by the people who were supposed to love her, left with no hope and no way out.
And then another thought struck her, so sharply that she almost laughed.
The baby.
As she processed the grim story, another piece of information surfaced in her mind. A crucial detail from another side chapter, one that the author had released before Kemmy… died. A chapter that had sent the book's fandom into a frenzy.
It revealed the identity of the stranger Zarlina had spent the night with.
It wasn't some random person. It was the novel's main antagonist. A man of immense power, wealth, and terrifying influence, who moved in the shadows and pulled the strings of the entire underworld. A man known only as Darius Crowe.
Kemmy's heart began to hammer in her chest again, but this time, it wasn't with fear. It was with the dawning of a wild, audacious idea. A tiny, flickering flame of hope in the suffocating darkness.
So that meant – this child she carried now wasn't some nameless accident. It was the heir of the most dangerous man in the story. This baby… this unwanted, tenacious foetus that had been the cause of Zarlina's downfall… was her lifeline.
Kemmy's emotions tangled in and over each other – fear, awe, disbelief. And beneath all of it, something else burned. A fierce, aching longing.
All her life, the one thing Kemmy had craved more than anything was a family. She'd grown up in the foster care system, bounced from one temporary home to another, always dreaming of a place to belong. It was that deep, aching need that had made her cling to Charles for so long, ignoring the red flags and his emotional distance, pretending his half-hearted affection was the love she desperately wanted. She had mistaken a measly shared apartment for a home she loved, and a convenient relationship for the family she craved.
Now, she had the chance to have a real one. A child. Her child. Someone who would be hers to love and protect. The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating. She would not make the same mistakes Zarlina did. She would not discard this child.
And if Darius Crowe was the father… then he was the key.
She lowered her gaze to her flat stomach, the fabric of the heavy dress damp against her skin.
Perhaps she needed to thank Charles, that bastard, for giving her this opportunity to get her own family. She gagged at the thought of it.
She couldn't survive out here alone. She had no money, no ID, no knowledge of this world beyond what she'd read in a book. But the Crowe family had resources. The villain, he had power. If she could get to him, if she could prove the child was his, maybe… just maybe… she could strike a deal.
Her mind raced, piecing together a plan. She ruffled through the skirts of the dress, looking for Zarlina's phone.
She couldn't just show up and demand the villain to take responsibility. A man like him would likely have her eliminated without a second thought. She needed leverage.
And thanks to her obsessive reading of The Sunstone Prophecy, she had it.