The last thing Alex Sterling remembered was the taste of champagne and the satisfied feeling of a deal well closed.
He had just finalized the acquisition of TechVision Industries, a struggling but brilliant AI startup that would slot perfectly into his empire. The former CEO had looked like he wanted to cry as he signed the papers. Alex didn't feel bad about it. Business was business. If you couldn't handle the pressure, you shouldn't be at the table.
The private jet's engines hummed as he leaned back in the leather seat, already mentally restructuring TechVision's bloated middle management. Fire the yes-men, promote the actual talent, cut the redundant departments. Simple, efficient and profitable.
Then the cabin pressure dropped.
Then there was fire.
Then there was nothing.
***
Now he was feeling pain.
A lot of pain.
Alex's first coherent thought was that his company's aviation maintenance contractor was getting sued into oblivion. His second thought was that he couldn't breathe properly. His third thought, which came with a disturbing sense of clarity, was that his chest felt wrong.
Very wrong.
He forced his eyes open. The light was too bright, too yellow, like candlelight instead of the cold LED strips he preferred in his office. His vision swam. Everything hurt. His head pounded like someone had used it as a drum, his throat burned, and his stomach felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out.
"Mistress! Mistress, you're awake! Oh thank the heavens, thank the Buddha, thank all the gods!"
Alex turned his head, which was a mistake because the room spun violently. A girl's face swam into view. Young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with a round face and eyes currently leaking tears like a broken faucet.
"Who are you?" Alex tried to say, but what came out was a weak rasp that didn't sound like his voice at all. Too high. Too soft.
"It's me, mistress! Xiao Cui! Your Xiao Cui! Oh, you've been asleep for three days! The physician said you might never wake up! Consort Su said... well, never mind what she said, the vicious witch, but you're awake now and that's all that matters!"
Alex's brain, which had been trained through two decades of cutthroat business and another decade of even more cutthroat assassination contracts, began processing information at high speed despite the pain.
Data point one: He was not dead. Unfortunate for whoever planted that bomb on his jet, because Alex Sterling did not forget debts.
Data point two: He was not in a hospital. The bed under him was too soft, too low, and he could smell incense instead of antiseptic.
Data point three: This crying girl had called him "mistress" and mentioned something called a "consort."
Data point four: His chest definitely had breasts now.
Alex looked down.
Yep. Breasts.
Small ones, thankfully, but definitely breasts.
He looked at his hands. Delicate. Feminine. The nails were painted with some kind of red lacquer, though half of it was chipped off. There were faint bruises on the wrists.
"Mirror," he rasped.
"Mistress?"
"Get me a mirror. Now."
Xiao Cui scrambled to obey, which Alex appreciated. At least someone here understood the concept of efficient task execution. She returned with a bronze mirror, handle first, trembling as she held it up.
The face looking back at him was not his face.
It was a woman's face. Young, maybe mid-twenties. Pale to the point of being sickly. Dark circles under the eyes. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut paper, but not in an attractive way, more in a "hasn't eaten properly in weeks" way. Black hair tangled and limp. Lips cracked and dry.
Pretty enough bone structure, Alex noted clinically, but severely under-maintained. This was what happened when you didn't invest in your assets.
"What is my name?" he asked.
Xiao Cui's eyes went wide with horror. "Mistress! Do you... do you not remember? Oh no, oh no, the poison must have damaged your brain! The physician said it might, but I hoped, I prayed..."
"Poison?"
"The poison! The one Consort Su slipped into your evening tea five days ago! You've been so sick, mistress, vomiting and fevering and... and..." She dissolved into tears again.
Alex closed his eyes and took inventory. Poison. Right. That explained the burning sensation in his throat and the way his stomach felt like it had been scoured with acid. He knew poisons. He had used poisons. Quite a lot of them, actually, though he preferred cleaner methods when possible. Poisons were messy and left forensic evidence.
Judging by the symptoms, it was probably arsenic-based. Crude but effective. The fact that this body had survived meant either the dose was miscalculated or someone had intervened with treatment.
"My name," he repeated, voice flat. "Tell me."
"You're Consort Yan, mistress! Yan Lingxi! The Emperor's... his..." Xiao Cui's voice dropped to a whisper. "His least favored consort."
Consort. Emperor. The words clicked into place with other observations. The girl's clothing looked like something out of a historical drama. The architecture he could see through the window was distinctly ancient Chinese. The formal speech patterns.
Alex had read enough fiction during boring flights to know what had happened, even if it was completely insane.
He had transmigrated.