"Norielle,"
"Your Highness... Lady Norielle."
The soft whisper pulled me back to reality-I flinched, nearly tipping the delicate teacup in my hands. The porcelain lightly chimed against the saucer, sending a faint tremor through the gilded tray.
I glanced up to find Zilda, my lady-in-waiting, standing quietly beside me, her brows knit in gentle concern.
"Is something troubling you, Lady Norielle?" she asked gently, her voice laced with worry.
I met her gaze with a reassuring smile, hoping to dispel the shadow lingering in her eyes.
Ting. The delicate sound of porcelain meeting porcelain drawing my attention to the figure seated opposite me in the pavilion, where jasmine vines twisted around weathered stone columns.
"Am I so frightening, Lady Norielle Graham, that you must flee into your thoughts to escape this reality?" His voice was calm, but edged with a challenge that hooked into my skin captivating, stern, impossible to ignore.
A man whose presence claimed the space-like a fallen angel trapped in mortal form. His eyes burned with a piercing crimson, vivid and sharp as freshly spilled blood, while his hair was as dark. Handsome, enigmatic, and commanding. Evander Hanes de Valois.
His gaze locked onto mine with an intensity that felt like it could carve through bone to the very core of my soul.
I forced a smile, "That is not true, Your Grace. I am just so captivated by your unmatched presence that I fear I might be dreaming."
Evander's crimson eyes held a steady, unreadable calm, his expression composed and nonchalant. He said nothing for a long moment, simply watching me with quiet intensity.
Finally, he murmured softly, "The line between dream and reality is thinner than most believe."
A shiver ran down my spine. Well, I thought bitterly, this definitely feels like a death flag. This is too much for me to handle.
"Noriel.." His voice dropped to a low growl, tightening with anger, cutting through the stillness like a blade.
My heart thudded painfully in my chest. Zilda's breath hitched beside me, her unease mirroring my own.
"My lady," he called again, his tone sharp and unforgiving. "Norielle Graham."
That unfamiliar use of my full name unsettled me further.
I swallowed hard, forcing a gracious smile. "Your... Grace?"
His eyes flashed, blazing with an intensity that sent icy fear curling through my veins. "If you're frightened enough to forget your own name, why do you even bother to come here?"
The weight of his words pressed down on me. I felt the tremor in Zilda's hand at my side and stiffened, painfully aware of how fragile everything had become under his relentless gaze.
"I apologi-"
Before I could finish, Evander rose abruptly from his seat.
"Dame Trina," he ordered a knight standing nearby, "Tell Coran to prepare a carriage for the lady."
He turned back to me with a commanding tone. "Stand, Lady Norielle. I will escort you to the gate. You should return to your estate for today."
There was no room for argument in his voice. Fear and uncertainty churned in my chest as I rose, Zilda trembling slightly at my side. The weight of his presence pressed down on us both, a silent reminder that this was far from over.
True to his word, riding in the carriage behind Evander's escort, Zilda and I were brought back to my family's estate.
Later, I lay on my bed, gazing up at the carved wooden canopy above me. Rich velvet drapes framed the four-poster, and embroidered linens enveloped me as my thoughts churned with the day's unsettling events.
What am I to do now? How can I survive a life scripted before me, where every choice, every misstep, is already written in ink I cannot erase?
The truth hit me with crushing clarity: unfamiliar name, unfamiliar face, family, life and an unfair fate.
I was once an ordinary student with strict parents, suffocating rules that kept me from wandering far or seeing friends. My only escape was reading comics, mostly, stacked high on my desk like a wall between me and the world.
One story was, Night and Morning Glory, about Ipomoea Gloire, a noble woman by day and mercenary by night, and Frenar Greyard du Roswal, a cursed crown prince constantly on the edge of peril.
It wasn't the typical cliché marriage-of-convenience and cold Duke of north tale I preferred, but it was one of my likes. Though some characters echoed those clichés, an obsessive yandere male lead, a second male lead more deserving than the first, a jealous villainess bent on tormenting the heroine, it was still a story I fell for.
Norielle Graham, daughter of a wealthy count, society's radiant flower, the epitome of grace and charm at the heart of the elite social circle, the betrothed of the main villain. And, as I now painfully knew, destined to a tragic end dying in the hands of the one she loved for poisoning the female lead nearly perished but somehow survived.
That was the story.
It was typhoon season back in my world, rain battering the earth under a heavy gray sky. On an impulse, I bathed in the downpour, feeling free for a brief moment until lightning struck, and everything went black.
Then I woke up here inside this room, in this body, with a pounding headache and a flood of unfamiliar memories.
I had become Norielle Graham the wicked villainess of a story I once adored now I despise more than anything.
Lucky and unlucky, all at once. Transmigration I'd never imagined I'd live it, but this was too much. Unlike the smart MCs in the stories I read, I was just lazy, impatient I'd only skimmed Night and Morning Glory, skipping paragraphs to get to the dialogues. I knew the gist, but not the details like watching a story through disjointed reels.
I'm doomed right from the start, from the fact that I transmitted to a novel. Am I even alive when the story reaches my doom when I already raised a death flag with the main villain, long before the plot even begins?