The first thing that wasn't quite right was the smell.
The olfactory landscape of Aria's life ran on a predictable, frankly depressing, playlist. For example, the lemon pledge assault on her bathroom mirror, the perpetual aura of sodium heavy instant noodles that haunted her kitchen, and the faint but stubborn scent of budget detergent clinging desperately to her bedsheets. None of these were present, hence the existential crisis her nose was now experiencing.
She peeled her eyes open to darkness. This was strange. Her blinds never blocked all light from the streetlamp outside her building. There was always that piece of yellow illuminating a corner of her ceiling. Here, there was nothing. Just absolute, pressing black.
A strange, restrictive feeling registered next. She wasn't in her oversized threadbare sleep shirt. Something heavy weighed on her chest, embroidered and intricate. Her arms felt bound in layers of silk.
Okay. Weird dream.
She pushed herself up, the movement clumsy with sleep-addled muscles. The fabric she was wearing, the elaborate dress described in excruciating detail in that very last chapter, rustled around her. Red silk, embroidered with golden thread that formed the shape of a mythical phoenix. The texture was nothing like her regular cotton clothes.
Her bare feet touched stone. Freezing cold, uneven stone. This was the polar opposite of the worn carpet in her apartment.
A knot of confusion pulled tight in her stomach. She patted around her being, trying desperately to find her phone; her phone was the single source of objective reality in her world, it had a calendar, it could tell her what year it was, it could tell her anything. But her hands met nothing but her own thighs covered by that ridiculously expensive feeling silk, and then more cold stone.
That's when she remembered. Falling asleep. That stupid webnovel. That ridiculously handsome but ridiculously cruel villain-king character. A character named the same as her. A character currently getting ready for her wedding night with said handsome cruel villain king.
"No way..."
Aria touched her hair, and then her face, her eyebrows, her nose. Her body felt... smaller. Lighter. Like her high school track-team body instead of her current sedentary desk job adult body.
She stumbled forward blindly in the darkness, her arms outstretched like a mummy. After three steps her fingertips brushed against solid wood, the surface of a wall, perhaps? Or maybe just an extremely well-made wardrobe. In fact, her exploring fingers found the metal details of a door handle.
A quick experimental push proved the barrier was immovable. It appeared she was locked in the room, a standard kidnapping trope. Her luck was officially trash tier today. She started banging on the door with the flat of her palm.
"Hey! Hello?" she called out. There was a strange echo that told her this place was vast. Much bigger than any apartment she had ever lived in. "Hello-o-o? Anybody?"
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could make out the shape of the bed she'd apparently just fallen out of; a four poster monstrosity draped in dark fabric. And next to it, a small table, which, by memory alone, she knew contained a decorative porcelain pitcher the size of a toddler.
Wait.
Her memory of what the novel had described earlier that evening slotted neatly into her mind. The room she was in, the cold floor, the giant bed, the heavy, wedding-style clothing that now weighed a ton on her body.
"Oh, I am going to kill myself."
Then a click. The large wooden door handle she had just touched turned. A section of the darkness was pushed inward as a new figure filled the space. Behind him, soft light from a hallway spilled in, a warmer light than any lamp in Aria's tiny one-bedroom apartment.
The new figure's silhouette blocked most of the illumination. He was tall, much taller than the original Aria in the novel had made him out to be. His clothing was black and flowing, made of what looked like silk and dark fur. He held a single candle.
She squinted. "Is that...oh, wow, it's you."
This was not what someone who was meant to be a terrified, shivering bride on her wedding night should have said. The original Aria from the novel would have cowered, maybe started crying. But then, the original Aria in the novel was not a cynical webnovel reader from Earth who knew exactly who this guy was and what he was capable of.
The Cursed King closed the door. The room went completely dark for a second before he placed the candle in a small holder on a nearby wooden table.
Aria's gaze traveled up, from his polished black boots, up the layers of dark silk, to a face that was unfairly perfect. High cheekbones, strong jaw, and those famous eyes the author described so often in painful detail. 'Red obsidian,' she thought they'd been called. A totally overused and slightly ridiculous descriptor that turned out to be infuriatingly accurate.
He didn't speak. He just stood there and looked at her. The look was every bit as hostile as the chapter had described. Aria shifted her weight. "So, big room, huh?"she offered. The awkward silence was starting to bother her more than the looming threat of death.
That finally got a reaction. One perfectly arched eyebrow lifted a fraction of an inch. "You speak."
"I do, yeah. Surprising, I know, given my family's whole schtick was raising me to be a pretty silent paperweight, but what can you do?"
His mouth tightened. It was the only change in an expression that could have been carved from granite. "And insolent. The sects neglected to mention this particular trait."
Aria crossed her arms. "Look, we're both adults here. Well, you look immortal so I'm not totally sure on that, but we can be mature about this situation. This is a raw deal for both of us. You're forced into a marriage you don't want; I'm forced into a marriage to a guy who just called me a cur. Let's not make this worse than it has to be."
"You speak nonsense," he stated. "Your purpose here is specific. It requires no words from you."
"My purpose is to be a glorified lightning rod for your wonky energy problems. Got it. I read the contract, well, not the actual contract, but the...novelization of the contract. Same thing."
He took a step closer. "Novelization? Speak plainly or don't speak at all."
"It means I know more about this setup than you think I do. Your powers are unstable post-sealing. The sects who dug you up gave you two choices: marriage to little ol' me, which they think will regulate your essence, or immediate sealing again in what the author called a heavenly tribulation that had about a sixty percent chance of erasing you from existence."
The man squinted at her as though trying to determine if she was speaking a foreign language or if her sanity was simply gone. "You sound absolutely deranged. Were you struck on the head during your travels here?"
"I am not—"
This is the moment that Aria realized that she has, indeed, transmigrated to this webnovel. And this man, indeed, has absolutely no idea that he was a villain from a webnovel she binge-read until 3:32 a.m.
So, her situation is extremely precarious.
Let's look at her options:
Option 1: Continue talking to this very tall, very scary, extremely attractive and unstable evil demon lord about how she's an avid fan of the novel chronicling all his atrocities and future defeats. This would, in all likelihood, end poorly and would only get her executed earlier. In her mind, she imagined the demon king laughing with disbelief before summoning a demon hound or some unholy creature from the abyss to eat her up.
Option 2: Try to run away. But the doors seemed solid and he blocked the only exit.
Option 3: Be the perfect little vessel wife he expects. This means staying silent, doing nothing and probably dying before she turns twenty.
Option 4: Stick with her current course but maybe try to get this guy on her side or something.
Option 4 was the riskiest one, but she might not even get the chance to think properly about the details before this man kills her off.
But Option 1 is definitely off the table because talking to the villain as an avid fan could definitely get her killed.
"Okay, look," she said, trying to make her posture seem confident and relaxed. "Let's establish a few ground rules for this whole domestic living arrangement we've got going on here."
The King blinked. It was a slight movement, but it was the most uncontrolled reaction he'd shown so far. "Ground...rules," he repeated, his voice as emotionless as a computer error message.
"Yes, ground rules. We're not friends. I'm aware that this is a business transaction. Your people gave you to my people, well, they technically didn't give me to your people but, anyway, I think that's the case here. You are expected to stay alive and to, like, siphon your energy or whatever onto me or into me." She paused. This is getting a little complicated.
A look that Aria interpreted as confused but mostly murderous was plastered on the king's face. "What, exactly, did you read before they placed you in this room?" he asked. "These texts the keepers spoke of when you came."
"The..." Aria started and thought, Okay, think here Aria! The last thing she wanted was to get accused of heresy or something equally dramatic by the big bad guy. "They were, uh, religious texts. Prophetic, you could say. About a dark sovereign who would ascend and shake the world to its core." The book's synopsis, she realized, was an incredibly handy tool right now. "You're a big deal in them, by the way."
"I don't buy it. Do you think I'm stupid? I would have believed you more if you simply said you made a contract with a rogue seer before they threw you in here," he spat.
Aria gulped, this conversation was not going the way she had wanted. At this rate she would probably be strangled to death with the silk she wore. "Look," she tried again, her voice now considerably less confident, "I'm not trying to trick you. I'm just... trying to establish the facts here so I don't—"
"Quiet."
Aria flinched and instinctively took a small step back. For all her sarcastic inner monologue, this wasn't a video game. Her hands flexed at her sides; her breaths shortened into a small stuttering rhythm.
"I-I-I...," the stammer died in her throat as he took another step closer, the candlelight flickering on his angular face making him look far more dangerous than even the author's florid descriptions could manage.
This was bad.
A flash of heat prickled at her skin, starting in her toes and rising with alarming speed toward her chest and face. "I-I didn't mean to…to…"
Aria was backed into the solid stone of the wall before she realized it. This was definitely not how the novel's scene played out. The King had just thrown things and threatened her. He didn't— he had never tried to... do... whatever he was trying to do right now.
"Hold up. One second!" she stammered, hands coming up defensively in front of her chest, as if her tiny, untrained palms could actually deflect an attack from a demonic sovereign.
"I'm your husband." He grabbed her wrist with shocking ease. His grip was solid, warm and calloused from…she didn't even want to know what kind of activities made your hands feel like they were forged in some kind of hell-fire kiln.
"That's the technical term for the situation, yes," she managed, a tremor in her tone that betrayed her attempt at sounding unbothered.
"So…" The King tilted his head a little. "Isn't a consummation of our marriage required?"
His face descended toward hers, aiming for her small, yet juicy, lips. Nothing was going to stop him from claiming what was rightfully his. Aria was in big trouble as the Cursed King prepared to take her in one go, right here and now.