Chapter 1: Death and a New Dawn
The last thing I tasted was cheap vanilla latte and blood.
It hit me in the middle of the crosswalk—a sudden, vicious cramp in my gut that dropped me to my knees. The screech of tires was deafening, the glare of headlights blinding, but that wasn’t what killed me. My own body betrayed me first. My heart hammered, a frantic bird against my ribs, then stuttered. My vision tunneled, the vibrant city lights fading to a pinprick as I collapsed onto wet asphalt. Food poisoning? I thought, absurdly, as the world dissolved into static. From a chain coffee shop? What a cliché way to—
Darkness.
Then, a different cold. Not rainy pavement, but polished stone, seeping through thin fabric. A groan scraped my throat, raw and unfamiliar. I blinked, and a crescent moon swam into focus, blurred by a fine, clinging mist.
“Your Highness? Can you hear me?”
The voice was honey and velvet, a sound so perfect it felt staged. I turned my head, every muscle protesting. A woman knelt beside me, her platinum hair a spill of moonlight in the gloom. Her features were sculpted, elegant, her violet eyes wide with concern. A flawless smile touched her lips, but it was like looking at a masterfully painted portrait—the warmth didn’t reach her eyes. Those eyes were assessing, calculating, watching a chemical reaction unfold.
“Seraphine,” she said, placing a cool hand on my forehead. “I am Seraphine Lovelace. Your handmaiden. You gave us quite a fright.”
My head pounded, a double-time beat of confusion and residual, phantom pain. Memories that weren’t mine flickered—less like recollections, more like poorly spliced film. A girl in silk, dancing. A bitter-tasted cordial. A sudden dizziness in a crowded hall.
“What… happened?” My voice was a stranger’s, higher, softer.
“You fell ill at the banquet, my princess,” Seraphine murmured, her fingers smoothing my hair back with practiced tenderness. “The court physician said it was a sudden imbalance of humors. You have been resting here for a short while to take the air.”
Bullshit. Absolute, top-tier bullshit.
I let her help me sit up. The world titled, then righted itself, revealing a courtyard shrouded in fine, perpetual drizzle. Rainwater carved silver paths through ancient, moss-choked cobblestones. Towers loomed in the mist, banners of crimson and gold snapping soggily in the wind. The air smelled of wet earth, stone, and a faint, cloying perfume—Seraphine’s perfume.
I looked down at my hands. Slender, pale, unmarked by the keyboard calluses I’d earned. They were draped in embroidered silk the color of midnight. This wasn’t my body. This wasn’t my world.
But the pattern… oh, the pattern was screamingly familiar. The beautiful, concerned handmaiden. The fragile princess. The sudden, mysterious illness at a public event.
A cold that had nothing to do with the rain settled in my bones. I’d consumed enough otome games and isekai manga to see the flashing neon sign. Reincarnated as the doomed princess. Check. Poisoned at a party. Check. Lovely, suspicious best-figure archetype hovering nearby. Big, fat check.
My name, the new one, surfaced: Celestine. Princess Celestine of Veridia. Twenty years old. Politically valuable. Currently a liability.
Evelyn Ashford was dead. Panic tried to rise, a sharp, animal thing. I squashed it. Panic was for people who hadn’t faced a final boss with a 2% health bar and a prayer. I had.
“Humors,” I repeated, letting a delicate tremor enter my voice. I pressed a hand to my temple, peering at Seraphine through my lashes. The perfect picture of frail confusion. “It felt… more violent than that. My stomach, it was as if…”
I let it hang, watching her. A micro-expression flickered in those violet depths—not alarm, but sharpened interest. Like a botanist observing a predicted bloom.
“The body can react most fiercely to imbalances,” she soothed, helping me to my feet. My legs were wobbly, but held. “Come, let us get you inside before this damp chills you further. I have prepared a soothing tonic in your chambers.”
A tonic. Of course she had.
Every instinct screamed. This was the part where the naive princess trusts the sweet friend, drinks the “medicine,” and quietly fades into a backdrop of tragic political history.
I leaned on her arm, mimicking weakness. The stones were slick under our feet. The mist beaded on my skin. I was a stranger here, dressed in another girl’s life, walking beside a woman whose smile was a weapon.
This wasn’t a romance. The setting was too grim, the air too thick with the smell of wet stone and intrigue. That poison hadn’t been subtle. It was a statement. Someone wanted Princess Celestine gone, and they wanted it messy enough to cause a scandal.
And Seraphine was in the middle of it.
“You are so kind, Seraphine,” I breathed, my voice a thread of sound. “I do not know what I would do without you.”
Her laugh was a gentle, bell-like sound that bounced off the courtyard walls. “It is my honor, Your Highness. Always.”
We reached a looming archway, the entrance to the castle’s interior. Darkness waited within, punctuated by the guttering glow of torchlight. She guided me forward, one hand firm on my elbow.
The game was on. But the rules had changed. I didn’t know which specific story I’d been dropped into, but I knew the genres. And the smile on the face of the woman leading me inside? That wasn’t from a light-hearted dating sim.
That was dark fantasy.
And I needed to learn the rules, fast. Starting with what was really in that tonic.
“I feel quite faint again,” I whispered, stumbling slightly. “Perhaps… perhaps the tonic can wait until the morning? I think I just need to sleep.”
Her fingers tightened, just for a second, on my arm. A silken vise. Then she relaxed, the perfect picture of compassion. “As you wish, Princess. Your comfort is paramount. I will be outside your door should you need anything.”
Anything. The word hung in the damp air, a promise and a threat. I nodded, offering her a weak, grateful smile of my own.
The door to my chambers closed behind me with a soft, final click. I was alone. I stood in the center of a room larger than my old apartment, all tapestries and cold finery, listening to the whisper of the rain outside.
I was alive. I was someone else. And someone in this beautiful, terrifying world had just tried to murder me.
My lips curved, not in a princess’s gentle smile, but in the grim, focused grin of Evelyn Ashford, otome veteran and unplanned player. Game on.
Game on.
The smile dropped from my face the second the door’s latch settled into place. I stood there, listening. The only sound was the soft, relentless patter of rain against the leaded glass window and the distant, rhythmic tap of Seraphine’s heels as she presumably took her post outside.
Right. No time to freak out. Freaking out was for people who hadn’t just identified their probable murderer-slash-handmaiden.
I took a sharp, steadying breath and surveyed the room. It was a gilded cage. Canopied bed, roaring fireplace, vanities laden with crystal bottles. Everything spoke of pampered idleness. Everything was a potential trap. The tonic sitting innocently on the bedside table winked in the firelight.
I ignored it. Information was armor, and I was currently naked.
My eyes landed on the massive wardrobe. First order of business: lose the beacon. This midnight silk screamed ‘privileged target’ from a mile away. If I was going to move, I needed to be a ghost.
The laces and fastenings of the dress were an insane puzzle. My fingers, clumsy with adrenaline, fumbled at the intricate hooks. “Come on,” I muttered, wrestling with the fabric. “I’ve solved harder puzzles in escape rooms.” After a minute of strained contortions, the heavy garment pooled at my feet with a soft hiss. The air felt shockingly cold on my skin.
I flung open the wardrobe doors. Inside, more silks, velvets, brocades. Useless. I knelt, digging through the bottom. There, folded neatly beneath a trunk, was a stack of simpler linen—a maid’s spare uniform, dull grey and practical. Perfect.
I pulled it on. The fabric was coarse and smelled of plain soap and lavender. It was blissfully, anonymously comfortable. I bundled my hair into a quick, messy knot, securing it with a pin I found on the vanity. A glance in the mirror showed a pale, sharp-eyed servant girl. Princess Celestine was gone.
Now, to get out. The main door was a no-go; Seraphine’s violet eyes were undoubtedly glued to it. My gaze swept the room again, landing on the heavy tapestry depicting some heroic hunt. In every story, behind the tapestry, there was either a secret passage or a ridiculous amount of dust.
Worth a shot.
I padded over and pulled the edge back. No passage. Just cold stone wall. Damn. I moved along the wall, pressing stones lightly, listening for hollow sounds. Nothing.
The window, then.
I pushed the casement open. The drizzle kissed my face. Below was a narrow ledge, slick with wet, that trailed off to the left around a turret. A sheer drop to the courtyard yawned on my right. My stomach lurched. Heights were not my thing. But poisoning wasn’t my thing either, and I’d already experienced that tonight.
“Just don’t look down,” I whispered to myself, swinging a leg over the sill.
The stone was icy and rough under my bare hands. I inched sideways, my back pressed against the cold wall, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The wind tugged at my borrowed clothes. Each shuffle was an eternity. I focused on the texture of the stone, on the sound of my own breath, on the slowly approaching corner.
I rounded the turret. There, blessedly, was a simpler, unadorned window, slightly ajar. I slid it up and tumbled inside, landing in a heap on a scratchy wool rug.
I was in a narrow, dark corridor. Servants’ passages. Bingo.
I moved quickly, my steps silent on the stone floors. The castle was a maze of whispers and echoing footfalls from distant halls. I followed the downward slopes, the plainer finishes, the smell of baked bread and laundry lye growing stronger.
My goal was the library. Every fantasy world had one. If I was going to understand Veridia’s politics, its history, its potential enemies—and maybe, just maybe, which otome hellscape I’d been dumped into—I needed text. Context. A user manual for my own survival.
I found it by accident, pushing open a heavy, unmarked door. The scent of old paper, leather, and dust washed over me. It was a cavernous room, shelves climbing into shadow. A few guttering candles provided pools of shaky light.
I slipped inside, closing the door softly behind me. For a moment, I just breathed. Here, the air was still. Here, the game’s variables might be written down.
I started scanning titles. Genealogies of the Northern Marches. Treatises on Border Law. Dry, dry, dry. I needed something more foundational. I moved deeper, my fingers trailing over spines.
Then I saw it: A Contemporary History of Veridia and the Neighbouring Realms, for the Educated Layperson. Jackpot.
I pulled the thick volume down, wincing at the cloud of dust, and carried it to a small table hidden between two high shelves. I opened it, the pages crackling.
An hour bled away. The drizzle turned to a steady rain outside the high windows. I read hungrily, my mind cross-referencing tropes with cold, hard facts.
Veridia was prosperous, strategically located, and currently ruled by my “father,” King Alaric, who was noted for his stubbornness and declining health. The queen was long dead. There was no male heir. Which made Princess Celestine not just a political piece, but the grand prize.
The neighboring kingdom, Sylvera, was explicitly mentioned as a “frosty ally” with “recent tensions over trade routes.” My stomach curdled. Sylvera was famous in otome games for one thing: beautiful, duplicitous spies with poison rings and hidden agendas.
Seraphine’s platinum hair and violet eyes were practically the national brand.
I read about the Iron Covenant, a peace treaty held together by brittle magic and older generation’s promises. I read about the Shadow Court, a whispered faction within our own nobility that advocated for “expansion.” The words blurred together, a tapestry of ambition and fragile peace.
This wasn’t a simple romance with capture targets. This was a powder keg. And someone—maybe Sylvera, maybe the Shadow Court—was using Princess Celestine as the match. My illness at the banquet wouldn’t have just been an assassination. It would have been a provocation. A beloved princess, killed at a public event? It could have been the spark for everything to blow.
The door to the library creaked open.
I froze, sliding lower in my chair. Heavy, confident footsteps entered. Not Seraphine’s light tap. These were boots.
“—the shipment from the mines is late again. The Regent of Sylvera’s excuses are as thin as summer ice.” The voice was male, young, irritated.
“Patience, Kiernan. Pushing now is what they want. They seek a reaction, not ore.” This voice was older, weary, with a gravelly authority.
I didn’t dare breathe. Through a gap in the shelves, I saw two men standing by a large map table. One was my age, maybe younger, with wild, dark hair and a scowl that looked permanent. The other was stern, greying, wearing the insignia of a high general.
“So we just let their spies crawl through our court? Let things like tonight happen?” The younger one—Kiernan—hissed.
My blood went cold.
“The princess lives. That is what matters. For now.” The older man pinched the bridge of his nose. “Watch the Lovelace woman. And double the guard on Celestine’s chambers. Discreetly. She cannot be allowed to become a casualty or a catalyst.”
They moved away, their conversation dropping to murmurs. I sat in the dark, the book cold in my hands.
They knew. Or at least, they suspected. And I was to be wrapped in cotton wool, a protected, passive liability in a gilded room.
That wouldn’t work. I couldn’t survive by being a guarded doll. Survival required agency. It required knowing who to trust, and it required them trusting me not to be a naive puppet.
I needed to get back before Seraphine checked on me. I slid the book back onto its shelf, a plan forming in the silence between my heartbeats. I wouldn’t just read about this world.
I would have to learn to play its game from the inside. Starting with convincing a certain spy that her puppet’s strings were still firmly in her hands—while I carefully, quietly, took up a pair of scissors.
I ghosted back through the servants’ passages, the coarse linen of my disguise now feeling less like a costume and more like a second skin. The rain hissed its secret against the stone. I had the lay of the land. Now I needed to navigate the players.
As I slipped back through the window and shimmied along the terrifying ledge, one clear, modern thought cut through the medieval fear.
Okay. First move: drink the damn tonic. But not all of it.
But not all of it.
Back in the gilded tomb of my chambers, I picked up the crystal vial. The liquid inside was the pale green of a stagnant pond. I uncorked it, took a cautious sniff. Bitter almonds, underneath the cloying sweetness of honey and chamomile. Classic. Amateur, even, if you read the right books. I’d expected something more subtle from Seraphine.
I poured three-quarters of it into a potted fern that looked like it had seen better days. The soil drank it greedily. I swirled the dregs in the bottom of the vial, just enough to stain the glass, and placed it conspicuously on the bedside table. Then I arranged myself on the bed, mussing the covers for effect, and waited.
The knock came exactly ten minutes later. Seraphine entered without waiting for a reply, her movements a whisper of silk. Her eyes went straight to the vial, then to my seemingly drowsy form. A flicker of something—satisfaction?—passed through her gaze.
“You drank it,” she said, her voice a soft croon. “Good. You will feel stronger by morning.”
I made a noncommittal sound, letting my eyelids flutter. “So tired.”
“Then sleep, my princess. I will ensure you are not disturbed.”
She drifted out, and I counted to one hundred in the silent, firelit room. The act was wearing. My nerves were live wires. I needed to move, to do something. Sitting here, waiting for the next move in a game where I didn’t know half the pieces, was its own kind of poison.
I changed back into the servant’s linen. The discarded princess gown lay on the floor like a shed skin. I needed to get rid of the rest of the tonic, the evidence in the vial. Dumping it in the chamber pot seemed too obvious. The gardens. I’d bury it.
Slipping back into the secret corridor was easier the second time. The castle was deeper in its late-night rhythm now, the silence heavier, punctuated by the occasional distant clang of a guard’s shift change. I moved like a shadow, the small vial a cold weight in my palm.
The servants’ passages twisted, branching like roots. I took a downward slope, following the scent of damp earth and night-blooming flowers. A narrow, recessed door, half-rotten, led out into the kitchen gardens. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the rows of herbs and sleeping vegetables.
I knelt by a bare patch of earth near a wall, my fingers digging into the cold, black soil. It was a world full of magic and secrets, the general had said. So far, I’d only seen the secrets. The magic felt like a rumor, a pressure in the air I couldn’t name.
I was burying the vial when a voice cut through the dark.
“That’s not where the nightshade goes, miss.”
I froze, my heart slamming against my ribs. Slowly, I looked up.
A boy stood a few feet away, leaning on a long-handled rake. He was maybe sixteen, wiry, with dirt smudged on his cheek and hair the color of straw. His eyes, a calm, plain brown, took in my kneeling form, the servant’s dress, the half-buried vial.
“I wasn’t planting it,” I said, my voice tighter than I intended.
“Didn’t look like you were harvesting it, either.” He nodded at the vial. “Poison’s a coward’s tool. Also a waste. Good nightshade’s hard to grow.”
He said it so casually, as if discussing the weather. I stood up, brushing the dirt from my knees. “And you’re an expert?”
“Apprentice to the royal herbalist,” he said, a hint of pride cutting through his nonchalance. “Kaelen. I check the greenhouses after a rain. Stops the slugs.” He studied me more closely. “You’re not from the kitchens. I know everyone from the kitchens.”
“Laundry,” I said quickly, the lie forming on my tongue. “New.”
“Laundry.” He didn’t look convinced. His gaze lingered on my hands—too clean, despite the dirt. Princess-clean. “You’re out awful late, laundry-new-girl. And burying things that aren’t seeds. Dangerous hobby.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the mist crept down my spine. He wasn’t threatening me. He was stating a fact. His calm was unnerving. “What do you want?”
“To know if you’re a problem or just… lost.” He tilted his head. “The palace is full of lost things. And problems. They usually get removed.”
He was talking about more than stray servants. The certainty in his voice was absolute. This wasn’t a chance meeting. He’d been waiting. Or watching.
“I’m not a problem,” I said, forcing my voice steady. “I’m just trying to understand the rules.”
Kaelen’s lips quirked, the barest hint of a smile. “Rules. Right.” He pushed off from the rake, stepping closer. The mist curled between us. “First rule: the pretty ones in the towers aren’t the only ones who see things. We see them, too. The deliveries that come at midnight. The herbs that go missing from the stores. The way certain people,” he glanced meaningfully back towards the castle, “smell of false lavender and regrets.”
Seraphine. Her perfume.
“Second rule,” he continued, his voice dropping. “Magic isn’t just in the Crown Jewels or the court sorcerer’s tower. It’s in the soil. In the roots. In the way you can whisper to a wound and tell it to knit. Or whisper to a weed and tell it to strangle.” He looked at the disturbed earth where I’d buried the vial. “Or feel a poison in the ground, crying out about its purpose.”
My breath caught. This scrawny, dirt-smeared kid was the first real, tangible piece of magic I’d encountered. It wasn’t fireworks and light. It was quiet, grimy, and profoundly dangerous.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re digging in the wrong place,” he said, shrugging. “And because the fern in the north-west tower is looking poorly. Unnatural, like. Someone poured their sorrows into it. Might want to get it a new pot. Fresh soil.” He met my eyes, and for a second, the calm brown depths weren’t plain at all. They were ancient, and knowing. “Some things soak up too much, and they can’t be saved. Better to start clean.”
A warning. About the fern I’d poisoned. About the plot I was in. About everything.
He turned to go, his task apparently complete.
“Wait.” The word left my mouth before I could stop it. “If I… if I needed to know what something was. A plant. A powder. Who would I ask?”
Kaelen paused, not looking back. “The herbalist is old. She sleeps deep. Her apprentice is in the third greenhouse most nights. He prefers questions to surprises.” He glanced over his shoulder, that faint smile returning. “And, laundry-girl? Next time you need to hide something, the compost heap behind the third greenhouse is better. It digests everything. Even secrets.”
Then he was gone, melting into the mist between the garden rows, as silent as he’d appeared.
I stood there, the wet earth seeping through my thin shoes, the weight of the partially-buried vial suddenly insignificant. The world had just cracked open. Magic wasn’t a story. It was a boy with a rake who knew about ferns and false lavender. Secrets weren’t just in whispered conversations between generals; they were in the soil, in the night air, in the gaze of an apprentice who saw too much.
I had a potential ally. Or another player. It was too soon to tell.
But I had a destination now. A place to ask questions. The third greenhouse.
I turned my back on the buried poison and walked into the deeper dark of the gardens, the mist clinging to me like a second skin. The game wasn’t just in the palace anymore. It was in the roots. And I was finally learning how to dig.