Chapter 1
12.30
At the gala, I mistakenly drank a glass of wine that had been… enhanced. My body burned with an agonizing heat, and my first instinct was to find Lord Kaelen, my childhood friend.
But then, strange, glowing text flickered into my vision.
【Oh, sweetie, you’re making a huge mistake! You might get your relief tonight, but tomorrow you’ll face the toxic hero’s wrath. He’ll be forced to marry you, then blame you for driving away the female lead. On your wedding night, he’ll have a beggar take his place…]
[ Don’t be an idiot! Go to your cousin next door, the ice prince! He has a secret room with a thousand portra its of you, in every conceivable pose!]
[Some people deserve to lose her. Acts all high and mighty around her during the day, then when his ‘fever hits at night, he’s crying her name. Pathetic!]
My hand trembling, I knocked on the door of my cousin–the man known for his untouchable grace and colc
self–control.
1
Thirsty.
My throat was a desert, my eyes stinging with tears I couldn’t shed. It wasn’t water I craved. It was the cool touch of someone’s skin to quench the fire raging beneath my own.
The wine was spiked.
My vision swam, faces blurring together across the grand ballroom. Who did this? Who wanted to see me humiliated, my reputation shattered in a single night?
I bit my lip, hard, the sharp sting of pain a fragile anchor to my fading sanity. I stumbled out of the hall, desp- erate to find Kaelen, the young lord who had escorted me to the gala.
There, in the moonlight, behind a trellis of climbing roses, he stood with another woman.
Before I could call out his name, my voice a desperate, trembling plea, the strange text flashed before my
eyes again. A chill, colder than any winter night, washed over me, momentarily eclipsing the feverish heat.
I recognized the woman with Kaelen. It was Seraphina, the Duke’s daughter, a celebrated scholar famed
throughout the kingdom for her beauty and wit.
The “female lead” the comments mentioned.
Kaelen’s untouchable goddess.
“My lord,” she said, her voice a soft melody on the cool night air, which had cleared my head just enough to hear his reply. “Shouldn’t you be with Lady Elara?”
10
1770
Chapter 1
His voice was a careless drawl, laced with an irritation that cut me to the bons,
“Elara?” he scoffed. “She’s nothing but a pretty face, an empty–headed doll who’s been clinging to me fo years, chasing away any other woman who dares to come near. I’m sick of it.”
“She still hopes that the alliance between our families means you’ll marry her. How could I possibly mar
someone like that?”
Seraphina offered a small, elegant smile. “Then what kind of woman would you wish to marry, my lord?”
Kaelen’s usual swagger softened, his tone turning earnest. “Someone like you, of course, Graceful, poised elegant… a woman who would bring honor to my house.”
