I Woke Up as the Villainess Fated to Die, and Now the Emperor Can't Forget Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Wrong Bed

I wake in the bed the book gave Rose and beg the Emperor to let me leave his Selection, but he refuses and tells me a kitchen boy saw a lady in green at Rose's cup.

I woke up under a canopy of gold silk.

For one second I thought I was in a hospital and somebody had very expensive taste.

Then I saw the painted ceiling.

Suns and lions and climbing roses, all in gold leaf.

I knew this ceiling.

Chapter three of Forbidden Rose spent a whole page on it.

This was the Emperor's guest chamber in his private wing, and the book gave it to Rose.

She woke up here and saw the lions, and the Emperor was asleep in a chair beside her bed.

I turned my head very slowly.

The chair beside my bed was empty.

I closed my eyes in relief.

"My lady?"

A woman shot up from a stool by the window.

She was a few years older than me, with brown hair pinned in a tight bun and freckles across a square face.

She wore a dark blue maid's dress, and her eyes were red.

Edie.

Vivi's maid.

In the book she had about nine lines, and most of them were "Yes, my lady."

"You're awake," she said. "Oh, thank God, you're awake."

She poured water from a jug and held the cup to my mouth with both hands.

I drank all of it.

"How long?" I said.

"Three days, my lady."

"Thank you, Edie."

She froze with the empty cup in her hands.

Then she set it down very carefully on the table.

"My lady has never thanked me before," she said. "Not once in six years."

I didn't know what to say to that.

So I said, "Then I'm sorry about the other times."

Edie stared at me.

Then her face did something complicated, and she sat back down on the stool.

"His Majesty was here," she said.

My stomach dropped.

"When?"

"Every night. He sat in that chair till dawn. Then he went to his council, and then he came back."

"Why?"

"My lady, the whole palace is asking that."

I pushed the blankets off and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

The room tipped sideways.

Edie caught my elbow.

"You can't stand yet."

"I have to get out of this room."

"You're in a nightgown."

"Then find me a dress."

The door opened without a knock.

Nobody knocked on doors in the Emperor's wing except for the Emperor's guards.

And the Emperor never knocked at all.

He came in alone.

He wasn't in the black coat now.

He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow and dark trousers, and his gold hair was damp.

He was twenty-eight and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week.

He stopped at the foot of the bed.

Edie dropped into a curtsey so deep her knees cracked.

I was sitting on the edge of his guest bed in a thin white nightgown with my hair everywhere.

I grabbed the blanket and pulled it up to my chin.

"Leave us," he said.

Edie looked at me.

He looked at Edie.

She went.

The door shut softly behind her.

He didn't come any closer.

He folded his arms and studied me, the same way he had in the hall.

"You're awake," he said.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"The physician said two days. You took three."

"I'm sorry to be late."

His mouth twitched.

It wasn't a smile.

It was the place where a smile would go if he were someone else.

"How do you feel?"

"Well enough to go home," I said. "With your permission, I'd like to leave today."

"No."

"Then tomorrow."

"You'll leave when the physician says so."

I took a breath.

I had spent three days asleep, but I had spent three years planning what I would do if I were Vivi.

Every reader did it.

You'd stay away from Rose. You'd stay away from the Emperor. You'd go somewhere far away and live.

"Your Majesty," I said. "I want to withdraw from the Selection."

The room went very quiet.

The Empress Selection had started at the beginning of summer.

Every unmarried lady at court over twenty-one had been entered.

Vivi Montclair had been the favourite since the day her name was written down.

She had wanted the crown so badly she poisoned a girl for it.

"Withdraw," he said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't want to be Empress."

He tilted his head.

"Three weeks ago you told my mother's portrait you'd be sitting in her chair by autumn. You said it loud enough for the whole gallery to hear."

My face went hot.

"I've changed my mind."

"In three weeks."

"In three days."

He came around the side of the bed.

He stopped close enough that I had to tip my head back to look at him.

"Nobody has ever asked me to let them go," he said.

"Then I'm the first."

"No."

"You can't keep a lady in a contest she doesn't want to win."

"I'm the Emperor," he said. "I can keep anything I like."

My hands were shaking under the blanket.

I made them stop.

"Why did you drink it?" he said.

"I was thirsty."

"You took a cup out of another woman's hand and swallowed it in one go."

"I was very thirsty."

That time he did smile.

It was quick and crooked, and it was gone almost before I saw it.

I had read two hundred and twelve chapters of this man.

He smiled four times in the whole book, and every one of them was at Rose.

"You're lying to me, Lady Montclair," he said.

"Everyone lies to you, Your Majesty."

"Not to my face."

He reached into the pocket of his trousers.

My whole body went cold.

But it wasn't a green glass vial.

It was a folded paper.

He opened it and read from it in a flat, even voice.

"A kitchen boy who served the ladies' table says he saw a woman bend over Lady Delmar's cup just before the toast."

I couldn't breathe.

"He didn't see her face," the Emperor said. "He saw her sleeve. It was green silk."

He folded the paper again and put it away.

Then he looked at me.

"You wore green that night," he said. "Only you."

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