Chapter 1: Transmigrated

The ending ruined my morning.

 I read it on the 5:40 train home, still in scrubs, my feet screaming after a twelve-hour ward shift, and I actually said "No" out loud. A man across the aisle glanced up. I didn't care.

 Chapter thirty of *Crowned by His Moonlight* was four paragraphs long. Seraphine Locke, the wife ignored for twenty-nine chapters, calls her husband from a rain-slicked road. He sees her name on his screen. Marguerite's hand rests on his sleeve. He declines the call.

 Seraphine dies pregnant and alone. Chapter thirty-one opens with the wedding.

 "Four paragraphs," I whispered to my phone. "She gets four paragraphs."

 I typed a one-star review with shaking thumbs. My head dropped against the window.

 The last thing I felt was cold glass against my temple.

 ***

 The first thing I felt when I woke up was silk instead of my scratchy hospital blanket. Silk, cool and heavy, sliding over my bare arms. Above me, a white plaster ceiling carved with flowers, and a chandelier hanging like frozen rain.

 I sat up too fast. My stomach rolled.

 "No," I said. "No, no, no."

 The voice that came out wasn't mine. It was softer, lower, with an elegance I'd never had. I stared at my hands. Slender fingers, unscarred skin. A platinum ring with a diamond big enough to clear my student loans.

 I stumbled to the mirror.

 A woman stared back, long dark hair, shadows under her eyes, a face so lovely it looked sad. I knew that face. *Seraphine Locke had the kind of beauty that made people pity her.*

 "Seraphine," I breathed.

 "Welcome, Host."

 I screamed. A flat, cold voice had spoken inside my head, calm as a hospital intercom.

 "Please remain calm. Your heart rate is unsafe for the fetus."

 My hand dropped to my stomach before I'd decided to move it. Beneath the nightgown, the faintest curve. My nurse's palm knew what it was feeling.

 "Eight weeks," the voice said. "Approximately."

 "Who are you?" I asked.

 "The Rewrite System. You have transmigrated into *Crowned by His Moonlight*, into the body of Seraphine Locke, the Blackwood family's discarded wife. Her death is scheduled in ninety days."

 "Scheduled." I said.

 "Every tragedy written for this character is a fixed plot event. Break one, and you earn points. Follow the script, and the story reclaims this body."

 I gripped the dresser. "You're saying I'm going to die."

 "Seraphine Locke is going to die. You may choose otherwise."

 I looked at the woman in the mirror, at the hand on her stomach, at the child I'd known for four minutes and already couldn't bear to lose.

 "What do I have to do?" I asked.

 "Rewrite what you remember."

 I remembered everything. That was the cruelest part.

 A knock sounded at the door.

 "Madam?" A gentle, older voice. "Madam Seraphine, are you awake?"

 I opened it. A grey-haired woman in a housekeeper's uniform stood holding a tray of dry toast and ginger tea. Her kind face trembled when she looked at me.

 "Mrs. Hale," I said. The book had given her three lines. She was one of the only people who'd ever been kind to Seraphine.

 "You're so pale, madam. You didn't eat yesterday either." She lowered her voice. "The driver collects you at six for the family dinner. Shall I tell Mr. Blackwood you're unwell?"

 "Would he care?" I asked.

 Her eyes dropped. "Madam..."

 "It's all right." I took the tea. "Is Marguerite Ellison coming tonight?"

 Mrs. Hale went still. "How did you know?"

 Because tonight, Evander Blackwood would seat his childhood sweetheart beside him and make his wife stand. Because Seraphine would start to cry. Because Marguerite would "accidentally" spill red wine down her own dress, and every Blackwood relative would whisper *how unstable, how jealous.*

 "Lucky guess," I said.

 My phone buzzed on the nightstand. One message, from a contact saved only as *E*.

 *Be on time. Don't embarrass me tonight.*

 Three years of marriage, and that was the whole conversation.

 I stared at it, and something in my chest, something that wasn't entirely mine, ached for the woman who'd read messages like this and still hoped.

 "Not anymore," I said quietly, to her or to me.

 ***

 The Blackwood estate looked like a museum built to intimidate. A dozen relatives were already seated when I walked into the dining room in the plain navy dress Mrs. Hale had found for me. Conversation dimmed. Someone smirked into a wine glass.

 At the head of the table sat Evander Blackwood.

 The book had described him as carved from winter, and for once the author hadn't exaggerated. Black hair, black suit, a face of sharp lines and no warmth at all. He didn't rise. He barely glanced up.

 Beside him, in the chair that should have been mine, sat a woman in white, delicate, glowing, eyes already glossy with unspilled tears.

 Marguerite Ellison.

 "Seraphine," Evander said, still cutting his steak. "Marguerite hasn't been well. She needs to sit near the head of the table. You can take the chair at the end."

 The end meant beside the servants' door.

 A hush fell. Marguerite lifted her teary eyes to me, soft as a dove. "Seraphine, I'm so sorry. I told him it wasn't necessary—"

 I knew every word of this scene. The original Seraphine would have murmured it's fine, walked to the end of the table with her face burning, and cried quietly into her napkin until the wine ruined her dress.

 "Scheduled event detected," the system chimed in my head. "Public Humiliation. Predicted outcome: Host cries and leaves. Reward for rewriting: one hundred points."

 I didn't move toward the end of the table.

 "No," I said.

 Evander's knife stopped. For the first time all evening, he looked at me. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and something in them flickered. Confusion, maybe. He had never once heard that word from me.

 "What did you say?"

 "I said no." My voice didn't shake. "I'm not sitting by the door. I'm not crying tonight. And I'm done being your wife."

 I slid the platinum ring off my finger. It clinked against his porcelain plate, bright and final.

"I want a divorce, Evander."

 The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the chandelier hum.

 And somewhere in my head, a cold voice whispered: *First rewrite in progress.*