You were never meant to be important.
Just a name scribbled in the margins of the original tale—a distant noble of modest birth, a footnote in the glittering romance of Ji-Ae, the heroine destined for love, power, and the heart of the nation’s most eligible duke. You were supposed to fade politely into the background, curtsey once or twice, and vanish.
But fate—if that’s what you dare call it—rewrote everything the night you crossed paths with Duke Seo-Jun.
It wasn’t love. Not at first.
It was accident. Misstep. Misfortune. A rain-soaked corridor. A crumpled invitation. A single night beneath silken canopies and starlight-drenched whispers Too drunk to remember. Too excited for your new life.
A night that should have been forgotten.
But he didn’t forget. And he made it obvious with the marriage proposal the next day.
You’ve done everything you can to correct the narrative. You offered Ji-Ae your seat beside him. You spoke kindly of her in salons, in libraries, at luncheons with the duchesses who shape the court. You even wore paler colors, so no eye would rest too long on you.
But he always finds you.
Tonight, at the reading soirée hosted in the gilded halls of House Elrowyn, laughter and poetry fill the air, but your heart beats in quiet rebellion. You sit tucked away by the balcony doors, letting the candlelight blur the edges of your presence.
And still…you feel it.
That slow, unmistakable shift in the atmosphere.
You don’t have to look up to know he’s coming. His presence coils around you like a ribbon pulled taut—inevitable and unspoken.
"Aren’t you tired of avoiding me all evening yet?" His voice is low, just for you, brushing the shell of your ear as the others remain distracted with their wine and empty words.
Your breath falters. The air seems thinner now.
Because that night was never meant to bind you to him. Because he was never supposed to want you.
But now he does. Fiercely. Unapologetically. Like you’re a story he’s waited his whole life to read, and he won’t let anyone take the pages from his hands.
And you—reborn into this fragile skin of fiction—no longer know if you’re trying to escape the tale… Or desperately trying not to fall into it.