The knife missed my throat by three inches.
I'd call that lucky, except the blade buried itself in my embroidered pillow, showering me with goose feathers and the horrible realization that someone was trying to murder me before breakfast.
"You've got to be kidding me," I wheezed, rolling off my absurdly massive four-poster bed. My limbs tangled in silk sheets that cost more than a car—not that cars existed here. Medieval fantasy worlds were really inconvenient when you needed a quick getaway.
The assassin lunged through my balcony window, masked and dressed in standard-issue black. Points for commitment to the aesthetic, at least.
"Lady Alexandra Thornheart," he announced, producing a second knife. "By order of the Second Prince, your conspiracy ends tonight."
"Conspiracy? I've been awake for thirty seconds!" I grabbed the nearest heavy object—a golden candelabra that absolutely did not need to be this ornate. "Also, it's morning. Your dramatic timing is completely off."
He paused. "What?"
"You said 'tonight.' It's 6 AM. Commit to the bit or don't bother monologuing."
The assassin looked genuinely confused, which gave me enough time to register what he'd actually said. The Second Prince sent him. Which meant the game's plot had already started, and I was about three weeks away from my scheduled execution for "poisoning the Crown Prince's tea."
A crime I absolutely did not commit because—and here's the kicker—I wasn't actually Alexandra Thornheart.
I was Min-ji Park, a 28-year-old game developer from Seoul who'd fallen asleep at her desk after finally, *finally* reaching 100% completion on "Crimson Destiny." I'd woken up in this ridiculous canopy bed five days ago, in the body of the game's villainess, with all of Alexandra's memories crammed into my skull like an unwelcome software update.
The assassin recovered his composure and charged.
I threw the candelabra.
He dodged.
It crashed through the window behind him, and somewhere outside, someone screamed, "MY ROSES!"
"Look," I said, backing toward the door. "I know this is your job and everything, but I'm having a really weird week. Could we reschedule?"
"Die with dignity, at least!"
"Dignity is overrated when you're nineteen and not ready for murder o'clock!"
He was faster than me—trained, deadly, and taking this way too seriously. I grabbed a book from the side table and hurled it at his face. He sliced it in half mid-air.
"Was that necessary? That was a first edition!"
My back hit the wall. The assassin raised his blade, and I realized with crystal clarity that I was about to die in a frilly nightgown, in a world that ran on dating sim logic, because I'd been too sleep-deprived to notice the death flag activation.
Then the temperature dropped forty degrees.
Frost crept across the walls. My breath misted in the suddenly frigid air. The assassin's blade frosted over, ice crackling up the steel toward his hand.
And a voice, cold as a grave and smooth as expensive whiskey, spoke from the shadows near my fireplace.
"How inconvenient. I was told Lady Thornheart would be alone."
A man stepped into the lamplight, and my heart—my very problematic heart—forgot how to beat properly.
Caelan Morrigan. The Death King. The locked route. The most dangerous man in the entire game, who wasn't supposed to appear in the story for another six months.
He was taller than the game sprites suggested, with sharp features that could cut glass and eyes the color of frozen mercury. Black hair fell past his shoulders, and he wore a coat that seemed to be stitched from shadows and spite. Objectively speaking, he looked like every "tall, dark, and damaged" Pinterest board come to life.
Subjectively speaking, I was completely screwed.
The assassin made a strangled sound and ran. Smart guy.
Caelan watched him flee with mild interest, then turned those unsettling eyes on me. "You're surprisingly calm."
"I'm internally screaming," I said honestly. My heart rate monitor—the little device I'd discovered on Alexandra's wrist that measured her condition—read a steady 62 BPM. Thank you, beta-blockers and a lifetime of anxiety management. "But externally, I'm doing great. Ten out of ten, would almost die again."
His eyes narrowed. "You're not afraid."
"Oh, I'm *terrified*. My heart just doesn't know how to show it properly." I straightened my nightgown, trying for dignity and probably failing. "Did you kill my roses?"
"Your...roses?"
"The candelabra I threw went through the window. Someone screamed about roses. I assume they're dead now." I paused. "The roses, not the person. Probably."
For the first time, something that might have been amusement flickered across his face. "You're strange."
"You broke into my bedroom to tell me that?"
"I came to make you an offer." He moved closer, and the frost followed him, spreading across the floor in delicate patterns. "Though I expected someone more...composed."
"It's been a weird week," I repeated. Then, because I was apparently suicidal and had nothing left to lose: "Let me guess. You want me to marry you."
He stopped. The frost stopped. The entire room seemed to stop.
"How did you know that?" His voice went dangerously soft.
And there it was. The inciting incident. The divergence point. The moment I either played this perfectly or ended up as fertilizer for those murdered roses.
I met his eyes and smiled. "Lucky guess?"
His hand moved to the sword at his hip. "Try again."
Well. In for a penny, in for a completely insane survival strategy.
"I'll do it," I said. "I'll marry you. But I have conditions."
Caelan Morrigan, the Death King, the Curse of the North, the man whose touch meant death and whose power could raise armies of undead, stared at me like I'd grown a second head.
"You'll...marry me," he repeated slowly. "You don't even know why I'm asking."
"Don't care. Yes. When's the wedding? I need at least two weeks to plan. Nothing fancy, but I refuse to have bad catering at my own wedding, even if it's a political arrangement to avoid execution."
"How do you know about the execution?"
"I'm a Thornheart. We're all doomed. It's basically our house motto." I walked past him—carefully, because that frost looked sharp—and grabbed a robe from my wardrobe. "So, do we have a deal, or do I need to start interviewing other cursed royalty?"
He was silent for a long moment. Then: "You're either very brave or very stupid."
"Can't I be both?"
"Most people die within seconds of my presence. Their hearts give out from fear."
I held up my wrist, showing him the monitor. "Heart condition. Bradycardia. My resting heart rate is fifty-five. Your death curse needs eighty-plus to activate, right?" I'd memorized every detail of his locked route mechanics during my obsessive gaming sessions. "I'm literally the only person in this kingdom who can stand next to you without dying. That's why you're here. You need a wife who won't immediately become a corpse."
His expression shifted into something unreadable. "You're remarkably well-informed."
"I'm remarkably desperate to not be executed for a crime I haven't committed yet."
"Yet?"
"Time travel is weird. Don't ask."
"I wasn't—" He stopped, rubbed his temple. "Are you always like this?"
"Like what?"
"Insufferable."
"Oh, absolutely." I cinched the robe and turned to face him properly. "So here's my offer, Death King. I'll marry you, play the perfect wife, and help you with whatever political nightmare you're trying to avoid. In exchange, you keep me alive, keep me out of the royal palace, and let me access your library."
"My library?"
"I heard you have books on advanced magic theory. I want access." Actually, I needed them to figure out how to break his curse and survive the game's main plot, but he didn't need to know that yet.
Caelan studied me with those frost-cold eyes, and I could practically see him calculating, weighing, deciding if I was useful or just insane.
Finally, he said, "Two weeks. The wedding will be at my tower. Tell no one."
"Deal." I stuck out my hand.
He looked at it. "I could kill you with a touch."
"But you won't, because then you'd have to find another wife, and honestly, the dating pool for 'women who won't die in your presence' is probably pretty limited."
A sound escaped him. It might have been a laugh. It might have been exasperation. Either way, he took my hand.
His skin was cold but not painfully so. The frost spread across my palm in beautiful, crystalline patterns, then faded.
"You really won't die," he said, sounding almost surprised.
"Told you. Heart condition. It's finally good for something." I grinned. "So, husband-to-be, want to help me figure out who keeps sending assassins to my bedroom? Because I'm pretty sure that guy will tell his friends I'm harder to kill than expected, and I'd like to be prepared for round two."
Caelan Morrigan, the Death King, the villain of every route, the man I was about to marry in the world's most insane survival strategy, looked at me like I was a puzzle he couldn't solve.
"You're going to be trouble," he said.
"Undoubtedly." I walked toward the door. "Come on. Let's go interrogate some people. And maybe save my roses."
"I'm not helping with the roses."
"We're engaged now. You're legally obligated."
"That's not how engagements work."
"It is in my world."
I opened the door and nearly ran into my maid, Beatrice, who was holding a breakfast tray and staring at the frost-covered bedroom with wide eyes.
"My lady," she squeaked. "Is that...is that the Death King?"
"Yes. We're getting married. Can you bring extra breakfast? He looks like he doesn't eat enough."
Beatrice fainted.
The tray crashed to the floor.
Caelan pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is going to be a disaster."
"Probably," I agreed cheerfully. "But at least it'll be an interesting disaster."
Behind us, frost flowers bloomed on the walls, beautiful and deadly, just like the man who made them.
And somewhere in the palace, a prince was planning my execution, a game plot was spiraling off-script, and I was about to marry the one character whose route had been locked for a reason.
But for the first time since waking up in this world, I felt like I might actually survive.
Even if I had to do it with a Death King, a fainting maid, and absolutely murdered roses.
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