The last thing I heard wasn't the sound of my heartbeat. It was the frantic, rhythmic tapping of keys on a Bloomberg Terminal.
"Sell it all," I had gasped, clutching my chest as the fluorescent lights of the 54th-floor boardroom blurred into white streaks. "If the market drops another point, the interest alone will swallow—"
Then, darkness. Cold. Final.
I was Evelyn Cho, the youngest hedge fund manager in Wall Street history. I was a woman who ate debt for breakfast and liquidated CEOs for lunch. I wasn't supposed to die in a boardroom. I was supposed to die on a yacht, retired at thirty-five.
But when my eyes snapped open, I wasn't in a hospital.
"Your Majesty! Please, stop staring at the mirror! We have fifteen minutes!"
I blinked. My vision cleared, and I saw a girl—no, a maid—fretting behind me. She was wearing a starched white apron and a bonnet straight out of a Victorian nightmare.
I looked down. I wasn't wearing my $4,000 power suit. I was squeezed into a corset so tight my ribs were singing a requiem, wrapped in layers of silk, lace, and enough diamonds to fund a small war.
"Who are you?" I croaked. My voice sounded different. Higher. Like bells made of ice.
The maid dropped her comb. "M-Majesty? It's Lila. Did the stress finally... oh, I knew this wedding was a mistake! If you faint now, the Duke will surely have my head!"
Wedding? Majesty?
I turned back to the mirror. The woman looking back at me was a stranger—and yet, horribly familiar. She had eyes the color of cold sapphires and hair like a spill of liquid rubies. She was stunning. She was twenty. And she was Evelyn von Bismarck.
The name hit me like a physical blow. I knew this name. I had read about her in a trashy web novel titled The Fallen Crown during a cross-atlantic flight.
Evelyn von Bismarck was the "Wasteful Empress." She was the woman who spent the national treasury on shoes while the people starved, the woman who obsessed over an Emperor who loathed her, and the woman who—in exactly one year's time—would be executed by guillotine for treason.
I wasn't just in another world. I was in a death trap.
[System Initializing...]
A translucent blue screen flickered into existence, hovering inches from my nose.
Host Identity Confirmed: Evelyn von Bismarck (Villainess) Current Assets: 42 Copper Coins, 12 sets of silk underwear. Current Liabilities: 1.5 Million Gold (National Debt), 300,000 Gold (Personal Overdraft). Status: Bankrupt. Hated. Bride-to-be.
My corporate brain, which had survived three market crashes, didn't panic. Instead, it calculated.
1.5 million in debt? At what interest rate?
"Lila," I said, my voice steadying. "Where is the Emperor?"
"He is at the Cathedral, Your Majesty. He... he sent a message. He said if you are a minute late, he will skip the vows and go straight to the banquet. He doesn't want to look at you longer than necessary."
I stood up. The weight of the dress was nearly twenty pounds. I felt the diamonds on my neck—assets that could be liquidated.
The original Evelyn would have cried. She would have begged for Alaric's love. She was a woman who valued "Romance" over "Revenue."
I, however, have never cared for things I couldn't trade for a profit.
[Warning: Survival Probability is 0.04%] [Would you like to activate the Starter Perk: 'The Sovereign's Audit'?]
Yes, I thought. Show me everything.
Suddenly, the room changed. Small numbers appeared over every object. The vase on the table? Worth 50 Gold. The maid's loyalty? Fluctuating. And the door to my chambers? It was glowing red.
"He wants to marry me to seal the Bismarck family's wealth and then discard me," I whispered. "But he forgot one thing."
"What's that, My Lady?" Lila asked, trembling.
"You can't discard a creditor."
The Grand Cathedral
The doors to the Imperial Cathedral swung open with a thunderous bang.
The music—a somber, joyless march—faltered. Hundreds of nobles turned their heads, their faces masked with sneers and pity. At the end of the long, marble aisle stood Emperor Alaric von Ravenstone.
He was breathtakingly handsome, with hair blacker than a moonless night and eyes that looked like they had never known warmth. He looked at me not as a bride, but as a stain he was forced to scrub off the floor.
"You're late," Alaric hissed as I reached the altar. He didn't offer his hand. "Let us get this farce over with. Priest, begin."
The High Priest cleared his throat, holding the Holy Book. "Do you, Alaric von Ravenstone, take this woman to be—"
"Stop."
The word wasn't loud, but it cut through the cathedral like a blade.
Alaric's eyes narrowed, a vein pulsing in his jaw. "Evelyn. If this is another one of your tantrums for attention, I warn you—"
I didn't look at the Priest. I looked at the Emperor. I pulled a folded parchment from the sleeve of my dress—a document I had spent the last ten minutes drafting with Lila's help.
"I will not sign the Holy Register," I said, my voice ringing out for every noble in the room to hear.
The crowd gasped. Alaric's hand flew to the hilt of his sword. "You dare refuse the Imperial Marriage?"
"I don't refuse the marriage," I said, a cold, shark-like smile touching my lips. "I refuse the terms. Before we say 'I do,' Alaric, we are going to discuss your Empire's balance sheet. Because according to my math... you're technically insolvent. And I'm the only one with the capital to save you."
I held out the paper.
"This is a Pre-Nuptial Agreement. Sign it, or find someone else to pay for your army's winter rations."
The Emperor's face went pale, then a dangerous, burning red. For the first time in his life, someone had stopped looking at his face and started looking at his pockets.
The "Wasteful Empress" was gone. The Debt Collector had arrived.