Chapter One The Villainess Engages the Enemy
CHAPTER ONE
The Villainess Engages the Enemy
Run to the abyss to watch my man rise, rise!
He can only get it if he’s got red eyes.
My pretty baby can be pretty odd.
Did you hear he’s the son of a god?
Hate to see his downfall,
Loved watching as he fell.
Someone that smoking
Must belong in hell.
There’s a curse upon him,
Wish I was on him too.
If he’d just glance my way
I’d die. And so will you.
Time of Lies, the brand-new sequel to hit musical Time of Iron
Enthroned in splendour, Rae Parilla contemplated her doom.
Every pane of glass in the tall windows was stained crimson with the fires of war and the deeper, darker arterial red of unearthly flame from the abyss.
Drenched in the light of another world, Rae sat on a throne of gilded bone side by side with her favourite character, the Once and Forever Emperor.
The story lay in ruins, because of all the shit Rae had pulled.
From the depths of her petty heart, Rae longed for someone else to blame, but this was on her.
She’d taken the offer from a mysterious stranger and walked into a book.
She’d used her sketchy knowledge of said book to act as if she were a true prophet.
She’d plotted to steal the magical Flower of Life and Death, cure her cancer and escape back to her own world.
She hatched the brilliant idea to organize the minor villains of this world into an unstoppable team in order to achieve her wicked ends.
She ignored all signs, and being repeatedly told outright, that the characters of the book were people as real as she was.
Most fatal of all, she’d mistaken the king from book one for her beloved Emperor, on the basis of him being tall, dark, handsome and enthroned.
Because of her arrogance and wilfulness, she’d got one of her vipers killed.
Now, the Emperor, formerly her guard Key, had crawled out from the dread ravine with a barely healed cut throat.
The sky burned livid with enchantment. Flames from the dread ravine leaped so high that every facet in the green crystal-lined throne room gleamed crimson, and every shining passage in the palace echoed with the moans of the restless dead.
Key should have lived for years longer, learning under the pure sweet heroine’s tutelage about pity, mercy, and grace.
Except Rae screwed up and got him killed. She couldn’t blame him for rising from fire and death as a monster.
She had enlisted Key, the fated hero, among the villains, and kissed his murderer as he died. She never meant for anything to happen to him, but what did that matter when he got his throat cut as a direct result of her schemes?
When Rae realized who walked across the golden floor towards her, leaving a path of blood in his wake, she expected to be slain with the imperial sword. She hadn’t anticipated a proposal of marriage.
Why was everything fun to read about terrifying to experience?
Here she was, on a throne, hand in hand with the most powerful and evil man in the world. An objectively cool and sexy scenario, and Rae couldn’t even enjoy it.
If she were reading this book, Rae would roll her eyes so hard at the loser whining that she must marry a gorgeous monster.
This world is as real as ours, but those who walk into the story have an advantage because we know the rules, the Golden Cobra told her once.
The rules said Rae was doomed.
An evil siren who betrayed the hero to his almost certain death? Readers would want the bitch hanged, drawn and quartered. Possibly eighthed.
The readers would get what they wanted. Rae always loved the Emperor’s epic revenge against his enemies.
Later in the original series, scheming courtiers killed Lia, his queen.
The Emperor lulled the conspirators’ suspicions, letting the noble maiden who betrayed Lia believe he would marry her.
Until the Emperor manoeuvred the traitors exactly where he wanted them.
At the grand feast when the duplicitous maiden believed he would proclaim their union, the Emperor exposed their lies and ripped their hearts out.
While reading, Rae cheered him on. People loved stories about revenge because nobody got justice in real life.
Rae would never hear an apology from her father, or any of those who abandoned Rae for having a bad personality, which they coincidentally discovered after she got cancer.
Let the Emperor wreak vengeance for them both. Traitors deserved punishment.
Rae deserved worse. The conspirators killed the heroine. Rae got him killed, and now he was back with eyes red as the wound on his throat. The story had gone wrong. So had he.
As a reader, it was extremely fun to root for bloody vengeance against those who betrayed the hero. As the wicked betrayer, Rae didn’t want to get butchered at the altar, blood drenching her wedding dress.
She needed to escape. Now.
The Emperor’s low voice, crackling like flame and deep as the abyss, broke her reverie.
“Scheming, my lady?”
Rae jerked, hand slipping from his claw. Swiftly, she pasted on a smile. “Picturing our wedding day.”
There was a pause, as though he was startled by her enthusiasm. Some level of surprise seemed reasonable. She had agreed to marry him at swordpoint.
Then the Emperor smiled back, as if at a nasty joke.
Lost in visions of disaster, Rae had failed to take in much else. Now she studied the man enthroned by her side. Behold: the bad bitch she’d bagged by being a worse bitch.
The dramatic planes and valleys of the Emperor’s face were even more dramatically outlined by eldritch light.
Once, the Emperor’s great winged throne stood on its silver dais alone, but the ghouls had dragged a throne carved from bone for a dead queen to stand beside his.
Now Rae and the Emperor had his-and-hers thrones, both winged.
The wings of the Emperor’s throne spread vast and high behind his spiky black head.
Jet and red gold, enamelled with human bone.
Diamonds and rubies trailed after the wings, each jewel a spark in a cascade against a lapis-lazuli sky.
The sparks fly upward, the people of Eyam said of the flames rising from the dread ravine that ran alongside the Palace on the Edge.
Those who swallowed a single spark from the abyss were always angry, always restless, always burning.
The Emperor was born from the abyss. All its rage lived within him.
The mask of kings lay beside his clawed gauntlet, his sword, Longing for Revenge, ran with fresh blood, and his eyes burned like the coals of hell.
Little trace remained of Key, the laughing boy from the city slums she’d affectionately called her evil minion.
The guard who’d knelt at her feet. This was the Once and Forever Emperor, the son of the gods, her favourite character of all time.
Once, Rae would have given anything to see him in person.
Now, she missed her gutter guard.
Misery weighed like a cold anchor tied to her scarlet-dyed skirts, trying to drag her down. She needed to survive this. She couldn’t let the Emperor suspect her plans.
“Your proposal was extremely romantic,” Rae purred. “What could I answer but ‘Yes, handsome man with an undead army, I will be your dark bride.’”
When his red gaze swept her face, she felt the lick of flame over skin.
“Have I pleased you? You don’t mourn the death of your lover, the king?”
Right, her lover the king. King Octavian had been Lady Rahela’s lover, before Rae took over the body. Rae’s personal opinion was “screw that guy”. Or don’t: King Octavian had given the impression he would be selfish in bed.
Rae shook her head. “He wasn’t going to marry me.”
“You vowed you loved him.”
Rae shrugged. “I say a lot of things.”
“You lie so sweetly.” The words cut off any possibility of reply, cold as his blade to her throat. The Emperor’s smile widened like a wound. Almost his old smile, with an abyss behind it. “That was a compliment, my lady.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment. He sounded murderous and furious, and he had every right to his revenge. Her veins felt laced with cold poison, her skin sheened with frost, too scared even to shake. Rae wanted to live.
Don’t cry. Don’t panic. Be a villain and plot.
The moment the Emperor first sat on the throne was the end of the first book. They were now in the sequel. At the beginning of many sequels, unfinished business could be wrapped up as the characters moved on into the next story.
According to all rules of narrative, Rae would die soon.
Probably at the Emperor’s hands. Unless she ran like a cowardly rat.
Hence, running like a rat was Rae’s new scheme.
She had already villainously acquired the Flower of Life and Death and opened the door to her own world.
She was almost sure she had heard her sister.
Rae had been so close to fleeing through that door to Alice.
Except when Key died, Rae realized how terribly wrong she was to believe the people around her were fictional characters, essentially unreal, who couldn’t be wronged and wouldn’t suffer.
When Rae walked into this world, she became Lady Rahela, the evil stepsister of the heroine.
She couldn’t leave her new stepsister to face the Emperor’s fury.
So Rae turned away from the open door, went to face the Emperor herself, and sent Lia away in the care of Rahela’s maid Emer.
Beforehand, she put the Flower of Life and Death in the hands of Lady Horatia Nemeth, telling Horatia she could give the Flower to her dying twin if Rae didn’t return before morning.
The sky hung in a black curtain behind the flames. The long dark night of the Emperor’s rise wasn’t over yet. All Rae needed to do was slip away as swiftly and efficiently as possible.
Her plan was simple. Get the Flower, flee to her own world. Never be seen again.