Chapter 2 The Corset from Hell
"Uhuk!"
I bolted upright. My chest felt like it'd been put through a trash compactor.
My eyes snapped open, but nothing made sense.
Where was the moldy, water-stained ceiling of my studio apartment?
Gone. In its place, high, gold-leafed ceilings carved with ancient-looking crap.
The bed was huge. Soft. The air didn't smell like rotting takeout anymore, it smelled like expensive, suffocating lavender.
"Wait... where the hell am I?"
My voice. It was soft. Clear. Feminine. It wasn't my usual scratchy, caffeine-deprived croak. I tried to swing my legs off the bed, but my chest just tightened. I coughed, stumbled, and dragged my heavy legs toward the bronze-framed mirror in the corner.
I stopped dead.
The woman in the glass wasn't me, Anna. No bags under the eyes, no tired, kitted-out face of a twenty five year old on the verge of a burnout.
The reflection was... stupidly pretty. Porcelain skin.
Wavy, jet black hair. Clear brown eyes staring back at me with the same "what the hell is happening" look I felt.
I knew this face. I knew these eyes. Ilse de Varannes.
The side character who gets her head chopped off halfway through the book I read last night.
I touched my cheek. Warm. Real. My heart was hammering like a drum, a solid, terrifying reminder, I'd transmigrated into a walking time bomb.
Before I could even process how to dodge my own execution, I heard footsteps. Then Sreeet!
"Agh!"
I screamed. Someone yanked the laces at my back with enough force to rearrange my internal organs. My ribs gave a sickening krek sound.
"Hold your breath for a second, Lady Ilse. This dress needs to hug your waist if you want to look the best at Lady Gisella's tea party this afternoon," a girl's voice chirped from behind me.
She said it like she was folding laundry, not trying to snap my spine in half. I twisted my neck around. A teenage maid in a white apron was holding the corset strings, grinning, ready to pull again.
My last life brain the one that had survived a thousand client disasters, kicked in. I didn't care about the execution plot yet. I cared about one thing "oxygen". No air to the brain meant no thinking. No thinking meant I was a dead woman.
"Let go," I rasped.
The maid blinked, her hands still tightening the strings. "Sorry, Lady? But you always insist on the smallest waist possible so that..."
"I said, loosen this crap right now!"
I spun around, locking eyes with her. I used The Look, the one I used on interns who messed up the quarterly brief. The maid recoiled, her hands shaking, apron bunching up.
I took a sharp, painful breath and went into full-on corporate rant mode, talking faster than anyone in this medieval hellhole could possibly follow.
"Listen. My lungs are crushed. If those strings aren't loosened, I'm not getting oxygen to my brain. And if I can't think, all the strategic crisis management plans I'm drafting to keep this family from collapsing are going to turn into a total dumpster fire! We don't have time for waist aesthetics!
Open it!"
The maid looked like she'd been hit by a truck. She wasn't used to Ilse de Varannes talking in full, coherent sentences, devoid of whining or hysterical screeching. She just stood there, mouth agape, frozen.
I stepped forward, put a firm hand on her shoulder, and dropped my voice to a dangerous, deadpan whisper.
"Do you understand the consequences? If I pass out or if my brain stops working because of this stupid dress, our reputation is the first thing that dies. You want to take the blame when everything falls apart?"
She didn't move to loosen the strings. Instead, her face drained of color.
Her eyes went wide not with understanding, but with pure, unadulterated terror.
She looked at me like I was a demon that had crawled out of a nightmare.
She scrambled backward. Then stumbled back again.
Her spine hit the bedpost with a loud thud.
The silk strings fell from her hands. She hit the carpet, scrambled onto her knees, and started clutching her own head.
"L-Lady Ilse... you... you're possessed! A spirit from the Forbidden Forest, right?! Don't eat me! You're talking all weird! Someone call the High Priest! Call the Viscount! Lady Ilse has gone insane!!"
She was shrieking, clutching the bedpost like her life depended on it.
"Can you just shut up?" I rubbed my temples, the headache getting worse. "My head is splitting. Get out of my room!"
She didn't need to be told twice. She bolted for the door, leaving me alone in the sudden, blessed silence.