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I survived three miserable years inside a romance novel—only to watch the hero and heroine claim their perfect ending.

The villain was stripped of his title, beaten nearly to death, and sold for ten taels.

So I bought him.

Adrian Vale assumed I wanted his body. I wanted the fortune he had wasted on the heroine.

My plan was simple: reclaim his gifts, sell them, and retire rich.

I never expected him to return months later, penniless and fully recovered.

“You bought me,” he said. “My money belongs to you. So do I.”

The original love story was already over.

Unfortunately, mine was just beginning.

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I had been dropped into a novel as a penniless flood refugee. After three years of hunger, illness, and determined avoidance of the plot, I had finally lived long enough to see the original story end.

Lord Julian Cross had risen to power. Celeste Ward, the beloved heroine, was about to marry him in a wedding the entire capital wanted to see. Adrian Vale, the defeated villain, had been convicted, beaten, stripped of rank, and sold along with the remnants of his household.

I spent every coin I owned to buy him.

The broker took my ten taels, shoved the bloodied man toward me, and hurried away before I could reconsider. I did not reconsider. I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.

Adrian looked at me with the hollow calm of a man who had already lost everything.

"Do whatever you want," he said.

"Gladly."

I hauled him back to my collapsing thatched hut and lowered him onto my plank bed. Even half-dead, he looked like a man born to give orders. His black eyes were cold, sharp, and openly disgusted—first with me, then with the bed that creaked beneath his weight.

Fortunately, he was too badly injured to beat me or run away.

I reached for his robe.

For the first time, his expression cracked. He stared as I tugged open his collar in broad daylight, then shut his eyes in furious resignation.

"I said you could do what you wanted."

He sounded as if each word cost him a year of his life.

Then I remembered that Celeste and Julian were getting married that very day. While the happy couple celebrated their wedding night, the man who had loved Celeste for years was lying powerless on a stranger's bed.

It was tragic.

I laughed.

Adrian's eyes opened. They were narrow and beautiful and full of murder.

"Miss..."

"Nora Quinn," I supplied.

"Miss Quinn, I understand that many women in the capital once admired me—"

He broke off with a sharp breath. I had peeled his outer robe away from a wound where dried blood had stuck cloth to skin.

The novel had not exaggerated his looks. Even his wince was unfairly attractive.

It was wasted on me. Three years of poverty had cured me of any interest in handsome men. My heart contained only the sincere, blazing desire to never be poor again.

I ran my fingers over the silk robe. Fine weave. Excellent workmanship. Bloodstained, yes, but after a wash it might still fetch something.

Adrian watched me caress his clothing. His hand closed into a fist.

"Do not indulge in fantasies. You are beneath even the lowest maid who served in my household. Owning my body will never give you my heart."

I laughed again.

"Your heart? I don't want anything that useless."

He went still. For one magnificent moment, he looked offended enough to die a second time.

In the novel, Adrian had been born into one of the oldest military families in the realm. His father and elder brothers had all died defending the frontier. He had inherited more wealth than one man could spend in several lifetimes, along with a cold temper and an obsessive love for Celeste.

Then he had repeatedly challenged Julian, the story's shining hero. No one survived that kind of mistake in a romance novel.

"There, there," I said generously. "Losing the woman you love isn't as bad as losing your livelihood. Oh. Sorry. I forgot you've lost both your office and your home."

His face darkened.

He tried to rise, perhaps to strangle me, but his injuries made turning over a serious undertaking. He settled for facing the wall.

I caught his chin and turned him back.

"When they confiscated your estate, did they find everything? Any secret vaults? Hidden storerooms?"

He looked at me as if I were a new species of criminal.

From his perspective, that was fair. I had paid ten taels for his person, and within an hour I was asking for his fortune.

When he refused to answer, I pressed one finger to his throat and lowered my voice.

"Talk, or I'll sell you to a pleasure house."

The tips of his ears reddened, but his face remained blank. "Do you imagine your methods could surpass those of the prison interrogators?"

I had expected as much.

"Where is your family burial ground?"

He turned his head very slowly.

People in this age loved burial goods. One tomb from a family like his could keep me comfortable for eight lifetimes.

"Under imperial law," Adrian said, "grave robbers are flogged at best and beheaded at worst."

"Even if it's your own family tomb?"

"You are asking me to let you dig up my father?"

He separated every word. If he had possessed a sword, I would already have been leaking onto the floor.

Villains were terrifying when angry. Who knew?

I shrank back, then tried one last question. "If you gave property to someone before your conviction, would it have been seized with the rest of your estate?"

"A completed gift belongs to its recipient."

"And if the recipient returned it?"

He frowned. "Then it would be mine again."

Relief flooded me.

For three years I had tried every honest way I could think of to make money. In a society divided by rank and ruled by men, an unattached woman with no family could work until her hands split and still never become secure.

I had saved those ten taels for this exact day.

Adrian's estate might be gone, but during his years of hopeless devotion he had showered Celeste with treasures. Antique instruments. Famous paintings. Rare jade. Coral, pearls, and enough jewelry to fill a merchant's strongroom.

Those gifts had been given in pursuit of marriage. If Celeste meant to marry Julian, surely she could return them.

And if Adrian belonged to me, then anything returned to him was—in the broadest, most morally convenient sense—mine.

After three years of suffering, fortune had finally remembered my address.

I liked Adrian much better at once.

He continued glaring as if contemplating my murder. I ignored that and fed him a bowl of thin rice porridge. I washed the blood from his face, tied back his hair, scrubbed and dried his silk robe, then wrestled him into it.

Once clean, he carried the unmistakable polish of the old nobility, even while lying in my hut with no money and several cracked ribs.

I admired that about rich people. Their possessions could be confiscated, but they still looked expensive.

When I tried to lift him onto a wheelbarrow, he finally asked, "What, exactly, are you planning?"

"Celeste marries Julian today. Are you willing to let that happen?"

His fingers locked around the bedframe.

"I'm taking you to stop the wedding," I announced.

"No."

He probably could not bear to let Celeste or his former colleagues see him broken and helpless. I pried his fingers loose one at a time.

They were long, elegant hands, callused from years of sword practice.

Someday soon, those hands might recover enough strength to kill me.

That was fine. Once I had the money, I would deal with the problem first.

"You saved Celeste three times," I said as I worked. "Without you, she would be dead. You gave her instruments, paintings, jade, and jewels. Without you, the neglected daughter of a failing house could never have become the capital's most celebrated lady.

"You injured Julian while investigating him, and they turned it into a story about a jealous man abusing his office. Doesn't that bother you?"

I got his last hand free and beamed at him.

"Today, I'm taking you back to collect what you're owed."

Pain exploded through my knee. I pitched forward across his chest.

His hand closed around my throat.

"How do you know so much?" he asked softly. "Who are you?"

The hut went very quiet.

This was the pressure the novel had promised: the former chief magistrate, ruthless even in defeat, studying me as if I were a confession he could cut open.

I was not afraid.

I was furious.

"Who am I? Three years ago, when the floods came, Julian was praised across the realm for feeding the refugees. I was one of them."

Disappointment flickered across Adrian's face. He gave a cold laugh.

"So you worship him too."

"That idiot mixed sand into the relief grain. So much sand that I got sick from eating it. I nearly died because I couldn't afford a physician."

The anger in my voice was real. Surprise crossed Adrian's eyes, and the pressure at my throat eased.

I remembered the scene in the novel. Adrian had objected to mixing sand into the grain, warning that weak and starving people could not digest it. Julian mocked him for knowing nothing about common hardship. As a reader, I had cheered the hero's practical solution.

As a refugee choking down gritty porridge, I had learned better. More people died of sickness after eating that grain than had drowned in the flood.

But poor lives were weeds. Who at Court counted weeds?

"Two years ago," I continued, "Celeste fell gravely ill. You searched everywhere for medicine and paid for an ancient ginseng root."

"Objects outside the body have no value," Adrian said. "It was nothing."

"Very noble of you. I spent half a year in the mountains getting bitten by insects and rats to find that root. When I delivered it, I learned she wasn't sick. She had miscarried. I lost my payment and nearly lost my life."

That disaster had begun because I could not keep my mouth shut. Still believing Celeste and Julian were good people, I warned her maid that such a powerful tonic could cause catastrophic bleeding after a miscarriage.

Julian sent men to silence me as soon as he heard.

Luckily, I had conducted the search disguised as a man. I escaped in women's clothes and scattered the advance Adrian had paid me into a crowded market. While the assassins fought beggars for the coins, I ran.

Adrian's breathing changed.

"Impossible," he said. "Celeste and Julian were already—"

I was still sprawled across him. From inches away, I watched disbelief tear through what remained of his certainty.

"Yes. After her birthday banquet. You stood outside her rooms while her maid accepted the antique zither from you. Inside, she and Julian were very busy becoming the greatest love story in the realm."

Adrian went white.

His hand dropped from my throat.

So even a villain could be devastated by learning that he had been used. He had never been as heartless as the book claimed. If he had truly been merciless, he would have killed Julian in prison and saved us all a great deal of trouble.

Perhaps I could teach him to be a more efficient villain later.

I climbed off him and kept a prudent distance.

Was Adrian actually evil? He had been severe, certainly. As chief magistrate, he had made enemies by investigating people who believed rank placed them above the law. The novel called him vicious whenever his work inconvenienced the hero.

In that story, Celeste and Julian could survive any disgrace because they were protected by the plot.

But the novel had ended.

Maybe its protection had ended too.

I secured Adrian on the wheelbarrow and pushed him toward the Ward residence.

The wedding procession would be leaving soon.