Mission: Steal the Male Lead

"—and frankly, I find the entire arrangement to be incredibly tedious."

The words tasted like ash and expensive mint on her tongue. Morwenna blinked.

The sudden, blinding glare of the afternoon sun felt like a physical slap to her face. A second ago, she had been staring at a glowing laptop screen in a cramped, dark apartment, surviving on stale coffee and pure spite as she ripped apart the massive plot holes of a popular webnovel.

Now?

The overwhelming scent of crushed roses, heavily powdered skin, and bergamot flooded her nose. The air was suffocatingly warm, trapped beneath the shade of a massive, silk-draped canopy.

"Oh, Lady Morwenna, you simply must try the Earl Grey," a soft, musical voice chimed. "The Emperor himself had it imported from the Eastern Isles just for this afternoon."

Morwenna’s vision violently snapped into focus.

Sitting across from her at a white wrought-iron table was a girl who looked like she had been painted by a renaissance master. She had flawless porcelain skin, doe-like eyes, and hair the exact color of spun sunlight. The girl held out a delicate, gold-rimmed teacup resting on a matching saucer. Her smile was picture-perfect. Innocent. Utterly angelic.

Lady Seraphina Ashbourne.

Morwenna’s breath hitched. Her lungs instantly fought against the crushing, unfamiliar grip of a whalebone corset she certainly hadn't been wearing two minutes ago. Her fingers, currently draped in sheer black lace, rested rigidly on the edge of the table.

Panic, cold and razor-sharp, spiked through her chest. Her scriptwriter brain, trained by years of dissecting narrative structures and character tropes, immediately analyzed the scene around her.

The sunlit gardens of the Valerius Royal Palace. The gossiping daughters of the Aethelgard nobility sitting at adjacent tables, their colorful gowns looking like a field of venomous flowers. The polite, measured clinking of silver spoons against fine china. The perfect heroine offering a cup of tea to the silver-blonde villainess.

Chapter Twelve.

Morwenna’s blood ran ice-cold. She stared down at the steaming amber liquid inside the cup Seraphina was holding.

In the notoriously dramatic webnovel The Sun's Chosen, Chapter Twelve was the major turning point. It was the chapter where Morwenna de Lacy—the wicked, arrogant, overbearing fiancée of the Duke of the North—finally met her end.

The tea was poisoned.

It was a rare, tasteless toxin derived from an exotic nightshade. If Morwenna took that cup from Seraphina's delicate hands and took even a single sip, her throat would swell and close up within three minutes. She would suffocate on the perfectly manicured grass while the high society watched in horror, cementing Seraphina's tragic trauma and propelling the rest of the plot forward.

Don't drink it, Morwenna’s mind screamed. Just push it away!

But as her eyes darted to the side, her stomach plummeted.

Standing just a few feet away, leaning casually against a marble pillar, was a tall man in an immaculate navy-blue military uniform dripping with gold medals. Crown Prince Lucien Valmont. His sharp, predatory eyes were locked directly on her, a dark smirk playing on his lips.

In the brutal aristocratic hierarchy of the Aethelgard Empire, refusing a gift explicitly endorsed by the Emperor—like this highly prized imported tea—was considered a direct insult to the royal family. It was an act of high treason. If she slapped the cup away, or even politely declined to drink it, Lucien would have her arrested on the spot. The penalty for insulting the Crown was the guillotine.

Drink it, and die quietly. Refuse it, and die publicly.

"Lady Morwenna?" Seraphina tilted her head, her golden curls shifting perfectly over her shoulder. "Is something wrong? You look terribly pale."

A few tables over, Lady Mirabelle Viremont leaned to whisper into the ear of a baroness, her eyes gleaming with malice behind a painted silk fan. The vultures were already circling. They all hated Morwenna. They were waiting for her to snap, to throw a tantrum, to give them a reason to tear her apart.

Morwenna’s fingers twitched against her heavy silk skirts. Her mind raced, violently sifting through the dialogue she had memorized, searching for a loophole in the narrative. There was none. The original author had written this scene as a flawless, inescapable trap to kill off the villainess.

She slowly reached out, her lace-gloved fingers trembling just a fraction as they brushed the warm porcelain of the saucer.

I don't want to die. I just got here. I refuse to die for some lazy plot device!

Suddenly, a high-pitched, metallic sound pierced her ears.

DING!

Morwenna physically flinched, her shoulders jerking up. She looked around wildly, but no one else had moved. Lady Mirabelle was still whispering. Seraphina’s angelic smile remained fixed in place. The Crown Prince was still watching her with that arrogant smirk. No one else had heard it.

Right in front of Morwenna’s face, hovering in the empty air between her and the poisoned tea, a translucent blue holographic screen snapped into existence. The text glowed with a mocking, neon brightness that made her eyes water.

[System Initialization Complete.]

[Welcome, User. The Audience Satisfaction System (A.S.S.) is now online.]

[You have transmigrated into a restricted narrative zone. The Gods are watching. Give them a good show.]