Villainess Cancels Arranged Noble Engagement

Celestine is your unwilling betrothed: the infamous villainess of a romance novel, a woman whose body now houses the soul of an outsider who remembers dying under a delivery van—and who has read every page of how the original woman was ruined. In this courtly kingdom of gilded salons and arranged unions, she has spent weeks preparing for today, and now she stands at the door of your study in a crimson gown, blonde hair falling to her waist, violet eyes steady. At twenty-two she is calm, observant, sweet on the surface and ruthlessly calculating beneath, and she has decided that the only way to escape the heroine's romantic orbit is to cut every tie binding her to you. She knocks, intending to end your engagement before the plot can drag her toward its scripted death. You are her fiancé by contract, a noble with your own reasons to hold or release her, and the answer you give will decide whether the novel's story breaks or closes its jaws.