When I awoke to the sound of a crackling fire, my heart raced. Was the house burning?  

No… it was a fireplace.

A large one, with thick logs of wood, surrounded by fine stone craftsmanship. Feeling around, I realized I sat in a giant red velvet and antique armchair.

Where was I?

The thought of waking somewhere foreign sent tremors through my body as the safety of my room left me.  

“Pardon me,” said a shy voice beside me.  

I turned, eyes wide, and saw a beautiful woman who couldn’t have been more than a year older than me. She wore an old-timey maid uniform, complete with black dress and white apron, bonnet, stockings, and laced gloves. Her hair, a platinum blonde so light that it neared white, tied up neatly in a bun. She blinked rapidly, her gray eyes not settling on me but for a moment.

But she seemed so familiar.  

I jumped up. She was exactly how I imagined the character Helen to look and sound in the book I had just read. 

Could this be a dream?

“Per your request,” Helen said, bowing her head and handing over a glass, “I have fetched some water for you, to help with your headache, my Lady.”  

My Lady? Nobody ever called me anything outside of my name, Lily.  

What in the world?  

Unsure of what was going on and not wanting to seem rude, I accepted the water.  

“Oh, thank you,” I said.  

Helen recoiled as if I were about to strike her. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Helen blinked twice at me with her mouth open ever so slightly. She appeared at a loss for words.  

“It’s nothing, my Lady!” she exclaimed with a big gulp. “I’m quite grateful for your kindness!”  

The way she said it made me feel as though I hadn’t ever treated her kindly before.

But then again, how could I have treated her in any sort of way? Helen was nothing more than a character from a book! 

I figured I must be dreaming, so I simply went along with everything that was happening. I sipped at the water, and it tasted so real, more real than any water I’d ever had in my parent’s condo, where we drank from the tap. No, the water Helen handed me tasted rich, clean, and as if it were somehow fresh.  

Was this really a dream?  

As I brought the glass down, I noticed the black polish on my fingernails—a color I would never wear.

I looked down. My skin was paler, and a lacey black dress with a crimson trim fell over a new, curvy body.  

My mouth went dry. What happened to me?

I cast my glance at a mirror towards the end of the room, hanging between another set of twin armchairs, and too far to catch my full reflection in.  

But the pale, blurry image I saw in the mirror’s reflection proved something was wrong.

I rose, noticing I stood taller than before. In the hallways at school, people always towered over me, but now? Now I towered over Helen. With long strides, I guided myself toward the mirror.  

My heart skipped a beat.  

My raven hair, long and straight, parted down the middle. Hazel eyes looked back at me with a reddish hue, making me almost seem evil. My face, while immensely beautiful, was not my own.  I appeared to be roughly the same age, though maybe a year or two older.

“My Lady,” Helen murmured at my side. “You’re shaking. Might I fetch you a shawl, or perhaps a blanket?”   

I shook my head and blinked stupidly.  

“Helen,” I said, “what is my name?”  

Helen laughed and played with the hem of her clean white apron.  

“Forgive me,” Helen replied, “I’m not sure if this is in jest.”  

I stared Helen right in the eyes and grabbed her by the shoulders. She felt real. Her fear seemed real.

I noticed bruises on her arms, so I quickly let go of her.  

“Please,” I said, “tell me my name.”  

Helen took a brief moment, assessed my intent, then said, “Why, you are Lady Vanessa Blake, daughter to the Kingdom’s Beta, Grey Blake, and Dame of this manor in the land of Oakheart.” 

Wait, but that meant… 

I tortured Erik, the man whom I loved so dearly. The man whom I had fallen asleep dreaming about. I, or rather Vanessa, had brought him agonizing pain and misery in nearly every chapter of the book.

It hit me like a punch in the face.  

I stepped closer to the mirror. It was no dream—I had somehow awoken as a character in the novel I had been obsessed with.  

And not just any character. 

A villain! 

My mind flashed to a climactic scene late in the story, where Vanessa stood cliffside beside Erik, the novels attractive male lead and hero. Gashes covered his shirtless body from her many sword strikes. In that scene, Vanessa shoved Erik off the cliff, then laughed as he screamed all the way down to the rocky abyss.  

Worst of all, another memory surfaced of Vanessa shackling Erik’s wrists behind his back and ordering him to be imprisoned in the dungeon of her—no, my— father’s estate. I recalled feeding him only a single small piece of stale bread once every other day. The bread being so hard, he had to suck on it just to dampen the dough enough to be chewed.  

I remembered smiling when he did so. 

“Tell me,” I said to Helen—I had to know what part of the plot we were in. “Have all our barrels of ale been removed from the lower chambers?” 

Helen glanced at me sheepishly.  

“Yes, Lady,” she replied. “The lower chambers have been prepared for your prisoner, per your wishes.”  

I nearly fell over, and my heart weighed heavy with the destructive decisions Vanessa made wherever she went. If the ale had been removed, then she would have begun her torture on Erik. I prayed that she hadn’t gotten very far and that there could be hope for me to sway Vanessa’s reputation.  

Her cruelty was unacceptable, and I needed to right all her wrongs.  

“Lead me to the lower chambers,” I told Helen, my voice raspy and shaking.  

By the light of a candle in a brass candelabra, Helen led me through the manor. I ignored the tapestries covering the walls depicting images of giant wolves fighting off armies of men with swords and shields. Once we arrived, Helen and I descended stone steps into a dark basement.  

The words written in the book I had read could not describe the wickedness that I witnessed. I leaned on the stone wall to keep myself upright and held back the urge to retch.

Inside a barred iron cage, Erik lay in the fetal position, naked on the cold stone with nothing more than a bucket in the corner.  

Guilt swept over me, as if I had been the one to turn the key and lock him inside.  In a way, I had.

Then, Erik lifted his head up enough for me to see the bags under his eyes and his sunk in cheeks.  

“You can’t contain me, Vanessa,” he growled, tiredly glaring at me with a rage I knew to exist only inside the pages of a novel.  

My heart stood still.  

It was the same look Erik gave Vanessa right before he thrust his sword through her heart and ended her life.  

I laid a hand over my chest.  

If I didn’t make this right, Erik would kill me.

I looked once more into Erik’s angry eyes… and fainted.