The headache arrived first. It was not the dull, manageable kind that aspirin could solve, but a splitting, blinding pain that felt as if my skull were being cleaved in two. I tried to lift a hand to my forehead, but my arm felt strange, too light and disconcertingly small.

Wrong. Something is very wrong.

I forced my eyes open. Ornate ceiling frescoes swam into focus above me, where painted clouds and golden cherubs floated across a pale blue sky. The artwork was exquisite, the kind you would see in European palaces, not in my cramped studio apartment. My apartment. I had been there, had I not? I remembered sorting through returned books, making tea, and settling in for the evening. The memory fragmented like shattered glass.

I sat up too quickly, and the room spun violently. My hands caught the silk sheets beneath me, which were far too luxurious for anything I had ever owned. I stared at my hands. These were not mine. They were tiny and soft, unblemished by years of paper cuts and coffee stains. They were a child’s hands.

Panic, cold and sharp, clawed up my throat.

I scrambled out of the massive canopy bed, my feet barely reaching the floor. Everything in the room was too big, too grand, too utterly wrong. Across the room, a full-length mirror stood in an ornate golden frame. I stumbled toward it, my legs unsteady and unfamiliar, as if they belonged to someone else.

The reflection that greeted me stole what little breath I had left.

A child stared back at me. She was five years old, maybe six, with platinum blonde hair that cascaded past her shoulders in soft waves. Her eyes were her most striking feature, a vivid amethyst that seemed to shimmer with an inner light. She wore a silk nightgown embroidered with silver thread, and her face was pale with a profound, soul-deep shock.

This isn't real. This can't be real.

I reached up, and the child in the mirror did the same. I touched my face, my hair, and my small shoulders. The reflection mimicked every movement perfectly, a flawless, terrifying echo. My knees buckled, and I sank to the plush carpet. The physical evidence was undeniable, but my mind refused to accept it. I was twenty-eight years old. I was a librarian. I had student loans and a cat named Fitzgerald and a mother who called every Sunday.

Had. The word echoed with the finality of a closing door. Past tense.

Because I had died, had I not? The memory rushed back with sudden, brutal clarity. I had been crossing the street after work, lost in thought about the novel I had just finished reading. There was the blare of a horn, the glare of blinding headlights, and the shocking finality of impact. Then there was nothing.

Until now.

I forced myself to breathe, to think. The room around me was not just wealthy, it was imperial. The architecture, the decorations, and even the quality of the light streaming through the stained glass windows spoke of a fantasy world. It was a world I recognized. My stomach dropped with the weight of cold dread.

No. Please, no.

I looked at the mirror again, really looked this time. Platinum blonde hair. Violet eyes. A child in a palace. The details clicked into place like a lock opening, and with them came a flood of foreign memories. They were not my memories, but they belonged to the body I now inhabited.

Princess Charlotte de Valerius.

The name echoed through my mind, bringing with it fragments of a life I had never lived. It brought visions of a cold, empty nursery, and of servants who whispered when they thought she could not hear. It brought the absence of a father whose face she had barely seen, and whose attention she had never earned.

And I knew why I recognized all of this.

Three days ago, in my real life, I had finished a novel. It was a fantasy romance with a tragic twist, the kind that left you aching for the characters. The Emperor's Unwanted Heir. The story had been beautifully written and utterly devastating, telling the tale of a forgotten princess who was executed by her own father at seventeen. The opening lines had haunted me enough that I had memorized them: "Princess Charlotte de Valerius died on a cold morning in autumn, her violet eyes wide with disbelief as her father's sword fell. She had spent her whole life trying to earn his love. In the end, she earned only his executioner's blade."

I pressed my small hands to my mouth, swallowing a scream. I was that princess. I was Charlotte. And unless I changed something, drastically and soon, I had twelve years until my father killed me.

The weight of that knowledge crushed down on me, heavier than any physical burden. I was five years old in a world that followed the rules of a novel, where my fate was already written in permanent ink. Emperor Valerius, my father, was cursed to hate me. The dark magic that stole his memories of my mother had left him with only resentment for the daughter who reminded him of what he had lost.

Nothing the original Charlotte did had mattered. She had tried to be good, to be invisible, to be perfect. She had died anyway.

But I was not the original Charlotte. I had something she never had. I knew how the story ended.

I pushed myself to my feet, my child's legs trembling but holding steady. My reflection looked back at me with those impossible eyes, and I saw something the original Charlotte had never possessed.

Determination.

I would not die at seventeen. I would not spend twelve years walking toward my own execution. I had read the novel, I knew the players, and I understood the plot. I knew, and knowledge was power. I just had to figure out how to use it before the final chapter closed on my life.