THE VILLIAN FELL FOR ME

Chapter Three

( Stay Away From the Villain)

For several agonizing seconds, I completely forgot how to breathe.

Prince Cassian Valerius stood only a few paces away. The villain. The Blood Prince. The man whose blood-soaked face had haunted the final paragraph of the novel I was reading right before I died. Except he wasn't supposed to be here—not yet, and he certainly wasn't supposed to be looking at me with that intense, calculating focus.

I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice steady. "I don't understand."

Cassian's expression didn't chip. "I asked why people believe you're dead."

"I don't know."

"Interesting," he murmured, his dead silver eyes tracking over me once more.

I resisted the burning urge to take a massive step backward. "What are you doing here?" The question slipped past my lips before I could stop it.

One dark eyebrow lifted slightly. "You ask a prince what he is doing in a noble's courtyard?"

I immediately regretted opening my mouth. "I meant—"

"I know what you meant," he interrupted. His tone wasn't angry, which somehow made the hair on the back of my neck stand up even more. Cassian glanced past my shoulder toward the dark windows of the manor. "Your uncle invited me. Lord Edmund."

Of course. My wonderful uncle. The man who had spent the entire afternoon warning me to stay away from the second prince had completely neglected to mention that the man himself was dropping by for a social call.

I forced a tight, artificial smile. "Then I suppose you should go speak with him."

"I already did."

"Then..." I searched desperately for a follow-up, a polite dismissal, anything to get him out of my face. Nothing came.

Cassian watched me struggle in silence, and then, completely unexpectedly, a faint smile touched his lips. It wasn't the cruel, unhinged smirk described at the end of the novel. It was smaller, almost genuinely amused. "You seem nervous."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm just tired," I deflected, crossing my arms. "You were staring at me."

"I was trying to determine whether you're real."

The words left my mouth before I could filter them, and they actually made him pause. I instantly wished I could swallow them back down. Cassian stepped closer, bridging the distance until I could see a tiny, faint scar running just beneath his left eye, a detail the character illustrations had never captured.

"Am I?" he asked quietly.

I stared at him, my mind short-circuiting. "What?"

"Real. I assure you," he said, his voice dropping an octave, "I am."

I flinched backward, and he stopped instantly. The dark amusement faded from his face, replaced by a sharp, sudden shift in his focus. He caught the exact moment my composure fractured.

"What?" I frowned, trying to look defensive.

"Nothing."

"You looked frightened."

"I'm not frightened of you," I lied. It was a massive, glaring lie. He knew it, I knew it, and probably the entire estate knew it.

Cassian's gaze remained locked onto mine for one heavy beat. Then, he said quietly, "You should be."

A visceral chill ran straight down my spine. There it was. The Cassian from the text. Cold, lethal, and completely unpredictable. The man who would eventually burn the capital to the ground.

I forced my eyes away from his. "I have to go."

"Where?"

"Inside."

"Why?"

"Because it's cold."

"It's not."

"It is to me."

He almost smiled again. Almost. But before he could press further, a frantic voice cut through the courtyard from the main doors. "Your Highness!" A royal guard appeared beneath the stone archway, his armor clinking. "His Majesty's carriage is ready to depart."

Cassian didn't break eye contact immediately. He kept his silver gaze anchored to mine while the guard waited anxiously at the perimeter. Finally, he turned to leave, but stopped to look back over his heavy traveling cloak. "Evan."

I froze. "Yes?"

"I'll see you at the banquet."

My stomach did a violent drop. "I thought you said—"

"I did," he broke in, his lips curving into a faint line. "That doesn't mean I won't."

Then he turned and melted into the evening shadows of the archway. Only after his footsteps completely faded did I finally release the breath I’d been holding.

"Three days," I whispered into the empty courtyard. I had thought I had seventy-two hours to figure out a survival strategy. Instead, the final boss had already tracked me down to my house. I was beginning to suspect I was catastrophically bad at staying out of trouble.

That night, sleep was an absolute impossibility. I lay wide awake in the dark, staring blankly at the timber ceiling. Every single time I drifted off and closed my eyes, those silver eyes flashed in my mind.

The problem was that Cassian wasn't acting like the character in the novel. In the original story, he barely even glanced at Evan Ardent until the wine incident at the banquet. But now? He’d sought me out. He knew my name, he knew the rumors about my fever, and he claimed my uncle had personally invited him. Something was deeply, dangerously wrong with the timeline.

I sat up, the cold moonlight spilling across the heavy blankets. If this world was going to follow the book's architecture, then my only real weapon was plot knowledge. I grabbed a blank notebook from the desk, lit a small candle stub, and wrote a title at the top of the first page: RULES FOR SURVIVAL.

Beneath it, I scribbled: Rule One: Don't trust anyone. I stared at it, then aggressively scratched it out. Too broad. I rewrote it: Rule One: Don't trust the royal family. Better.

Then I penned: Rule Two: Don't interfere with the original plot. I paused, the ink pooling under my quill. I’d already completely ruined that one just by standing in the courtyard. I crossed it out with a sigh and wrote a replacement: Rule Two: Stop making things worse. I nodded to myself. Practical.

Finally, I wrote: Rule Three: Stay away from Cassian Valerius. I underlined it three distinct times, then added a messy postscript: Especially Cassian.

I leaned back against the pillows. Simple. I didn't need to make friends, I didn't need political power, and I definitely didn't need a high-stakes romance. I just needed to stay alive. My eyes drifted toward the dark window glass. Somewhere out there in the capital city, Cassian was probably plotting a rebellion or executing a corrupt lord. I caught myself wondering if he was actually sleeping, and the thought instantly irritated me. Why was I suddenly trying to rationalize the villain?

I shook my head violently to clear it and slammed the notebook shut. "No. Cassian is the villain." The words sounded small and ridiculous in the quiet bedroom, but they had to be true. They had to be.

The next morning, a chorus of shouting shattered the peace of the manor. I sat up instantly as frantic footsteps rushed down the corridor.

"Master Evan!" Mara burst through the door without knocking, her face completely drained of color.

I jumped out of bed. "What happened? Is the house under attack?"

"The horses are gone," she panted, clutching her apron. "Three of them. Stolen."

"What?!" I threw on a loose coat and followed her down the stone stairwell at a run.

Down in the courtyard, the heavy timber stable doors were hanging wide open. Two stable boys were furiously arguing by the fence while Lord Edmund stood between them, his face purple with rage.

"What happened here?" I asked, breathing hard.

My uncle whipped around to face me. "Someone slipped past the watch and stole three of our best horses right out of the stalls during the night."

"Could it have been local bandits?"

"From inside a fortified noble estate?" Edmund shook his head, his teeth clenched. "Impossible."

I walked past him, looking at the muddy ground near the entrance. Deep, fresh hoofprints cut into the earth, tracking directly toward the eastern road. Three horses. Moving fast. I stared at the tracks, a sudden, cold sense of familiarity washing over me.

The book. In the original novel, three horses were stolen from House Ardent shortly before the Crown Renewal Ceremony. The author had glossed over it in a single, throwaway sentence, so I hadn't thought it mattered. But it did. It mattered because one of those exact horses was later used by the assassin who targeted Evan.

My heart began a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The timeline wasn't just changing out of order—the original plot beats were still trying to happen, just with completely different contexts.

My uncle stepped into my line of sight, gripping my shoulder. "Evan. You are not leaving this estate. Not until the banquet carriage is ready."

"Why? Because of a few horse thieves?"

"Because someone may be actively watching you," he hissed under his breath.

"Who?" I pressed, but before he could answer, a set of slow, measured, completely recognizable footsteps echoed against the stone behind us.

I turned around, my stomach sinking into my boots. Cassian Valerius was standing right in the stable entrance. Again. He wore his heavy black coat, his silver eyes scanning the chaos with perfect, infuriating calm.

"Why are you here?" I blurted out.

Cassian looked right past me, his eyes fixing onto my uncle. "His Majesty asked me to personally investigate the breach of security regarding the missing livestock."

Edmund’s expression tightened into a hard mask. "You didn't mention you'd be handling local theft, Your Highness."

"I wasn't aware I needed permission to inspect an open crime scene," Cassian replied smoothly, his gaze sliding back down to me. He walked past my uncle, crouching down directly over the muddy tracks by my boots. His long fingers lightly touched the edge of a footprint. "Three horses. Taken in the dead of night."

I swallowed hard. "Yes."

"Interesting," he murmured, looking up at me from his crouch.

"What?"

"You knew there were exactly three before I even stated the count."

My blood went entirely liquid-cold. I opened my mouth to explain, but my throat completely locked up. Cassian stood up slowly, the dark amusement vanishing from his features. He was studying me now, his eyes tracking the micro-movements of my face. "How exactly did you know the count, Evan?"

"I... I saw the stable," I stammered.

"No." His voice was deadly quiet, cutting through the morning air. "That's not what I asked."

I forced myself to draw a breath, desperate to find a logical way out. "I counted the empty stalls from the doorway."

Cassian glanced back toward the interior of the barn, his lips thinning. "From all the way out here? Through a blind angle?"

I cursed myself into oblivion. The stalls were completely blocked from where I was standing. He noticed everything. Every single slip-up. Cassian took a deliberate step toward me, and I instinctively took a matching step back. That weird, unreadable expression flared in his silver eyes again, not raw suspicion, but a deep, intense curiosity. He wanted to solve me. And that was the most dangerous thing that could happen, because I couldn't exactly tell him that I’d read his entire tragic biography on a phone screen at 3 a.m.

"I guessed," I said flatly, bracing myself.

Cassian stared at me for a long, silent beat, and then that faint smile returned. "You are a truly terrible liar, Evan Ardent." My stomach sank. He leaned down slightly, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me. "But you are becoming incredibly interesting."

He brushed past my shoulder into the stable. The second he was out of earshot, my uncle grabbed my forearm in a vice grip. "Do you remember what I told you yesterday?"

I looked at his white knuckles. "Stay away from him."

"Yes!" Edmund hissed. "Then why is he constantly in your space?"

"I don't know!" I whispered back, looking over my shoulder. Cassian was currently speaking in low tones with one of his personal guards, but he looked back over his shoulder right as I turned. Our eyes locked, and his lips curved into a subtle, mocking line. I ripped my gaze away instantly.

My uncle let out a heavy, defeated sigh. "This is exactly what I was terrified of. You've caught his attention, Evan."

"And that's bad?"

Edmund's face went completely grim. "For everyone involved."

By that afternoon, the walls of the manor felt like a cage. I decided right then and there to leave, not just the estate, but the entire kingdom of Avarion. If the plot was collapsing, there was no logical reason to stay and wait for a poisoned glass of wine.

I packed a small traveling pack with everything I could scavenge: coins, a change of clothes, dried rations, and a small, balanced hunting knife. I stared at the steel blade for a second, realizing I’d never held a weapon in my life. Reincarnation apparently came with weird survival instincts.

I was halfway down the servant's corridor, heading for the rear exit, when a smooth voice echoed from the shadows.

"Running away?"

I froze mid-step, the handle of my pack slipping slightly in my sweaty palm. Slowly, I turned my head. Cassian was leaning casually against the stone wall of the corridor. Alone. Again.

"Do you make a habit of just manifesting behind people?" I snapped, my heart flipping.

"Only the interesting ones."

"I'm not interesting."

"You've said that twice now." He pushed off the stone wall, stepping into the dim light of the hallway. "Because it's true."

He stopped a few feet away, his eyes dropping to the bundle in my hand. "What are you carrying?"

"Nothing."

"That is very clearly a traveling sack."

"I meant nothing important," I corrected quickly.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"You are currently standing in your home."

"Another home," I muttered, shifting my weight. "Somewhere far away from here."

Cassian stopped directly in front of me, cutting off the path to the door. "You really dislike answering questions, don't you?"

"Neither do you."

"I didn't realize we shared so many traits."

"We don't."

His expression softened, the hard edge of his jaw relaxing just a fraction. "Perhaps not."

For some reason, that quiet admission threw me completely off balance. It was worse than an argument. I tried to push past his left shoulder, and to my surprise, he actually stepped aside. He didn't raise a hand to stop me. But as my shoulder brushed past his cloak, his voice cut through the quiet hallway.

"If you cross the boundary lines now, you'll be a corpse before you even reach the eastern gate."

I stopped dead in my tracks, my fingers tightening around the straps of my bag. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I know these roads. I know who patrols them."

"You think someone is waiting out there to ambush me?" I turned around to face him fully.

Cassian’s face had gone entirely serious, the mocking tone completely vanished. "I know someone is."

"Who?" I demanded.

He looked down at my traveling pack, then back up to my face. "That is exactly what I am trying to figure out."

I stared at him, my mind spinning out of control. "Why do you even care what happens to a minor noble?"

For the first time since I’d met him, Cassian didn't have a fast, clever retort. He just held my gaze, something deep and entirely unreadable passing through those silver eyes.

"I don't know yet," he said quietly.

Then he turned and walked down the hall, leaving me entirely alone in the dim corridor. My escape plan was totally ruined. I looked down at the knife in my pack, then toward the empty space where the villain had just been standing.

Three days ago, I had written a comment wishing that someone in the book would just try to understand the tragic villain. Now, that exact villain was the only thing standing between me and a death sentence. And the most terrifying realization of all wasn't that he was a monster... it was the horrible, sinking feeling that he was actually trying to keep me alive.

I hated that possibility. Because if Cassian Valerius wasn't the heartless monster from the pages of The Crown of Ashes, then I had absolutely no clue who to trust in this world. And the worse was I had no idea what I was going to do if I actually started trusting him.