How To Tame Six Husbands

I Know How This Ends

They say the dead don’t get second chances. They’re wrong.

I have thirty days before my sister pours nightshade into my cup.

I don’t know how time broke open to let me crawl back through, and frankly, I don’t care. The gods can keep their cosmic mysteries. I’m alive, breathing unpoisoned air, with the memory of my own blood still hot on my tongue.

The rules of the game have changed.

Lucienne, my sweet, weeping little sister, is a viper wearing a saint’s face. And my husbands? This time, I won’t let them become casualties of the rotten dynasty we’re trapped in. Not before I tear it down myself.

“Your Highness, are you feeling better?”

Talia’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. She watches me with the same anxious expression she always wears when I do something unexpected. Given the fever from my shoulder wound, she probably thinks I’ve finally lost my mind.

The seventeenth of the Month of Plums.

In my first life, this was the day of my forty-second assassination attempt. The day a blade carved a jagged wound into my left shoulder—one that might not have struck so deeply if either of my husbands had bothered to protect me during the imperial parade.

Instead, they stood behind me on the balcony, watching with dead eyes as the assassin struck.

“I’m fine, Talia.” I keep my gaze on my reflection in the silver vanity mirror. “Why haven’t you gone to your quarters?”

“I couldn’t leave your side tonight, Your Highness. Not after what happened at the plaza.”

Talia. The only person in this wretched palace who doesn’t deserve a knife in the back.

My eyes drift toward the silver kettle steaming on the side table. My stomach twists. For an instant, the phantom taste of bitter almonds and copper floods my mouth, and I’m back on the cold floor, clawing at the carpet while Lucy steps over me.

“Throw that out.”

Talia freezes, her hands hovering over the porcelain cups. “Pardon?”

“The tea. Throw it out.”

“But Your Highness, these are the imported leaves you like. They’re from the eastern provinces—”

“I said throw it out.”

My voice cuts through the room. I bite the inside of my cheek, forcing myself to breathe. I’ve never been particularly patient, but Talia has always endured more of my temper than she deserves.

The memory of that cup is simply too fresh.

“No more tea in my chambers,” I say, lowering my voice. “Or anywhere near me. Understand?”

Talia hesitates before bowing her head. “As you wish, Your Highness. I’ll clear it away at once.”

I turn back to the mirror, studying my sharp violet eyes.

“My husbands. Where are they?”

I ask because I remember what happens tonight.

A scandal erupted around one of them, and in my first life, I didn’t bother investigating until morning. By then, I’d found him kneeling outside the palace gates, his arms shackled in glowing runic chains designed to suppress his nonhuman strength.

The accusation? He had broken into Princess Lucienne’s private bathing wing.

At least, that was the story she fed the court. And I, in my arrogance, had swallowed every word.

“Shall I send someone to check on them?” Talia asks.

It’s the first time in years I’ve asked about my husbands without demanding they be dragged before me in chains.

“No. Summon Jarrett.”

Jarrett is one of my most useful informants, though hardly the most discreet. He knows nearly every secret buried beneath the palace’s polished floors, largely because he can’t keep his mouth shut. I bribe him when necessary, let him believe he’s clever, and occasionally feed him false information to test the court’s gossip network.

You don’t discard a spy who doesn’t realize how much he’s revealing.

Minutes later, the oak doors open.

Jarrett enters with none of his usual boyish smirk. His face is pale, his expression rigid, as though he’s seen a ghost.

I don’t give him time to speak.

“Where did they take him?”

In my first life, I found my husband the following morning, covered in fresh cuts and dried blood. He’d endured a midnight whipping, a punishment I’d personally doubled in my fury over his supposed offense.

What I hadn’t known was that he was innocent.

By the time I learned the truth weeks later, the damage was done. Worse, I hadn’t cared enough to undo it.

Not this time.

I see the trap now. I know why Lucy arranged this little scandal, and I’m going to tear her carefully written script apart.

Jarrett swallows, adjusting his stiff collar. “The dungeons, Your Highness. The lower holding cells near the inner canal. They took Lord Seraphin down there less than ten minutes ago.”

Seraphin Vane.

The Siren Archduke possessed a voice capable of shattering stone or charming a god. Delicately built and bound to me by a marriage he had never wanted, he wore a heavy gold collar around his throat, a constant reminder of his captivity.

The court treated him like a dangerous exotic pet. Lucy saw him as an easy target.

Her private bathing wing was heavily warded and guarded, situated on the opposite side of the palace from the Siren quarters. There was no sensible reason for Seraphin to be there.

The accusation was convenient. It would paint me as a tyrant unable to control my own household while giving Lucy another opportunity to break my husband’s spirit.

“Who authorized his arrest?”

My voice drops, and Jarrett instinctively steps back.

“The Grand Chancellor, Your Highness,” he stammers. “He claims he caught Lord Seraphin leaving Lady Lucienne’s bathing wing. The guards are preparing the runic chains, and the midnight flogging is scheduled to begin shortly.”

Grand Chancellor Wu. Of course.

The old vulture had been working with Lucy, manufacturing scandals to weaken my political standing. In my first life, I had been too consumed by my own suspicions to recognize the hands guiding them.

I’d heard the accusation, assumed the worst, and reached for the whip myself.

This time, a thin smile touches my lips.

“Prepare my velvet cloak, Talia.”

Jarrett stares at me. “Your Highness? You’re going to the dungeons yourself? At this hour?”

I glance at him, amusement flickering in my eyes.

“Why? Are you worried I’ll miss the show?”

“No, of course not! It’s just that you usually prefer to let prisoners rot until morning.”

“Times change.” I sweep past him toward the door. “And so do my priorities.”

The corridor is cold and dim, the hem of my dark gown whispering across the stone.

In my first life, I’d walked these halls like a prisoner, forever searching for assassins in the shadows, terrified of losing the crown I’d bled to protect.

Tonight, I have nothing to fear from the dark.

I know what waits ahead. I know who is pulling the strings, who is holding the knife, and who will gladly watch me fall.

Grand Chancellor Wu expects an enraged Crown Princess who will condemn her siren husband without question. Lucienne expects her dear older sister to play the villain, just as she always has.

They’ve prepared a stage for a tyrant.

How unfortunate for them.

The devil has decided to rewrite the script.