The first thing Clara could feel when her senses started coming back to her was pain. A heavy, relentless headache, as if her brain was being crushed by a hydraulic press like those satisfying videos she spent far too long watching. Her whole body felt sluggish, and her recollection was hazy—there was the celebration, and Warren, and after that it was all a blur. She’d barely cracked her eyes open, yet it felt as if the light was stabbing through.

  She found herself lying on a wooden floor. It was stained red and peppered with white blurs, nothing more than tiny dots. They looked like… pills? But she wasn’t on any medication. Why would there be—

  And then she remembered. The trip to Boston. The turbulence. The plane nosediving. Clara’s head hurt so much that she flinched.

  I survived. But how? And where was she now?

  She opened her eyes fully, and the pain got so bad she thought she was going to faint. But the overwhelming brightness slowly dimmed, and the world began to come into focus.

  The room was tiny, smaller even than her apartment’s guest bedroom. There wasn’t much to speak of in terms of decoration—a plain bed, a single stool tucked under a small desk, and a wardrobe. The only thing of note was a large golden key hung on the wall as if it were an idol.

  She tried to push herself up, but immediately felt something sticky and wet as her hand touched the floor.

  Her gaze fell with trepidation.

  There was blood; spatters of it scattered around the wood, like someone had been coughing it repeatedly. Before she knew it, the memories started flooding—her parents’ blood splashing onto her face, the taste of it on her tongue—and a scream tore itself from her throat. She gagged as her shaking hands tried to wipe off the blood.

  Clara heard quick, purposeful footsteps outside, then the door slammed open with enough force to rattle the frame.

  “Miss Casewell, what is the meaning of this?”

  A tall woman stood in the doorway in a long black dress that looked like it belonged in a period drama. Her gray hair was pulled so tightly it could have doubled as a facelift, and her lips were twisted with disgust.

  “As head maid, I demand an explanation.” Her voice could have etched glass.

  Clara stared at the woman, struggling to process what she was witnessing. The dress, the way she spoke. And behind her, through the open door, Clara could see a stone corridor lit by what looked like gas lamps.

  “I—” Clara’s voice died in her throat. She tried again. “What—where am I? What happened? The plane—”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. She stepped into the room slowly, and her severe gaze swept over the blood, the open bottle and the pills, and then Clara, as if she were conducting an inspection.

  “The plane,” she repeated. “Is that how youngsters refer to Heaven these days? I can never keep up with the language.” She crouched down—not too close to Clara, but near enough to pick up one of the white pills carefully between two fingers. “What have you done, you foolish girl?”

  Heaven? What the heck was this old lady talking about?

  Nothing about this made any sense. But if there was one thing Clara had trained for, it was bringing reason into nonsense.

  She took a deep breath.

  Any good attorney could tell you where to start. Assess the situation. Look at the evidence. Then draw a line to the most logical, simplest conclusion.

  First, this was definitely not a hospital. The head maid’s clothes weren’t modern—and even the concept of a head maid felt out of place. And she seemed to think Clara had poisoned herself. Those were the facts.

  As for the logical conclusion… Fuck if I know.

  “I didn’t—” Clara started, but the woman cut her off with a sharp gesture, raising her hand.

  “Save your excuses. I am far too busy for your theatrics.” She stood, brushing off her dress as if Clara’s apparent suicide attempt was a personal inconvenience on a busy day. “I should have known when you requested yesterday off. ‘A headache’, you said. ‘Just need to rest’, you said. And instead, you decide to do this. Do you not realize what a privilege it is to work for this household? So many young ladies would give everything to be here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clara managed. Her head was pounding worse than ever. “I was on a plane. There was turbulence. I think we crashed, and—”

  “Enough with the delusions.” The head maid’s voice cracked like a whip. “Do you wish to escape from your trial that badly? We must all bear the consequences of our sins, Miss Casewell. Even you and Lady Iris.”

  Sins? Lady Iris?

  Clara’s blood ran cold. She looked down at herself properly for the first time. She was wearing a dress—no, a uniform. Specifically, a black-and-white uniform with an apron. A classic maid outfit.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered.

  “I didn’t expect such blasphemy from you, foolish girl. You know better than most that Arcadia has no god but the Goddess; do not call on Heaven so lightly.” The head maid’s expression softened. “Now pull yourself together. You’re overdue in Lady Iris’s chambers, and a personal maid must always be presentable… and coherent.”

  Lady Iris’s personal maid?

  The head maid turned to leave, then stopped at the door.

  “Oh, and Clara? You ought to have had the decency to do this somewhere that wouldn’t stain the floorboards. The von Rhenias have enough troubles without a hysterical servant adding to them.”

  The door closed with a definitive thud.

  Another deep breath. This wasn’t the first time Clara had dealt with pressure. She stood up without leaning on her hands this time.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Assess the evidence. Don’t overthink.

  A new fact: this was the world of My Fair Villainess: A Maid’s Guide to Social Climbing, and she had somehow taken the place of the titular maid. Therefore, this must be a dream. A hallucination. Maybe the plane was still tumbling down right now.

  If that conclusion were correct, it meant that Clara was still headed towards her inevitable demise. And that whatever was happening here was a figment of her imagination, a brief reprieve before her end. She thought of Warren, who was heading to the same demise she was. He’d never make partner in the end—surprisingly, there was a pang of sadness at that thought.

  She sat down on the bed, careful not to stain it with the blood on her hands. She could feel the plushness of the sheets; it was so real she could almost convince herself this was some sort of reincarnation story, that she’d been granted a new lease on life. But that would be silly. Clara had never believed in the afterlife or in reincarnation—as far as she was concerned, life on Earth was all there was to it, which was why she’d always tried to make the most of it.

  But if her oxygen-deprived brain wanted to give her one small measure of comfort on her way to the end, who was she to deny it? A dramatic, high-stakes dream sure beats an empty void of nothingness.

  So, let us meet this Iris von Rhenia.

  After tidying up and leaving her room, Clara quickly discovered the von Rhenia estate was more of a palace than a house—it was almost as if she were wandering around Versailles. She remembered from the few chapters she’d read that Duke von Rhenia was the main noble in charge of the Kingdom’s eastern lands, so it made sense that they’d be wealthy.

  Fortunately, even if her mind was completely lost in the labyrinth of beeswax-scented marble halls and elaborate rooms, her legs seemed to know exactly where to go.

  Honestly, it’s kind of exciting. It’s like I’m inside a TV show. But there was something nagging her… Did dreams even have smells? She couldn’t remember.

  Clara must’ve passed by dozens of servants in outfits just like hers—all of whom avoided meeting her eyes, she noted—before she reached the staircase leading to the family’s private wing. It was flanked by two guards wearing crimson dress uniforms, with sheathed sabers at their waists. Fortunately, they seemed to recognize her as Iris’s maid and made no move to stop her as she went upstairs.

  The upper hall, before reaching the bedrooms, had a lavish sitting area surrounded by mirrors. She couldn’t imagine the expenses involved in procuring something like this with the technology of this time, but then again, the author of this particular story didn’t seem very concerned with verisimilitude.

  Clara took a moment to glance at herself and was pleased to note she looked much like always. The same hazel eyes, the same thin eyebrows, the same dark brown hair—though now it went all the way down her back, when before she used to cut it shoulder-length. Doesn’t look bad, though.

  Eventually, she reached a pair of mahogany doors that felt oddly familiar. Iris’s room. She took a deep breath. The Iris from the novel was haughty, arrogant, and impulsive. Even in just the twelve chapters that Clara had read, Iris had gotten herself in trouble more than once by acting out against the heroine-like baron’s daughter who’d been getting uncomfortably close to Iris’s fiancé (the Crown Prince, of course, because nobody’s written anything original since Homer). But Iris also had a soft side, and was warm and kind to those she saw as ‘on her side’.

  Clara knocked three times and let herself in, as if she’d done that a thousand times before. The room was several times larger than her own, and looked like a penthouse hotel suite, featuring a set of sofas near a fireplace, a table perfectly set up for a tea party, a wide velvet rug, and a large curtained king-size bed.

  And then there was Iris herself, sitting down at the center table and reading something while sipping on some tea.

  The first thing Clara noticed about the girl, who looked to be in her late teens, was her striking hair. It went halfway down her back, with drills dangling from the front and side—Clara had obviously known drills were a staple of villainesses in comics, but seeing such realistic drill hair, even just in a dream… She felt she was going crazy. And it was silver, which would have been just about the most unusual thing Clara had ever seen, if not for Iris’s deep amethyst eyes.

  She looked exactly as the story described her—almost the picture of a villainess.

  Almost.

  There was one decidedly un-villainess-like thing about her.

  As soon as she noticed Clara step into the room, Iris stood up, walked slowly towards her and hugged her. While in tears.

  “I-I’m so, so sorry, Clara,” Iris stammered, her voice shaky, and Clara felt a gentle warmth envelop her. “I heard what happened from Priscilla. I didn’t mean for it to get this bad. Please don’t hurt yourself…”

  Priscilla? That must be the head maid’s name, then. Who’d apparently told Iris about the—alleged—suicide attempt. But why?

  “Promise me, Clara.” Iris released the hug and grasped Clara’s hands within her own. Her floor-length burgundy dress, which featured short puffed sleeves and intricate golden patterns, had crumpled quite a bit. “Promise me you won’t do anything like that ever again.”

  Clara didn’t know why the original maid—Stella, if she recalled correctly—had attempted suicide, if that was indeed the case at all. Maybe it was just a convenient setup Clara's dream had architected. Regardless, Clara had no intention of ever doing anything like that; she’d enjoy these last moments to the fullest until the plane hit the water.

  “Of course, Lady Iris.” Clara nodded. Faced with such earnestness, she couldn’t help but want to console the young lady. “It will all be okay.”

  “It won’t.” Iris looked away. “I’ve spoken to Papa. The worst that’ll happen to me is expulsion from Claves and house arrest, but for you… They’re talking about execution. I shouldn’t have involved you. I’m really, really sorry.”

  Clara’s eyes widened. Execution? Couldn’t she have come up with a plot that’s just a tad more wholesome? In what little she’d read of the original story, Iris’s antics had never escalated beyond petty high school bullying in Claves Academy, where all important noble scions of the Kingdom spent their formative years (because, just like originality, worldbuilding is also dead). This seemed like quite a jump in stakes.

  “Execution, my lady? Why?”

  Iris’s face contorted in pain, and she looked genuinely angry. “I don’t know. I really don’t. The herbs were only supposed to give her a stomachache, but apparently Helena was deathly ill for weeks! They’re accusing us of trying to murder her! As if I wouldn’t have had more effective ways to kill her if that was what I wanted!”

  Ah. This was around when Clara had stopped reading, so she knew some of the background. There was a group project coming up, and Helena had cried like a baby due to being a tiny, innocent baron’s daughter who no one wanted to team up with, prompting the Crown Prince himself to offer her help. Iris couldn’t stand that, so she asked her maid—then Stella, now Clara—to prepare some herbs she could slip into Helena’s morning tea and take her out for presentation day.

  Not the most polished plan. But not attempted murder.

  “I must’ve made a mistake somewhere, used too much… I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear it. You must believe me, Clara.”

  Without really thinking, Clara took a brush from the dressing table near the window and started combing through Iris’s hair. Her hands knew what to do, even if her mind didn’t, moving through Iris’s hair with practiced ease. There was something about this mechanical action that felt like a comfortable routine. Perhaps it was Stella’s muscle memory? That sounded weird, but it somehow felt right.

  Iris’s hair was impossibly silky, finer than any hair Clara had ever touched, sliding through her fingers like water. But it had weight to it, too—weight that made it feel real. It was warm at the roots and cooler at the ends, and she could even feel each individual strand separating and reforming under her touch. There was a floral scent, too; maybe jasmine or moonflower—wait, does that mean America and Asia exist in this world? Do they have colonialism? Was there a Columbian exchange? Damn it, Casewell, now’s not the time to nitpick worldbuilding.

  If this was a dream, it was the most elaborate, physically consistent dream in history. So could it not be one? But the other possibility—she couldn’t even bring herself to think it—was far too outlandish.

  “Of course I believe you, Lady Iris. Don’t worry so much. I’m sure your father will hire an excellent lawyer, and they’ll be able to show this was simply an accident.”

  Duke von Rhenia was one of the most influential men in the Kingdom, and he treasured his daughter immensely. There was no way he’d spare any expense in defending her—and Clara, by extension.

  But instead of being comforted, Iris simply looked back at her and blinked.

  “What’s a lawyer?”