Sweet Romance13 min read
My System, My Lies, and the Cold Sword
ButterPicks10 views
"I woke up on a bed that felt wrong for my life, and a system introduced itself like a wolf wearing a headset."
"I am Atlas Vorobyov," he said, stepping from the dream-blood like a man from a painting I had hated and loved at the same time. "You will not live long."
"Excuse me?" I asked the system and the man at the same time.
"Congratulations, host," a flat, intrusive voice said like a bell. "You have bound with the characters of The Supreme Favor. System online."
"I am not your host," I told the screen. "I am Alexandra Cain, modern-day, allergic to spoilers, and I have opinions about your book's timeline."
"Main quest: Rewrite Alexandra Cain's go-die ending. Prevent Atlas Vorobyov from becoming irredeemably dark. Achieve HE. Subquests loaded."
"I want a refund," I said.
Atlas's eyes did not smile. "You will either play the part of the villain well, or you will die as your predecessor did."
"Stop narrating my obituary," I hissed.
"Task one: Improve relations with Atlas Vorobyov," the system said. "Task two: Obtain the yellow scroll. Task three: Do not be eaten by the plot."
"I did not sign up to be eaten by anything," I told it. "Where is the one that says 'return me to my bed'?"
"That purchase option is not available," the system chimed, and then, more quietly, "Fail a task and you will be reset to void."
"Void?" I swallowed. "Do you mean nothing? Because I've had worse Monday mornings."
Atlas stood in the doorway, my hair still wet from whatever river dream had left on me. He had sword scars and a look that said he had been carved from ice and rumor.
"You look like the villain who collected her own misfortunes," he said.
"I do not collect misfortunes for sport," I snapped. "Also, I did not expect to actually be the villain. I'm just very method."
"You will behave as Qin—" He stopped. "Alexandra," he corrected himself because the system apparently liked clarity. "Behave as your new famous self, and do not obstruct the main line too much."
"I object to 'behave,'" I told him. "And why do you call me that name in private like you have time to give nicknames between murders?"
Atlas raised an eyebrow, unreadable. "You speak oddly for a villain."
"I was modern. I study bedside manners and what the author forgot to write."
He did not laugh, but when he disappeared I found I could breathe without the dream-thorn in my throat.
"First," I told the system aloud, "show me the plastic tab of rewards."
"Subquest: Quick HE package available. Recharge with skill points?" the system offered. "Warning: reward content censored due to spoilers."
"Censored?" I clicked my tongue. "No fair."
"Do not waste time. Atlas's darkness grows from being misunderstood and used. He will cut. He will hurt. He will be praised by enemies. Do not let him fall."
"Then help me," I said. "Stop being judgy and give me actual instructions."
"Subquest one: Befriend Atlas Vorobyov," the screen said. "Subquest two: Steal the yellow scroll from Corbin's study. Subquest three: Patch Prince Lennox Espinoza's trust."
"Too many princes," I muttered. "Where's the manual?"
"Disrespect detected. Orange warning."
"Fine," I said. "I will do it my way."
"Also," the system added, like someone who feeds you cake and then warns of a dentist, "If you cause major timeline damage, you will be reset."
"Can you stop talking like a curse?"
"Affirmative. Please proceed."
Atlas could kill me with one look, but the system had given me a strange courage: knowledge that the book left gaps. I would use the gaps. I would use the system.
"Are you planning to smile at him or stab him in the ankle?" Gillian Mancini asked as she leaned in the doorway, prim and soft as the heroine who had always been a foil in the book.
"Neither," I said to her and to Atlas. "I plan to live."
"You should be wary of Prince Lennox," Gillian said, hands folded like a waiting prayer. "He puts soft words on a sharp tongue."
"Soft words," I repeated. "Good."
We retreated into the net of courtiers and palace smells. I learned fast: the book's world breathed of etiquette and old grudges; every compliment could be a trap. Every "help" had a hidden ledger.
"Atlas," I said the first night we sat in the study and the moon made silver on everything he had chosen to hide. "Why do you kill so prettily?"
He put down his cup. "I do not enjoy killing. I enjoy truths."
"Fine. Then tell me a truth: do you trust me?"
He did not answer with words at first. He answered by watching me as if I were a secret he could open with muscle memory and a key. "I do not trust living things that smile too easily," he said.
"Then fix that."
We argued. We traded truth for pragmatic secrets, and I learned that Atlas had reasons his eyes were like winter—histories that made him keep swords where other men kept letters.
"Can you play dumb, then?" Gillian asked one afternoon as she sewed a sleeve.
"I can appear unprepared," I said. "But I will not be dumb."
That was my philosophy. Appear the villain; be a better engineer of outcomes than the book's author.
Atlas and I were a walking paradox. He was the blade; I was the glue pretending to be poison. He saved me sometimes, and I saved him back with herbal plasters and arguments about gallows humor.
"Why did you save me from the cliff?" I demanded once, because a system had just beeped and called my action "romantic bait."
He answered slow, like a man who had placed coins in a fountain often and finally wanted one wish. "Because the world is less necessary with one less blade."
"That's poetic," I said. "You are better at metaphors than at murder."
He did not smile. "Do not guilt me into kindness."
We lived through small triumphs. I learned to move in the palace without getting stuck in other people's plots. I stole into the library and found an oak-brown box—the same box the book had hid from me for so long.
"Open it quickly," the system said in my ear. "Main task: retrieve the yellow scroll."
The box had a lock with eight tiny signs I did not know. Atlas watched where my fingers slid, and when the mechanism opened, the yellow paper inside fell into our hands like a leaf.
"This is not a ledger," I whispered. "It is a memory."
The scroll said that an infant switch had been plotted, that a queen had planned favors, and that a whole line of power had been rewritten long ago. The scroll painted a map of old betrayals. It smelled of smoke and paranoia.
"How long did it take to make this a secret?" Atlas said, voice low.
"Longer than my patience," I said. "But we have it."
When we brought the scroll to Prince Lennox Espinoza—who was marble and manners in equal measure—he smiled a smile that fit every court and none of the world.
"Alexandra Cain," he said, taking my hand in a way meant to quiet a rumor. "You are always useful."
"I am useful," I told him, "and occasionally inconvenient."
Prince Lennox was complicated. He wanted the scroll. He wanted everything it promised: leverage, gratitude, another string on his delicate, diplomatic fingers.
"Will you give it to me?" he asked.
"I will not give it to anyone who will hide it for their own gain," I said. "It will go to the Emperor."
He pursed his mouth. "Bold."
"Also, Prince Lennox," I said, and the system flashed a task: "Increase Lennox's favor." "You owe me a favor. Do not use it to cut Atlas."
"Who said I would?" he replied, and his laugh had too many notes in it.
"Many," I answered back.
A web of intentions tightened. Finnian Howard—the Crown Prince, the quiet man with a crocodile smile—had always been in the story the sort of villain who steadied his hand with policy but sharpened his teeth with rumor. He had made a career of accusing others to hide his own nets.
"Keep away from Finnian," Gillian warned. "He has a habit of turning accusations into sentences."
"Which is why," I said, "he will be my villain who learns when to speak and when to fall."
We moved like puppets with new strings. I patched wounds on Atlas. I kissed absurdly on his lips for a system quest of artificial heroism. The system recorded, blinked, and rewarded: a "soft hug" achievement, a brief phantom of heat at the center of my ribs.
"You exist," Atlas said one night. "You annoy me."
"And you are a muttered prayer I now know how to answer."
We were dangerous together because the book had not given me enough space to be interesting. I carved a place for my curiosity.
The palace, however, loves spectacle. When a queen's private secret spreads and the scroll rears up like a ghost, those in power begin to choose sides.
Finnian Howard chose poorly.
He accused me in a marble court with the kind of calm that was meant to stick. "This woman," he said, tapping the paper that was already in the Emperor's hands, "has been involved in schemes to manipulate princes. She has been misleading us."
"That's my line," I shot back.
"You will not insult me in this courtyard," he said.
"Then speak something new."
He did. He said that a poison had been placed in the Prince's infant, that I—I, Alexandra Cain—knew more than I told, that Atlas had killed in service and still once belonged to a darker household. He made his accusation precise because that is how one builds a gallows.
That was when I decided that the story's villain would not walk away unbruised. The book had promised quiet misery. I promised consequences.
Public Punishment of Finnian Howard (500+ words)
The day Finnian was humiliated, the entire court filled the wide, tile-floored hall where the Emperor held audiences. There were lords, generals, eunuchs, foreign envoys with carefully folded papers, and ladies who had painted their faces with the colors of careful neutrality. The Emperor sat like a mountain in his place. I stood beneath him, small and bloody with truth in my pocket.
"Bring the accused forth," the Emperor said.
Finnian came forward with a face like a perfected mask. He was pale, practiced, and proud. His robes flowed; his hands were clean. He had the calm of the man who expects the law to be a curtain—never a mirror.
"You accuse," the Emperor said. "Present your proof."
Finnian smiled as if to show he had prepared a play for the evening. "Your Majesty," he said, "this woman has spread venom and lies about the household. She has worked with unknown men—"
"Stop," I said. I had not planned to speak. The system pulsed with an emergency task: "Expose Finnian's plot publicly." I had the scroll and the proof of the poison's source, but I had to make the moment burn.
"Bring forward the eunuch who delivered the medicine to the nursery," I said.
A murmur like disturbed water ran through the hall. Finnian's eyes twitched. He looked at me with a new curiosity: the look of the man who is about to see his stage collapses.
"Silence," the Emperor commanded.
The eunuch shuffled forward. He was small and gray and terrified. He had hands stained with ink and fear. Finnian snapped a look as if the man's presence were part of his plan. "This man?" Finnian asked, voice honeyed. "He is my loyal servant. He brings me reports and tea."
"Speak," I said. "Did you deliver medicine by the Crown Prince's orders?"
The eunuch's lips betrayed him. He spoke, and the thousand ears in the room listened—some curious, some with their own knives in their pockets.
"At dawn," he said in a voice that trembled like a bell, "I was called by a messenger. I was given a sealed box and told to take it to the nursery. I was told it was a tonic."
"And who sent the messenger?" I asked.
"The note bore the Crest of the Crown Prince," the eunuch said. "The seal used is his."
Finnian's face moved from calm to a brittle sort of composure. "Forgeries. The world is full of people wanting to ruin me," he said, his voice rising like a thin candle trying to appear a sun.
"Does the messenger keep their handwriting?" I asked. "Can we see the letter?"
Three men bowed and produced the sealed scrolls like priests bringing up relics. I took one and held it up under the sun streaming through the glass. It was not the Crown Prince's ink. It was a looped, formal hand Finnian used only in private letters—letters we later compared. And the seal—when placed beside Finnian's signet—answered like a twin. No forgery.
"Denial?" Finnian demanded. His laugh was high, too high.
"The imperial mint and my Lady Eunuch of the court traced the courier's path," I said, because the system had fed me a way and the palace had the tools. "Records show the courier came from your private retinue."
"False!" Finnian said. "You will not make a liar of me!"
"I will not allow you to make a killer of a child," I said. "Bring forth the herbalist."
An herbalist, old and pained, was brought. He had been bribed into silence and his hands trembled. He showed the mixture he had been forced to make with notes and money. The paper was stamped. The stamp matched the ledger of payments Finnian had authorized to one of his subordinates.
The room went cold. Men who had pretended not to have noticed Finnian's small cruelties folded their faces into masks of shock. A general who had once bowed to Finnian's smile now stared like a man who had found a viper in his boot.
Finnian's expression changed. The smugness plummeted; fury rose like a wave. "You will not do this to me in front of my family," he snarled.
"I will do it in front of the Emperor," I said. "If you can deny your hand in this, then deny it now."
He fought a second of denial. His voice was louder, more insistent: "I never ordered harm to an infant!" He clenched his fists. "You have no proof, no witness."
"Your ledger," I said. "Your private ledger, please."
A clerk carried a folio to the throne and opened it. There, penned in Finnian's own cramped script, were payments. There were repeated notes: "For special tonic; attend to the child"—the sort of euphemism used by men who think ordering a poison is a gentlemanly business. The Emperor's face darkened like stormclouds. Finnian's color changed.
His reaction was not immediate shame but disbelief turned into denial.
"This is a frame!" he cried. "This is treason! You conspire to make me a villain."
"You conspire to make a villain, and your ambition has gone further than wisdom," Atlas said from the audience, his voice carrying like something that always cut to the truth.
Finnian's face finally cracked. He groped for words; they came out jagged: "I— I was protecting the crown. I meant to remove only a threat."
"A child's life is not a threat to be removed," the Emperor said. He rose. "Finnian Howard, you stand accused of plotting to harm the imperial blood."
Denial fluttered in Finnian's chest like a trapped bird. He began to tremble as the weight of the hall fell on him. The courtiers drew close, some with pity, some with audiences who had their own grudges. Someone whispered, and phones—no, people produced little boxes (I laughed silently at my modern mental image)—and hands pointed and recorded. The murmur grew. Foreign envoys leaned forward, pens scratching, eyes trained on scandal.
Finnian's tone shifted. From denials to bargaining. "Please, Majesty," he said, voice thin as ice. He dropped to his knees, a planned posture. "I never meant to— I meant service—"
"No excuses here," the Emperor said cold and calm. "Collective disgrace is not mercy. Fold him in ropes."
Hands moved to Finnian with never such tenderness for a traitor. He went from tall to small in front of the audience. He begged. "You don't understand. I can make the court stronger. Let me—"
But the room had had enough of his "let me"s.
He dropped to his knees on the cold stone and pressed his forehead. The crowd had already leaned in, watching the great boy who had played with knives now seeing the blade's edge.
At first, there was a shocked silence. Then, an ugly sort of satisfaction rippled like wind: whispers of "traitor" and "crime" and "how could he." Some had already pulled out seals and tokens to record the moment. Others took furtive pictures; a young noble clapped in a strange way, like a man training his hands to the concept of justice. I hated him for the sound, but I could not stop the rush of relief at seeing truth surface.
Finnian moved through stages with breathtaking speed. He began proud and smooth; he quickly became shocked; he slid into denial; then, he faltered, admitting the ledger's truth. His voice broke. "Please," he begged, "you do not understand—"
"No," the Emperor said. "You do not get the right to 'please' in this court. You have used your right to harm."
Then came the public ritual. Finnian was stripped of his titles—publicly, a scribe recited his crimes in crisp, exact phrases. The gallery murmured and snapped. He fell silent. He watched as his crest was removed and tied to a pole and the herald read it for all to hear, "Finnian Howard, former Crown Prince: charged and stripped for conspiracy."
When he finally lowered his eyes, the crowd looked away in a hundred different ways—pity, triumph, disgust. Someone threw a folded scrap into the air like a small moral confetti. "So," Finnian whispered, "I should have been so careful."
"Careful is a poor substitute for kind," Atlas said. "You will remember that."
Finnian's last responses were full of the cycle. He begged before the gallery like a man who had miscalculated the strength of his own story. He promised anything. He crawled. He clutched at ankles. The cameras—pestered, loud, everyone stashed them in the moment—captured his pleas. The Emperor's judgment sealed the moment: exile for the accomplices, custody and public penance for Finnian, his titles and influence burned from the record.
The crowd reacted with a wave. Some whispered, some wept, some took out pens and wrote in their notebooks. Some cheered with low claps. The offended palace ladies took the chance to remove mention of Finnian's name from their conversation forever. The courtiers filmed, and soon the footage, filmed by hands that had once fawned over Finnian, circulated like a black bloom: princes who once nodded to him hid their faces; guards who had obeyed his furtive orders stiffened with new loyalties.
Finnian's forehead hit the stone as they dragged him away. "Please," he whispered again. He was a man small under the weight of his own ambition, and the hall had become a stage where he was forced to rerun his mistakes.
When at last the Emperor spoke, the words were cold and irrevocable: "Let this be a lesson. Not for him alone, but for the court. Power without mercy is a ruin."
The sentence hung in the air like someone unsheathing a sword.
He had been proud; then shocked; then denial; then collapse; finally, he begged. The court watched it all. The punishments were public, carved, and irreversible—Finnian's power evaporated like dew; people clapped and recorded and gossiped, and his reputation seared. That day the palace learned that some knives are meant to be seen.
After the spectacle, Atlas stood nearer, and he watched me with something like relief hidden under ice. "You did this well," he said.
"We did this well," I corrected. "And please—next time, warn me if there will be more cameras."
He cracked something like a smile. "I will."
The scroll—our leaf of memory—was safe, and the court had decided to settle on new rules. Finnian's punishment was not vengeance only; it was the palace cleaning itself of rot. The Emperor left the last word in the record: "Let mercy be guided by justice, not by ambition."
Afterward, people muttered that I had been brave or blinded by politics. I accepted neither. I had been practical. I had stopped a child from dying and a villain from rising without consequence.
"Now," Gillian said the next morning at breakfast, "what about the other tasks?"
"Other tasks?" I asked. The system pulsed on and we laughed. It was disturbing how much we had begun to need its prompts.
Atlas kissed the corner of my hand—a small sign the system called "real progress"—and I felt something in my chest I had no word for, only the sound of a sword unseen being sheathed.
"Do you know," I said, "how annoying it is to be a protagonist the author meant for ruin?"
Atlas took my chin and looked at me as if he planned to memorize my face. "Stay alive," he said, and the words were a kind of promise.
I lived like that: a villain pretending to be a lady who pretended to be compliant. I learned to be clever. I learned to make friends with the right people. I learned how to steal a heart by being a better person than my title asked. And I learned that sometimes the only way to stop a man from becoming a monster was to make sure he never needed to feed his darkness.
"One more thing," the system said as a bell in my ear. "Main quest progress: 11%. Atlas's darkness reduced. Rewards pending."
"11%?" I groaned. "We have a long way to go."
"Good," Atlas said with rare softness. "Then we have time."
And I remembered, with a laugh and a shudder, the first line of the system's greeting: Congratulations, host. The story will be cruel.
I smiled back. "We will be cruder," I said, which is a Victorian way to say we'll be wiser.
I would not let the book keep making my life a tragedy unless it earned the right.
The End
— Thank you for reading —