Sweet Romance13 min read
Kiss Me to Survive: My Accidental Life as the Regent's Wife
ButterPicks12 views
I fell from a tree and into steam.
"Welcome, Host 001," a metallic voice chimed inside my head as hot water wrapped me like a trap. "You have bound to the Ravaged Hero System."
I spluttered and swallowed a mouthful of sulfur-scented pool water. "What?"
"You are in the alternate dynasty of the Northern Realm. The male lead, the Regent Xander Luna, has had his fate siphoned. Change the fate of the original heroine and reclaim the Regent's fortune of life force. Complete the tasks and you will regain your life."
My chest was a drum of disbelief. A moment later a tall hand clamped my throat, hauling me from the steaming pool. I coughed, my lungs burning.
When my eyes cleared, his face filled my vision: pale as porcelain, hair dark as midnight, crimson eyes like spilled rubies. He looked like a ghost that had learned to smile.
"Ah! A demon!" I shrieked on reflex and slapped at him.
He moved with the deadly confidence of someone used to killing. "You tempt death," he said, his voice cold and precise. His fingers tightened. Pain blurred the edges of the world.
"Please—please don't kill me," I choked. "I—" Air left me, hope leaving with it. My hands clawed at his wrist.
He seemed amused by my begging rather than moved. He eased me away and tossed me like a rag.
I landed hard. My ribs complained. I scrambled to my feet and looked at the terrifying man advancing toward me.
The system pinged inside my head.
"Host 001, first task: survive tonight in the hands of Regent Xander Luna. Reward: a golden finger. Fail and your soul returns to your other body to die as a vegetable."
My mind pinwheeled. I was an ordinary woman—Anastasia Buchanan—torn from my life into this strange country. My options: drown, beg, or do what an idiot in every romance novel does.
"Hello, husband," I said before I could stop myself.
Xander froze. The murderous light in his eyes dimmed, puzzled.
"I'm your wife," I said, and forced a smile so bright my face hurt. "Anastasia Buchanan, your new wife."
He sniffed, annoyance curdling on his face. "You dare call me that? Prove it."
Prove it. He wanted drama. The system squeaked.
"Host, kiss him. On his lips. Now."
"Pardon?" I blinked.
"Kiss him. The system analysis indicates you can suppress his murderous temper through intimacy. Kiss his lips," it insisted in that ridiculous, earnest tone.
My brain short-circuited and agreed that my survival mattered. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his waist like a child who had lost her balance and wanted comfort.
He flinched, then inhaled—then the air flattened. The man who lived like a blade pressed his face closer. He smelled faintly of smoke and something floral. His hand moved to my waist and claimed me like a possession.
The first kiss was a public bargaining chip and a private avalanche. I started gentle—like in a bad play—then clumsy scripture of desperation, pecking, nibbling, learning by instinct. He retaliated with a kiss that was not a test but a claim. The world narrowed to the heat of his mouth and the violent beating of my heart until black dots came at the edges.
I woke on a bed, soft and unfamiliar.
"Task complete," the system proclaimed. "Reward granted: peerless medical skill."
I sat up so fast I saw stars. "Really?"
"Yes. But your next task is to detoxify Xander Luna. Complete it for more rewards. Fail and return to your other life to die."
I blinked at the ceiling. Xander? Detoxify the man who tried to kill me? The system hummed like a child with a secret. It showed me a tiny space—a pocket room filled with trinkets and light—and something that looked like a seed, burning with seven colors.
"That is the Seven-Color Flower seed," the system said. "It is rare. Its flower is the key to the antidote. You will need the flower to save him."
"How do I take it?"
The system chirped a silly rhyme: raise your hands, chant, call me 'system brother'—a ridiculous incantation. I did it because I was stubborn, because the seed was pretty, and because this world had me by the throat.
"Host, you really said that out loud," the system whispered in a tone that might have been proud.
I tucked the seed away, and the reward cracked open my head so I knew needles and pulses and herbs now as if they had always lived inside me.
My days became small rebellions. I watched Xander closely. When I met him again at dawn, he looked like carved ivory under the sunlight. He moved like a man who had once been a god in motion and now had to pretend.
"You should have stayed away," he said the first time he saw me upright in the bedchamber.
"I thought you were frightening last night," I replied, honest as a child.
He lifted a hand and pinched my cheek as if testing the softness. "Do you fear me?"
"I'm your wife," I said. "I shouldn't be afraid."
Xander sneered but did not cross the line. He ordered me out like a small annoyance; I pretended to leave, then tripped and fell into his arms with perfect timing. His pulse thudded through the skin under my fingers. I felt the riot of poison in him: strands of broken currents circulating in stubborn loops.
"You're too curious," he warned.
"I only wanted to be near you," I said, and stole his wrist while pretending to be clumsy. "You must let me help you. I'm good with herbs."
Xander's eyes glinted. He barked, "You will go no further than the kitchens."
"Then watch me." I grinned.
My bedside manner matured into stealth medicine. I learned to take deadly pulses and tease out the poisons like knots caught in a sleeve. I practiced, tested, bought silver needles with the sort of boldness that felt almost shameful. When I walked the market streets, I saved a stranger with a hairpin and saw the way people looked at me: surprise, suspicion, admiration. A pink-clad noblewoman fainted and then woke because of me.
"Miss—" the woman called me later.
"Anastasia," I supplied.
"Anastasia Buchanan," she repeated with a little bow, then, softer, "You are the Regent's wife?"
"I am," I said, then hid the brief spike of fear in my chest. "Please, what is your name?"
"Mine is Mia Danielsson."
She thanked me as if I had saved her and not merely pushed a pin between her ribs. That day, the town called me many things, but I liked "Anastasia" best: it stayed simple, honest.
Back in the Regent's dining hall he forced me to eat until I could have popped like a dumpling. Then he left. I stayed. I snuck. I learned to slip soothing herbs into his bath and trace his meridians while he pretended not to feel me. Once, when my hand brushed closer than it should, I kissed his mouth because the system told me kisses slowed him, and because I needed to show I was not afraid.
What followed was the festival.
"Go," Xander told me with dead calm. "Attend the celebration. I will be there. Behave."
"Yes, husband." I bowed like a marionette and walked into the blossom-lit palace garden, my heart a stubborn bird.
The Emperor Javier Gordon and the Dowager Esther Olsson presided over the court with pomp. The Emperor suggested a poetry contest by flower, and I decided to win the prize that would give me the prize I needed. I stood up in a room full of aristocrats, and I read.
"My words are silly," I told myself, quoting poets I had memorized in another life. Yet each line caught as though I had always owned them. The Emperor clapped. The Dowager smiled. Xander watched from his place like a shadow waiting for a storm.
"You recited like a water bird," Javier said after, with a grin. "You hold rhyme like a secret."
"You were splendid," Esther added, smoothing her sleeve. "Anastasia, you are bright."
They awarded me the seven-colored glass orb. At last—the vial of rainbow sand that would be soil for my seed.
The system chimed: "Host 001, seven-color sand detected. You must plant and nurture a Seven-Color Flower. It blooms only under the full moon and will produce the crucial herb for your Regent's detox."
I laughed with relief and secret triumph. Xander's gaze, however, drifted to my trembling hands.
That night, in my little chamber, I used a small hammer and my stubbornness to crack the glass. The shell resisted like a stubborn chest. I called him, because men with swords sometimes have strong wrists; Xander came, with the faint sheen of night on his jaw.
"Can you help?" I asked.
"Hand it over," he said.
He placed the fragile globe and, with a controlled motion I felt down to my bones, he channeled inner strength and split the glass without letting his body betray it. He paid dearly—his complexion paled, his breath hitched—but he did it.
"Thank you," I said, feeling a rush of gratitude.
"Do not be reckless with what you love," he murmured.
That same night I pushed a patchwork of medicines into warm baths and began minutely to bind thread to thread of poison outage within him. When Xander strained his inner power for me, he hurt. I pressed thin needles into his skin, cued at the correct acupoints, and guided his havocing breath. He closed his eyes like a man who was tired but willing to be led.
"Promise me you will not push yourself so far again," I whispered.
"I promise," he said and then, quieter, "I will not let you become a widow."
The worry settled into my chest like a soft stone.
But the world was noisier than our private bond. During the festival, a slaughter had happened in a teahouse. A killer—red-eyed, skin pale to the point of white—had burst in and maimed men in noble cloaks. When I arrived, the scene was a nightmare of overturned wine bowls and blood-slicked floorboards. The murderer lay in the center, vomiting black blood. His legs had begun to dissolve like an image in acid.
My hands worked though. "This poison—it's the same as his," I told the bystanders.
Karter Olivier, a boy of fine clothes and poor courage, had been in the room and had fled. He pointed at me to cover his tracks, and because fear makes people ugly, he told the magistrate we were the killers.
They cuffed me and Lisa Cunningham with crude metal loops and brought us to the government hall.
I stood in the magistrate's court and watched the man who had judged me with his voice. He called me a murderer and threatened to torture to find truth.
Xander arrived. He walked in like a drawn blade. When he spoke, everyone leaned.
"Is this true?" he said.
"The magistrate says—" I tried to explain.
"Bring the one who accused her." Xander's tone was soft and terrible.
The magistrate faltered, and it took only his look to make him summon the witnesses. Within an hour Karter Olivier was pushed forward, pale at the face, his bravado peeled like old paper.
"You accused her. Why?" Xander asked.
Karter's words stumbled. Before the room, the truth came out: Karter had fled the scene and had lied to save his reputation. The magistrate's brow furrowed; Karter became a small man under the eyes of the court.
"Bring him to my steward," Xander said. "He will answer for slander."
We walked out under the curious gaze of the city. My hands trembled. Xander's side seemed thinner, more fragile. I moved closer.
That night, the system pulsed a warning that settled into my bones.
"Host, the chaos is not random. A reborn enemy has come. We have traced their trail to the inner circles. Be careful—his identity cannot be extracted automatically. You must hunt him."
I knew that the man who sought to inherit Xander's fate was dangerous. Over the next days, Xander and I wove a net. He used his secret network of shadows; I planted herbs and listened.
Our investigation led us to a masked man who had dropped a coarse cloak near the tea house. The shadow's trail ended at the mansion of Minister Fox Rinaldi, the solemn official who had never mixed in party tricks. The evidence was loose like a scarf in wind, but it hummed.
Inside the Minister's study I saw a scrap of leather and a discarded mask. The minister's household pretended ignorance. But Xander's spies were patient. The net tightened.
"Do you see?" Xander murmured one night, fingers clenched on the table. "They used a hired hand to poison, then to die as evidence. They attempted to switch identities."
"Who profits if he dies?" I asked quietly. "Who would want to strip him of his fate?"
"Someone reborn," the system confirmed. "One who has lived before in another body. This one is named Ezekiel Delgado in your world's registers."
Ezekiel Delgado. The name felt heavy as an anchor.
We moved carefully. The palace halls were full of watchers. We had to reveal the villain without giving him time to vanish like smoke.
We widened the net and planted the seed of truth in the right ears: evidence of a conspiracy led to a house of one of the great families. Rumors spread on wings.
A week later, in the grand hall, evidence came in. A captured courier—a small, trembling man who had delivered herbs—broke. He confessed to delivering poison to the Dowager's staff at command. His confession spelled a name: Ezekiel Delgado.
The court hall filled. The Emperor ordered a public inquiry. Xander studied the Emperor for a long, low moment. He did not smile.
"Bring him here," the Emperor said.
The man was dragged forward with rope around his hands. He looked at the crowd and tried to be small. But when he saw me standing beside Xander, the air in his chest seemed to thicken.
"Are you Ezekiel Delgado?" Xander asked. His voice never rose, but it cut like a whetted blade.
Ezekiel met him with a smile that did not reach his eyes. "So, I have a new audience."
"You poisoned the Dowager and the Emperor's table," I said, every word an accusation. "You inserted foods that would combine and injure the Dowager. Why?"
Ezekiel's smile widened. "Because he died once," he said. "Because in my last life I watched a man—my crony—rise and take what I would have taken. This realm is a ladder. You must climb it and take what belongs to you."
"Who gave you the command to murder?" the Emperor thundered.
"My own will," Ezekiel answered. "To harvest destiny."
The crowd around us buzzed like an angry hive. Someone shouted, "Traitor! Assassin!"
Ezekiel's face broke into a mask of mock offense. "Traitor? The word tastes like pity."
We put on a trial that was no mere ceremony. The accusation was treason and murder, and the court was packed with nobles who needed a verdict they could believe.
The punishment we designed could not be merely hidden away. The system's rules, my own thirst for justice, and the court's politics demanded one thing: public, undeniable humiliation and retributive ruin.
"Today you will answer in the square," the Emperor announced. "You will not die in secret. Your crime will be unmasked to all."
We took Ezekiel to the central square, where the city could watch his fall. People crowded like waves to see a spectacle. The silver bells of the palace rang clear.
He was brought out with his hands bound and a dull robe. He tried to spit jokes; the crowd spat back.
"Now confess," the Emperor ordered.
Ezekiel sneered. "Confessions are for the weak."
Xander stepped forward, his face unreadable. "Then watch every truth be shown."
First we presented the courier's testimony, then the merchant who had sold the poisoned mushrooms, then the chambermaid who had seen Ezekiel slip into the Dowager's kitchen. Each witness spoke with the certainty of those who had no clout to lie. Each testimony tugged a thread from Ezekiel's woven cloak.
The crowd's reaction changed as we spoke. Surprise, then anger, then the cruel satisfaction of spectators watching the mighty topple. People photographed with their crude glass—locking memory into devices that would burn this man with light forever.
"Do you deny?" the Emperor asked.
"I deny nothing that brings me power," Ezekiel said.
At that Xander reached inside his sleeve and produced artifacts Ezekiel had left in haste: the mask, a scrap of the robe made of strange thread, a written note with a handwriting sample. Each proof landed like a pebble on a pond. The ripples spread.
"Enough," Javier said, and his voice was a gavel. "We will execute public remedy."
The crowd leaned forward.
This was not a simple execution. For crimes against the dynasty and for the cold cunning that intended to extinguish our Dowager, the punishment would be designed to reflect the method and the mettle of his crimes.
Ezekiel had sought to steal a life force—he had aimed to harvest someone else's future. He would be made to surrender what he valued: his standing, his freedom, and his face—the mask of whom he pretended to be.
First, we carried his possessions into the square and burned them publicly. Men who had thought themselves clever watched their goods go up in flame. Ezekiel snarled and spat as the flames ate his tokens.
"Your words promised new life," Xander said, "but you traded it for ruin."
Next, we forced Ezekiel to stand on a raised platform. The magistrates read out the catalog of his crimes—each act listed, each consequence named. The crowd booed; people wept; someone threw stones at his boots. They wanted to watch the man fail.
Ezekiel tried to roar back, to issue threats about rebirth and fate, but his voice lost weight in the open air. He looked smaller with every sentence, a man whose scaffolding of lies had been dismantled.
Then came the challenge portion—a public stripping of the things that hid him.
"Remove that mask," Xander ordered.
They tore off his false face, revealing the real one: not handsome, not old, a man's face that had spent too many hours contorting into different names. The crowd hissed like a foreign animal.
"Since you sought to shift your shape across lives, your face will be remembered and yet remade for the city to scorn," the Emperor said.
They took Ezekiel's scalpings—small trims from the hair that had been dyed—and handed them to the public to be fashioned into a totem that would hang in the market: a warning. Merchant's children would point at it and learn that greed for others' fates would cost you everything.
"Now the punishment of restitution," the magistrate proclaimed. Ezekiel had to kneel and publicly confess to each household he had tried to ruin and to perform, before witnesses, the measures to rebuild them: sums of coin, labor, herbalist remedies, and—most humiliating of all—the sworn apology to the Dowager herself.
People watched Ezekiel go from sneer to broken apology. He tried to bargain his way through tears, but a confession is a quicksand: each step sinks you deeper.
I watched the crowd's faces turn through a thousand shades: some relieved, some sated, some frightened by the way a man could fall. The emperor's justice was a slow pot boiling over, and everyone enjoyed the steam.
By the time the last mark was counted, Ezekiel's proud posture had become hunched. He begged for mercy and found none. He tried denial and found the square deaf.
Finally, the Emperor delivered the final decree. "Ezekiel Delgado shall be stripped of his name. He will be given a laborer's mark and assigned to strengthen the city walls for ten years under supervision. His face and his name shall be remembered as a warning. Should he sin again, his penalty will be far worse."
Ezekiel's jaw dropped into emptiness. The crowd howled—some in approval, some in hunger for more. The magistrates cuffed him and walked him away like a dog that had been used and chewed.
As the square emptied, murmurs followed: "He thought to steal destiny. He got only disgrace." People took pictures and posted them into flickering screens. The market would whisper this story for weeks. His fall had been public, his reactions recorded, his ruin sewn into the city's memory.
Later, Xander put his fingers against my cheek and said softly, "You are safe."
I looked up at him and saw the tiredness carved there, but also something like a smile. "You won't let a reborn thief take you," I said.
"I will not let you be harmed," he answered.
I thought back to the system's warning. The chaos had been worse than I had imagined. But the public unmasking had steeled something. People who saw justice with their own eyes believed it.
That night, I leaned against Xander's chest and listened to his breath slow to the rhythm of the world. The Seven-Color Flower seed slept in my space, and I had planted it in the special glass. Moonlight was promised. We had time—a thin and precious thing.
"Will you trust me?" I whispered.
He held me closer. "Already," he said.
It was the simplest word, and it felt like a promise.
The End
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