The Villainess Refuses to Follow the Script-Chapter 37

Beatrice waited until Francois’ footsteps faded completely before exhaling, slumping back into her chair. That was too close.

She pulled her notebook out from under the larger tome, flipping it open to where she had left off. Ink still glistened slightly on the last sentence she had written, the scrawled words trailing off mid-thought.

She had been documenting everything. Everything she remembered, everything that was supposed to happen. But with each passing day, her memories of the novel felt less like something she had read and more like something she had lived.

Beatrice frowned, twirling the quill between her fingers. The more she wrote, the more her mind filled in the gaps. Details she didn’t remember before suddenly surfaced. Conversations, emotions, things that hadn’t been explicitly written in the novel but felt real now.

She shook off the unease and dipped her quill into the ink, forcing herself to focus.

Key events. She needed to remember the key events.

The assassination attempt. The shift in court alliances. The growing tension between the king and the nobility.

Her hand moved on its own, scribbling furiously as her thoughts raced. But when she glanced down at the page, her stomach twisted.

She hadn’t been writing from an outsider’s perspective.

She had been writing as Beatrice.

"I was always a fool to think my family’s support was unconditional. The Da Villes never supported people, they supported power. And the second I failed to meet their expectations, I became disposable."

Beatrice’s breath caught. She hadn’t meant to write that. That wasn’t something she remembered from the novel.

She swallowed hard, staring at the words.

They felt true. Like a memory that wasn’t hers.

Her grip on the quill tightened. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was becoming more frequent. The thoughts, the emotions. Beatrice Da Ville’s past was becoming clearer in her mind, bleeding into her own.

She rubbed her temple, trying to push away the headache forming. She needed to be careful. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t just be documenting the novel, she would start living it.

And she had already changed too much to trust how the story would end.

Beatrice exhaled sharply and slammed the notebook shut. Enough for tonight.

As she stood, the candlelight flickered, making the shadows around her stretch unnaturally across the walls.

She ignored the chill running down her spine.

Beatrice ran a hand through her hair, trying to steady herself. This was fine. Totally fine.

So what if she was accidentally slipping into the villainess’ memories? So what if she was starting to feel things she had no business feeling? It wasn’t like she was losing herself.

Right?

She took a deep breath and reached for her notebook again, flipping back through the earlier pages. Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe her own thoughts were getting tangled with the way she had written the story.

But no. There it was, clear as day.

"Father told me to stop embarrassing the family today. Mother said I was failing them. I smiled and promised I’d do better."

Beatrice sucked in a sharp breath.

That wasn’t her writing. It was obviously, her handwriting, her ink, her book... but those weren’t her words. That was something Beatrice Da Ville had thought. Had felt.

And now it was something she felt, too.

She clenched her jaw and snapped the book shut again, pressing her fingers against the worn leather cover like she could physically stop the words from sinking any deeper into her.

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

She needed to get out of here.

Beatrice pushed herself up, shoving the notebook back into its hiding spot beneath a stack of dry, boring historical texts no one would bother touching. Then, with one last glance at the flickering candlelight, she strode toward the library doors.

She needed air. She needed distance.

She needed to remind herself that she wasn’t Beatrice Da Ville.

Not really.

But as she stepped out into the dimly lit hallway, she hesitated.

Beatrice pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to force the growing pressure in her head to subside.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

She wasn’t supposed to remember these things, memories that weren’t hers, emotions that didn’t belong to her. They were seeping into her thoughts like ink bleeding through parchment, impossible to erase.

Her breathing felt uneven, and the quiet stillness of the library suddenly felt suffocating. She needed to move, to shake this feeling before it settled too deeply into her bones.

Without thinking, she strode out into the corridor, barely registering the coolness of the stone floors beneath her feet. The palace was quieter at this hour, the usual chatter of nobles and servants replaced with only the distant flicker of torchlight and the faint echo of her footsteps.

Beatrice didn’t have a destination in mind. She just walked.

The hallways stretched endlessly before her, each turn leading to another identical corridor, another ornate hallway, another memory waiting to be unearthed...

"You should be grateful."

Beatrice faltered.

The words weren’t spoken aloud. They had risen unbidden from her own mind, but they weren’t hers.

"Girls like you don’t get choices. You do as you’re told." 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Her breath hitched. She knew that voice. Cold, clipped, with a quiet kind of cruelty.

Her mother.

No! Beatrice’s mother.

She squeezed her eyes shut. No. No, no, no. She wouldn’t let this happen. She refused to become someone else.

But the memories were pushing, insistent and suffocating, curling around her thoughts like vines.

She stumbled against the nearest wall, gripping the stone like it could anchor her in place.

"You will marry well. You will make us proud. You will stop embarrassing us."

Beatrice gritted her teeth, forcing the memory back, shoving it deep, deep down where it couldn’t reach her.

This wasn’t real. It wasn’t her life.

She was Bea Elisha Park.

She had grown up in a cramped apartment with her father. She had spent late nights typing out stories on a laptop that always overheated. She had made instant noodles at three in the morning and cried over fictional characters and...

And yet...

She had also stood in an opulent drawing room while a woman who barely looked at her dictated her entire future.

She had smiled through clenched teeth as a man who never once praised her demanded that she try harder. She had looked in the mirror and wondered...

"Who am I, if not what they want me to be?"

Beatrice’s breathing was ragged now, her fingers trembling slightly where they pressed against the stone wall.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t her.

She dug her nails into her palm, grounding herself in the sensation.

She was Bea Elisha Park.

She was. And yet...

For the first time, she wasn’t entirely sure if that was still true.