How to Get My Husband on My Side

“I’ve finally found a worthy groom for you, darling,” announced Father, as he wiped off his lips with a napkin.

Laying on the knees of my oldest brother Cesare, I felt the urge to run back to my bedroom and throw up all the food I’d just eaten.

My second brother Enzo, who had been busily chowing down on an awfully smelly quenelle, slammed his fork down and cried out in protest.

“Not again! Father, how many times has it been already?”

“Enzo.”

“It hasn’t even been three months since her last engagement was called off! Regardless of what our family would gain from this marriage, shouldn’t you at least try to consider her feelings?”

“What a surprise to see you side with your little sister. Then would you rather battle the barbarians yourself instead of accepting Britannia’s support?”

“What are you talking about? Those savage barbarians up north wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of me, the greatest, most noble soldier to ha—”

“Shut your trap, boy.”

The great noble soldier took the rest of the quenelle on his plate and shoved it into his mouth, aggressively chewing in protest.

The marriage proposal wasn’t any surprise to me though. I knew that it would come sooner or later.

“Who is it, Father?”, I asked cheerfully.

My father, who had been staring disapprovingly at Enzo, looked back my way and smiled.

“He’s Britannia’s hero. The king’s beloved nephew and famous knight of the South. He’s very handsome, I’m sure you’ll like him.”

“What! Father, do you know how bad his reputation is?!”

“Boy, was I talking to you?”

Enzo became quiet again.

would one

“Ruby?”

time his long fingers groped the back of my head. I shuddered in revulsion. It felt like a cold

my head and locked eyes with Cesare. After glancing at his eerie azure eyes, I shifted my gaze to Enzo

at least be

smile and pressed them up against the top of my

as always, our sweet

really

After

***

my tiresome life had at last come to an end and I could finally rest. But if I’d known that I would be reincarnated as a lady in the Renaissance Era, and as a character in a novel that I’d read long ago, and, to make matters worse, forced to survive in an environment that was just as vile as my previous life, would

in this novel, couldn’t I have at least

“Ugh!”

at throwing up silently that I didn’t need to worry about being caught by

as people call it nowadays, an eating disorder. Before I became Rudbeckia de Borgia—I mean before I died—I was an adopted

was born. Like my adoptive siblings, I attended a prestigious private school in Madrid and lived a life

time I felt different than the kids around me was sometime around 4th grade, when a boy in my class laughed at me while pulling back his eyes. At first I didn’t understand what it meant, so I just laughed along with the rest of the kids in my class. I thought that my eyes were round like everyone else’s, so I had no idea that

to the racism that I faced at school, but as for my life at home, despite the sophisticated, welcoming facade of my adoptive family,

lover, and my second brother, who was a rising tennis star, was publicly exposed for his promiscuous private life and drug addiction. The only one in my adoptive family who would sometimes treat me nicely was my older sister, and she committed suicide at age twenty-one. As for my oldest brother, I quickly learned that he was

bit of shame to my family or offended them in the slightest, there was hell to pay. And when I woke up here, it was exactly

when I looked in the mirror, instead of seeing my face, there was a beautiful western girl staring

that I’d become Rudbeckia de Borgia, a character in the fantasy novel Sodom and the Holy Grail I used to read as

power to subjugate others. It was a story about the countries of the North and the clergy bravely rising up and banding together to overthrow the wicked pope, his family, and the entirety

and ‘Holy Grail’ was a metaphor for the holy site of the Vatican City. And as for lucky me, I was

destined to die, and to die no

marrying off Rudbeckia, and after three unsuccessful engagements and another last minute

would lose his mind and decide to murder his wife’s entire family after only being married for six months, it was Rudbeckia who

that made him lose his mind, it was hatred—hatred of Rudbeckia, who’d poisoned his little sister.

seems like Izek just got