Serena Angelique Bella Blanc.
  That, apparently, was her new name. Or more accurately, the name of the body she was in. The character she was playing.
  This was infuriatingly frustrating. It shouldn’t have taken her so long to catch on, but who would believe that this was really happening?
  After waking up in this Victorian-flavored nightmare and meeting the members of the Count’s household, Liberty had started to piece a lot of things together. 
  The Countess- sorry, her Mother- had a small freak out when she couldn’t seem to remember her own name. The sweet woman had thought that the fever had scrambled her daughter’s brain. 
    A long discussion with the doctor had followed. 
    She finally calmed down a bit when he had reassured her that this was most likely temporary and that observation would be best. They had then left her with Serena’s personal maid, Erica. The following days had been filled with chaos, interspersed with visits from the doctor.
    Liberty had to give credit to her new parents and the little maid. They hadn’t taken any of her outbursts or strange exclamations to heart. They just patiently told her stories and recited facts, ‘reminding’ her about her life, hoping to jog her memory. 
    Who was she? She was Serena Blanc, beloved daughter of Count and Countess Blanc. Where was she? Her family’s mansion in Shallarin, the capital of the Kalimar Empire. 
    An empire. 
    That gave Liberty the first clue as to where this was supposed to be. Then her suspicions about who was responsible for this nightmare had narrowed down to only one possible person. 
    Tara.
   Best friends since they met as roommates on the first day of college, the two young women had been partners in crime ever since. Now, she was suspect numero uno. 
   The sweet little nurse spent all her spare time when she wasn't pulling a shift in the ER at the county hospital, reading increasingly ridiculous romance novels. She had been trying to rope Liberty into her hobby for years.
    Her collection of novels, featuring long-haired men with chiseled jaws and strategically ripped shirts on the cover, was considered legendary. 
   Liberty was all for long hair and exposed abs - she just preferred them swinging a sword against evil or disarming bombs. Or trade the abs for a sharp mind, cornering the murderer with icy logic and sarcasm in an exquisitely tailored suit. 
   Romance was alright; she just preferred it as a side dish, not the main meal.
   That night, Tara had hit her with the one phrase guaranteed to do the impossible- make Liberty do something she didn’t want to.  
  “I double dog dare you!"
  And that was it. Everyone knew she couldn't turn down a dare sober, and she was already a few cocktails in that night. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to resist. That's how Liberty ended up reading The Bloom of an Angel.
   Liberty had been more than a little skeptical, but she abided by the rules of the dare and read the awful thing from cover to cover. 
   She had not been impressed. 
   What a trash book. 
  It was a story about, surprise, surprise, a sweet and stunningly beautiful girl getting swept off her feet and into a tumultuous romance. She was only the daughter of a Count, and he was the Crown Prince of the Empire who took one look at her and vowed to marry only her. 
   The main characters had made her gag on their syrupy sweetness, and the plot had revolved largely around them with the barest set dressing of a mystery thrown in. There had been a murder investigation happening around all this sweet romance, but there were so many holes left in the plot it might as well have been Swiss cheese. 
   He spent all his time winning her heart, taking her on the most impressive dates, and consistently trying to sneak her off to the nearest secluded corner to ‘express his affection’. 
   All that boring, mundane nonsense like running the country was left to his poor best friend and second in command, the Prime Minister. One of the few characters in this dumpster fire of a novel she could stand, not that he was actually in it much.  
  Why bother finding a bloody killer when you could focus on finding love instead?
  Of course, there were obstacles thrown in their path. Mainly by one of the other characters that Liberty had not hated completely. The sweet and helpless female lead’s rival who happened to be a duke's daughter.
    And you know, the prince's legitimate fiancée prior to him meeting our little protagonist. So this man of the year not only loafed around and pushed his work onto his overworked friend, but he was also a cheater. 
   Man of the year. A real catch. And this two-bit author is going to saddle me with him. 
   Hearing Erica list off Crown Prince Erik Augustus Emmanuel Von Kalimar had been what had confirmed that she had woken up in the world of The Bloom of an Angel.
  Just thinking about it made her want to hit something.
  After recognizing the source material, Liberty had tried to hold onto the idea that this was all just a giant prank. It was on her second day in the Count’s mansion that she finally had to admit that it was more serious than that.
  It had been time for a bath, and she had looked forward to using the huge claw-foot tub in her bathroom. She had been shocked when the young women dressed as maids tried to insist on assisting her while she bathed. There was no way Liberty was going along with that, immersive experience or not. 
    After the last pinafore-clad maid had been shooed out, she had shed her night gown, ready to step into the steaming tub. That's when she had looked down, and unexplainable proof presented itself. 
    Serena's skin spread pale and unmarked across her flat stomach and slim waist. Skin that, had it belonged to Liberty, would have sported ink that had been there for years and held deep meaning for her.
  The sword of justice, with the date she passed the bar inked down its blade, should have cut across her left hip. The crossed arrows of her army unit’s emblem should have sat just under her belly button, and an American flag with her entry and exit date from the service should have been frozen mid-wave across her right hip. Or at least they should have if this were her body.
  She had collapsed on the floor and hyperventilated for a few minutes. Then a knock at the door followed by a soft voice inquiring if she was alright, had calmed her down enough to get in the bathtub and start bathing. 
    In denial, she had even scrubbed her skin hard enough to turn it red in case they were covering them up with makeup, but no tattoos appeared. 
   Then, she had spent a few manic minutes trying to convince herself that they must have used laser removal while she was passed out. However, even if she could convince herself that Tara would have let them do that to her despite knowing how much that ink meant to her, laser removal still leaves faint marks. And there were no marks. Just smooth, perfect, pale skin.
  There was no choice but to admit that this wasn't her body. It wasn't her life. And if it wasn't her life, then it most likely wasn't her world. She was really stuck in a book.
  A book she hated.
  Perfect. When am I going to learn to stop taking random dares?
  Forced to accept her new circumstances, she had latched onto the idea that she might be able to go back the same way she had arrived. Since the last thing she remembered before waking up here had been being hit by that truck, maybe she was just lying in a hospital room, and this was just all an elaborate coma dream. 
   In that case, she might be able to wake herself up if she shocked her mind. Which had led to a series of what, she can admit now, were some serious miscalculations on her part. Trying to jump off the balcony had caused the household’s concern for her mental state to understandably escalate. On reflection, Liberty also admitted to herself that the attempt had been more out of an uncharacteristic feeling of despair than a logical belief that killing this body would somehow send her back. Unless she was certain that it would work, the consequences were too high. What if it wasn't a way out, just a one-way ticket to the real afterlife? 
  She needed to regroup and approach this like she would any other problem.
  First, she needed to document everything. She had noticed that while this new world used a different language. A little experimentation proved that while the Empire’s language would automatically be translated for her both written and oral, others couldn’t decipher when she used English. That made it a perfect secret code for her to use. 
    She spent a full day writing in a pair of journals that she had Erica get for her. She had filled one in with every detail of her previous life, including sketches of her family members so that she wouldn't forget their faces. Who knew how long she might be trapped here? She had been decent in art class back in the day, and Serena seemed to have had some talent for sketching, too, so she had been pleased with how they turned out. 
   Then, she began trying to find out as much as she could about her new family. The book had been pretty full of details about Serena's looks, clothes, and general lack of a real personality, but pretty sparse on actual details about her life and the household. Outside of a couple of scenes where the Countess urged Serena to consider not marrying the Prince, which made Liberty warm to the woman immediately, the Blanc family was pretty much like their name- a blank. The maids, especially Erica, had been a perfect source for the information she needed. 
    In the novel, Serena’s personality was described as ‘sweet, demure, and quietly wise.” Some discreet questioning of her parents and the maids confirmed that the reality matched up. This had the potential to be a huge problem. A Venn diagram of her and Serena’s personalities would look like two circles sitting on opposite sides of a piece of paper. Her ‘memory issues’ could be explained away, and there was always the hope that her memories might be restored one day.  Pair that with a complete personality change and…
    Well, the consequences could be dire for her. During the period in history that the author had chosen to copy for this story, inconvenient women were often locked away in asylums. A daughter who suddenly went from being demure and sweet to brash and headstrong, couldn’t even remember her own name, and had even attempted to throw herself off a balcony, would be extremely inconvenient. Liberty had to admit that even in modern times, if the same situation had played out, she would most likely find herself spending quality time in a psych ward. 
    Liberty knew herself well. She had wasted only a couple of hours on a pitiful attempt to mimic Serena’s quiet nature, then gave it up. She could fake it for short periods of time, but not live her whole life that way. In one of her darker moments, Liberty had coldly comforted herself with the fact that the Count and Countess seemed to love their daughter, so it would probably at least be a fancy asylum. Then her usual fighting spirit had kicked in.
    In the eyes of her family, Serena had practically risen from her deathbed and then suffered severe memory loss. So a few changes to her normal attitude would be natural. To keep her new family from enacting the posh equivalent of fifty-one fifty’ing her, she just needed to make a third circle on that diagram that balanced between both personalities. Dilute Liberty down so she could present them with just a spicier version of Serena. To do that, she would have to gain a lot of information very quickly. 
   She had realized that the original novel had been pretty sparse on the background details. Most of the details about the world that the characters inhabited were fleshed out. The focus had been so focused on the two main characters that everything else was left to be filled in by the reader’s own imagination and preconceptions based on the period setting. For example, the book hadn't even mentioned that Serena had a brother who, apparently, was back on the estate handling some business. 
   That had been the real eye-opener for her, highlighting just how many details in this world were not included in the book. The implications had made her head spin. To begin with, she might not be inside a story. She might be in an alternate world based on a story, which was a different kettle of fish altogether. One implied a set plot that imposed itself on the world, the other implied that the story was merely something that happened in a wider world. One was set in stone, and one had wiggle room. She could change things. She needed to figure out how closely this world mimicked her own and the rules its society operated under. Otherwise, she would be unable to predict how the background characters she would need to interact with would react. Because Liberty now had a purpose and the beginnings of a plan.
   Realizing this world might be more complicated than she had originally suspected, Liberty needed to find out as much as possible as quickly as she could. 
  This was what the second journal had come in handy for. She filled it with everything she could remember about the novel. It didn’t take as long because she left out a lot of the fluff that had taken up most of the main plot, focusing on any intrigue or political maneuvering, and only included the few bits about the changes to the actual world that were going on in the background while the sugar-coated couple had their romance.  There was still plenty of room for her to add new information, which fit perfectly with her intentions.
  She had been dumped into this body and world with no instructions or information, so she figured that it was only fair for her to decide for herself. What the book considered the ‘main plot’ had made her gag. She couldn’t imagine having to act her way through any of it. While the Prince might have been described as Serena's dream guy, from how ‘reserved’ the young woman was about engaging with him, Liberty had her doubts. More importantly, though, Liberty had no interest in a two-timing creep, no matter how rich or powerful he was. 
   Determined to avoid the pull of the original plot, Liberty spent a few days going over every book on the history and laws of the Empire she could get her hands on and reading all the periodicals that the Count had collected over the past couple of years to fill in her knowledge on the world around her. Then she began to flesh out her plans. 
  Like any plan, though, she would need key people to implement it. After reviewing her notes, she filled out her dream team.  
   She estimated that she only had around six months before the main plot of this literary masterpiece got started, so she needed to get prepared.
   There was a key person she would need to find and recruit first. Her skills were so important that Liberty wasn't confident she could get the others without them, and he clock was ticking.