“By the blood!” Regina cried as she stared at Henrietta looming over Artem while raising the shattered urn above her head once again. “Henri – stop! You cannot kill him!”


    Henrietta stared at Artem and flexed her arms experimentally.


    “Are you sure?” Henrietta asked.


    “Yes!” Regina sternly responded, even as she had to force down her instinctive desire to fling her body over Artem’s to protect him from further blows. “You cannot murder a royal prince, even if he was trying to… to…”


    “To kill you because his family told him to do so even after he told you he would love you forever?”


    There was a reason that nobody in their family ever accused Henrietta of sensitivity.


    “Even so,” Regina finally responded, closing her eyes to keep herself from further disgrace. “If you and I flee Carcosa as penniless and powerless daughters of House Sheridan, that is one thing. If we are very lucky, no one  in Carcosa will investigate our ‘deaths’ further because we are worth so little without our family’s backing. Yet if you kill Artem…”


    Regina shuddered.


    Whatever others thought of Artem, he was a member of the royal family and had proven his magical prowess a hundred times over. If he died and they were suspected of having a hand in his death, she and Henrietta would be chased down to the ends of the world. Their own “deaths” would not be enough to protect them from the Alpin’s fury.


    Regina carefully did not admit, either to herself or to Henrietta, that this reason mattered less than the visceral horror that struck her at the thought of Artem’s death.


    Regina knew that she should have wanted to hurt Artem at this moment.


    He had lied to her, deceived her, even attempted to murder her.


    Even if reason kept her from murdering him, she should have at least wanted to kick him in the ribs while she had a chance.


    Yet even so, Regina had to wrap her arms around herself to keep them from wrapping around Artem’s body as he lay before her, scratched and helpless and bloody.


    ‘Love,’ Regina quietly realized, ‘truly is even stranger and stupider than the terrible romance novels said.’


    Thankfully, it looked as though Henrietta was willing to listen to Regina. So, with a sigh, Henrietta let go of the remnants of her urn and heaved slender Artem onto her shoulder.


    “Then I shall find some place to hide the princeling,” Henrietta said. “Will you come with me?”


    Regina shook her head, still keeping her arms wrapped around herself so as to not reach for Artem.


    “No,” Regina quietly said. “I have wasted enough of our time speaking with Artem and every second counts when they are expecting me at the ceremonial hall. I will go ahead and set up our ‘exit’ at the place we marked on my parents’ map. Come meet me once you have found a safe… location for Artem and we will – we will –”


    “Leave this place,” Henrietta added, ending Regina’s sentence. “I am ready whenever you are.”


    Regina was not sure she would ever be ready.


    Even so, she knew that this needed to happen.


    Regina took one last look at Artem, slung over Henrietta’s sturdy shoulder like a sack of potatoes.


    Smiling bleakly, Regina said, “Thank you, Hen, for doing what I cannot.”


    Then Regina let her fingers trail down to the substances she had kept hidden in her bridal skirts and thought of what she was eager to do.


    Namely, she was going to burn down the Alpins’ catacombs so that she and Henrietta could flee Carcosa forever.


    ~???~


    Regina quickly made her way to the remotest part of the catacombs – a place she and Henrietta had decided was the ideal location to start a raging fire. Her path was made possible by the strange everburning Alpin torches that were spread just far enough to see the near area, while still allowing for ominous shadows outside their reach.


    Feeling smug at the ease of her arrival, Regina started the next part of the plan with unusual optimism. After all, she had skirts that were designed to be easily torn, a set of materials to use with those easily torn skirts, and the determination of a woman well scorned.


    Unfortunately, she discovered that arson needed significant exertion.


    “Who knew,” Regina grimly muttered as she stacked the lightest, most desiccated, dead bodies atop one another like cord wood, “that Alpins are just as troublesome dead as when they are alive?”


    Indeed, Alpins were nearly as irritating when they were corpses as when they were living men and women. For if they were not attempting to assassinate Regina after she had shared her first night with them, they were shooting dust up her nose, caking her hands with dirt, and generally doing everything in their power to avoid stacking into a nice tidy pile that she could set on fire.


    By the end of a half-hour of exertion, Regina was covered in dirt and cursing the entire Alpin lineage from their very moment of conception.


    “Why,” she angrily asked the pile of corpses she was about to light on fire, “will none of you royal idiots ever just do what I ask you to? Instead, you need to get engaged to me, make me fall in love with you, and then try to kill me repeatedly!”Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Enraged, Regina punched one of the Alpin skulls she had stacked up in the face… only to angrily hiss when her knuckles began bleeding against the jagged edges of its teeth.


    “By the blood!” she cursed. “None of you Alpins can ever make this easy – even if you are too inept to murder me!”


    That reminded Regina of Artem and that made her lash out again, never mind how much her hand throbbed from yet another collision with Alpin teeth.


    “Why did you have to lie to me?” she asked the ancestors of a man who was not even present. “I did not even ask you for your love. You just made me believe that you were giving it freely!”


    If she kept this up, Regina grimly realized, she was not going to have any intact skin on her hands. So, changing tactics, she lifted her skirt up and gave the Alpins a vicious kick that she felt they all deserved.


    “You just gave your love to me,” she went on raging, “and after so many months, you made me expect it, enjoy it, even need it! Then, just as I thought you were the one person in the world left in the world who loved me just for being myself –”


    Regina ground an Alpin beneath her heels and felt as though her heart were turning to dust as well.


    “It turns out you wanted to use me… just like everyone but Henrietta.”


    The papers that Artem had given Regina crinkled within her petticoats, as though she needed yet more reminders of the treachery of that stupid goldfish.


    “Well, may the blood curse you!” she shouted, and tried to believe it. “I do not need you, your love, or your papers. So they can go burn with your damned ancestors as well!”


    With a sense of cold finality, Regina ripped Artem’s papers out of her skirt, ready to set them aflame along with his ancestors and her identity.


    That was when she finally looked at said papers…


    ….and felt her heart stop at the words they contained.


    Mrs. Jane Sullivan, the first said, along with: jewelry merchant traveling to countries west of Carcosa along with husband.


    The page fluttered down and then Regina stared at a surprisingly good sketch of her own face. That is, it was a surprisingly good sketch of her face if her hair was cut short and dyed brown, and her ornate jewels and dresses exchanged for a simple pin against a plain muslin frock.


    With mounting dread, Regina looked at the next page in her hand.


    Mr. John Sullivan, it said, along with: jewelry merchant apprenticed to Mr. Tarry Pritchet of the Capital. Will be traveling west of Carcosa with wife for twelve weeks.


    The page afterward held another skilled sketch of Artem’s face, though his hair had also been cut short and tinted brown, while his clothes were exchanged for a merchant’s sedate suit.


    ‘By the blood,’ Regina realized as she began frantically combing through the papers that Artem had left her. ‘What was Artem trying to do?!’


    And as Regina increasingly desperately rifled through Artem’s papers, she discovered the truth.


    Artem’s papers contained nothing but… travel documents and false identities. There was enough documentation to convince any normal border agent that he and Regina were an ordinary merchant couple traveling outside of Carcosa to peddle their trade.


    This kind of documentation went far beyond what she and Henrietta had been able to prepare for themselves as they had attempted to flee. This meant that…


    ‘Artem,’ Regina realized as the truth dawned with the force of a lightning strike, ‘never meant to kill me!’


    Even if his family wanted her dead, these documents proved that Artem wanted to save her life… by running away with her to another country.


    All this time, Artem had loved her and did want to keep her safe!


    He was even willing to give up the privileges of being a prince to make her happy!


    Yet how had she repaid him?


    By suspecting him of seeking her murder, shunning him a week before their wedding, and allowed Henrietta to knock him unconscious with a vase!


    ‘I truly am a villainess,’ Regina realized with all-encompassing horror, ‘and if I do not find Artem and apologize immediately –’


    What would happen if Artem woke to find her “dead” in the flames she would leave behind?


    What would that do to a pure and innocent heart that she had already wounded gravely?


    Head spinning with the possibilities, Regina turned from the pile of bodies.


    Regina began to move.


    She did not know where she was going.


    She did not even know where she had been.


    Within the enormous and empty catacombs, there was no way to know where Henrietta had taken Artem, especially since the last thing Regina wanted was to attract attention to herself.


    Regina hoped that Henrietta had taken Artem to some location outside where the fire could spread. However, as her anger started to fade and the fear started to build, Regina realized that Henrietta had never promised that she would remove Artem entirely from danger.


    After all, Henrietta did not need to directly murder Artem.


    She could just leave Artem to die to the fire that Regina built.


    So all Regina could do now was move as quickly as she could while making as little noise as possible, trying to control her guilt and fear.


    “I will find them both,” Regina told herself as she raced forward. “I will find him and I will apologize to Artem and we will – we still can –”


    However, anything Regina was planning ended when she reached the arch in front of her. She stopped abruptly, staring up at the arch with long, strangely ominous flower-studded vines that dangled down to drape over anyone who might be approaching.


    Yet nothing lived in the catacombs.


    Slowly, oh so slowly, Regina bent over as she pretended to adjust her skirt…


    …while she secretly pulled out one of the flammable liquid vials that she had hidden in her panniers.


    Then, in a single fluid movement born from months of avoiding death, Regina rose with the vial and threw it in a perfect arc toward the vines.


    As the flames lit the entire room, Regina grimly smiled.


    “There you are,” she said as the world began to burn around her and a voice cried out in shock. “Are you here to offer me another blossom… Robin Buren?”