Regina had her brains, her determination, and an angry duck to use to defeat a skilled assassin.


    Only one of these things was new. Even so, Regina felt as if she had gone from hopelessness to a sheer determined certainty that she was not going to die this day.


    Ava, her beloved sister, had somehow reached out from a past that had tortured Regina for years and given Regina the strength she needed to survive.


    It still did not make what Regina had to do any less impossible.


    Regina drew back her foot as she moved more thoroughly behind the column that gave her the best view of Robin Buren, her terrifying and now strangely still assassin.


    The flames from his vines had already died back almost completely, without any other living material to feed them. Regina had counted on the plant fire to lure Robin towards her the first time without putting either of them in “real” danger since the fire was within a small space and brief but intense. It had still allowed the fire to act as a brief wall between them where they could see and speak with one another… a wall that she had used to fake her death without him being able to get too close.


    There was no chance that she could use a shield of flames a second time.


    Her “dead body” was still aflame, but those flames were mostly against the wall and useless as a shield while she was in the more exposed columns of the catacombs.


    How long would the flames even last with only a few urns and her skirt to feed them?


    It was fortunate that the mysterious Alpin lights were mostly against the wall, allowing her to see Robin while he could not see her. However, any movement towards him would bring her into the light as well.


    His figure was slumped towards the flames, his head in his hands… but could his seeming vulnerability be a trap?


    Now that Regina was not planning to die with Robin to ensure that he would perish when she used her own body to keep him from leaving the burning flames…


    Now, coming behind him was an even more difficult problem to solve.


    She had circled back behind the columns, but she was running out of time before her most powerful distraction failed utterly.


    So what could she do?


    Her skirts were gone. She had no allies. Her only remaining container of flammable liquid was as much a danger to her as to Robin, since without her pinning him down, he could easily avoid or put out any flames that she set on him.


    Given the ease with which Robin wielded plants, he must have the ability to create a shield to pull flames from him… as he did when he walked through her flames in the first place.


    There had to be something she could use… something she was missing…


    Still, Regina knew she faced a man who had managed to incapacitate Artem – even when Artem was the most powerful magician Regina had ever seen!


    Of course, the incapacitation had only come after Robin had poisoned and tied Artem and it was not as if Regina had any poison-


    Regina’s eyes widened.


    A slow brilliant smile spread over her face.


    “Now if only I had a distraction,” she muttered, even as her hands started moving swiftly across her bodice.


    She needed to get at least two columns closer if she had any hope at all of saving herself. Unfortunately the next two columns were in the light.


    By the blood.


    Regina nearly bit through her tongue trying not to shriek, when another sharp pain spread through her ankle.


    As she tried to hold back the tears of pain, a very cranky duck waltzed out into the light.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    “Quack,” said the duck.


    Regina stared at the duck.


    Robin slowly lifted his head and stared at the duck.


    Regina moved.


    As quickly and quietly as she could, she raced to the darkest side of the well lit column while Robin seemed to be engaged in some sort of… staring contest with the duck.


    With a stifled sigh of relief, Regina leaned back against the column, closing her eyes.


    In a strange way, the whole situation felt like her very first vision where she had wandered in her shift in front of Lord Grass Hair, feeling naked and lost.


    This time, she had a corset and garters and far too much jewelry to support her wedding dress, but the sensation of being naked and unarmed and lost was the same… except that this time Robin Buren, Lord Grass Hair, could see her.


    It was, Regina realized, an even worse feeling than watching herself die in a dream.


    At least she had made it to the first of the two columns without notice-


    A hand suddenly barely avoided grabbing the edge of Regina’s shift as Regina slid herself to the opposite side of the column faster than she had ever moved in her life.


    “So what little mouse,” said Robin Buren, definitely not still kneeling on the ground in front of the fire, “has decided to come visit me?”


    Regina held her breath, trying to stay as still as the column she was melding herself against.


    If he found her now-


    “Little mouse, little mouse,” said Robin softly, his voice echoing like thunder in the pulse in Regina’s veins. “Where are you hiding?”


    His hand started to reach around the side where Regina was hiding.


    Frantically, Regina wondered if she could avoid him and get back into the darkness with all element of surprise gone and if she could even avoid her imminent strangling –


    “QUACK!”


    “You blood bedamned duck!” howled Robin and Regina suddenly understood exactly what she had to do.


    Regina ran.


    She did not look back.


    She ran and she ran into the flames and ignored the fire and ran so that she was behind the flames and her burning skirt and she was somehow not on fire and the fire was dying but that was no problem and Regina threw her last canister at those terrible Alpin lights, hoping she was right-


    The lights exploded into the most glorious burst of light Regina had ever seen and Regina turned and saw Robin fall again to his knees, blinded.


    Regina moved.


    She had been pulling her corset laces loose and her garter loose and she pounced.


    Robin tried to grab her.


    She stabbed him.


    The brooch looked beautiful buried an inch deep in the palm of his hand.


    Regina grimly continued, her hands steady, her vision focused entirely on what she had to do while Robin thrashed, unable to grab her, unable to see.


    “You bite well for a mouse,” he said, his voice dark and still beautiful somehow as a flower bloomed on his palm.


    Regina calmly stabbed him with another brooch.


    The last of the knots fell into place and suddenly, Regina had wrapped herself a present she had never anticipated.


    Bound in strong corset strings and even stronger garters, with knots that even a sailor would find difficult to undo, for once in her life Regina finally felt like she had the upper hand.


    “There,” she said, as she looked down on her handiwork, as Robin’s thrashing suddenly stilled entirely.


    Regina, for maybe the first time in her life, told a joke because she actually wanted to tell a joke.


    “You have been a very knotty boy, Robin,” she said smugly. “Now you will be tied up and punished.”


    Regina had been prepared to have to stab Robin with more jewelry after riling him with her words.


    What she had not expected was for Robin Buren to slump in front of her, his head bowed before her as he looked up at her through his unfairly long eyelashes.


    “You are alive,” said Robin. “I am…”


    He closed his eyes.


    “You are a brilliant woman who deserves to live a long, happy life, my lady,” said Robin Buren, assassin for the Neville and Buren duchies.


    “Yes,” said Regina Sheridan, survivor. “I do.”


    “Now,” said Regina Sheridan, once and future Princess, as she kicked Robin onto his back and put her heel over his throat, “I will ensure it.”