'As I seem to have misplaced the gown you so carefully prepared for me, I will need a new one for the Imperial Family's upcoming Victory Banquet,' she had written in the letter the messenger had brought this morning, adding: 'Naturally, I understand if this request is too challenging, even for a tailor of your stature, Mr. Cain.'

This was something he couldn't possibly ignore, as his pride had been called into question. For he was indeed the one and only Silver Cain, son of a Baron in name only, who had worked hard to stand where he stood now.

And not only that had caused him to gather all his assistants and cancel his appointments he would have had today.

''Misplaced'? My dress?' he thought, shaking his head as he propped up one of the mannequins that had been brought in with the help of the servants of the House of Varnhagen, 'She didn't like it, so she didn't accept it. So it must be. But I am not a man of failure.'

In a matter of hours he had drawn up a new set of sketches that were as good as the first ones - no, better. 'Far better than the previous ones,' he estimated as he looked at his sketches.

"Sir Cain," a voice suddenly cut through the sound of rustling fabric and busy workers, "I didn't expect to see you in our residence today. To what do I owe the favor of your visit?"

Surely, she had been expecting an answer from the tailor, but he hadn't replied to the messenger her stepmother had sent in the morning. For him to drop in like this seemed somehow rude to Rowena.

"Oh, I apologize, I took your letter from this morning as a sign of urgency, so I wasted no time and spared no effort to be of service to you."

'He's at it again,' the lavender-haired customer thought while struggling to understand his intentions, 'how did he even manage to get all of this ready so fast?'

For the sake of transparency, he held up a neatly arranged stack of papers. "I must admit, I had already taken a look into a few more styles suitable for your esteemed self, my lady."

She hesitated for a second, but eventually took what he offered to see that it was indeed a stack of sketches. One of the designs on display reminded her of the clothing she would see on most women walking the streets of the Arlen Empire.

While people in the north wore thicker clothing, the general style was much the same as in the capital. They just had their own little twist.

In this particular case, it was the way the female commoners wore a kind of corset over their dress. Sure enough, a commoner's dress was considerably more plain than this, even in more accessible color schemes - like white, brown, or beige, and all the natural variations of those.

It seemed like he had a rough idea of what he wanted to do, but no finished product to show among the dresses on display. A noble wouldn't want to wear what a peasant would, right?

"I love this design," she said, looking at this particular sketch, noticing the high collar that was attached to the fabric that came out under the corset. 'But would I want to wear a corset?'

As he glanced at it, a brief wave of intrigue washed over him. He had added it at the last minute, but he hadn't thought she would actually be interested in it.

In fact, he had expected her to throw it back in his face. Perhaps she really was a bit more sheltered than he thought, even though she had just been on a long journey, seeing all kinds of people in the Empire and beyond.

"I can draw up a clearer version of this for you if you would graciously enlighten me as to what your wishes would be," he asked, bowing with a wide, welcoming gesture of his right arm while still holding his designs with his left hand, "I'm afraid we don't have much time if it has to be done by the day after tomorrow."

"Are you truly willing to go that far, Silver Cain?" she finally asked, taking a deep breath. "This is going to be a very difficult task."

"As I said before, I am willing to come to your aid under any circumstances," the man said, keeping a low stance and maintaining eye contact, "and I never shy away from a challenge."

"In that case, I will hold you to your word," Rowena replied, sitting down as a blonde maid came to set the table with two cups and a plate of baked goods, "as for the specifications of the dress, I want it to cover my back and collarbone."

"So that's why you didn't like the one I gave you before. I will repent."

"What do you mean? I did like it," she said nonchalantly and took a sip of her tea, inwardly thanking Norina as she always did.

The maid even smiled down at her when Rowena looked up to see how they were doing - Norina and her sister, standing nervously beside her.

"I misspoke," Silver Cain corrected himself immediately, "I remember you accidentally losing sight of it."

"There was some confusion and the dress ended up with the wrong person. Now I need a new dress. That's all that happened, I'm afraid."

'What a brazen lie,' he thought, smiling to himself as he nodded understandingly on the surface, 'only a noble could tell such a tall tale without an ounce of shame. I had it brought to her doorstep, who would dare steal it here?'

She really was a strange character. But no matter how he looked at it, he couldn't find her boring. Someone who had the audacity to ask a designer to bring her a new dress barely four days before an event that everyone and their grandmother had to attend must surely be a bit mad.

But it was madness he could work with. Stress had always pushed him to the limit. And it was this model that he desperately wanted to see his new creations on, so he considered it a small price to pay.

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"I will spare no effort in making this dress. Shall we go with the same color scheme as before?"

For a second, Rowena nodded, her tea touching the tip of her upper lip, when her eyes widened and she had to pause.

'No?' she thought and sat her cup down, "I would like to change the color as well."

The color meant that he would probably make it with fabric off the same badge, it was hard to make sure it was the same otherwise, they weren't exactly in the industrial age yet. If she was unlucky, the two dresses would look almost the same next to each other, and she had told her stepmother to let Arabella wear the other one.

She didn't want to be a wallflower, but she didn't want to be part of the crowd either. Her debut was meant to open doors into society, and she was going to walk through those doors, even if she had to crash through.

It was important, especially since the Emperor had hinted that he had decided something for her future when she had met him recently. Maybe she was imagining things and it was nothing - but maybe it was everything instead. The cat about her using Mana was out of the bag, too, and she could only hope that this would go over smoothly.

She needed someone to have her back in this world, now more than ever. So instead of showing how weird she was, she needed to show how outstanding she could be.

Even if it was only on the outside - no, even if they only came to talk to her because of her family, she had to at least convey the image that she had no ambiguous position within the Grand Duchy. In short, she had to make a strong impression.

Suddenly, there was an idea on her mind that she couldn't quite place. But where had she seen it?

'An ocean of fireflies,' she thought, trying to uncover a blurry memory, "Actually, I think I know what I want the dress to look like."

"I'm all ears, Lady Rowena."

With a smile, she looked up at a surprised Norina. "Say, did you finish cleaning out my closet back then?"

"Today you will learn about your schedule for the next two days," Vicar Arnaldo, who also held the title of Bishop of Avarinth's Temple, spoke to Rowena without ever looking in her direction, "as a member of society who was once blessed with a second name through baptism, you are to be initiated into the world as a pure child of Aurora."

'Now that I think about it, they should all be aware of who Aurora actually is, shouldn't they?' the noble thought to herself while she looked at the pompous cleric out of the corner of her eye, 'It's a bit amazing how smooth he's at pretending to believe. Or maybe he really does?'

There was a saying in Celia's world that "to see is to believe". But some said "to see is to know", and knowing and believing were concepts that were sometimes worlds apart.

She scratched that train of thought, knowing it was going nowhere, and tried to pay attention to his sermon instead. She was going to be given some special food, apparently a green soup, that she would have to eat for the next two days for some sort of inner cleansing.

"It's made from specially grown herbs native to the Aurora Empire that we have imported to grow here at the Temple," he went on, holding up one of his arms, "over here is the ceremonial bath house, you will take a bath in the blessed water to wash away old sins and greet adulthood as fresh as a newborn."

"To start anew," she mused, and he finally stopped to look down at her, making her stop as well.

"Correct." His eyes were sharply criticizing her for a moment, but he also seemed proud, which caused their interaction to be more complicated than it should have been.

"On that note," Rowena said to break the awkward atmosphere, "could I ask if I may take the soup with me today? That way you wouldn't have to bring it all the way to our residence tomorrow."

For a second, he pondered what to say, but ended with a nod. "I will have to see if it has already been prepared. I will have to ask you to wait here for a moment."

He turned to leave, and Rowena instantly felt the stares she had just become accustomed to, growing more intense the moment she was alone.

'I see, I'm still not a welcome guest,' she assumed, though they were less hostile compared to her last visit at the Temple.

Suddenly, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Someone was closing in on her.

"Fancy meeting you here, my lady," she heard, shortly after the presence behind her had come close enough for her sharpened senses to feel its breath behind her, "have you been well?"

She whipped her head around, almost hitting his chin, causing him to pull back with a crooked smile.

"Careful my lady," the young man said jokingly, his deep green eyes held an amused glint, "last time you stepped on my toes, this time you almost head-butted me, are you going to try and kill me the next time we meet?"

"Don't say such things out loud, Your Highness." She had to pause for a moment to think. "How are you even here?"

"Shall we take a walk through the garden while we talk?" the Crown Prince of Lodden offered instead of answering her question.

"I am quite comfortable here. The Vicar will be back soon."

"Right," he said, "I assume this is in preparation for your debut?"

"You know about it?"

"Everyone here knows. They have been talking about your ceremony for days."

She laughed and took a step with him despite her earlier words, as they walked slowly along the flower beds of the circular courtyard. It would surely be all right as long as she was there when Arnaldo returned?

"Probably because they plan to make life difficult for me."

"That's not true," Lucan claimed, "at least not entirely true."

"How reassuring, Your Highness."

"Do not call me 'Your Highness,' I am but a humble acolyte seeking to become a Priest in this honorable place."

He hadn't lost his theatricality at all, in fact it might have gotten worse in her opinion. "Sure, Master Lucan, so how come you are here?"

A flash of concern crossed his features, quickly replaced by his usual cheeky expression. "After the old contract was dissolved, we returned the High Priests brought by the Aurora Empire and replaced them with those lent by Arlen. And we came to a new agreement."

"I remember. The contract said that the Lodden Imperial Family would not be allowed to formally learn how to control Mana. They would have to resort to pagan practices."

"Which we did," he confirmed what she already knew, "but now we are allowed, of course they don't want to see me at the Vatican, but I can still come here, as we have just established a healthy trade relationship with the Arlen Empire, haven't we?"

"So you came here while I was still traveling," she began to lose herself in her thoughts, 'that explains why he didn't tell me about it. No, there's no way he would have told me about it anyway, is there? There's no reason for it. I'm still feeling bad for him though.'

If he couldn't go to the Vatican, becoming an ordinary Priest would be his limit. A High Priest learned things that would never leave their headquarters. It meant that he would still never reach the level of what this world knew as their peak of Mana.

It was unfair, but even in their old world there were rules about who had access to what and how. 'Anyone could spread knowledge that was basic and crude, but the good stuff was kept in the VAULT - literally.'

"Arnaldo can't really stand me, but I think he does what he's told." Lucan continued speaking as Rowena turned her head to see a middle-aged man with a gaunt face approaching them.

"Speak of the devil," Rowena muttered as she looked at the mentioned Vicar, 'now that I think about it, that guy is basically a Jedi Master in this world.'

"I didn't know young people in the West still referred to the Devil," Lucan commented, pulling her out of her thoughts before she could laugh out loud at her own joke.

"What do you mean?" She turned to him in confusion, but the Jedi Master was faster.

"I see, you two have already become friends," Arnaldo called to her before Lucan could answer.

"Friends might be a bit much, but as you know, we are acquainted, Lord Bishop," the young man clarified.

Rowena couldn't stand the way he looked at the black-haired prince, it was even worse than his attitude towards her.

'You truly don't like the Lodden Imperial family, do you?' One more question for her to ask.