"Milady?" he asked once more, as Arthur Shelton was quite the patient man, wondering what the young lady in front of him was so deeply concerned about.

As he followed her eyes, he blinked in surprise. "Oh, isn't that the infamous Saintess? I barely got to lay my eyes on her during that Victory Banquet."

Confused for a moment, Rowena's head shook as she alternated her attention between the man standing next to Scarlett Baldwin and the Young Lord of Shelton.

"What?" she asked first and thought about his words afterwards, "Correct, that is her. Do you wish to have a word with her? I could introduce you."

"I could never ask this of you, but I am well chuffed about your benevolent offer." Though her voice filled with sudden urgency had intrigued him, he didn't wish to intrude.

She wanted to ask what exactly he had just said, but she interpreted as a sign of thankfulness and kept her lack in knowledge to herself. Since he had denied her, she would need to find a different excuse to get closer to the Saintess, and therefore closer to her servant, Illic.

That was when she spotted a familiar looking black-haired Prince, standing close to the Temple's finest, appearing to have a leisure talk.

"Well, in that case, I won't stop you from enjoying the Festival any further," the young noble woman said, walking off to close the distance to her object of interest.

The young lord was flabbergasted at her quick exit, yet had to laugh at it at the same time.

"You really are always like that, aren't you?"

She didn't hear him say it, not because she wouldn't have been able to, but because she had used her advanced hearing to listen in on the two people in front of her.

"I'm happy to be here as well, Venerable Saintess."

"Please, don't address me this way, it would be unbefitting of both our statuses, wouldn't it?" Scarlett was one of the few who knew exactly who the young man in front of her truly was.

Because of the internal affairs and their outward appearance, little had been known about the young Imperial Prince. He had to travel across the land, shaking hands will all kinds of "pagans" around the world, learning from whoever was willing to teach him, so he couldn't do it as the Imperial Prince of Lodden.

As not many knew about him, people still thought that Rowena was meant to marry the ugly old Emperor himself. Rowena herself had originally thought so, because the novel itself hadn't been any clearer on the matter.

As Rowena tugged a stray stand of hair behind her ear, looking sternly at Lucan from a few feet away, she wondered what they had been talking about before she had arrived. Was it all just bland small talk like that? Scarlett looked as if she was enjoying herself, but Lucan seemed pressed.

And she wasn't the only one who saw it. The Saintess herself saw how awkward the young man was standing there, waiting for something that would never happen.

'He didn't have a partner, did he?' she thought. It was one thing that a lot of people were staring at him, but admitting that one didn't have anyone to come with was very different for regular noble, compared to the Saintess of an Empire.

'I should have won,' Lucan thought to himself, 'I should have won, so the lady wouldn't have had to take the hand of that flirtatious scoundrel. She didn't look very happy and I could have helped her. A good friend I am.' With a sigh, he looked down at his official Lodden knight's formal clothing which he wore when he wouldn't need to dance, as it had his sword attached. 'She even went out of her way to wish me good luck.'

The charm on his sword reminded him of how he had met the young Duke up on the mountain. They hadn't crossed paths for long, but their meeting was memorable as well. He couldn't tell why, but when the Varnhagen heir spotted the sword of the other, his mood had turned sour.

The young Duke was always so calm, but at that moment, he was clearly shocked. And Lucan was right about this observation. As Alan wasn't far, barely noticed by anyone but all the single young ladies at the ball, he watched his sister with the eyes of a hawk, as the red-haired Prince strolled away, and a different leach would immediately attach itself to Rowena.

He couldn't fathom how he hadn't noticed this before. She hadn't been interested in anyone, and with her quirky personality, he simply hadn't been too worried, but as he saw her hand that tassel over to the Lodden Imperial Prince, Alan felt a significance… that Rowena didn't actually put behind that gesture.

To her, it was something to give to a friend. Alan, on the other hand, wondered why he would be important enough for her to think about him in the first place. And then the second Prince coming onto her, which wouldn't have happened had he won.

Both Alan and Lucan held quite the same sentiments: 'How could I not see this coming?'

Neither of them had recognized the second Prince as their rival in one way or another, as the latter finally returned with a glass of water in his hands. As they saw him put a hand around her waist, which she reluctantly let him do, both of them groaned inwardly from their side of the Festival grounds.

While the Saintess could tell from the beginning that Lucan wasn't truly interested in talking to her, he had still pretended to care until now. But at this moment, she looked over to what he was observing, seeing the young lady of Varnhagen struggling to keep a smile on her face with Prince Cassian next to her.

Scarlett knew little about the second Prince, but though he wasn't a bad guy per se, he was indeed a playboy, always trying to lure in some new, young lady, every day of every week, while never showing any real interest in them. His new found favor was surely due to the Emperor's order, but he had acted this way since she had known him regardless of that.

"I'm sure she will be open to a dance with your lordship," she flatly remarked, acting as if her words didn't mean anything in particular.

It took him a second to make a decision, but eventually, he turned to nod in her direction. "I will go now, Venerable Saintess."

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"I wouldn't dare stop you." As he walked off, she turned to realize that she was now all alone. 'What fate', she thought to herself.

For a second, Rowena wanted to give a slap to the hand that slyly wrapped around her waist, but that would only get her into trouble, as she had agreed to this "date," no matter the pressure behind it. And she knew he wasn't interested in her, even without being good at reading people.

He wasn't even trying to hide his true feelings. As she took a sip from the glass of water he had taken ages to bring, there was something at the back of her mind. It was a feeling she had felt before, but couldn't place.

"I know we didn't start to our relationship in a positive manner," he said as he leaned in slightly, in order for her to hear him as he spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.

"What relationship, Your Highness?" They simply didn't have such a thing.

"That is why I would like to have a talk, Lady Rowena."

'Rude much?' Her eyes told him how much she had appreciated that approach.

"Pardon me, Lady van Varnhagen, since you have had your debut," he corrected his words, "but now that you are grown woman of high society, and the deal with my brother has been annulled, you will need to think about who you are going to marry."

"What if I don't, Your Highness?" She took another sip of the water, already feeling woozy with the speed this conversation went south.

He smiled in a wicked way, pointing ever so slightly with his head into a vague direction behind them, as they stood side-by-side. The gold shine of his eyes bore into her, as if he had her in the palm of his head and knew it.

"Will you go on a short walk with me? Where we are alone, so we can talk about things that shouldn't be overheard by every simpleton on the North-Western-Continent and beyond."

'Hell no,' she thought without missing a beat as she turned her head and looked into the eerie deep forest at the edge of their festival grounds, 'I may not always make myself look very intelligent, but I'm not outright brain damaged, Sir.'

After blinking a few times, thinking she must have been really rattled by his strange words, as she couldn't answer right away, she shook her head as another voice rang loudly over their quiet conversation.

"Good evening, Lady Rowena," Lucan spoke to her exclusively, not even looking at the Prince next to her, "I wondered if we could maybe have a dance later on."

For a while now, she had an odd feeling being there, which was the reason for her handing the half empty glass back to her partner. "Would you mind, Your Highness? I wish to have a dance with my friend from Lodden."

Of course, he also knew who the man in front of him was, so he scrunched up his face, but didn't say she couldn't go. As she took his hand, right on cue, a new song was being played.

They had danced together a few times now, so she didn't only feel more carefree, but it was even fun. Dancing under the open sky, as she looked up and the stars looked back at her, made her feel weightless and free.

She didn't care about the people eyeing her from the side, flapping their lips about how she stood up her partner, who was a member of the Imperial family. After all, it was only one dance, so she couldn't be faulted for it.

Also, since the Emperor seemed to like her either in the family or out of his Empire, he wouldn't necessarily want to hold it against her anyway, but they wouldn't know about that.

"Is she trying to get out of her marriage with the tyrant of Lodden by coaxing this innocent child from the Temple?" For once, it wasn't Sheila Neuhaus spouting words along those lines.

No, that wasn't her, but she did stand right beside the older woman who had said them. "Mother, I would appreciate her getting into that marriage, so I'm not fond of that thought." After all, the next in line of honorable and unmarried ladies in the Arlen Empire was none other than Sheila herself.

"I don't understand," Lucan said, "why do they all talk so freely about my father?"

"Because they don't know you are his son," Rowena put it simply, while watching the people around her.

"Damn, he's gone." How did she let that happen? Even if she was distracted from all sides, she was disappointed in herself.

"Again, this language," Lucan started, but cut let it go. "Who is gone?" he asked instead.

What she remembered of the man from Lodden, she couldn't describe in mere words. Who was she looking for?

"Clearly, a man with eighth-grade-syndrome," she joked to take the edge off the situation.

"A man with what, Lady Rowena?" The Lodden Prince seemed truly puzzled.

"Eight-Grade-," she stopped herself, "no forget it." Why did she think this could be an expression they knew in this world?

Instead of creating more of a mess, she looked around, in order to distract herself from the fact that she had missed Illic vanishing. Even if he were out there, organizing a sudden ambush, which should have already happened according to the novel, they still had enough fighting power. Her brother Alan, for example, standing at the edge of the "ballroom", ignoring each and every lady trying to make contact with him.

She hadn't heard a single word of their guests from the other continent this evening. But she saw the dark skinned Prince of Ashanti, Azad Arora. Next to him the beautiful exotic Princess, Nisha Arora, that everyone was eyeing from afar.

Azad didn't receive that same treatment, as he had likely tried to flatter every young woman he had not yet met in the vicinity before Rowena had even shown up at the ball. As she looked at the wall flower, focusing to find the guard, Sandeep Sharma, who was contracted with Jormungandr, her eyes slightly drifted into the deep of the woods.

Suddenly, her heartbeat picked up its pace, as she saw someone watching the crowd while narrowly hiding their frame behind a tree. Her feet stopped abruptly, causing Lucan to almost step on them for once, but barely managing to prevent it.

"Is something the matter?"

She shook her head subconsciously, patting his shoulder as if to reassure him, while not even looking at him.

"I need to go see my father," her mouth said before she could think.

Since he couldn't deny her, he just watched her hurry through the crowd, passing the Princess she had been looking at before, who was wondering what this was about. Rowena could only head further into the forest, chasing the ghost of her past.

As there was nothing to be found, she realized that she had gotten lost already, as everything around her still carried that eerie vibe of the rot that came with the ashes of a person murdered by a Visitor. She knew she had seen it; the brown, curly hair, the black sweat jacket and the cargo pants she used to wear. This was her, she had seen it, she wasn't crazy!

"Celia?" she called out into the deep forest, "Celia!"

Breathing audibly, with her heart pumping and body in a state of heightened awareness, she shrieked as two hands suddenly grabbed her shoulders.

"What did you say?"

Confused, her father stood there, the Grand Duke of Varnhagen, staring straight into her eyes.

"Father" – no, this wasn't even her life. It was a cold reminder of something she had buried deeper inside her heart with each passing day. It had hit her like a shower of cold water, until she realized she wasn't the only one who had seemingly realized something horrible.

"Is something wrong, Your Grace?" She still looked up at her father, who had yet to turn away – or react at all.

"What were you doing here?"

"I was… I thought I had seen someone suspicious. But there was nobody there." She laughed it off, but his face remained frozen in this puzzled expression.

"Alright, I will see if there could have been someone after all. Go back to the party, it's not safe in the woods."

"You're right," Rowena said, feeling the awkwardness of the situation even more than she had with the second Prince before, "are you also alright?"

He cleared his throat and smiled, it was almost a warm one. "Children shouldn't need to worry about their parents. I will be fine."

'He didn't say he was fine, just that he will be,' was what left an impression on her mind instead, 'so something is wrong.'

'Could he have heard you?'

'Don't know. It's possible, but does it matter?'

Pan didn't give his evaluation on that matter, as she had barely made it back with the direction the Duke had given her, as she heard a scream much louder than her own from before. The sound echoed throughout the entire mountain range, but only as one got closer could they see what had happened.

It was the Saintess, on her knees and holding onto her bleeding servant, Illic, as a young noble woman stood in front of them with a gemstone-studded, golden dagger in her hands, emotionlessly looking down at him.

'Fucking theatrics.' This world really was too much for her sometimes.