Something crashed onto the floor with a rumbling sound, but Blanche didn't feel any pain. Slowly, she opened her eyes again and met Owen's gaze. The guard stood directly in front of her, which startled her too. When had he moved over here? She took a step back in confusion and looked around. The board was lying there on the floor, so it hadn't stayed on the shelf but had fallen down. It seemed like the head knight had pushed it away in time before it could hit her.
“Did you...” She glanced at the object on the floor before facing her savior. “Did you just come over here to knock this out off the air?” Within the two seconds that hadn't even been enough for her to evade it?
Owen retreated a step too so that he was at a normal distance again and bowed his head. “I apologize for surprising you, Lady Blanche. I had to react immediately, or you might have gotten hurt.”
The concubine blinked at him and gazed at the board on the floor again. If that thing had hit her face, it certainly would have been painful. “Thank you, Owen. I'm just...” She eyed the head knight with slight skepticism. “You're awfully fast, aren't you? How could you react that quickly?”
“As the leader of the royal knights, I have been training with the best fighters in Artias for years. Improving your reflexes is one of the most important matters in this profession. Strength and speed are crucial without a doubt, but if you cannot react to your enemies' movements in time, it won't help you no matter how much effort you put in.”
Blanche to keep herself from frowning at that. While she was grateful, she was intimidated at the same time. Those reflexes bordered on a speed that humans shouldn't even be able to reach, so she wasn't sure whether his experience was a reasonable explanation for this. But wasn't she in a world that was based on a novel anyway? If the author had given Owen such great skills, it wasn't strange for him to be able to act like this. She just chose to rely on that logic.
For the concubine, this could just be good since she wouldn't need to worry about many dangers if this man was accompanying her. She focused on steadying her breathing and calming her pounding heart before speaking again. “That's impressive. I've never watched the knights train, so I wouldn't know, but I am convinced that you are working hard to protect the royal palace. Thank you for helping me.”
Owen bowed to her and grabbed the item from the floor before raising his head. “It's my duty to defend you, Lady Blanche. Even if the attacker is a chessboard.” He lifted it so that she could take a look at it.
It really seemed to be a chessboard that was made out of stone. The sharp edges looked especially painful, so she was glad that this hadn't hit her.
Blanche extended her arms towards the knight, and he handed her the board.
Stella looked over her mistress' shoulder and narrowed her eyes at the object. “Why did someone even put this on top of a bookshelf like this? Was this purposefully placed to hurt the next person wanting to make pancakes? This placement doesn't make any sense.”
Blanche carefully opened the small drawer below the board and admired the skillfully crafted figures that were lying inside. It seemed like one would still be able to play since none of the playing pieces were missing, as far as she could tell. She carefully stroked her fingertips over the board as she allowed herself to get lost in her memories for a moment.
This board looked so similar to the one that her family had owned when she had been young. Blanche had played chess with her father a few times, so she knew the basics. She had never won against him, but despite her usual unwillingness to lose, she had adored playing this game with him. Maybe because it was the only one he had played with her alone. Normally, her father had just sat next to her while she was in the middle of a game with her mother and had given her tips, or they had played as a whole family with her siblings. But this was the one game that had belonged to her father and Blanche.
Blanche made her decision out of an impulse as she pulled the board to her chest. “Do you think that anyone would miss this if I took it to my room for the time being? If it was here in the middle of all of those books, that means that no one played with it recently, right? There is so much dust on it.” She demonstratively wiped off some dirt with her index finger and showed it to the two others.
Stella simply shrugged. “As you can see, no one touched this in years. So, you could probably steal it without anyone noticing.”
Owen chimed in too. “This has nothing to do with stealing. I would like to remind you that Lady Blanche is the mistress of this residence for now. This means that everything here would be considered hers, so she is free to do anything she wants with the objects inside the house. Even if this is only temporary, His Majesty is the owner of these items, and I doubt that he would forbid you from taking it.”
Blanche would still have to get used to being called the mistress of an estate, but right now, this was favorable for her. “Good. Then I would like to take this with us. Would you bring it to my room, Stella? In the meantime, I'll search for our recipe.” She handed the board over to the maid.
Stella nodded and walked to the door but stopped before leaving the room. “Please be more careful from now on. There might be something else that some idiot left up there.”
Blanche gave her a calming smile. “Alright. I'll just ask Owen to help me if I need to reach the higher shelves. But let me see whether I risked my life for this book for naught.”
While the servant was gone, the concubine finally managed to find a recipe, which made her breathe out in relief. She doubted that her recreation from memory would have led to a good result, so this was way safer.
The group went into the kitchen immediately so that she could begin mixing the ingredients. After a short pause for lunch, during which they ate in one of the guest rooms to avoid the empress, they went back to spend the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen.
Blanche was a bit clumsy with the pan, and the first pancakes were less than satisfactory, but she got better with each one. In the end, the recipe turned out to be delicious, so both Stella and she were gushing about it. Even Owen could be convinced to try one pancake in secret.
When they returned to her room, the concubine wrote down the recipe in a notebook so that she would be able to prepare the same pancakes again at home. By then, it was already time for the sun to set, which she was thankful for. The more she attempted to do during one day, the fewer moments she had to think about her lover being alone in the capital. Right now, he would probably arrive at the palace and then have to deal with the dowager empress' schemes.
But no matter how much Blanche wanted to help him, she couldn't while she was here. So, crying wouldn't change the situation and only bring her to the brink of total despair. Instead of that, it was better to busy herself.
That was exactly what she did for the next few days.
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Each day, Blanche woke up, put on Theodore's ring and wished him well before getting ready to eat breakfast. Then she went into the library. Sometimes, she was so willing to distract herself that she even looked at some book about Artias or the area around Ibela. Otherwise, she copied the recipes of all dishes that sounded like they would taste good until noon before going to the kitchen and baking something new every time. Her friends often visited her there, which helped with distracting her too. Depending on how long the baking took, she either went outside in between or returned to her room immediately after that.
When Blanche left the house, she took walks within the estate. She had thought about swimming too, but without Theodore, she was still too unsure of her abilities. Since she didn't want to drown, she wouldn't go into the sea alone while Stella and Owen were watching from the beach. Naturally, she wouldn't ride a horse either, so the only thing that was left aside from promenading around was using the swing. Her maid had offered to push her, but she had declined and put in some effort herself. Feeling the wind raking through her hair while she had a glorious view of the sea was still wonderful, but it wasn't as magical as it had been with Theodore.
In the evening, Blanche returned to her room and did the only thing that might support her lover. She wrote a letter to him about what had happened in the estate and about how much she loved him and wished for his safety. She dated the envelopes and collected them for one week before giving them to a messenger so that he could bring them to the capital. She would have liked to send them every day, but unfortunately, the journey took two days, so she couldn't over-exhaust the courier.
The few minutes that were left despite this busy schedule were spent playing some chess. At first, Stella had been her mistress' opponent, but it quickly became obvious that the maid didn't like this game very much and that she wasn't good at it either. So, Blanche had asked Owen to join her, and surprisingly, he had accepted. He was more experienced than Stella, so he immediately won the next few rounds. The concubine took some time to get used to his way of playing the game, but now that she had a serious opponent, she was overly motivated to try to win, and they played round after round.
Like this, almost every second of Blanche's day was filled with an activity that could distract her. It would have been nice if that was enough to fool her emotions, but it wasn't. She felt terribly alone, no matter how much she chatted with Stella, Owen, her friends or the servants in the kitchen that ate the leftovers of her baking. These people were great, and she liked spending time with them, but they didn't replace Theodore.
One minute without anything to do or anyone to speak to her was sufficient to remind her of her lover's predicament. Especially lying alone in the big bed made it more than obvious that he was currently in danger and that she couldn't help him in any way, which made her stomach churn more often than she wanted to admit.
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The only moment in which her worries were eased was when the messenger returned with response letters. Theodore had truly taken his time to write one for every day. He didn't mention the political situation much and just stated that he wasn't openly being threatened right now. Still, he claimed that it would take a little while until he could be sure that it was safe for her to follow him and that it would take even longer until the situation was fully resolved. This kind of news was bittersweet. On the one hand, she could be sure that he was fine for now, but she couldn't be by his side anyway. So, she spent every night when she was lying in bed without being able to fall asleep praying for his quick victory.
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Time passed by, but it also felt like nothing changed. Since it was close to the middle of summer by now, the temperature slowly increased a bit. On most days, it wasn't too warm since the cool sea regulated the climate, but today, it was especially hot.
Thus, Blanche wouldn't force herself to walk around in the sun and risk damaging her skin. She wasn't willing to use a parasol since she was both too lazy and too frustrated about being similar to Evelyn to do that, as childish as this might sound. So, she had just made herself at home on the small terrace with a cold drink and a roof shielding her from the sun. Apparently, being this relaxed had eased her mind enough to finally enable her to win against Owen.
For the past few minutes, she and Stella had been on edge since the victor wasn't decided yet. Blanche had been able to corner the head knight for the first time and was determined to win. With every move, Owen saved his king once more, but his queen was already defeated, and Blanche was always one step short of victory. She brought her face next to the board and frowned at the figures as she tried to come up with a way to cut off her opponent's possibilities to retreat. “You're awfully good at running away, aren't you? Is that what a royal knight should do?” In fact, it was more surprising to her that he managed to maintain a completely blank expression when she was so nervous that she was grabbing the edges of the table.
Owen shrugged as he scanned the playing pieces, without a doubt with five different ways to save his king in mind. “If victory is impossible, it is always better to retreat than to fight. You don't want to send your troops into a scenario that guarantees their death.”
Blanche took a sip from her drink and stared at the board. “I wasn't being serious. Playing chess is a bit different from fighting in a real battle. I meant-” She cut herself off and narrowed her eyes. “Wait. Did you just say that victory is impossible? So, you know that you can't win anymore and still draw out the game to keep me from winning?”
She could swear that the corners of Owen's lips tucked at that. “I am merely giving my best to turn things around. Giving up would be boring, wouldn't it?”
“Sure, but I worked hard to defeat you. So, I would like to win once too.” Slowly, she put her hand on her queen as she pondered about where she should move the playing piece.
Stella, who was standing next to her mistress, leaned forward to observe the game's development. “I'm convinced that you will be able to win, My Lady. You already cornered him, now you only have to deal out the final blow.” It was amusing to see how serious she was. Even though she was the only person here who didn't play, she was the most excited one of all of them.
Blanche turned to her and raised her eyebrows. “I thought that you didn't like chess that much. Now that you don't have to think about the moves, it's very interesting, isn't it?”
Stella hurriedly nodded. “Yes! I want My Lady to finally win. You gave your best for the past days, so you deserve it.”
Now Blanche was under even more pressure. Aside from her own ambition, her maid's enthusiasm was also a good reason to win. “I'll try.” She moved her queen forward so that she was standing in the midst of black playing pieces that still couldn't reach her and defeated a pawn in the process. Hopefully, offense was the best defense.
Owen reacted by putting his knight in a position from which it would be able to attack her queen in the next move.
Automatically, she wanted to put the figurine out of harm's way, but she froze before her fingertips could touch it. If Owen defeated her queen, all the black squares between his king and her bishop would be unoccupied. This meant that she could win by risking her most important playing piece.
For a second, Blanche hesitated before realizing that this might pull attention to her thought process. She quickly moved her rook so that it looked like she was threatening to take his knight if he attacked her. After that, she sat there being completely tense while trying to seem inconspicuous during Owen's turn. She held her breath when he grabbed the knight and waited for him to make the move that would finally allow her to win. She almost didn't believe it when he truly did what she had anticipated.
Blanche's mind wasn't allowing her to understand that she was the victor for a few seconds before a wide beam spread across her face. She leaned forward and used her bishop to knock Owen's king off the board in an exaggerated gesture. Stella next to her inhaled sharply, which just made the concubine prouder.
Owen still watched her with his stoic expression. The guard looked at the figures for a moment before meeting the concubine's gaze. “Congratulations. You won. You did very well.”
Blanche jumped to her feet and almost tipped over her chair in the process, which earned her a shriek from her maid.
“My Lady!”
But the concubine didn't focus on that. She raised her balled fist up over her head and yelled with confidence. “Yes!”
Stella hurried to the table to save the wobbling glass that threatened to topple over. “My Lady, I'm happy too, but please be careful!”
Blanche couldn't stop smiling even though she had just risked covering the table with water. “I'm sorry. I won't do it again. But I can't believe that I won. Until now, I never had a chance and-” She cut herself off and looked at Owen before putting her palms on the table to lean forward. She slowly narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn't lose on purpose, did you? For the past two weeks, you were always so much better than me. You are a genius when it comes to chess, so me winning is strange.”
The knight shook his head. “I can assure you that I would not cheat in a game like this. I believe that fairness is the most important thing in a competition of any kind. Besides, games would not be fun if people lost purposefully. But I thank you for your compliment. It seems that I was able to play well despite only recently learning the rules of chess.”
Blanche straightened her posture and looked at him with confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Of course, I had heard about this game before, but when you played with Miss Stella, it was the first time that I saw how the rules for the different playing pieces were. I memorized them while I was watching you, so I attempted to mirror that when you asked me to join you.”
The concubine froze for a moment. “Are you joking? Why are you so good then? You couldn't have learned all the rules just by observing.”
Owen began putting the figures back into the drawer under the board while he spoke. “I believe that it is connected to my ability to quickly memorize positions in a battle and find out which troops to use for which task. While Artias did not engage in any war for over a century, I supported generals of allied nations while preparing strategies and also came up with a few for our country in the case of an emergency.”
Blanche plopped down on her chair. “You're incredible. Most people wouldn't be able to do this. But that also means that I just got excited about defeating someone that learned chess a week ago while I already had some experience.” She let out a sigh. “That's dejecting.” She leaned her head back and rested it on the backrest of her chair.
Stella patted her shoulder in an attempt to motivate her. “But Sir Maillont is really good. No one learns chess that quickly, so he must be a genius when it comes to strategies, just like you said. Since you defeated him, this is impressive as well.”
Blanche let her head roll to the site to look at her maid. “I don't know. Isn't this rather a sign of-” She interrupted herself when her attention was attracted by a movement behind the servant. As soon she focused on that and realized that Seraphina was standing there, she jolted into an upright position.
Stella immediately noticed that something was wrong and turned around, only to hurriedly let go of her mistress to lower her head.
Owen rose to his feet and stepped to the side to bow as well.
The empress' presence was as authoritative as always. She was flanked by two of her maids, and Noah and Kate followed behind her. But in all honesty, she probably wouldn't have needed this entourage to prove that her position was extremely powerful. She held her head high and strode toward the table with so much elegance that it seemed like she was floating across the floor. Naturally, her expression didn't reveal anything and rivaled Owen's in terms of emotionlessness.
Thus, Blanche didn't have any indication of what the heroine could want from her. She stood up as well while giving her best to be half as graceful as the other woman and curtsied.
The empress arrived in front of her. “Good afternoon, Lady Blanche. It seems like you have made yourself comfortable outside. The weather today is truly wonderful.”
The concubine slowly lifted her head while praying that Seraphina hadn't been here for longer. After all, she had yelled about winning before, and that hadn't been very courteous. “Good afternoon, Your Majesty. It is indeed a beautiful day, but I fear that it is a bit too hot. That is why I decided to take a seat here. What leads Your Majesty here?” Hopefully, this wouldn't make anyone think that she was indirectly telling the other woman to go away.
Luckily, the empress didn't act as if she felt like that was the case. “I was on my way to take a stroll, but then I noticed that it was rather hot, as you said. So, I had an idea that is similar to yours. It is a surprise to meet you here. I did not expect that you would be outside as I have not seen you for the past two weeks.”
That was the case since Blanche had avoided the dining room after their breakfast together. She had eaten in a guest room on the other side of the building to not run into the empress. The rest of her time had been spent in the library, the kitchen, her own room or somewhere in the huge garden of the estate. Of course, they hadn't run into each other because of that, and the concubine had been very content with that. After all, Seraphina's initial pity with her due to Blanche's breakdown when her lover had left would fade, and then the empress would look at her like she was an insect again. She still remembered the scene with Noah. That had made it seem like the heroine was angry just because someone talked to the concubine, so Blanche would have to be careful if she didn't wish to antagonize the other woman.
“Well, I did not wander around much in areas in which we could meet, Your Majesty. I enjoy taking walks on the beach, and since the property is huge, it would be strange for us to see each other, wouldn't it?” She could only hope that this didn't make her intentions of evading the empress obvious.
Seraphina glanced at the table. “I see. Due to the size of the estate, that might be unavoidable. It seems like you were playing chess?”
Blanche choked down a sigh. Why was the heroine asking about that and not simply leaving? “Yes, Your Majesty. Sir Maillont and I spent our time playing a bit.”
“I already thought that that was the case. If I am correct, it sounded like you won. Congratulations.”
The concubine bit her tongue at that. So, the group had heard how she had yelled in victory and had possibly even seen her exaggerated gestures. She sank in herself as she forced herself to keep her expression neutral. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I'm sorry that you had to witness that unsightly display. I believed that we were alone.” She could basically feel how the empress' maids were judging her for that, but she didn't turn her head to confirm her suspicion.
Seraphina replied without budging. “I do not mind. It is good to show some enthusiasm for activities rather than just being passive. The only downside is that you will not have someone to challenge you anymore. If you already defeated both of your companions, winning again will most likely not be as demanding.”
That was true, but Blanche didn't care that much. Chess wasn't her favorite activity, she just played to keep herself from being sad about Theodore and to honor her father a bit. She didn't say that though. “I agree, Your Majesty. However, since I, myself, am not very good either, it does not matter much. Sir Maillont will improve too, and next time, I might lose again.”
The empress was quiet for a short moment before responding. “Your words contradict each other, Lady Blanche. You said that you aren't good while winning against a person whom you called a genius. I would like to check which one of those statements is actually true. Do you still need an opponent for the next game?”
Oh no.
Blanche felt like this could only be unpleasant.