Duke Marshal continued to hold his hand out to Anne, looking at her expectantly.

Anne slapped his hand away and got to her feet on her own. She brushed past the Duke and began looking around the belfry. “Where are the stairs? Or is there a ladder somewhere?”

“Saintess,” said Duke Marshal, following just behind her. “Can we please talk?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” said Anne. “I don’t like you.”

“Then just listen,” said Duke Marshal.

Anne pointedly ignored him, looking out through the window. The windows of the belfry were huge, and empty of glass (so the sound of the bells could ring out more clearly). She could see the crowds far below around the entrance of the cathedral. The crowd seemed restless, with people shoving each other to get a better look inside.

“Oh god, there’s not gonna be a riot cause I disappeared, is there?” muttered Anne.

“My life has changed since the moment I saw you at the Summer Ball,” said Duke Marshal. “And then when I heard your words on vanity, that spoke to me deeply. I have spent far too much of my life pursuing vanity and greed. You inspired me. I want to dedicate my life to something better.”

Duke Marshal got down on one knee in front of Anne. “Saintess Anne, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met, both inside and out. Please allow me to dedicate my life and my sword to you and your causes. If I can do that, I will feel as though my life has had some meaning.”

Anne looked down at him and tried to resist rolling her eyes. Hearing Duke Marshal call her a beautiful woman made her skin crawl.

She was pretty sure the Duke had delivered an extremely similar speech to the Saintess about halfway through The Foundling’s Wings. And Anne could see how, if she liked men, and if she didn’t know anything else about the Duke, then this kind of speech might be the sort of thing that could tug on her heartstrings. But Anne didn’t like men in general, not like that, and she had good reasons to dislike Duke Marshal in particular, so…

Also, based on the other plot points, this was way too early for this speech to happen, which made it extra suspicious. In the original novel, the Duke and the Saintess had already known and liked each other for some time before the Duke made this speech. But in this timeline, Anne had been going out of her way to avoid knowing the Duke at all. They were basically strangers.

Anne thought that probably meant one of two things. Either the novel was working overtime to correct itself, causing the Duke to genuinely develop an extremely strong love-on-first-sight style attachment.

Or the Duke had some sort of ulterior motive.

After all, the Duke was one of the characters who benefited the most from the rebellion in the original novel. As the Grand Duke there would always be a limit to his power, because the imperial family would always outrank him. But if he could get rid of the imperial family altogether…

The latter explanation seemed more likely. After all, Anne knew very well that with her short-but-slightly-hefty build and her butch looks there was no way she could be considered some great inspirational beauty men would throw themselves at.

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Duke Marshal, still on one knee, held his hand out to Anne. “Saintess, won’t you accept my pledge?”

“Absolutely not,” said Anne, knocking his hand away again.

The Duke looked legitimately shocked at this.

“Now will you please tell me how to get down from here,” said Anne. “I really need to get back to the cathedral, like, right away.”

The Duke stood up and grabbed Anne’s hand. “If you would just give me a chance—”

“I said no,” said Anne, trying to pull away. “We don’t even know each other, and—”

“Then we could start out as friends,” said the Duke, pressing forward, forcing Anne to take another step back, towards the belfry window. “Perhaps after we get to know each other you will change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” insisted Anne. “I don’t like you. I am never going to like you.”

“Then accept my pledge as my ally only,” said the Duke. “You don’t have to like me to use me. After all, I could be a very powerful ally…”

Duke Marshal pressed forward one more time, forcing Anne to bend backwards out the window.

“…or a very dangerous enemy,” finished Duke Marshal.

The belfry was a high tower, far above the roof of the cathedral. And the cathedral architecture placed a heavy emphasis on various kinds of spikes. Lots of ways to get skewered on your way down.

Oh yeah, thought Anne, as she finally realized the full danger of her situation. This is a world where people rely on social subtlety to survive, isn’t it? Maybe being so blunt was a mistake after all…

But Anne wasn’t the kind of person who could make herself pretend to like a slimeball like Grand Duke Marshal, even to save her own life.

Will I get transferred to another world again if I die here? Or will this really be it this time? I should have read more romance novels while I was here, just to increase my chances…

“What do you say?” said Duke Marhsal, pushing Anne a little further. “Will you accept my allegiance?”

There were some things you just couldn’t do and still remain yourself.

Anne had just opened her mouth to tell him to go fuck himself when there was another blinding flash of light.

----------------------------------------

Anne landed with another thud, not on any killer spikes, but back behind pulpit.

She picked herself up more quickly this time, patting herself down just to double check she was still fully intact.

The crowd was staring at her in awed silence. A few of the noblemen near the front had their mouths hanging open.

Oh, right. Saintess time. Gotta be a Saintess.

Anne placed her hands in a prayer position and tried to look serene before addressing the crowd. “Thank you Goddess for providing this miracle, and thank you all for standing witness here today. We all have been truly blessed by the love of the Goddess. Amen.”

In response there was only silence still. People in the crowd were whispering and pointing at her. Confused, Anne looked down at herself, but she wasn’t glowing or floating or doing anything strange, as far as she could tell.

Finally, she made eye contact with Corvina in the front row, who had an expression of concern on her face. When she saw that she had Anne’s attention, she pointed to the side of her own head and mouthed the word ‘ears.’

Anne’s hands flew up to her ears. Her hood had fallen down at some point without her noticing.

Well, there was the cat out of the bag.

In the original novel, the whole elf thing wasn’t revealed to the public until basically just before the rebellion, and at that point everyone more or less had other things on their minds and it wasn’t that big of a deal to anyone.

But still, the fact that the beloved Saintess was an elf was part of what inspired people to abandon their prejudice against elves. Even if the timing is different, that should still be true, right?

Besides, Anne had started to develop some theories…

“Yes, that’s right, I am an elf,” said Anne, her magically amplified voice echoing through the dead silent roam. “But you know, I’m pretty sure the Goddess herself is actually an elf. It’s humans who later distorted her image to portray her as a human. And the first ever Saintess was an elf, too. You know those statues with the missing ears? I think—"

Anne felt a hand on her shoulder and spun around to see Eva.

“I believe it’s time we to get out of here, dear Saintess,” said Eva. She was smiling, but she was also pulling rather forcefully on Anne's arm to guide her off stage.

As soon as Anne was out of view, that was when the riot started.