Nia’s mother, Tara, clung to her daughter tightly, stroking her hair, and kissing her head. “You’re the only thing, the only thing I have left. You’re the only one who will never leave me. You’re all I have in the world. My beautiful daughter.”

Tara Singh was the youngest daughter of an important military family in Quellinia, the largest and most powerful country that shared a border with the Wyernwolf Empire, to the South-East. Both nations were warlike, but they were too close in terms of military strength for either to want to risk going to war with the other. So they maintained close, careful, and fraught diplomatic relations.

This went beyond simple ambassadorships. The two nations had long-standing exchange programs for students or workers to visit and experience each others’ culture. In theory, these exchange programs were meant to encourage the sharing of knowledge and the building of international unity and friendship.

In reality, they were more like extended vacations for the aristocracy.

It was on one of these exchange trips, when she was just eighteen, that Tara Singh had met Cedric Lowind, the handsome son of a local Baron. He was a few years older, had an open-hearted smile, and went out of his way to include her even when others avoided her for being a strange foreigner.

The homesick Tara had quickly fallen in love.

When she returned home and her family found out about the pregnancy, they’d used their influence to have her named as the new official ambassador to the Wyernwolf Empire, young as she was. Ostensibly, this was so that Tara would have a way to support herself and her child, with or without a husband.

In reality, it was a sort of banishment.

Tara had become an embarrassment to her family, so they were sending her away to a foreign land, alone, where they wouldn’t have to see her or think about her anymore.

But Tara didn’t mind. Returning to the Wyernwolf Empire meant she could return to Cedric’s side. And being appointed Ambassador gave her the equivalent rank of a Viscountess according to the Empire’s laws, so she would have the social status required to become Cedric’s wife.

However, when she finally tracked him down at his home in the Wyernwolf capital, she’d discovered that he had already married someone else while she was gone. His open smile had turned into a cold-hearted frown, and he wouldn’t even let her into his home to talk to him. He wanted nothing to do with her or the child she was carrying, and made it very clear that he would deny any connection with them.

It was then, when the door had been closed in her face, that Tara truly felt she had lost everything.

In the present, Nia quietly allowed her mother to embrace her and fawn over her, but made no move to return the gesture.

“What is it that you want, Mother?” she asked in a quiet monotone.

“You were out on the town today, right?” said Tara. “Did you stop by the post office? Were there any letters for me? You did send him my letter like I asked, didn’t you?”

“There have been no letters for you, Mother,” said Nia.

“Or perhaps you saw him, even?” continued Tara, ignoring Nia’s words. “Did you go by his house? Maybe you came across him in the marketplace? His family owns businesses, you know, he’d have a lot of good reasons to be in the marketplace.”

“Mother, Baron Lowind moved to a city up north a long time ago, you know that,” said Nia. “He lives far away now. With his family.”

Suddenly, Tara pushed Nia away with some force. “It’s all your fault!” she screamed. “You’re the reason he left me! You took everything from me! If only you’d never been born! He would have loved me if you hadn't been born!”

Nia sighed. “You should try to get some sleep, Mother. You know getting worked up like this doesn’t do you any good.”

Nia stepped forward and put a hand on Tara's shoulder, but Tara pushed her away again. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed.

Nia stepped back, making a placating gesture. Tara climbed back into bed, muttering to herself, and crawled under the covers.

“You did send the letter, didn’t you?” Tara snapped.

“Of course I did, Mother,” said Nia.

“I’ll write another one tomorrow,” said Tara. “The other one must have been lost in the mail or he would have responded by now. You better make sure this one gets sent. Pay them extra so they don’t lose it.”

“I’ll be sure to do that, Mother,” said Nia. “I’m going to blow out the lantern now so you can get some sleep, okay?”

“You’re an ungrateful child,” said Tara. “You don’t even love me.”

“Of course I love you, Mother,” said Nia. “Sleep well.”

Nia carefully closed the bedroom door behind her, hoping her mother had truly settled down for the night. Tara usually wore herself out after a tantrum like that.

In the hallway, the butler was cleaning up the pieces of the broken vase.

Nia sighed. “I thought I told you to get some sleep.”

“I just thought I should be standing by,” he said, standing up to attention. “Just in case you needed me.”

The butler was a distant cousin of Nia’s by the name of Gatik. He was loyal and reliable, which, given some of the other servants who had worked for the Ambassador over the years, Nia greatly appreciated.

“Why was there a vase in her room, anyway?” asked Nia.

“That was my mistake, I’m afraid,” said Gatik. “Madame has been so listless recently, I thought she might appreciate some fresh flowers from the garden.”

“I appreciate the thought,” said Nia. “But it’s best to just keep breakable things away from her. Oh, Gatik, while I've got you here...”

“Yes?”

“In the morning I want you to go out and hire some guards. Four of them. One each to be stationed at the front and back doors to the house, one to be stationed at Mother’s bedroom door, and one to roam the house freely. Only hire people you’re absolutely certain we can trust. Check into them really thoroughly before you even tell them what the job is.”

“Understood,” said Gatik. “But is it really necessary to go to those lengths to keep the Ambassador inside?”

Nia shook her head. “No, they’re not to keep her in. They’re to keep assassins out.”

The Saintess had said that if they just prevented the assassination of the Crown Prince, then none of the rest of this “shadow war” in the capital would happen, and the Ambassador’s life would never even be in danger.

But Nia didn’t quite share the Saintess's faith.

“A number of people came by today requesting meetings with the Ambassador,” said Gatik.

"Oh, really?" said Nia, raising an eyebrow.

"They were quite insistent on meeting with her personally," said Gatik. "They seemed to be new to the city."

“Alright, just put them on my schedule and I’ll take care of it, as usual. They'll soon learn the way of things," said Nia. “But right now I’m going to bed. I'm exhausted.”

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

Elsewhere, Belle was already fast asleep, tucked neatly into her bed in her family’s townhouse. Collette, too, back in her own home, was sleeping—although she was sprawled out on a divan, not having bothered to go all the way to her bedroom.

Even Anne and Agis, who had expected to be lectured by Eva as soon as they arrived back at the cathedral, hadn’t really questioned their good luck when she wasn’t there, and had just gone straight to bed. After all, they were tired, and there would always be time for Eva to lecture them later.

Only Corvina was still awake, sitting on her balcony in her nightgown smoking a cigarette.

Corvina was tired, sure, but she was too restless to lay in bed. Her mind was racing, trying to make sense of these new, unfamiliar feelings.

Corvina knew about romance, intellectually. She knew all the social rules of courtship amongst high nobles, and she could lecture you at length about the political ramifications of various matches. She wasn’t a total stranger to the emotional side of romance, either, as she frequently enjoyed reading romance novels to unwind.

But Corvina had never really considered love or romance from a personal perspective. She had never thought it could be relevant to herself, specifically. Apart from the occasional vague, passing fantasy. A quiet longing deep inside that she’d done her best to ignore.

After all, Corvina had known for most of her life that she would eventually marry Grand Duke Robert Marshal, even before they had become officially engaged. And there had never been any pretense of love between them. Neither of them found it necessary. Their engagement was a… business partnership. And a tenuous one at that. It was just the thing that they were required to do.

There was also the fact that Anne was a woman. All the social rules of courtship were highly gendered, with men and women supposed to play clear, defined, separate roles. How was one even supposed to adapt that sort of thing to a situation between two women? Who would play which role? How would they know which rules to follow?

Corvina smirked to herself. She could already imagine how it would go if she asked Anne that question. Anne would laugh with that loud, disruptive laugh of hers that would make people on the other side of the room turn to look at her, and her eyes would wrinkle at the corners, and she would say in that flippant tone of hers, ‘Those rules are all fake anyway, so who cares?’ And suddenly none of it would matter.

Corvina stubbed out her cigarette and went inside her office. She picked up the candle from her desk and slid on her glasses so she could read the spines better as she examined the shelves. She was searching for a specific book.

Corvina wasn’t quite ready to be as… free as Anne was. She couldn’t act based purely on feeling or instinct. She needed to have some idea of what she was going to do ahead of time. She needed to have a plan.

Corvina pulled a book off the shelf. The cover read Maintaining Consistent Supply Chains During Protracted Warfare. She opened the book and the inside cover page read The Lonely Shepherdess: A Tale of Romance and Adventure.

It was the first romance novel Corvina had ever read, when she was about 14 years-old. She’d read it mostly out of curiosity, and had hidden it behind a false cover to fool her tutors at the time.

It was about a shy shepherdess who fell in love with a kind-hearted soldier who was passing through her town on the way to war. None of the characters were aristocrats, and the stakes were all personal. Nothing happened that would change the fate of nations. Just the fate of these people living in this small town. Everything in the book seemed so disconnected from her own life that she’d found it… refreshing. Ever since she’d made it a habit to track down and read similar books, although she still generally hid the fact that she read them.

Corvina sat down at her desk, placing the candle back down carefully, and flipped the book open to the first page, beginning to read.

Corvina’s thinking was simple. She had found herself in a strange new situation in which she wasn’t sure how best to proceed. So she would do what she always did when she found herself lacking necessary knowledge.

She would study.