Shortly after Anne and Lady Corvina left, that little girl, Liza, had returned to the drawing room carrying a stack of books so large they barely fit in her arms.

Liza slammed the books down on the coffee table and began to flip through them, explaining her research process at length.

Eva, sitting on a nearby chair, was barely listening. Out of the corner of her eye she was watching an image of Anne walking through the garden with that hateful Lady on her heels. They had just entered a hedge maze. They seemed to be talking of inane things.

Eva was just glad that Anne was wearing the lapel pin she had given her so the surveillance spell was active and Eva could keep an eye on them.

“So why do you think that is?” asked Liza, turning to look at Eva with large eyes sparkling with intellectual excitement.

“I’m sorry, what was your question?” asked Eva.

Liza rolled her eyes and picked up one of the books, shoving it into Eva’s hands. “Look,” said Liza. “In the oldest records of the saints, divine magic was always associated specifically with an ability to see hidden truths, either about what is, what was, or what is yet to come. The first and second saintesses were revered as oracles, specifically. There was never any mention of them performing physical miracles.”

Liza then grabbed a second book and stuck it on top of the first one in Eva’s lap. “With the third saintess, that’s when miracles started to be mentioned. She was portrayed as a hero of the empire, helping the army in battle through her miracles. In more recent books, the focus of divine power always seems to be this style of miracle and not on visions or hidden knowledge at all. Why is that?”

“Well…” said Eva. “Divine magic is a gift from the Goddess, right? So perhaps the Goddess gives different gifts to different people, depending on what the world needs most at that time.”

“Maybe…” said Liza. “But if that was the case, I feel like there would be a wider variety in specific abilities, instead of this clear progression from ‘visions’ to ‘miracles.’”

“The Goddess works in mysterious ways…” said Eva, dismissively. She was still watching Anne out of the corner of her eye. Anne and Lady Corvina seemed to be having a more serious conversation than before. Corvina was crying.

“Fine, you don’t know the answer either,” said Liza, with a huff, taking her books back. “It just bugs me because the descriptions of miracles seem really similar to older descriptions of what you could accomplish with true magic, but whatever. All the info I can find on true magic is so vague. Do you know what mana is?”

“What?” said Eva, turning her full attention to Liza for the first time.

“Do you know what mana is?” Liza asked again, flipping through some of her other books. “I understand that true magic is powered by mana, but none of the books I’ve read have ever said what mana actually is. Maybe that’s why true magic has been lost. Maybe if someone could figure out or remember what mana is, we could all use true magic again!”

Eva watched the little girl carefully. She clearly had a sharp mind, and she was so full of excitement and curiosity. She also had a stable life and a wealthy, loving family that genuinely cared for her.

Eva felt a twinge of something like sadness and grief and loneliness and… jealousy.

This pissed her off a bit because those were all emotions that she should have successfully repressed years ago.

Eva wondered vaguely how Bishop Geist must have felt, way back when, when she’d discovered the grubby, abandoned Eva, hated or ignored by everyone other than her one true friend, scrounging around the abandoned wings of the church, reading forbidden books, asking many of these same questions.

The Bishop had likely looked at Eva and seen her potential to be a useful tool, if trained properly.

Perhaps the same could be true of Liza. If she was capable of this high level of theoretical thought regarding magic, then she was probably capable of wielding it as well. Perhaps not by instinct, but by study, at least.

But Liza had so much in her life already. Which meant she had much more to lose than Eva had ever had.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

In that moment, Eva decided to show a type of mercy the Bishop had never been capable of.

“You should give up on looking into this,” said Eva.

“What?” said Liza. “Why?”

“Nothing good can come from studying true magic,” said Eva. “There’s a reason it was allowed to die out from this world. Study alchemy instead. With your mind you’ll be able to invent all sorts of marvelous things and make your family proud. Be content with that.”

“I don’t want to use magic, I just want to know about it!” protested Liza. “You sound like you know all about it already. Why can’t you just tell me what mana is?”

Eva shook her head. “That’s something no one should know.”

“What if I super duper promise that I won’t ever try to use it?” asked Liza.

“No!” snapped Eva. “If you know then the temptation will always be too great. In your darkest moments you’ll think to yourself, well, why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I reach out to that vast power and just fix this? No, you’re better off not knowing.”

Liza stomped her foot on the ground and tears started to form at the corner of her eyes. “Why are you being so mean?” she asked. “I just want to know about magic because I think it’s interesting!”

“You shouldn’t always just do whatever’s interesting to you,” said Eva. “Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

“And satisfaction brought it back!” said Liza. “I know idioms, too.”

“Just listen to me, will you?” said Eva. “I’m trying to do a nice thing here!”

There was a knock on the drawing room door and the attendant standing by opened it. Lady Corvina’s maid walked in with a low curtsy.

“My lady, I’ve finished preparing your room and drawn a bath for you to… Lady Corvina?” The maid finally looked up and saw that Lady Corvina wasn’t there. “Where’s my lady?”

“She’s out in the garden with the Saintess,” said Eva, sitting back in her chair, slightly embarrassed to have been caught bickering with a nine year-old.

Reflexively, Eva checked the feed again. Then she stood up suddenly.

Something was wrong. The location had changed. Anne was still surrounded by green hedges, so it was likely still somewhere in the hedge maze, but the figure standing over her wielding a dagger wasn’t Lady Corvina.

“She’s in danger!” said Eva.

“What?” said Helen, looking alarmed.

Eva rushed out of the room without saying another word.

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

When she was flying through the air, all Anne could really think about was what a surreal experience it was.

Anne wasn’t a particularly light person. And yet, this slight figure had her fully tucked under their arm and was performing the most ridiculous jumps from hedge to hedge, landing lightly on each one so that it didn’t damage the plants at all.

Anne was forced to wonder if physics worked the same way here as they had in her previous world.

Finally, Anne was unceremoniously dumped on the ground.

She scrambled up to a sitting position and stared around her. They were still in the hedge maze, clearly, but there were no lanterns nearby and the sky had grown darker still. She could barely make out the silhouette of the assassin standing in front of her, brandishing their dagger again.

“I’ve been thinking about your question and I have an answer,” said the assassin.

“Oh yeah?” said Anne. “Which question was that?”

“About whether I have an intuitive sense of my own gender,” said the assassin.

“Oh, right,” said Anne. This was still a surreal conversation to be having with an assassin, but as long as she could keep them talking at least they weren’t… stabbing. “What conclusion did you come to?”

“I’m both a man and a woman at different times,” said the assassin. “Sometimes neither.”

“Probably genderfluid then. Cool. Nice. Awesome. Love that. What name do you go by?” asked Anne.

“You may call me Rain,” said Rain.

“Awesome, nice to meet you, Rain,” said Anne. “What pronouns do you prefer? Do you have a preference?”

Rain just shook their head. “I already answered your question,” they said. “Now you answer mine.”

“What question?” asked Anne.

Rain stepped forward and grabbed Anne by her lapel, bringing their faces closer together. “Why doesn’t your soul match your body?”

“Oh,” said Anne, her blood running cold. “That.”

Rain dropped Anne. “Growing up I sometimes felt like my soul was in the wrong body,” said Rain. “But it’s not. I can see that they match, the flesh and the spirit. They have the same aura. I learned to see such things. But yours don’t match. The aura is wrong. Tell me why.”

Anne had gotten this far without telling anyone the truth of who she was and where she came from. No one, not even Eva or Agis, had figured out that she was the wrong Anne.

Now she was being forced to weigh the pros and cons of revealing her true self to this dagger-wielding stranger who had likely come to kill her.

Anne had had a strong feeling ever since she arrived here that it could be incredibly dangerous for her if anyone ever figured out who she really was.

On the other hand, a dagger wound could also be incredibly dangerous.

Rain grabbed Anne again and brought the dagger up to her throat. Anne could feel the edge of the sharp knife pricking threateningly on her skin.

“Tell me!” demanded Rain. “Who are you?”

“I’m not…” Anne choked out. “I’m not the original Saintess. My soul came here from another world and ended up in this body.”

Rain looked her up and down. “How?”

“I don’t know,” said Anne, squirming. “I just—“

Suddenly a jewel-encrusted knife whizzed past Rain’s head, knicking their ear as it went, before burying itself in the hedge behind Anne.

Anne recognized that knife. After all, she had used it to cut her own hair once.

Rain dropped Anne and raised a hand to their bleeding ear, turning around, their own dagger at the ready.

Corvina stood a few feet away, backlit by lanterns from another part of the hedge maze. She had her sword out and at the ready. Her long skirt had been torn, revealing the bottom half of her bare legs, and her shoes were gone entirely.

Anne had never seen a more beautiful sight.

“That was just a warning,” said Corvina. “Get away from the Saintess or prepare to meet the Goddess.”