“Why,” Regina wearily asked Henrietta several weeks after the masquerade ball, “is there a corset lying on my dining table?”

It was not even her corset or Henrietta’s corset. Whoever had worn that corset had an endowment that made Regina hope her tracts of land were nearly as large as what the corset must have contained.

“Hmm,” said Henrietta, frowning. “I thought I had burned everything that came with the purple letter.”

Regina furrowed her brow. “Was that the one that was doused in a potential toxin?”

Henrietta shrugged “The maids told me it was a ‘perfume’ when I asked them, but nothing should smell that strongly of dying flowers unless it is meant to kill people.”

Regina and Henrietta shared a meaningful glance and then simultaneously turned to look at the giant pile of paper in front of them.

“How,” said Regina slowly, “are there this many people in Carcosa? Much less this many nobles who wish to invite Artem and I to their… special events?”

Henrietta shrugged. “Perhaps they have children that live to adulthood.”

Regina winced and looked around, hoping no one was paying attention. Henrietta may have become bolder since leaving the Sheridan estate, but Regina had not survived this long by letting down her guard.

Apparently though, most Carcosan nobles, except for the ones trying to poison her by letter, had no guard to speak of.

As it was, Regina was keenly aware that every one of their letters was paired with some terrifying public event she and Artem had barely managed to survive.

She picked up the one directly in front of her and read a few lines aloud. “...we were impressed by your amazing display with The Lady’s Guide to Etiquette in Lady Society, Lady Politics, and at Your Father or Husband’s Home, the fire, and the duck… attend an exclusive soiree…. Tea and ducks available…”

Regina put the letter back down and stared into deep space.

“I wonder,” she said musingly, “if these people would be so eager to invite me and Artem to their events if they realized that every amazing display we have put on this past month is because someone keeps trying to murder me.”

“I thought,” Henrietta sensibly returned, “it was because these assassination attempts have convinced the nobles that you are making a play to be our next queen.”

As Regina buried her face in her hands at that horrific truth, Henrietta added, “In fact, I believe there is a split between what the nobles believe. Half of them assume you are a spectacular actress who is falsifying all of these assassination attempts to look stalwart in the face of constant death… while the other half believe someone is out to murder you.”

For a moment, Regina foolishly felt some hope. “Does that mean the other half believe I should not be queen because I am unpopular enough to incur murder?”

“Not at all,” Henrietta wryly said. “Your ability to survive constant death threats makes those nobles even more impressed by you.”

“Why,” Regina asked, in despair, “would anyone be impressed by my constantly dodging death?”

“Well,” Henrietta pointed out, “if you do become the queen, you will have to thwart constant assassination attempts. I heard rumors that the King keeps a collection of mounted assassin heads over his wife’s bed.”

Disgusted and hoping that was just a scurrilous rumor, Regina had to ask, “Is the King not afraid of having their eyes on him while he is – well –”

Henrietta snorted. “Have you read any of the history of the Alpins? It is just a rumor… but forcing dead enemies to watch them breed probably serves as an aphrodisiac to the Alpins.”

Regina had a horrified moment where she wondered if Artem might have similar proclivities… before reminding herself that her sweet dandelion of a prince was an exception to the general Alpin rule of being murderous, treacherous, and full of perversities.

Even so, the thought of having to forever fend off assassination attempts and power plays as the queen made Regina want to hoist Artem over her shoulder and run off into the country.

It had been bad enough when Regina had realized how horrifying the attempted assassination at the Poisson manor actually was.

As soon as she had arrived back at the Capital manor, she had started convulsing and required some anti-toxin of her own. Before she could wonder if the Poissons had loved her enough to poison her and mount her as a trophy, she had realized her symptoms had been the same as Artem…

…which meant that Regina had been in contact with the same source of poison that had infected Artem.

It had not taken long to realize that the green ropes that had made her bleed must have also delivered the toxin that had harmed her, Artem, and the fishes. Strangely enough, however, the doses had been low enough for her and the fishes that Regina was able to get anti-toxin to the Poisson fishes before they also died.

That was not the only strange part of the entire fish-based fiasco she and Artem had landed in. Indeed, in the horrible night afterwards where Regina lay awake staring at the ceiling for most of it, she had realized a few key pieces of information.

Firstly, she had realized that Artem had not gone to the fountain on his own. This was hardly a realization since Artem himself had told her that he had stepped out to tend to his toiletries, felt faint, and then woken up to her face.

However, it meant that whoever had poisoned him had had the ability to move Artem, undetected, from inside the busy manor to the fountain and raise him up with a series of complex ropes that had been later meant to disappear and make it appear as if he drowned.

This was a plan far more complex than most of the assassinations Regina had thus far faced, but it was not even the worst of her realizations.

The far grimmer realization was that Regina had obviously arrived before the actual assassination scene could be staged.

She had initially thought that the dramatic reveal of Artem and the fish had been meant as a warning. Yet after she realized that both she and the fish were poisoned as well, she felt as if the complex structure that Artem and the fish were hoisted on had not meant to be seen.

This meant Regina had managed to get to the scene before her actual vision of Artem’s dead body… which led to yet more complications.

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After all, if Regina and others had stumbled onto Artem’s body as it had appeared in her vision, others might have assumed that Artem had drowned in the water. Nobody would have checked for poison because nothing suggested Artem was poisoned.

The only ones who would have been obviously poisoned were the fish but even that would not have been apparent because who – besides the Poissons – would care about a pile of dead fish when they found a dead prince?

So someone had poisoned both Artem and the fish and yet, wanted to hide their means of murder through some elaborate pantomime that suggested…

…Regina was not even sure what this assassin wanted. All she knew was that this whole episode was confusing and frightening and then there were all the other murder attempts that month and Regina only had one way to make this all stop, only one question remaining-

“What do I need to do,” Regina plaintively asked, “to show everyone that I do not want to be the next queen?!”

“I am not sure there is anything you can do,” Henrietta pointed out. “In fact, the more you protest that you do not want the throne and would never make for a good queen, the more modest and unassuming you will seem to be. The commoners love you for all the favors you have done them and all the orphans you have taken in. Many nobles will support you after you became their “friend”. Besides, the Sheridan elders must have heard all about your growing fame and want you to be queen too. So at this point, nobody wants you to avoid the throne except your enemies – and because of your growing popularity, they would rather you be dead than alive.”

“So you are saying,” Regina finally managed to say after her mind had stopped spasming in horror and pain, “that unless I die, I am officially too beloved to avoid being Carcosa’s queen?!”

“Unfortunately,” Henrietta said, “that is correct. The only way for you to get out of your trap is…”

Henrietta hesitated in a way Regina had never seen her do before.

Then, abruptly changing the subject, Henrietta said, “I know you are strung high enough to reach the clouds right about now. Is Prince Artem adding to your stress?”

Though Regina did not understand why her cousin wanted to change the subject so abruptly, she was willing to follow along. So, nodding, Regina admitted as much.

“Yes,” Regina said. “I had enough night horrors trying to deal with the attempts on my life – but now, the attempts are affecting poor Artem as well. I now have to worry about keeping him as well as myself intact. I feel like I’ve gotten engaged to a pet goldfish. I never could keep goldfish alive as a child!”

“That is because the rest of the family was poisoning the fish,” Henrietta replied.

“Exactly!” Regina cried. “This is my poor pet fish Fish all over again – only even worse this time! It was hard enough to keep myself alive but now Artem stares at me with his giant goldfish eyes every time there is an attempt on his life, so I must save him as well. I feel as though I am dying!”

“You have been looking like a reanimated corpse lately,” Henrietta pointed out thoughtfully.

“Yes,” Regina snapped, “and unfortunately, our family’s magical gifts do not involve necromancy!”

After her outburst, Regina had to close her eyes, feeling almost ashamed that she had allowed herself this moment of honesty.

After all, Regina loved Henrietta and it felt terrible to burden her cousin with her innermost feelings. It felt like too much of a burden to place on a person who already had enough to bear on her own, however brawny her vase-laden arms might be.

Indeed, Regina did not even want to burden herself with thoughts of how truly worried she was about her future now that she knew everyone thought she was making a play to be Carcosa’s future queen.

She wished she could live in happy ignorance instead. She wished that she could still dream of marrying Artem and quietly retiring to the country to live a simple, peaceful life where she never had to worry about anything more serious than murderous ducks and aromatic cheese.

Instead, Regina had a terrible feeling that by trying to free herself from one trap, she had leaped into another. Somehow, she had moved from the snare of being a victim to the bear trap of being a queen.

Her musings were only interrupted by Henrietta’s voice… and advice that upended all the certainties in Regina’s life.

“Why do you not let Prince Artem die then?” Henrietta said, even as Regina’s eyes widened in shock at the suggestion. “Would that not solve all your problems at once?”

“W-what,” Regina stuttered, “do you mean?”

“Think about it,” Henrietta calmly said. “The only reason your prancing prince is still alive is because you keep saving him, over and over again. Yet all your problems would stop if you only focused on saving yourself.”

“What,” Regina stupidly said, feeling oddly frozen at Henrietta’s suggestion, “are you saying?”

“You already know what I am saying,” Henrietta calmly responded. “Gina, you already have a simple solution to your problem.”

Regina made a small noise, incapable of speaking, though she had a terrible feeling she knew what Henrietta meant.

So Regina did with it what she did with most things that made her vastly uncomfortable – she took the idea and buried it so deep into her mind that she would not contemplate it except in the very depths of the night.

Instead, Regina forced a smile and said, “Enough about me. Should we not be worried about your marriage, Hen? After all, you do not even have a fiancé always teetering on the verge of death!”

Suddenly, Henrietta, who had always been in fond possession of advice so long as Regina had known her, went silent and turned her head.

Puzzled at the sudden change in her cousin’s behavior, Regina stood up to walk closer to see why Henrietta had turned her head. What could be so distracting to her cousin?

Yet as Regina started to walk closer, Henrietta suddenly moved with a speed much greater than Regina thought she possessed and grabbed Regina –

Pulling the two of them to the ground and then rolling out of the way as a resounding crash sounded from where Regina had been standing.

Shaken, Regina pulled herself away from Henrietta and stared at the large pieces of a particularly ugly vase that would have no doubt killed or seriously injured her if it had landed on her head.

“Who,” Regina said, with anger and fear in her voice, “thought it was a good idea to put large vases on the upper shelves of the room?!”

Henrietta shrugged, as though Regina had just asked who had misplaced her antivenom for the evening.

“Hypothetically,” Henrietta said, “it might have been that shifty-looking butler who is new to the staff and forged his recommendation letters. This is the third assassination attempt on you that I have foiled this week.”

As Regina’s mouth opened in shock, Henrietta helpfully added, “Even if I had not, he would have been destroyed by your parents after he killed you.”

Regina stared at Henrietta, the last pieces of the puzzle slotting into her mind.

Henrietta stared back at her defiantly.

“What kind of future-telling can you see?” Regina softly asked, realizing with dread that she had another problem on her hands.

“...It seems to be based on vases,” Henrietta said at last. “I can see the future as it happens next to them. It is easier when the vases are ugly.”

“By the blood,” Regina cursed, even as she marveled at the sheer ludicrousness of Henrietta’s powers. “Our elders will kill you if they ever find out what your power can do!”

“Then they are just going to have to not find out,” Henrietta snapped.

“Besides,” Henrietta added with a small, sad smile, “if you live, there are many more ugly vases in my future. If you do not, I will not see any.”

For a moment, Regina stood still in shock, the realization that she was now responsible for Henrietta as well as Artem and herself resonating through her mind.

She needed to make sure nobody else would find out about Henrietta’s bizarre vase-based foresight. To do so, Regina would need to marry Henrietta off to a noble family that would protect her or bundle Henrietta off to the countryside.

How could she do that with what favors she had accumulated so far?

Then Regina remembered a certain masquerade ball with Princess Pisces and realized what she should do.

“Henrietta,” Regina said sweetly. “How open are you to fish and fish-based byproducts?”