Perhaps, Regina realized, there were some things that were more tortuous than dying.

She was starting to realize that “pretending to care about fish and fish-based by-products” might actually qualify as a fate worse than death.

Regina was smiling at Lady Paloma Poisson while Artem admired the Poisson family’s vast array of fish-based byproducts and fish-laced jewelry and Henrietta was stuck in the corner near a fish-headed vase ugly enough to suit her magic’s taste.

Even as Regina absently attempted to socialize, Regina resolutely did not dwell on Henrietta’s earlier advice.

– Yet all your problems would stop if you only focused on saving yourself –

Instead, Regina focused on nodding enthusiastically at every interminable word that Lady Paloma Poisson had to say about her family’s history of farming fish and fish-based byproducts.

After all, if Regina wanted to keep Henrietta alive, she needed to build an alliance with the Poisson family. She needed to pretend to share their increasingly disturbing piscine obsession until she could convince them to have one of their own wed Henrietta before the Sheridan elders realized that Henrietta had inherited their family’s future-sight in a way that they did not approve of and killed Henrietta.

Of course, this meant that Henrietta would have to spend the rest of her life with a husband and in-laws who thought that the best way to awe a potential future monarch was to display their collection of failed frozen fish advertisement posters.

The one that said “You cannot be a Carcosan, but you can eat like a Carcosan”, with an image of a large, apparently living fish winking beadily while peaking out of a man’s mouth, was particularly horrifying.

Strangely, given the way Henrietta stared at Lady Paloma as the Poisson scion went on about how fish heads were an underused fashion accessory, the thought of such a future seemed oddly appealing to Henrietta.

‘At least,’ Regina wryly even as she kept an eye on her cousin, ‘Henrietta is resigning herself to her future. The Poissons are the only noble family I know that are far too obsessed with fish to be plotting my destruction. Therefore, Henri is just going to have to live with an all-fish culinary and conversational diet as soon as she can safely wed one of them!’

If there was, perhaps, a very very very small part of Regina that took some pleasure in thinking of Henrietta’s future all-fish meals in retaliation for the thought that Henrietta had placed in Regina’s mind –

– Yet all your problems would stop if you only focused on saving yourself –

Then Regina could deny that as much as she denied everything that had ever caused her grief or fear in her life.

As always, Regina forced those uncomfortable thoughts into the deepest corners of her mind and focused on something far more important… how to survive.

That meant that even as Regina smiled and nodded at every inane, fish-based fact that Lady Paloma enthusiastically shared, Regina thought of who might be trying to kill her.

‘All along,’ Regina acknowledged, ‘I have suspected that Crown Prince Aaron Artem wishes to kill me. After all, he is the person with the clearest motives and means. I have always known that he dislikes me. Even in the future where I could have been engaged to him, he was happy to see me carried away in chains and to my death. He has no love for me.’

‘What is more,’ Regina mused, ‘he must hate me even more over the last few months because of the way I keep stupidly amassing power! Even if I would rather be the Capital’s clown, people are putting me in the place of the Queen. This would make sweet Artem my consort and displace Crown Prince Aaron as King. My popularity must make Crown Prince Aaron’s life miserable because…’

Regina went rigid at the thought, long enough for Lady Paloma to stare at her with a surprised expression that resembled the mounted fish she was stroking, before Regina pasted another reassuring smile on her face.

‘Because,’ Regina realized, ‘Crown Prince Aaron knows that without an ambitious queen, Artem could never be king. If the Crown Prince truly loves his brother, he could simply kill me and ensure that Artem’s next bride is the least ambitious woman alive.’

That thought was somehow both comforting and terrifying.

Behind her increasingly rigid smile, Regina kept on thinking.

‘Even if Crown Prince Aaron would benefit from my death,’ she reasoned, ‘he is hardly the only person who might be out to murder me. There are so many people who could benefit from my murder… including my own family.’

On the face of it, that should have been an absurd thought. After all, most noble families would kill to place their daughter on the throne of Carcosa and to have ties to the wealthy and powerful, if incredibly treacherous, Alpin family. Regina amassing enough popularity to become the future Queen of Carcosa should have been the Sheridan elders’ dream! As a commoner magickless merchant family who had made their initial money by selling Northern goods to foreign countries before they developed their magic, rising to the ultimate power of the country in three generations should be seen as an unbelievable success.

Besides, given how sweet and tractable Artem was, her family’s elders surely would expect to rule the country with Artem as their puppet king. Given how Artem hopelessly doted on Regina, it was a fair assumption to make, especially given how obedient Regina had seemed so far.

Unfortunately, there was a major complication, unique to the Sheridans. One would expect the elders to be happy with her success…

‘…Unless,’ Regina thought grimly, ‘the elders used their own future foresight to see that if I actually became queen, I would do my absolute best to destroy them.’

As she came to this realization, Regina could almost sympathize with her enemies. Trying to thwart a foe who could see into the future and anticipate your plans had to be horrifying. In her case, it was potentially deadly.

‘What is more,’ Regina acknowledged, ‘even if the Sheridan elders do not realize how much I loathe them… perhaps they have realized that I am concealing my abilities! I may now be too famous for them to “recall” me to our family estate and throw me off a balcony… but that might give them even more reasons to murder me in some outlandish manner far from home.’

After all, if the Sheridan elders were not sending assassins after her, then they knew the attempts on Regina’s life were real. It would not be a large deductive leap to then realize that she was fending off these attempts by seeing the future.

Her family had shown time and again that they would rather murder their kin than allow them to share their powers with the rest of Carcosa. After seeing the vicious selfishness of noble society for herself, Regina could almost understand their reasoning. If the other Carcosan nobles ever learned that the Sheridans could see into the future, they would no doubt rise as one to destroy the Sheridan family and forcibly “adopt” whatever children were left –

– Just as they did to the Northern orphans now under Regina’s care.

For a moment, something almost like sympathy for her elders lanced through Regina.

Thankfully, she was able to dispel that by reminding herself that nothing justified their murder of “useless” children like Henrietta or Regina herself.

‘Let me not forget,’ Regina reminded herself sternly, ‘that my elders would kill both Henrietta and myself if their future sight revealed our secret powers. I cannot assume they are my allies simply because I am on the path to being queen. It does not matter that I would rather amass a fortune by raising ducks out in the country.’

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Having done her fair share of battle with ducks at this point, that was truly conceding something.

Disturbed by the sheer memory of ducks, Regina took a moment to pay attention to Lady Paloma, only to realize that the Poisson noble was now making intrigued sounds as Artem started telling her about the living habits of feet fish in the North.

Hastily, Regina retreated back to her mind to think of a much safer topic, namely, the next group of people who wanted to kill her.

‘It is not just the prince and my family who are troublesome,’ Regina hastily thought. ‘There are quite a few nobles that might benefit from my murder. Even if the Poissons are too obsessed with fish, and possibly feet fish, to plan my destruction, surely there are some nobles out there who would benefit from my death!’

After all, Regina’s supposed rise in power and popularity meant a lowering of Crown Prince Aaron’s prestige… which meant that any noble families who backed him had reasons to be upset with her.

‘This may be true,’ Regina realized with a chill, ‘even of the nobles who are pretending to support Artem and myself. There were so many who were eager to exchange ugly jewelry with Artem at the masquerade ball a few nights ago… yet how many would stab us in the back if Crown Prince Aaron made them a better offer?’

Suddenly, Lady Paloma’s eagerness to get as much information on feet fish from the cheerful and politically oblivious Artem was starting to seem… sinister.

Regina had to fight not to take a step back when Lady Paloma asked Artem how much experience he had with handling meat. It took Regina a few seconds to realize that this was somehow about carving up a gigantic feet fish corpse.

Increasingly disturbed, Regina realized that she could hardly yank Artem away from a polite conversation and it was not as though Lady Paloma could rush at her with a weapon. Resigned to finding some way to ignore the conversation, Regina tried to distract herself by slowly moving behind an exceedingly hideous fish-stamped vase.

‘Fourthly,’ she reminded herself, ‘I have to worry about…’

Then she stopped, suddenly out of ideas.

‘Is there even a fourth suspect I should be aware of?’ Regina wondered. ‘Who else might want to murder me, besides Crown Prince Aaron, ambitious nobles, and my own family…?’

Regina was not sure whether to be pleased or not when Artem popped up beside her to displace that troubling thought.

She soon settled on being pleased, as Artem gently offered his arm to her and Regina realized how much she wanted to be able to lean on him for a minute, her stress exhausting her even more than normal. She closed her eyes with a contented sigh as she felt his arm supporting her only to have them widen within a moment of him starting to speak.

“I have the most amazing idea,” said Artem cheerfully and Regina felt a terrible dread building in her chest. The last time he had said that, thirty ducks had chased Robin Buren around the palace gardens.

Smiling even more widely, Artem said, “After speaking with the Poissons, I realized how much they have in common with us with their love of fish and frozen fish-based products.”

Regina frowned. She could not remember either her or Artem ever deliberately choosing fish for meals-

“Did you know,” said Artem, warming to the topic, “that you can rub frozen fish eggs in your hair for added luster?”

Regina did not know. Regina wished that she continued to not know.

“Anyway,” said Artem, speaking unusually loudly, “this made me realize I should express signs of our undying friendship, inspired by our deep passion for the piscine. I have created matching feet fish brooches for all of us to wear to show how friendly we are!”

Before Regina could even begin to process the horror of that statement, Artem had led her out from behind the vase to a gathering of what seemed like the entire Poisson family standing shockingly close to her hiding space.

Regina tried to process how all the Poissons could have manifested so suddenly. Did they have some kind of fish discussion signal?

Before she could work out the magic involved, Artem showed an even more potent magic that both thrilled and terrified her.

With a sweep of his arm, a metal table assembled itself in front of the audience and, one by one, the ugliest brooches Regina had seen yet manifested themselves down the length of the table.

“By the blood,” said Regina, her blood fleeing from her lips.

There was no possibility the Poissons could take Artem’s action as anything other than a dire insult.

After all, he did not produce merely ugly brooches.

He had just produced giant ugly brooches shaped like feet fish.

She stared in abject horror at the one in front of her.

To her even greater horror, the single ugly metallic eye almost seemed to wink at her.

Perhaps there was something she could say that would allow them to leave the house alive?

Regina did not need a vision to know that this gift was going to lead to murder if she did not do something. The Poissons had not even said a word yet!

“My dearest dove,” said Regina desperately, “your talents are so-”

“Incredible,” breathed Marquess Poisson himself, finally speaking after letting his daughter Paloma dominate the conversation. “Amazing! Beautiful!”

It was as if he had unleashed a carnivorous frenzy and the entire family fell upon the table.

Later, Regina would try to mercifully block her mind from that scene of carnage, although it did give her a very healthy fear and understanding of the Poissons, fish based abilities, and how the seemingly-unsophisticated Poisson family had survived when many other families had not.

Her mind was still reeling from the horror, when Artem came up to her, presenting her with the shiniest, ugliest brooch Regina had seen yet.

For once in her life, Regina wanted, no needed, to turn down Artem’s overtures, but just as she was about to open her mouth-

-Regina caught sight of Henrietta leaning against a pillar, looking surprisingly calm in the face of the horror unfolding in front of her.

Regina realized that she needed to accept this monstrosity if Henrietta was to have any hope of a happy future with a Poisson husband. Thus, swallowing her protests, Regina managed a shaky smile.

“Yes,” Regina said, “please prick me, my prince.”

Suddenly, Artem’s gaze was entirely on her, his pupils so large that she would never have assumed his eyes were blue had she not seen him previously.

“My dearest sea urchin,” he said, his voice trembling with an emotion that Regina instinctively wanted to shield from the others around him. “If that is your dearest wish –”

Yet before Artem could continue, Henrietta interrupted by pushing the more slender Artem out of the way and plucking Regina’s brooch from his hand.

“This is,” Henrietta muttered to Regina, “already mortifying enough. If I have to stand here watching you two make cow eyes at each other as well, I will set us all on fire and none of us will ever have to worry about feet fish or assassins again. Let me pin this damn brooch to you and let us leave soon.”

Realizing her cousin’s nerves must be shot by the prospect of being married into a family who went into raptures over hideous feet fish brooches, Regina meekly let Henrietta do as she wished.

Finally, after Henrietta had finished, Regina returned to Artem’s side with a smile.

“How did you come up with this design?” she said before she could control her tongue. She only hoped she sounded interested rather than horrified.

Artem did not answer for a moment as he looked over at… whatever the Poissons were doing with their brooches.

“I thought of you,” he said, oddly seriously, before gently linking his fingers with hers.

Regina had never been more horrified and insulted in her life.

The terrifying maw of the feet fish was visible even from her angle looking down.

Was that what Artem thought of her?

“Do I really,” she said, feeling shaken, “remind you of this?”

Artem took their joined hands and brought them to his lips, his gaze so intense, Regina felt as if she was caught in place.

“Everything I do,” said Artem softly, “reminds me of you.”

Regina slowly swayed towards him as if hypnotized. It was…

He was everything she had never even dreamed of having in her life.

– Yet all your problems would stop if you only focused on saving yourself –

Regina pulled her hand back as if burnt.

“Darling?” said Artem, obviously confused.

“Let us go,” said Regina, her guilt warring with twenty-one years of trying to survive. “I am tired and I cannot show weakness in front of our potential… friends.”

‘If that is the cost of survival,’ thought Regina even as Artem came forward to support her, ‘who will be left beside me when I am done?’