There was something to be said, Regina realized, for fish and their role in the world.

Unfortunately, the Poissons had said all of it and even more.

Saying farewell to the school of piscine Poissons thanking them heartily for their visit and the feet fish brooches took far more time than Regina intended. This was made even more tense due to Henrietta’s clear irritation over the whole situation. Still, after Regina promised to visit the Poissons again and received their promise to meet for hopefully non-fishy tea in the future, Regina and her people were ready to depart.

Yet even as Regina slipped her arm around Artem’s as they headed toward the Poisson manor’s entrance, she was lost in thought.

‘Right now,’ Regina decided, ‘my main goal is keep Artem and myself alive long enough for our wedding to take place in a month. After we wed, I can use my new status as a princess to determine if the Poissons are my allies. If they are, Henrietta can marry one of their fish-mongers that she can carry over her shoulders like an ugly vase. Then, Artem and I…’

Regina could barely suppress her sigh, lest it disturb Artem’s happiness. She wanted at least one of them to be content with life.

‘Ideally,’ she acknowledged, ‘Artem and I would take off in the middle of the night to some remote country estate that we would barricade against assassins. I could even pretend to have lost my mind from repeated duck-based stress. That would disqualify me from being queen and make my enemies lose interest in me…’

‘Right?’

‘…Right.’

Still preoccupied with her musings and weighed down with her hideous new feet fish brooch, Regina started to head towards the door with Artem…

…before she froze, her had feeling as if it would split in two-

– Artem crumbled at her feet, his body still twitching, a torn arm emerging from the green mass that engulfed him –

Regina felt her breath catch in her throat, her heart sounding in her ear, Artem turning towards her –

“Darling, what is wrong?” Artem asked, concern clear in his voice as he looked at her, gently holding her hand even as she fought not to tremble. “Did you see something unsettling?”

‘Yes,’ Regina did not say. ‘I saw you die today because you took a blow that was meant for me when our exit from the Poissons was intercepted by assassins.’

Regina opened her mouth to say something, to delay Artem from walking out the door and to his death, to tell him to stop walking because –

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

For a moment, it was though Regina was locked into another vision, though she knew it was her imagination rather than her magic at work.

She could vividly see in her mind what would happen if she did nothing and let Artem walk through that door.

She could imagine his dying body, she could imagine the blood and the screams, she could imagine falling to her knees in tears and –

And she could imagine that without a potential king by her side, she would never have to fear being queen.

She would be too famous to kill but too tainted to be a queen, especially since she had been living with Artem outside of the bonds of matrimony.

She would most likely be married to some insignificant nobleman, a pleasant potato of a person, and sent to the countryside to war with ducks, quietly forgotten in favor of new pawns and peons.

It was everything she had ever wanted and it would be so easy to achieve.

All she had to do was let Artem keep walking.

For one second, it felt as if the world itself had frozen around her, as if time itself was not just showing Regina the future but waiting for her to create it.

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In that moment, with a calmness Regina had never previously felt, Regina knew exactly what kind of person she was… and who she wanted to be.

In one fluid motion, Regina tore off the hideous but heartfelt feet fish brooch that Artem had created for her…

….and threw it out the door.

The noise as a giant mass of greenery completely crushed the brooch was ear-shattering.

There was shouting and exclamations and someone was trying to hold her and Regina felt nothing but numb.

Regina had no idea what people were saying.

Regina was not sure she knew what words were.

Finally, Regina managed a smile and said, “Lady Paloma Poisson, your lovely premise might need more fish-based products to replace the unreliable plants.”

Even as the Poissons surged forward like a school of fish and swarmed the mass that had nearly murdered Artem, Regina calmly took a step forward.

Then another step.

By the time she had taken her tenth step, she realized that Artem was not only attached to her arm but was almost fully wrapped around her body.

That was good.

She did not have to worry about losing him that way.

There was a different set of exclamations in the distance.

Regina looked towards the gate of the estate.

“The reporters have arrived,” she said blandly, watching them take notes as if their hands were on fire.

Henrietta was saying something, but unless it involved more murder, Regina did not have the ability to care.

So Regina walked past the gate, past the reporters, wondering when someone had pressed the badly dented fish brooch into her hand.

Gracefully, she felt Artem lift her onto the carriage.

Gracefully, she ignored the shouts as she left without saying anything to the reporters.

Tomorrow’s headlines, Regina grimly decided, were going to be future Regina’s problems.

All present Regina wanted to do was to go home.

She had known she was a terrible person since the moment Ava had died in front of her. How was her realization today any different from then?

She would survive. It was the only thing that she was good at.

After all, how much further could the world torment and humiliate her?

~♦♥♦~

Sometimes, Regina thought that the power of the press would be greatly improved by having it not exist.

PRINCESS TO BE WIELDS POWER OVER MURDEROUS SHRUBBERY AND INSPIRES NEW JEWELRY THROWING CRAZE

‘It has been one day,’ thought Regina. ‘One day.’

How in Carcosa could there already be a craze about anything but her slowly dissolving sanity based on what some reporter had seen?

‘At least,’ Regina thought bitterly, ‘they must have run out of alliterative options in the thesaurus.’

Regina looked out the window.

The yard was littered with ugly jewelry.

“Draw the curtains, please,” said Regina flatly. “I would like to spend the rest of the day in the dark learning how to be a mushroom.”

~♦♥♦~

Unfortunately, Regina’s attempts to cultivate in the dark were delayed.

Pretending to be a mushroom reminded her about growing things which reminded her about her hopes and dreams to live on a small farm growing potatoes which reminded her that she knew nothing about actual farming-

All of which resulted in the absolute disaster that was Regina trying to learn more about Carcosan agricultural methods and then… what happened next.

The resulting newspaper headline was somehow even worse than its predecessors.

MUSHROOM LIKE PRINCESS EMERGES FROM DARK TO BE VICTORIOUS OVER TERRIFYING TOPIARY ALSO ANGRY DUCK

“Why,” Regina asked Artem, her eyes almost wild, “did you decide to walk under topiary in a high wind with a duck that did not want to be there?”

Artem stared at her in adoration or indigestion.

Regina decided she no longer wanted to interpret the look in his eyes.

“Darling,” said Artem, “you would not emerge from your room where you were studying to understand the new crops that will benefit Carcosa and I thought that I could at least brave the winds to bring you a helpful companion.”

“The duck,” said Regina, “was trying to murder you when three topiary came loose and also decided to murder you at the same time.”

“But you saved me,” said Artem, his eyes shining. “You found a new way to stake topiary with metal rods that will now be used all over Carcosa! Gardeners are composing odes to your methods for mushrooms and rods!”

Regina wondered if it was too late to just let herself be murdered.