Regina had spent most of her life wishing she was anybody but the person she happened to be.

Then again, she supposed most of her relatives did the same, given how simultaneously tedious yet terrifying it was to be a member of the Sheridan family.

Even so, she did not believe she would ever stop being shocked by how many people wanted her to stop being a Sheridan by faking her death and relocating her to another country.

She was not sure whether she was more irritated that everyone seemed to have copied her glorious idea for escape or whether she was more annoyed that they could not have realized this plan earlier than five minutes before her wedding.

In fact, Regina had the sneaking suspicion that if Robin Buren had not been her assassin and had approached her with such a plan before she had met Artem, she would have thrown herself at him with more enthusiasm than her mother with a knife and an unpierced table.

As it was, Regina stared at the handsome, brilliant, and charming nobleman who had somehow managed to plot both her death and her rebirth.

“Do you realize,” Regina said in a strangely even voice even as her last glimmers of sanity faded from her mind, “that this revelation only makes me want to strangle you with the last pair of laces I have on my body?”

“I am not sure,” Robin Buren said, as a deep flush suddenly colored his face, “that that is the punishment you think it to be.”

Admittedly, Regina was not quite sure if her remaining laces were strong enough to thoroughly choke Robin. Even so, the reminder that she had very few ways of controlling him if he were to break loose was deeply unwelcome.

Feeling more than a little uneasy, Regina realized that the man in front of her was a master assassin.

Whether Robin was sincere in his desire to help her or not, she had barely survived his murder attempts and Artem had been actively damaged by his plans.

There was no future in which she could imagine herself with someone who had attempted to kill her –

Regina’s eyes closed for a second as she realized just how true this truth was to her core.

Although she would never forget how she had felt when she realized Artem was innocent, suddenly she found that she could forgive herself for not wanting to marry someone she thought was going to murder her.

Even so, Regina would survive to make it up to Artem.

She would.

“My lady?” said Robin, suddenly sounding uneasy.

“You say,” said Regina, her eyes opening and her voice so cold that it almost frightened her, “that you did all these things so that I could… marry you if Artem died or flee… as if I was dead.”

She stared at Robin with all the force of a Sheridan who had watched her sister die in front of her.

“Yet did you truly think that the Nevilles and the Burens would have let me live if my engagement was broken?”

She continued before Robin had a chance to reply, trying not to close her eyes against the certainty of who had killed her in that very first vision.

“Do you think my family would have let me live?” said Regina who-had-never-wanted-to-be-a-Sheridan.

“Do you think,” said Robin, something soft and sad in his voice, “that we are no more than what our families would have us do… and do to us in turn?”

Regina started at that, unnerved by the fact that he had not already accepted her irrefutable logic.

“What do you mean?” she asked, trying not to sound as surprised as she was.

“No family,” said Robin with a strange, musing tone, “even one who controls the plants of the earth or sees the future can rule everything as they will. Plants wither and the future can be misleading. I assume you tried to change what you saw. In fact, I counted on it… but surely the future you saw was not always as you later lived it?”

Regina had to work not to flinch.

‘Damn him,’ Regina thought, though she was not sure if she was damning Robin for getting under her skin once again… or being so accurate. ‘How does he know so much about the limitations of my abilities?’

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For Robin was right once again. As much as Regina had relied on her magical foresight to stay safe, there was much it could not tell her – and many ways in which she altered the future without realizing it.

Even if she could see the future through Artem’s eyes, she could not read Artem’s mind or foresee all the ways her present actions might affect a new future. It was also disturbing how, as she had more visions, they had become more… sharply focused. Her visions had gone from general visions of Artem to visions only of her death where he was present… or his. Though Regina had originally supposed that was because she would die soon after Artem, if Robin was to be believed, some of those early deaths had not been deaths and she had been meant to survive Artem’s assassinations.

Frankly, Regina wished her visions were as powerful as Robin seemed to be implying, even if he was trying to hint at limits. They were already strange and focused, but without Artem, she had no visions at all.

The proof of how useless her powers could be was shown in her having to face down Robin Buren at all.

If she could have, she would have avoided this encounter entirely and already fled the country!

Even worse was the other part of Robin’s strange insight.

‘Robin Buren knows far too much about me and my family’s abilities. What shall I do with him?’

For a moment, she stared down at the brooch in her hand, the sharpest point of it already red with Robin’s blood.

Then, after wrestling with temptation, she chose another tactic.

“Do not pretend to know what either myself or my family can see,” Regina snapped. “Even more, do not pretend that you offered nothing but the milk of human kindness to me! If you thought I knew so much, why did you not identify yourself to me and ask me to run away with you earlier?”

Eyes narrowed as her hand clenched on the bloody brooch, Regina asked, “Why would you not tell me about your plans during your dance as a masked man, when you all-but-propositioned me openly?”

Robin’s brow furrowed as he looked up at her, the smile on his face far too confident for someone under her heel.

“If your fiance had died,” he said with a twitch of his lips, “we would have been able to have many conversations, my lady. As it was, I did not think I had enough to offer to persuade you until now…”

“...Five minutes before my wedding,” said Regina dryly, unimpressed.

“I think,” said Robin, raising an eyebrow, “you are seriously underestimating how long it will take you to reach the altar as you stand currently.”

Regina froze in place.

She had never planned to go to the altar in the first place, but how delayed now was she?

Was Henrietta already at the exit, waiting for the fire?

Would someone else come looking for the missing bride if she had been down here too long?

“I hope,” said Regina, feeling her words with all her heart, “that the angry duck pecks out all your hair.”

Robin’s eyes widened as his head turned to look around him.

“What duck?” said Robin.

Regina stared at him.

“What do you mean?” she said in confusion. She had not been looking for the duck, but it had pecked Robin not that long-

Thud.

Regina jumped backwards, pulling herself into a ready stance-

As did Robin in front of her.

Standing.

Untied.

“I heard a noise,” said Robin, looking around himself.

‘I am going to die’, Regina suddenly realized. ‘I am going to die and I never even got to complain to the corset maker that their strings might be strong enough to hold bosoms but not full grown assassins.’

Regina started backing up calmly, carefully.

She had no weapons left.

Robin had been pretending all along.

All her efforts to find the truth and subdue him and she would have been better off immediately stabbing him in the heart.

Robin might have still stopped her but at least she would feel less of an enormous fool.

Even so, Regina would not make this final battle easy for him.

There were still burnt shards of pottery on the ground.

Perhaps she could quietly grab one of them and at least make him bleed when he tried to kill her.

Regina carefully, slowly bent down and carefully, slowly wrapped her fist around the nearest sharpened shard, while Robin was looking in the opposite direction.

She carefully, slowly straightened shard in hand, ready to fight –

– An unconscious Robin sprawled on the ground.

Regina froze.

From the darkness, from the shadows, into the one remaining place of pale light where Regina had bound Robin, something slowly stepped into view.

“Where,” said Queen Natasha, gently tossing a handful of bloody hair in her hands, “is my son?”