He did it again. He did it to her, again. Vanessa almost couldn’t believe it. She’d outright thought he was joking when he told her about his little gift, during the coerced luncheon.

Merely giving her a little land and a little money had been enough to almost get her killed. When he said he intended to make her a princess by bestowing to her the special royal dispensation that the father of the kingdom’s current king had bestowed to him, she’d believed that he’d understood how much trouble that could cause her, and understand why she'd need to reject such...generosity.

Everyone knew that the old Count was crazy but never stupid, thus she was justified in expecting the man to use his reason and leave her be.

Even though she was no longer in a position where she’d have to fear for her and her family's thanks to the rise of both and her family’s strengths, she still didn’t want to play with such calamity. She had no need for inherited wealth, and the status she had was good enough as it was, she neither needed nor wanted more.

Still, he did it anyway. He said,

“I’m going to make a you into a Prince...well in your case a princess...How would you like that? ” said Hunfred

“No thank you? No thank you, very much, please.” said Vanessa.

She’d promptly but politely declined, and he’d responded to her declining by insisting. Or rather than calling it insistence, it might be better to say that he responded by conveniently seeming to go deaf.

Playing the part of a kindly old man. Nodding at her words while pushing things along his way. While she perhaps in error, gently tried to push back. Not doing anything rash like forcing her way out of the Count’s manor, or just teleporting out, because for various reasons she was still hesitant to do anything that might force her family’s hand

Even during the subsequent trip to Alcide the nation’s capital she’d still been entirely skeptical of what exactly was happening. Simply going along with things because the old man seemed determined to have her go, and she didn’t want to cause trouble for the vis-Oddmunds, the people she actually considered family.

She’d even still been in doubt a day after the month long commute by wagon and ship, finished, still doubting as she was guided out of the posh guest room of Count’s manor in Alcide and taken to a parlor where servants apply makeup to her face, perfumes to her body, and clad her silks and jewelry.

Primping and pinching things till she looked the part that she was intended to play. Violet lipped, her blue skin glowing, her hair piled high on top of her head, cascading off her shoulders in rococo swirls. She was dressed in an aesthetically pleasing, but highly uncomfortable, bustle-backed, olive colored, gown.Her shoulders cover in a cloak that bore the family’s coat of arms.

The day after the day that she’d arrived in the Palmas kingdom’s capital, Alcide, was the day of her grand debut.

Vanessa’s head was still spinning, trying to figure out how the man had talked into travelling with him for more than a month, to put her in a position that she very much wanted nothing to do with, she was even more befuddled and lost when she had to add the question how the old man was able to arrange a grand ball for her to introduce herself to the kingdom’s high society.

At the time, she was too swept up in the old man’s pace, and too preoccupied  with trying to remember the etiquette lessons she’d had taken back when she was younger, trying not to embarrass herself. Too busy with dancing, and introductions to question how quickly everything was moving, and how it all stank to high heavens with the stench of a set up.

It was only later, after the ball was over and the king’s men arrived to not only introduce themselves, but to carry her away on charges of high treason that she’d apparently inherited along with the title, that she realized that there was a great deal that didn’t add up about the situation she’d found herself in.

Her biological father’s good intentions  seemed to have bought her even more trouble than last time.

She spent a week in a cell that was more like a hotel room, waiting to know if she was going to end up becoming an enemy of the state or not. Quietly reassuring herself with happy thoughts, like the realization that if she so chose, or if things couldn’t be sorted out in the proper fashion, she could be teleport out and be free at any time.  

The only thing that kept her waiting in the cell playing the part of a good little prisoner was her desire to not implicate her family. The vis-Oddmunds. Making a kingdom lose face was a great way to have people trying to wipe out one’s nine generations. Even if the Palmas kingdom wouldn’t actually succeed in such an endeavour it didn’t mean that she wanted to risk having them try.

Besides that matter, having had some time to calm down a little in the absence of the old man and his odd sense-numbing atmosphere, she was realizing that she’d been given quite the run around. Moved into position like a chess piece before she even knew what was going on.

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Thus she was trusting that someway or the other the old man had planned for this scenario as well, if it wasn’t part of his plan to begin with. Meaning that an attempt to escape would only complicate things.

The days passed and eventually the anxiety gave way to painful sort of boredom. She needed to focus on something else. Anything else. Unfortunately, the only thing she had to read, was a treatise.

A heretical treatise that someone had left hidden inside one of the pillows of the cell. A thick, politically radical tome that “briefly” filled her in on the history of kingdom from the past to the past.

One key thing that kept being pointed out, was a need for all the high lords of the kingdom to vote on matters of importance. Important matters like whether or not the kingdom should capitulate on certain issues with its neighbors to the north, the Helios Empire.

The same Empire which served as the only other nation with the power to potentially dominate the continent, besides the kingdom. Towering over its peers, as the people kingdom of Palmas towered over theirs.

An empire that had been at the Kingdom’s throat since both nations were founded. With the empire whittling away at the kingdom’s strength by goading Palmas’ decadent nobility into getting fat and weak, and tricking the paranoid and arrogant royal family into tearing down its strongest supporters, supporters like the fallen, Oedheim clan.

Vanessa read, and she read and she read some more, finishing all nine thousand pages, of the massive tome, in a single night. Barely noticing that some parts of the book had been earmarked. As if she’d not been supposed to read the entire book.

She scowled as she read through the chapters concerning the Palmas family, the royal line of the kingdom’s, treatment of the older more powerful clans of the kingdom.

Hating the royal family’s tendency of cooking its  loyal “hunting hounds” after all the proverbial rabbits and foxes had been rounded up.

All nations were built on bones, but if the book could be trusted, when it came to the Palmas kingdom, and the kingdom’s strongest defenders and protectors, it seemed that a great number of those buried beneath this land had been put there by the kingdom itself. Arrested and executed on various trumped up charges, once their usefulness was over.

Van sat there reading. Hating the book because it was giving her thoughts that she didn’t want, filling her in on some very likely possibilities of what the old man was trying to do. Assuming that all the old man had planned for her to find the book somehow, knowing what her reception in the Capital would be like.

Then came the day of the trial, where she found herself chilled and uncertain, not so much worried about herself, because somehow she felt she would be fine, but worried about what this would mean for her family.

When the old man came and saved her, she wasn’t surprised, or shocked, or stunned, or at all thankful. There was no point in clapping when an old dog pulls off a trick that it taught itself.

He got her out of court and then they rode back to the manor, her manor...in silence.

Finally just as she was about to get out of the carriage he spoke.

“So what did you think of the reading material I had a friend bring in for you? I figured you’d be bored being in there all by yourself...”

“....” she didn’t didn’t answer him.

First she wanted to take a proper shower, then she wanted to finally go and sleep in her own bed. Then she had some thinking to do. A lot of thinking, which would be followed with a discussion with her family, her actual family, not some mad old schmer and his equally mad children...With the discussion to be followed by yet more thinking.

Finding herself with neither the temper nor the energy to spend time chatting with the infuriating old man, no matter how badly he wanted to try and feel her out after her rough seven  night stay in the kingdom’s tower-dungeons, Van simply strode into the manor, eyes glowing, brow furrowed. Looking more vexed than she’d ever been in her life.

She thanked her Lord Father for his aid, and good intentions, and this time paid no heed to politeness when she bade him good night and had him make his exit.

Leaving the man standing in the manor’s main hall staring dully at nothing, eyes wide, with a faint ghost of smile on his face.

“Nh, She’s got her mother’s fire in her, all right…She might just survive this.”