Rose couldn’t really hear any of those who were talking around her. Her head throbbed for a few seconds before the sensation became completely dull. She knew for a fact that she had seen something while she was passed out, and she knew more or less in which direction it was, but everything else was a blank.

  There was a piece of cloth of her forehead, being held by the maid, Rose realized that she was cleaning away the sweat of whatever had happened to her. She could now breathe normally, and in a few seconds, all her senses fully returned alongside a sensation of a strange clarity. She knew what to do next, she was sure of it.

  “Lady Wynthart?” A voice called close to her ear, it was Maran’s, she sounded worried. “Rose?”

  She blinked and got up from the seat. Her legs wobbled a bit, but she managed to stand, and looked at those present in the side room. There was Miss Rabineau, there was that mustached man, Lord Crota or something like that, the old nurse in a maid uniform and of course, his Highness the prince. Who was looking at her in silence with an unreadable expression on his face. Something was wrong.

  “Your Highness…” She said, her mind suddenly stopping as many things she wanted to say flowed naturally to her lips, fighting among each other to see which would be first in a battle that made her head hurt even more.

  Rabineau started talking to her, but she gave her none of her attention, perhaps unwisely, as she noticed the prince moving away from her and going straight for one of the windows of the room, the one that was right behind the place she collapsed in. He studied it for a good minute, squinting his eyes through his glasses trying to look through the seemingly impenetrable wall of rain and darkness. Rose had only seen him like that two times, the first had been when he, over a year earlier,had invited her to see an experiment he was conducting for his research, however it went wrong, and he had that exact expression while trying to understand the results. And the second had been when she had seen whatever had caused her to have a nervous breakdown while at his villa.

  “Maran.” He said. “My briefcase is still in my office. Could you bring it to me, please?”

  The small Miss Rabineau looked at him with a baffled expression before shrugging and getting out of the room in quick strides.

  “Lord Crato, if you may” The prince continued. “Can you tell me if you see anything there?”

  Crato walked to his side, hands resting in the pockets of his pants. He blinked a few times and made a sour expression. Rose herself went to his side, if just to see. He was a bit taller than the prince, although not by much, but seemed as if the mold that had made him was significantly larger. His Highness, in comparison, seemed oh so delicate.

  “What am I looking for, my lord?” He asked. “I could swear I have seen a light shining over there a moment ago.” The prince answered, looking closer, to the point in which his nose touched the glass.

  “It could be one of the lights of the garden, your Highness. With this weather it is impossible to see anything at all.” Crato answered. “Should we postpone the ball?”

  The prince looked at him, seemingly baffled, and so did Rose. He then put up an even sourer expression before any of them talked.

  “Your Highness.” Crato said, the tone of his voice sweetening as if he was talking to a child, which in his mind, Rose thought, becoming a bit angry about it, was probably the case. “The lady collapsed of what felt like a panic attack and now you claim to have seen an strange light out there. Do you think, seriously think, that any of you two are ready to go out there and say that this whole thing was a farce?”

  Rose looked around, the nurse picked up some things she had with her, specifically a bottle filled with a mint green liquid and some cotton, along with a couple of other bottles, the content of which she couldn’t see, and with one last look at her, curtsied and left the room. Rabineau was still nowhere to be seen and there was…

  “Lord Crato, a constable came with you, right?” Rose asked.

  Crato, who was ready to begin arguing with the prince, felt completely silent, then he gave a gesture to his Highness and moved up to Rose. “If you mean Clarissa, she claimed that she had to check something and left running just about a minute before you woke up. And, by the saints, I did not expect a woman so small to be that fast. But alas, given how she speaks to others, she was bound to be a little box full of surprises.”

  She didn’t like how the lord spoke about her, it wasn’t really slimy, but it felt just so condescending that she was becoming rather irritated about it. However, this was neither the time nor place, so she took a deep breath and decided to change topics, unfortunately it was to another thing she found grating about him. “Milord, this may not be my place, or perhaps it is given my relationship with him, but I have noticed that you seem to be pushing your opinion quite a bit into his Highness, do you not?”

  “Well, Lady Wynthart, that is because, as you know, he is terribly indecisive.” He didn’t seem offended or defensive at all. He treated it as the simple truth, which it perhaps was, but it still made her upset. So much that she didn’t notice Maran coming back behind her.

  “And that gives you the right to try to make him agree with you?” The obvious answer was a ‘yes’, of course it was, but Rose was betting in that her tone, slightly menacing, would do the trick to make him fall fully silent. At which point she would have effectively won the debate, at least for herself.

  However, before neither of them could continue, they both heard a scream and turned around towards the source, towards the prince. He was looking at a couple of instruments in his hands. Crato arched an eyebrow, waiting for whatever he probably had to say, while Rose recognized the device. She quickly rushed to his side. He seemed quite pale.

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  “Seven.” He said, almost as a gasp. Rose didn’t understand what it meant, but she could guess it was something rather bad.

  “Like in the villa?” She asked. The right question.

  He nodded and put down the instrument. Then he adjusted his glasses. “Kind of… The scale is much smaller, but the phenomenon could be similar. Or maybe not. It is just a single reading of the mana amount present here.”

  Rose felt silent, a knot formed in her stomach, something burned inside her brain. She couldn’t process the implications of what he had said, but Crato did, fast.

  “Your Highness, are you suggesting that it was not a panic attack but rather that she was attacked?” He asked, hands still on the sides of his waist, pushing his frock coat to the back.

  The prince clearly didn’t want to say that much, he knew about the implications that an assassination attempt would have around all of that, everything would become so much complicated in ways that he didn’t even want to begin to understand. And yet, something had to be done, and some other thing suddenly clicked in his brain. “Lord Crato, why did the constable leave?”

  “To check something, as I said.” He answered, and suddenly felt silent for a few seconds. “Oh.”

  Rose looked at them, a bit lost, and then back to Miss Rabineau, who was putting the equipment back inside the suitcase. Then, she understood the implication of what the prince was saying. If she had been attacked, through the use of magic somehow, perhaps then the police officer saw it and went to try to capture the culprit, or maybe she didn’t see anything but somehow suspected that it may be an attack. In any of the two cases, it meant she was outside, trying to fight whatever hurt her.

  She saw a small flash of light through the window at that very moment. Like a single small star in the night sky. And realized that everyone else in the room had seen it too.

  “I will be calling for the guards, all troops right now.” Crato said, ready to leave.

  “No!” The prince adjusted his glasses as he shouted back. “Send just a couple. We’ll be starting the ball right now.”

  Maran and Rose stared at him, silent, not knowing what he was going on for. That was clearly the worst possible decision; sure Rose wanted this to finish up as soon as possible, and rebuild her life, that was all she had truly wanted since she realized how bad her situation undeservedly was, but if she had been a victim of what perhaps had been an assassination attempt, celebrating the ball and exposing her had to be unwise at best.

  Prince Rull realized as much, cleared his voice, and began to explain. “An assassination attempt with can be done two ways. Either through the use of a complicated mechanism, like in the death of the last king of Tarana, or through a mage acting as an assassin. Now, if there had been a mechanism big enough for it in that direction, the patrolling guards would have noticed it. And otherwise, given how heavily guarded is the place, it is impossible to enter with a group to execute the assassination, so it has to be a single mage.”

  “Your Highness.” Crato said, leaning on the door, ready to leave. “You are missing an essential part of your theory. And that is the reason:”

  He sighed. “Do I have to explain everything? Anyone can understand an assassination attempt on you, as we all know, you are not popular. But why her?”

  “For the same reason she was attacked at my villa!” The prince answered.

  “Oh? And pray tell then, what is that reason? Trying to incapacitate her to make you look like a fool? Because if that is the case and the little Miss Rabineau here is right,” Maran looked at him with some absolute disdain, enough to make Rose flinch. “Then we should go arrest Lord Vivrul right now.”

  There was a grin on his face, an expression intended for provocation, but Rose noticed that the edges of it were trembling. There was some kind of storm going inside of Rose at the moment, things making her angrier and angrier, but she could tell there was a different one inside of him. Rose sighed and realized something about Lord Crato, and that was that he was one of those sad, stressed men who mask it by making themselves as punchable as possible. A kind of person that she hated. But she had a better idea.

  “If this would-be assassin wants me, how about we let them?” She said, the most angelic smile she could fake plastered all over her face.

  Lord Crato staggered. He wanted to say something, but the words failed him.

  Rose picked it up. “If you may, your Highness, I may be a bit lost about what this is all about, but I would like to make a proposition.” She smiled wider, the prince nodded for her to continue. “How much time remains until the ball?”

  Maran glanced at a clock. “Three quarters of an hour.”

  The villainess nodded. “Very well then. I will pick up a sword, get rid of that assassin and hopefully get them to talk. Afterwards, if Miss Rabineau was right, you will arrest this Lord Vivrul, right after I am exonerated, because if I remember right, he occupies the office of Minister of Justice and his public verbal consent would be necessary for the admission that I have committed no crime whatsoever, correct?”

  The prince and Maran looked at each other, they seemed to be nervous about something, but she paid them no mind. The mustached man was to be the problem.

  “You?! Lady Wynthart, has your short bout of unconsciousness driven you insane? Even assuming that you can go against a mage, you are the very objective of the assassination. If it goes badly we lose, fully, there are no winning conditions in which you would have to do that, it is downright insane!” He was almost shouting and his face had gone red.

  “I may not look much like it, but both his Highness and Miss Rabineau can certify I know my way with a blade. And while yes, an strategic analysis of the situation is bound to make it seem like it is the worst possible idea, I would rather sustain that it is probably the worst thing to do at the moment.” She answered, calm, trying to hide her amusement at his expression, and yet, she needed to tie the knot. “And I will do it for two reasons; first, because we are losing time right now and someone should really help that girl, and second, because this talk about scenarios makes your lordship sound like a gambler.”

  Prince Rull suddenly chuckled behind her. It was a sound that she hadn’t heard in months, and it fired her up.

  She grinned. “Now, if you do not have any other objections, just shut up and get me a weapon.”