“Oh? That sounds ominous,” said Sebastian, cheerfully. He took a seat near Anne’s fireplace, crossing one leg over the other and placing both hands on his knee, looking up at Anne expectantly.

Anne glanced back at Eva and Betty.

“I was kind of hoping to talk to the Prince in private…” she said. Then she added. “Eva, I can catch you up on what’s going on later.”

Betty bowed and left right away. Eva took a bit longer, looking from Anne to Sebastian and back to Anne again. Finally, she seemed to come to a conclusion.

“As you wish, dear Saintess,” she said, bowing and leaving the room.

“So, Sebastian…” said Anne, sitting in a chair across from Sebastian.

“Oh, before we get into that,” said Sebastian. “How are you doing? That can’t have been easy, hearing all that awfulness earlier. I’m so sorry all this happened. I swear I didn’t know my dad was planning to do something like that.”

“Oh, well…” said Anne. “Corvina knew, so… it’s fine, I guess.”

“She did?” said Sebastian. He shook his head, bemusedly. “Of course she did. So she told you about it beforehand? Let you prepare yourself?”

“No, she didn’t tell me…” said Anne. “That’s actually sort of why I wanted to talk to you today, you see—”

Sebastian clicked his tongue. “She should’ve told you. It was the least she owed you,” he said. “And now you have to leave the city!” Sebastian put a hand on his forehead in an exaggerated gesture of woe. “We’ve only just become friends and now you have to leave already! I only wish I could come with you.”

“Good news then!” said Anne, speaking loudly to try to interrupt Sebastian’s momentum. She was worried she would miss her chance to say anything otherwise. “Because we actually need you to come with us. To Longren. Well, the border of the Sacred Forest. So we can kidnap you.”

Sebastian leapt to his feet, clutching his chest in shock. “You want to kidnap me?”

“Not me, personally,” said Anne, reaching out to Sebastian to tug on his arm and try to get him to sit down again. “One of my half-brothers probably. Elyon. Or maybe Zaos is Elyon doesn’t wanna do it. The elves anyway. The Sacred Forest elves specifically, not just any random elves. And it’s more of a staged kidnapping than a real kidnapping. We’re all going to be in on it together. Come on, Sebastian, sit down, let’s talk about this.”

Sebastian shook Anne off. “None of that makes it better!” he said. “You have to see how that doesn’t make it better. Goddess’ tits, woman, I know there must be some sort of scheme behind this but have you forgotten that the elves hate my family? For good reason, I’ll admit, but for Goddess’ sake you’re gonna get me killed.”

“Um…” Anne rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. “About that…”

“Oh my Goddess, I can’t—” Sebastian covered his mouth with his hands and took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ve calmed down. You can tell me.”

“A while back, I received a vision from the Goddess,” said Anne. “A prophecy of the future. In the prophecy… well, basically if you stay in the city you might get assassinated. You will get assassinated. Probably.”

Sebastian sat back down again.

“I told you it would be a lot to process…” said Anne.

“Why can’t I just leave the city and not get kidnapped?” asked Sebastian. Sebastian looked genuinely scared and vulnerable, like a small animal caught in a trap.

Anne felt bad for him. He was the Crown Prince, theoretically one of the most powerful people in the Empire, and yet even his closest allies had written him off as stupid, shallow, and useless ever since he was a young kid. No one told him anything. No one included him in anything. Everyone had just… given up on him. No wonder he turned out the way he did.

Admittedly, Anne had found his character in the original novel really annoying and hadn’t cared that much when he died. She’d kind of enjoyed it actually, just for the drama of it. Anne had sort of also found him pretty annoying when they’d first met in this world, but… now that she’d gotten to know him better she considered him a genuine friend.

He deserved to know what might happen to him.

Suddenly Sebastian perked up, eager, like he’d thought of something. “Or, instead of kidnapping me, you could just tell me who the assassin is! We could arrest them before they could get me.”

Anne shook her head. “The, uh, prophecy didn’t show many details about the actual assassin. There was—is going to be a lot of chaos around the time when you’re assassinated. And you can’t really arrest someone for something they might do in the future.”

Sebastian gave Anne a look and Anne conceded.

“Okay, well, maybe your dad could arrest someone for a theoretical future crime,” said Anne. “But he shouldn’t. Also the kidnapping isn’t just about saving you. It’s also about saving the Sacred Forest. The Emperor won’t burn it down while there’s a risk you might be killed in the process. You're his only blood heir. He cares about that connection too much.”

“I’m sure Corvina has a million other reasons for why this is the best course of action, too,” said Sebastian, bitterly. “And she wanted you to tell me all this?”

Anne shook her head. “No, she actually insisted we keep it a secret from you.”

“Well, why in Coris’ name did you tell me then!”

Anne was taken aback. “But just a minute ago you were saying that Corvina should’ve warned me about what was going to happen to me!”

“That’s different!” said Sebastian.

“Yeah, it is,” said Anne. “A kidnapping, even a staged one, is a much bigger deal than just getting slandered. So I thought you deserved to know.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Sebastian stood up again. He leaned against the mantle for a moment, facing away from Anne. He rubbed his forehead with one hand. Finally, he turned back around again. “Anne, you’re actually smart. And you were raised by the church with certain practical skills that fit your role. It just makes sense to keep you informed about things. I, on the other hand, am weak, and stupid, and useless, and I’m very much used to being kept in the dark about more or less everything and I’m fine with that.”

“No, Sebastian,” Anne stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not useless, and you deserve to have some level of agency over your life just like anyone else. You deserve to know things.”

Sebastian gave Anne a highly skeptical look. “Did Corvina tell you why she didn’t want you to tell me about this?”

Anne shrugged. “Well… she thought you might accidentally give the plan away to someone if you knew what was happening…”

“A-ha!” shouted Sebastian, knocking Anne’s hand away from his shoulder and pointing at her. “Exactly! I’m going to start acting all weird and everyone’s going to be able to tell something’s up! I’m terrible at keeping secrets. Well, except for my one big secret, I suppose. Although I found out recently that even that was never that much of a secret. Everyone’s just too scared of my father killing them to point out the obvious.”

“What big secret?” asked Anne. “What are you talking about?”

“I like men, Anne,” said Sebastian, exasperated. “That’s why, the first time we met, when you said you would punch the Goddess if she said that sort of thing was unnatural… Well, that meant a lot to me. That changed my life, Anne. But this… I don’t know if I can go through with something like this… I’m sorry, Anne.”

“Oh,” said Anne. She was desperately trying to remember if she had noticed any homoerotic subtext in the original novel. She was usually better at picking up on things like that.

I guess since I had The Foundling’s Wings mentally filed away under ‘straight romance’ I wasn’t really on the lookout for anything else…

“Oh?” said Sebastian. “That’s all you have to say?”

“No, I mean, that’s great!” said Anne. “About you liking men. Totally cool. But about the kidnapping… you’re really sure you can’t go through with it? It’s for the greater good. And to save your own life, too.”

Sebastian sighed and rubbed his temple. “I just really wish you hadn’t told me…” he said quietly. “If I hadn’t found out until the moment, when I was basically already being kidnapped, I maybe could’ve just gone along with it. But I can’t… I’m just not brave enough to purposefully walk into the den of the beast on my own. I’m sorry, Anne. I’ve… I’ve gotta go. I can’t deal with this.”

Sebastian left and Anne sat down heavily.

As the night crept on, Anne stared into her slowly dying fire and felt like shit.

If she was being honest with herself, she still felt really bad about what the Emperor and the Bishop had said about her. And she kind of felt bad about feeling bad about it. And she really felt bad about upsetting Sebastian.

But Anne still felt like she was right to have told Sebastian about the kidnapping. And she felt bad about feeling that way, too.

God, what a tangled mess, she thought, her head in her hands.

Goddess, what a tangled mess, thought Corvina, finally stepping out of her father’s office.

The conversation had gone about as well as she’d expected it to. Which was to say, it had gone poorly.

But Corvina had managed to lay out all her reasonings for breaking the engagement.

My tainted blood isn’t fit for a Duke’s house, your highness. Besides, wouldn’t it be a waste to marry your two closest allies off to each other? Think of the advantages you could gain by pairing us with others. At the very least, it would be prudent to keep our options open, in case a chance for a useful alliance presents itself. It’s better to keep the Ducal house and the Imperial house separate, anyway, for the sake of the Empire—two strong houses at the center of the aristocratic order was better than one.

And on and on and on. The Emperor was much like Corvina. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Corvina was like the Emperor, since he had raised her and taught her to be what she was. Either way, neither of them liked to act unless they were certain they had considered every angle of an issue. So when Corvina set out to persuade her father of something, she was always certain to cover all the angles.

The Emperor had said he would need time to consider it. This was about what Corvina had expected. But the groundwork had been laid.

Corvina felt a hand on her shoulder, stopping her as she walked down the hall. It was the Duke.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Duke Marshal hissed. He usually at least tried to hide his anger behind a calm face. He was no longer trying to hide it.

“Ending our engagement,” replied Corvina in a detached tone. “Weren’t you listening?”

“He’ll never go for it,” said the Duke. “This has been the plan since we were children.”

Corvina shrugged. “Plans change.”

“Not this one,” said the Duke. “You are going to marry me, woman, and when you do—”

“Robert,” said Corvina. She reached up and grabbed the wrist of his hand that was on her shoulder. Her grip was tight, almost to the point where she knew it would begin to cause him pain. She met his eyes with a determined gaze. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes to persuade my father. It doesn’t matter what you do to try to influence matters. I will never marry you. It’s over.”

Corvina didn’t look back at him when she walked away.

Rejected first by the Saintess and then by his fiance, Duke Robert Marshal was beginning to feel like a cornered animal. All the paths he could see towards his own victory and power, either turning against the Emperor or remaining at his side, were being blocked off. Even the useless Prince, who used to follow him around like a puppy, who just recently had been cowering before him, had turned against him… dismissed him. Like he wasn’t even a threat.

It was humiliating. It was emasculating. It was infuriating.

The thing about cornered animals is that they’re known to bite.

Arriving back at his chambers, the Duke stealthily handed a small pouch of coins to the guard standing outside his door. Then he whispered in his ear.

“Send for the Unseen Rain.”