Warnings: Even more mysteries and stuck-up elves.

[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•chapter seven•

Girl has a serious talk. Girl gets a magic tutor. Girl terrorizes the elves.

•••

“You really didn’t have to go with me,” Penelope says, as she and Scarlett walk at a relatively fast pace towards the tall white tower. It was massive, shooting up the sky above even the palace, seemingly build from painstakingly placed white bricks, with glittering windows and ivy climbing up the outer walls. It was the Magetower, and it was a library and center of all knowledge and research in Sheothia, not only magical. It was built by the first prominent Mages in the country, hence its name, and is the seat of the Archmage, as well as the housing unit of various Magi and people of science from all over the country, and beyond.

It was also where Penelope’s person of interest lived—her tutor of choice for Adetta. Since they were in the Capital, the Archduchess saw no harm in personally contacting the Magi, and maybe arranging a meeting with Adetta so that they could feel one another out and decide on the best course of the magic tutoring. That, or preferably just hire them fully. With Adetta’s magic awakening more and more, a feat relatively rare among children under ten years old, it was only a matter of time before she lost control of her wild magic and caused an accident, therefore learning control with a trained professional was crucial and couldn’t wait as long as Adetta initially waited.

She would understand, and Penelope had a distinct feeling that she would also appreciate it. Adetta was always a bit more interested in magic than in other things.

“But I want to,” Scarlett says, bringing Penelope out of her thoughts, “also, despite living in Capital, I see Ethel less than I see you. We’re both just so busy and our schedules hardly ever align at all. Only now I have some free time as all we’re doing is waiting for the elves.”

“I thought you weren’t overly fond of one another? And I didn’t hear anything of that changing.”

“Understatement of a century,” Scarlett snorts. “But that was fifteen years ago at the Academy, and we’re all adults now. I mean… I still don’t actually like Ethel, but I tolerate her. Honestly, of our friend group from Academy only four people other than I turned out well, but the rest of them?”

“They called us bastard sisters, do you remember? Nobodies from nowhere, upstarts, all the names, all the ridicule. And look at them now, writhing at our feet, begging for favors—‘for old times’ sake, Penny, you were such a great friend’, and conveniently forget all the torn dresses and venomous words. Oh how I love how their faces contort and all the excuses they come up with when I recount all of their little sins—‘for old times’ sake, my friend,’” Penelope chuckles, delightfully cruel, and Scarlett can’t help but agree.

“If only they knew where those nobodies from nowhere actually came from. Do you think that bitch, Iola, would turn any paler than when Tobias proposed to me?” Scarlett asks wistfully. “If she knew who my mother actually is. And yours. They would probably be more scared of yours, really.”

“Heart attack on the spot, no doubt!” Penelope laughs. “But alas, they can’t all be like elves, and know.”

“Elves don’t know, elves remember. Ethel knows.”

“Of course Ethel knows, you’re almost-related!”

“Yes, and therefore I’m coming with, Penny. She’s more likely to listen to us both than just you. For old times’ sake.”

“And also…” Penelope looks at Scarlett knowingly.

“Fine, fine, you nagging goose!” Scarlett snaps. “Ethel has a boy our children’s age, and throwing the mini-archmage in the making straight into Adetta’s social group will do him as much good as it will Adetta and Alastair’s standing with the mages!”

Penelope laughs as they enter the Magetower.

♦►☼◄♦

Shelor finds them eventually, down in the gardens, walking languidly among the verdant, trimmed greenery. He walks slowly and stops every once in a while when the lower amount of red blood cells fail to circulate oxygen quick enough through his body and he loses his breath, but he stays on his feet, and Adetta contemplates the wisdom of leaving him to walk all on his own without a person to catch him. He probably insisted, she figured—Shelor may have been half-dead for the past week, and not particularly keen on doing anything than eating and sleeping through his severe blood loss, but he made it rather clear that he was a stubborn bastard to boot.

He takes a look at Alastair, blood on his chin and icepack on his nose, and snorts, and the princeling makes an offended noise, but the elf doesn’t seem to quite care. Instead, he turns to Adetta.

“Adelia, would you accompany me for a bit?” he asks, even if it’s obvious he’s straining to stand. Adetta blinks for a second, because he’s calling her by her actual name and that’s been making her confused for the past week, but after a moment she just sighs and stands up.

“Let’s find somewhere to sit, okay?” she asks, and he nods, a tad strained. As a trained elf ranger, he’s significantly stronger than a regular human, but anemia is a bitch. “Elijah, Fenrir, don’t murder the prince without me to watch.”

She’s rewarded with an indignant ‘hey!’ which she promptly ignores, following the elf at the pace she can easily keep up even with the length disparity between their strides. Shelor was getting better, sure, but it was definitely slower-going than what Adetta, still used to twenty-first-century medicine, would have liked to see.

They eventually find a nice patch of grass under a tree, and sit down without much preamble.

“The elves will try stirring something,” Shelor tells her, and Adetta can’t help but appreciate his bluntness. Or the fact that he knows to treat her less like a child and more like an adult, something only Penelope did aside from him. Crawforde… Tried, but he still looked at Adetta and saw his eight-year-old child, so she supposed it was fine.

“Elaborate?” she prompts.

He does just that. “I was attacked by elves, on Sheothia’s grounds. I don’t even remember details of why we’re here in the first place, some scouting—we were mere miles from the border. And suddenly I have an arrow in my shoulder and in my gut. I should’ve figured it, really, but I suppose my mother is right to call me an arrogant moron. It would have gotten me killed, if not for you.”

“And you didn’t think to share it with us?”

“Not really, no. I was going to recuperate, return, have my mother deal with the dissenters and send you a sizable reward,” he sighs, scratching the back of his neck. “I did not expect the envoy to be sent—and so soon after I’ve been declared missing in action. It’s as if they were fully expecting to have me dead, to pin it on Sheothia and have a pretext to go to war.”

“Even if the arrows were obviously elven?”

“Not to diss my species, but elves are so convinced of their superiority, we’re not that good at plotting. It’s all pride and honor,” Shelor snorts. “Who could possibly accuse another elf of attempting to murder a prince? The gall!”

“And yet,” Adetta mutters wistfully.

“And yet, indeed,” Shelor sighs, swinging back to lie on the grass.

“Do you know who is it? You said it was a family squabble.”

That, and he wasn’t the only sibling. Adetta knew that.

“It’s not any of my siblings,” Shelor says with a chuckle, quirking an eyebrow at her. Adetta flushes—can he really blame her for the first most obvious conclusion?! “It was my cousin, if anyone.”

Ah. So she wasn’t that far off the mark after all.

“Why?”

“Because his mother is my mother’s elder sister, and they both never particularly hid the fact that they think they deserve to rule Ifa Nalore, instead of my mother, who won the crown fair and square by proving herself more capable,” he says, spatting the word like a particularly vile curse.

“But why provoke a war?” Adetta asks. “Why provoke a war that would end with extremely severe loses from both sides? Just to destabilize the current ruler? Do they not care about their people?!”

The game didn’t mention a shift of power in Ifa Nalore during the war. Then again—the game cared about the elite school for mostly-aristocracy in Sheothia, and not at all Ifa Nalore.

Shelor looks at her sadly, and shakes his head.

“Greed for power and wealth is a common disease not exclusive to humans and dragons,” he says sadly. “Balinor thinks that being a prince is his birthright, and Eliyen thinks the crown is hers. They will take no for an answer, I’m afraid, and Ifa Nalore may burn, for all they care, as long as they get the throne. Or so I think, now. Before, it was merely harmless snide remarks.”

“Before they haven’t almost-successfully attempted to murder you,” Adetta mutters, furiously ripping at the perfectly-trimmed grass. All that war, fighting, death, famine, plague—all that death, her sister’s death, just to get a fancy tiara and some legislative power? Because they thought they deserved it?

She snarls, throwing a fistful of grass. It doesn’t fly far, before her wind magic surges with her anger and carries the trimmed blades father away.

“Some people just don’t care, as long as they get their way,” Shelor tells her sadly. “Some people just don’t care. Unlike you.”

Adetta blinks. “Me?”

“You may fool others, but you don’t fool me,” Shelor smirks. “Your whole family, in fact, are good people. Towns under Crawforde’s jurisdiction prosper fine and he never even thinks before investing money in them, and how mad he got at mistreatment of a child, too. Your mother is widely known for being the one behind funding a whole lot of orphanages, hospitals, and basic schools. And you—that seamstress you employ, the one you said you dragged from another province—you throw at her, for the dresses you want, that are cheaper and easier to make, the same ludicrous amount a person would pay for the elaborate contraptions the ‘upper crusts’ call fashion.”

The last word is uttered with such absolute, finite disgust, and Adetta is inclined to agree. Not to mention she could hear the quotation.

Shelor’s opinion of most Sheothian nobles is about as high as hers.

“Your point?” she asks.

“My aunt is a terrible bitch, and you’re a good person,” Shelor says with a shrug, which looks weird, as he’s lying on his back, on the grass. “And that not everybody can be a good person, their standing notwithstanding. You and her are of the same rank, if we compare our country structures.”

“Ah,” she says noncommittally. “Anything we should be wary of, otherwise?”

“Balinor is a crafty bastard who doesn’t know when to give up,” Shelor sighs. “He will try again. He will have a backup plan. He targeted Ifa Nalore’s royal family. He will not be above targeting Sheothia’s—especially the prince and the princess. He cares not for the legends and superstitions, he will not respect Scarlett’s blood.”

Adetta freezes.

Chantal’s accident. Even with Shelor’s death, it happened around this time. Could it be?

“Another future snippet?” Shelor asks, shaking Adetta out of her stupor, and she hums.

“Maybe.”

“No matter. And there’s also the idea of subjugating the lesser, human race,” he says, rolling his eyes at the very notion. Adetta snorts.

“Fantasy racism. How lovely,” she gags. “But what about your cousin and his mother? Are you going to expose them?”

“Of course,” Shelor sniffs. “Well, maybe it’s for the better the envoys are coming here. With so many people around, Balinor will be less likely to pull some crazy stunt, like trying to kill me again. No doubt one of my elder brothers will be there.”

“Oooh, you’re the baby of the family then?”

Shelor glares at her in a pointed manner that tells her everything about his littlest sibling complex.

(And god, she really became proficient in sibling-speak, hasn’t she?)

“Aww, poor widdle babie. Can’t relate, though, as the eldest sibling and all that.”

He throws grass at her.

“Real mature,” she sticks her tongue out at him.

Shelor scoffs. “Joke’s on you—I’m not actually an adult yet.”

“Wait, really?” she asks, wide-eyed.

“Yes. I’m eighty-nine. I won’t be an adult for eleven more years.”

Wait. Adetta is eight. People are considered adults in Sheothia at age of seventeen. Nine years from now. That means—

“Oh my god,” she whispers in a sort of horrified awe. “I will actually become adult before you.”

Shelor looks at her, eyes widening with the same sort of realization. “No.”

“Shelor, that-“

“No!”

“You’re a baby! I’m technically older than you!”

“No! Shut up! You’re eight! I shouldn’t have said anything!”

He hides his face in his hands, and Adetta just laughs.

♦►☼◄♦

“Okay, how do we do this? I’m assuming the elves don’t actually know you’re alive. Or found.”

“No. I was attacked by Balinor’s main lackeys—there’s a very high chance he is bringing them right to the Capital with him. With my brother there, taking care of them all won’t be hard.”

“So you’re going to burst in dramatically in the middle of the audience?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. Main entrance or sneak in?”

“Main entrance might be a bit too much—the throne room is a bit big and pushing the big door open and then going all the way there? I’d be panting, and that’d not help me.”

“So we’ll sneak in from the side.”

“Yes… Wait, we?”

“Yeah. I don’t need to be there, and I don’t want to be there, but Eli, Fenrir, and I were the ones who found you, so. We’ll just sneak in after you’ve distracted the emissaries.”

“That… That holds merit. Yes, we’ll do that.”

♦►☼◄♦

When they return to the gazebo, it’s to a sight of Chantal excitedly talking with Rosaria and Fenrir while Elijah is reading a book he must have weaseled out of someone. The curious thing, however, s that Chantal and Rosaria aren’t sitting on chairs, but rather, on the back of a viciously cussing Alastair.

“He was being a meanie to Fen,” Rosaria explains. “So I told Eli to flip him like you showed us!”

Elijah all but pounces at Adetta the second she enters his range, hanging off of her arm and fidgeting, and she just pats his head in return. It was logical his anxiety would skyrocket in unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people, and she’s proud he managed to actually hold without running off to find her.

“Good job flipping the princeling,” Adetta compliments him, and he nods happily.

“It was either that, or Fenrir going at him with claws, and you said to wait for you for murder,” Elijah hums, and she chuckles. Alastair, who must have heard, looks at her wide-eyed.

Adetta grins.

♦►☼◄♦

“I cannot believe I’m actually agreeing to this—”

“You’re being paid for this,” Penelope reminds bemusedly.

“But—Penelope! I, the future Archmage, a live-in tutor of my former archnemesis’ best friend’s kid? Why did I agree to this? How did I agree to this? Gods have forsaken me. My hatred is just for show, now. Everybody will think that I’m—I’m friends with you, or something!”

“Oh, admit it, you actually love us,” Scarlett croons.

“Fuck you Scarlett! Were it not for the laws of this land, I would have blown your head straight off!”

“Now, now, children, cease your squabbling. Admit it Ethel, you’re interested in the children,” Penelope interjects before a catfight can break out.

“I—As much as I loathe to admit it, they have your insane aptitude for magic. Runs in the family, after all. Except the boy… His aptitude for healing magic is, indeed, very interesting…”

“You know exactly where Adetta’s and Rosaria’s magic comes from, you remember my mother. And Scarlett’s mother—you met her personally, after all.”

“Like I could forget the crazy lady uncle Asher ran off with,” Ethel grumbles. Her favorite uncle! The gall, no matter that woman’s true nature!

“Why do you hate me so? We’re family!” Scarlett bemoans.

“He was adopted. And you’re a bitch.”

“I’m a queen!”

“Never cared before, don’t see why I should now.”

“But you’ll tutor them?” Penelope presses.

“I agreed already, so give me my money and get out!” Ethel snaps. “I’ll be ready to go with you with Noah when you finally leave. Gods know this boy could use some actual friends.”

“Speaking from experience?” Scarlett smirks.

She gets a book thrown at her head for it.

“Get out of my office, you crazy half-bloods!”

♦►☼◄♦

Shelor was an asshole.

But that was okay. Adetta was an asshole too.

Frankly, only Crawforde raised complaints about their plans, and even that was purely because it seemed rude to him, and not because it was a bad idea or anything else. And now they—Shelor and the children, with only Fenrir on the lookout to call them in as needed—were hidden away in one of the side chambers, the ones with entrances hidden behind pillars lining the sides of the throne room, and no actual doors. There were quite a few nobles in the Throne Room, and Adetta wasn’t happy to be going out to be seen by them before her debut ball, but needs must, she supposed.

She hears the elves arrive, maybe even feels. There’s a shift in the air, and the tell-tale sound of opening door, and the hush of the furiously whispering nobles, and steps, but that’s not it.

There’s a sort of an aura that floods the throne room, one that’s eerily reminiscent of her mother’s at times but also completely different; of something old and graceful, and powerful. It’s exotic and it’s magical, but it lacks the danger-lethal-flee-NOW touch her mother sometimes exudes with a soft, cheery smile when something isn’t quite to her liking.

And then there were demands and raised voices that, while muffled, Adetta could still hear. She didn’t catch every word, not even most, but the tone was very rude and accusatory.

“That’s Balinor,” Shelor says, wincing. “I can’t believe he just up and—He’s yelling at the ruler of another country! What the fuck!”

“I know right,” Adetta snorts, mussing her bangs in disbelief. “He’s really into provoking this war, isn’t he?”

“War?!” Elijah hisses in panic. Adetta pats his head.

“It’ll be fine. In a moment, we’re going out and yelling at him, and there will be no war.”

“Ah,” the boy says, tension slowly leaving his shoulders. “If you say so.”

If Adetta says so, it must be so. Honestly, his faith in her was amazing, and Adetta wished for some herself. Right now, she was fine, but she held no illusions that the moment she was out there, in public, she would be battling a sudden wave of stress and stage fright. It would be the first time she would be in any capacity in front of a crowd in this new life, but before, it was always like that.

She was always fine prior to an event, and then—stress.

“It’s time!” Fenrir bursts into the chamber, whisper-yelling. How on earth does he manage that, Adetta isn’t sure, but he does, and Shelor gets up, and moves to exit. He momentarily stops by Adetta as he passes her, and pats her head twice in reassurance. She takes a deep breath and follows, with Elijah and Fenrir in tow.

She feels her heartbeat go erratic the second she glimpses the gaggle of nobles gathered in the throne room, here with nothing else to do, having come to see the elves like some exotic animal in the circus. Some were even pointing at them.

The elves, of course, were all unfairly pretty. Tall, slim, almost lithe and whimsical, with all the stereotypical traits; facial features just a bit too pretty, eyes just a bit too bright, hair just a bit too lustrous to pass for a human. And, of course, the pointy ears—quite longer than that of human. Beautiful bastards, all of them.

Two men were at the forefront of the envoy; one was tall, with wavy, brown hair that barely reached past his chin—short, compared to others—and dressed in leather armor. The other was taller, with significantly paler skin and almost-black hair reaching his hips in a loose braid, and clad in green robes of a very… Stereotypically elvish cut, or so Adetta’s Tolkien-addled brain supplied.

“—and so now, third prince is gone, and as the obvious aggressors—” the short-haired one was speaking, but Adetta didn’t quite care, and neither did Shelor. He snorted, striding in like he wasn’t about to keel over from anemia. Maybe recovering this slow was elvish thing?

“How about I speak for myself, cousin?” Shelor asked, stunning the elves into silence. The tall one in a robe looked like he was about to burst crying upon seeing the blonde elf, while Balinor’ eyes slowly filled with indignance. He was not happy to see Shelor alive.

Two of the elves with them, Adetta noticed, paled significantly. Culprits; located.

“Brother!” the long-haired one sighs in obvious relief, and Shelor chuckles.

“I’m happy to see you too, Elisar,” he says, and the other elf wastes no time rushing over to embrace him, etiquette be damned.

Adetta looks between them, to focus on something that isn’t the nobles slowly noticing them. They look like night and day, truly—Shelor’s skin is dark, his hair is an ashen, pale blonde, and his eyes are a striking shade of purple. Elisar, on the other hand has very pale, almost glowing complexion, very dark brown hair, and warm, honey-colored eyes. On the first glance, the two look as unrelated as can be, but upon closer inspection, Adetta notices, their facial structure is incredibly similar to one another, almost the same.

“What happened?” Elisar asks, letting go, and Shelor, to Adetta’s horror, steps aside and points at her. Elisar takes one look at her, right into her pink eyes, pales even more, and looks back at Shelor in shock. To the side, Balinor scoffs, but the other elves shuffle nervously when Adetta inevitably turns her gaze at them.

The nobles, predictably, whisper, and she sways, feeling light-headed and dizzy, but Elijah’s hand is grounding, and to the outside she seems like a stoic doll, so everything is fine.

(She hates crowds, especially when most of them pay attention to her specifically.)

“What proof do we have that they have not put Prince under a mind-control?!” Balinor snaps suddenly, and Adetta realizes she must have dozed through half or more of an explanation. Not good, but probably nothing she hasn’t heard or done.

She looks around—Balinor is trying very hard not to panic, while the two elves she singled out before are straight-up having meltdowns where they stand. They must be really regretting coming out in public right this very moment. Shelor, at least, is kind enough to not to call them out in front of the nobles.

Adetta sighs, trotting over to the Elisar worriedly hovering to the side, as the two argued. She tugs at his sleeve and, upon getting his attention, motions him to bow so that she can whisper to him.

“Don’t act alarmed, but Shelor was attacked on Sheothia’s grounds,” she says, and Elisar’s eyes narrow. “But he was attacked by elves. He confirmed himself that Balinor staged it, and those two lackeys over there, panicking—they’re the ones who did it. Keep an eye on them.”

She looks at him steadily, face set, and he looks right back, for once holding her gaze, searching.

“What’s your game?” he whispers eventually, and Adetta cocks her head in confusion.

“The war, I suppose,” she answers eventually. “It would be incredibly bothersome if it happened,” she says, attempting to not to feel to bothered by Elisar’s cryptic question, superstitious and careful. Connected to her supposed heritage, she concludes.

Elisar nods, seemingly satisfied with her answer. “It would then appear that Balinor’s plan of public audience is backfiring rather spectacularly.”

“Oh, haven’t you noticed?” Adetta giggles. “He’s on a verge of panic attack. And I’ve grown a bit attached to Shelor so, honestly, I don’t feel the slightest bit bad for him.”

Elisar hums noncommittally. “I suppose my little brother has always been lucky.”

Not in the original game he wasn’t, Adetta thinks but doesn’t say. But I’m glad he is here.

♦►☼◄♦

Eventually, Tobias notices Balinor’s deteriorating state and the nobles increasing whispers, and unceremoniously kicks them out, inviting the guests to his personal study to resolve the issue once and for all.

Adetta all but collapses the moment they leave the throne room, very glad that they didn’t actually have to speak and kind-of mad she even went out there to begin with. Her legs feel like jelly, and her stomach is doing some wildly unpleasant flips.

“Elijah, can you carry me?” she asks, not even trying to stop her hands from shaking. “I think I may be about to faint. I hate crowd attention so much.”

“Ah… Alright,” Elijah says and, with Fenrir’s help, Adetta climbs onto his back. It takes some tension off of her, and is kind of a reverse of Elijah’s first night in the mansion, when the storm happened. It’s nice to know she can rely on him back.

“I could have carried you,” Fenrir huffs unhappily, but Adetta merely reaches over to pat his head.

“I’ll let you carry me once you’re bigger, okay?” she tells him, and he brightens.

“Promise?”

“Mhm. Walking is bothersome.”

“You walk everywhere anyways,” Elijah says.

“I do a lot of bothersome things. Like breathing. Talking. Wearing dresses. Life is so bothersome…”

“Well, if you want, you could just stay in bed and we’d bring you food and all!” Fenrir proposes.

“But then I’d get fat, and I’d be bored all the time,” Adetta complains. “You need to do bothersome things to get on with your life. It’s how life works. That’s why I hate it. But I gotta do it.”

“That sounds… Well, bothersome,” Elijah says lamely, and Adetta snorts into his shoulder.

“I know. It sucks. But it’s fine, too. You can do whatever you want, as long as you own up to it. But the consequences of doing some things aren’t worth it. So just don’t bother with some things.”

“Like what?” Shelor asks from wherever he was lurking, walking next to them.

“Like trying to murder your cousin and provoke a war because you want a fancy fucking chair you won’t even be able to use properly,” she scoffs. “God, some people are idiots.”

Shelor laughs. “But we caught him.”

“Yeah,” Adetta scrunches her face. “Just a hunch, but I think your bitch-cousin will cause trouble again. He’s the type.”

Shelor hums in agreement.

♦►☼◄♦

Exposing Balinor and his lackeys is laughably easy, in the end, and very cliché, in a shojo-isekai-game way that Adetta is now stuck in, where the love interest exposes his ‘evil fiancee’. Except now it’s Shelor exposing Balinor for trying to murder him, and Balinor and his lackeys getting tied up.

It’s quick, it’s anticlimactic, and Balinor is a whiny little bitch. Adetta doesn’t care.

“Um, are you going to be getting off soon?” Elijah asks.

“No. I’m acting spoiled today. You were fine with the crowds, I almost puked. And fainted.”

“I can carry you!” Fenrir steps in eagerly. Elijah looks at him.

“Actually, I don’t mind carrying you longer,” the boy amends quickly, causing Fenrir to glare. Adetta snorts into his shoulder.

For now, things were good.