[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•chapter three•

As now is customary, this chapter has been beta'd for you by Magikarp Karp.

Today's warnings: blood. Just. A lot of blood. And arrow wounds.

***

More typical Otome Isekai Heroine: I dunno... Let's just let things happen to me.

Adetta: *grabs Elijah and Fenrir* YA FOLLOW ME WE'RE GONNA GET IN TROUBLE AND IT'S GONNA BE FUN.

•chapter three•

Girl goes on a picnic. Girl wanders into a forest. Girl saves a life.

•••

The two weeks between their excursion into the town and Adetta's planned birthday picnic pass in a flurry of caring for Fenrir, answering best wishes and opening gifts from lesser noble houses—which was pretty much everyone else—desperately trying to butter up to Bellvilles, suffering through the last storms of the season and just generally getting ready.

There were even some shy inquiries about possibility of marriage contract. Crawforde and Penelope both would look at her questioningly, after which she's proceed to gleefully burn each and every one of them over a candle after a prolonged eye contact, instead of bothering to answer verbally.

Just to make sure everyone understood her properly, yes?

She would be the perfect, elegant, graceful lady capable of outwitting everyone and their dog in this political game as it was expected of her, but if she absolutely had to marry, she'd rather have this choice be left exclusively to her.

Not like it wasn't up to her—she might've been her father's daughter, but she was also her mother's mini-me, and her mother did absolutely whatever she pleased. The only opinions that mattered were those of her family's anyway, and not all the other nobles. Also, her parents were convinced that she wouldn't hesitate to stab a man right on the altar, if she were to be forced to marry. They weren't wrong, and as amusing for them wouldn't that be, killing off noble sons left and right wouldn't be good for the Archduchy in the long term.

Or she'd just publicly flip them off and proceed to ruin them.

(Just because she wasn't being a psychopathic egomaniac didn't mean she rid herself of her mean streak; that thing was too useful in showing people what happened if they pressed too much.)

Adetta was eight. Mary was twenty-seven.

She really wasn't looking for anybody's acknowledgment, and was already fully formed as a person with individual wants and aspirations who knew how to deal with her emotions and make decisions based on pragmatic view of what's best for her. And she wasn't one to let others step all over her either—no; that was a shtick that Mary grew out of come her twenty-second birthday.