The Saintess and the Villainess

Chapter 24

The next morning, Anne was extremely reluctant to get up when Eva went to wake her.

Eva shook her on the arm gently, and Anne pushed her away, groaning. "Just five more minutes," said Anne, not opening her eyes. "Or maybe, like, twenty more minutes..."

"You have a prayer meeting to conduct in twenty minutes," said Eva, gently.

"Can't I skip it?" asked Anne.

"No," said Eva. "You can't."

Anne had clearly dozed off again. Eva sighed, hands on her hips, and said in a slightly raised voice. "And I thought you said seeing that woman would give you energy? Clearly it's made you more tired than ever. As I thought, there's no way I can let you go see her again until—"

Anne shot up in bed. "I'm up, I'm up!" she said.

Eva sighed, and said fondly, "Alright, good job. Now come, I'll help you get dressed."

"I really can't keep going like this, Eva," said Anne, sitting on her bed as Eva knelt in front of her, doing up the buttons on Anne's shirt. "I can't work this hard. I feel like I'm dying all the time."

"You can do it," said Eva, reassuringly. "You're much stronger than you think."

"No, I'm serious, I need a break," insisted Anne. "At least just a few days off, please."

Eva looked up at Anne's exhausted face. She raised one hand to gently stroke Anne's cheek. "Alright. I'll have a talk with the Bishop. But it will have to be after the miracle. If you put on a really good show, that will generate a lot of good will for the church, and that should put the Bishop in a generous mood."

"About the miracle..." said Anne, nervously fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. "Do we really have to do it?"

"Of course," said Eva, helping Anne into her trousers.

"But... you know my miracles are unpredictable," said Anne. "I don't feel like I can really... control them as much as I should be able to. Even after all this time."

Anne really hoped she wasn't revealing too much by saying this. After all, Anne didn't really know how well the real Saintess had been able to control her miracles. All she knew was that she, herself, had no fucking clue why it had worked the one time she had gotten it to work. And she hadn't been able to replicate it since.

"Wouldn't it be really bad if we put on this big event and then when I got up there... nothing happened?" continued Anne.

"You don't need to worry about that," said Eva, putting a hand on Anne's shoulder. "After all, the Goddess loves you. More than she loves anyone else. And she'll always be there for you when you really need her. You just have to call on her with faith in your heart."

Anne was not feeling a whole lot of faith at the moment.

"Now let's get you into these boots," said Eva. "Here, eat this muffin while I lace them up for you. You need to keep up your strength after all!"

Later that afternoon, while Anne was trying not to doze off in the middle of some ritual or another, Corvina was having a few friends over for tea.

They called themselves friends, although in the high stakes social world of the capital, friendships between noblewomen were really more like strategic alliances—connections formed in order for each person to further their political goals and gain more power for themselves and their families. Even if two women were genuinely enjoying each others' company, they would also be constantly making those calculations in the back of their mind. What can I get from this person? And what it is that they want from me? That was just the way it was.