The Crazy Daughter of the Duke's Family - Book One: Pandora

Chapter 28: Of History Unforgotten

''Trouble, trouble, toil and trouble', wasn't it?' She messaged her temples as she thought about the situation.

It would be her debut, which would change things in terms of future events, but she could still safely say that everything would be fine. Now that they had decided to make it her debut after all, it meant that they wanted to marry her after all, or at least leave that door open.

But there was no one but the Imperial Prince of Lodden who could take her, and she had just established some friendly relations with their Imperial family. So if he wanted to learn about Mana Utilization from the Church first, she might be able to persuade him to say he didn't want this marriage to happen.

"Not that I think he wants me to marry him that badly, but it's a good deal that will be hard to refuse," she muttered to herself, picking up her cup of tea again as she thought, "In the end, they have to establish stable relations with Arlen. But what about Neuhaus?"

They could indeed still marry off their eldest daughter, who was about the same age as Rowena herself. It seemed like nothing to worry about, if only she could talk to Lucan first. With one hand on her drawer, she gathered her writing materials with the other, ready to fix a letter to the Lodden Empire.

'Is there enough time?' Their messenger birds wouldn't take nine days, so they had ample time, considering the Victory Banquet would be ten days later.

It might be a futile endeavor, but she had to try to use the little connection she had established to save herself from the hardship. With a bit of haste, she scribbled her words in her most legible style, asking him to reject any proposals that might reach the Lodden Imperial Family regarding her.

"Great," she said, looking at her work in the sunlight pouring in through the windows, "I wrote 'please' pretty nicely, didn't I?" She was quite pleased indeed.

'They won't be pleased.'

'Shut up, they said I didn't have to get married if I didn't want to. I basically had the Emperor's backing.' Needless to say, if the Emperor of Arlen decided to put pressure on them after they broke their age-old agreement with the Church on her recommendation, they would probably do whatever they had to do.

But until that happened, she remained calm. As for her dress, she wasn't worried, since an occasion like the Victory Banquet was already extremely grand, and the dress she had ordered, knowing that it would be coming soon, had been ordered safely and securely. It was one of the dresses that hadn't been finished when she left, as it was of a more elaborate and fancy nature.

To her, it was just a dress. She hadn't worn dresses as Celia, but it wasn't as if she didn't know what it felt like.

'I did get used to it fast, though,' she thought as she leaned back and took a sip of her now lukewarm tea, 'but it's not as if I had never worn a dress before. Like when I was invited to Sarah Dent's wedding.'

Sometimes she wondered why she had invited her. She had changed a lot of people's lives by saving them, but most of those saved people saw the VAULT Executors through the lens of a spectator in a theater.

To them, they all looked the same, it was all unreal, and they preferred not to be reminded of anything that had happened during their rescue. With their monsters beside them, the Contractors felt as alien as the Visitors who had taken the lives of their loved ones or threatened their own.

And even that one occasion felt surreal to Rowena. If she hadn't been keeping a video of it on her phone, she would have thought it was a dream instead of an old memory. And she hadn't done much during the party itself.

Sometimes, when she tried to recall specific memories from her original life as Celia, it all felt so distant and fuzzy, like a dream she was beginning to forget.