The Villainess Wants Her Prince to Live!

"You," said Regina's father, pushing his glasses firmly up the bridge of his nose, "look as if someone dropped a large sack of gold coins on you from a great height."

Regina wished someone had dropped a large sack of gold coins on her from a great height.

If she had survived the weight, at least then she might have had enough coin to bribe the guards at the border to let her flee the country.

She was also not sure why she had seen her parents more in the past two days than in the entire six months prior, but she hoped that it was a situation that would end very soon.

Which it might, she thought grimly, if she actually was-

"Where," said Regina, stabbing her breakfast with the force she could not apply to everyone who had placed her in this nightmare, "would I even find a giant sack of falling coins?"

"Probably," said her father, raising his eyebrow, "in the same place you found those six brooches."

Regina winced, the movement hurting her already sore muscles, strained from stress from the night previous.

Regina did not want to be wearing six brooches.

Wearing six brooches was only part of Regina's efforts to convince herself that her dreams meant nothing at all.

She barely avoided glaring at her father as she thought, 'Well if you were the one dreaming about a frolicking blond man hopping from crate to crate in the harbor, I suspect you would be quite happy to suspect that you had been reading too many of Henrietta's romance novels and that your mind was subconsciously telling you that you needed to wear more jewelry.'

After all, it was not like Regina's dark family of reclusive crows featured many blond men outside of books. Regina was very afraid that the recent engagement had convinced her that she needed to expand her knowledge of the world before she was trapped in an even worse cage than the Sheridans.

Wearing more bright jewelry was the least harmful way she could think to reduce her restlessness. It was perfectly obvious that dreaming about a blond man frolicking in front of a ship called "Prince's Seaduction" was a not at all subtle signal from the depths of her consciousness.

Settled in her mind, Regina started to slice her sausage slightly less forcibly, only to hear her father suddenly let out a loud harumph.

"What are those Poissons thinking?" her father said, glaring at the newspaper that had suddenly appeared in front of him. "Of course if you overfill a ship with fish and fish-associated products, it will take longer than it should to reach port. They are lucky it should be able to limp back to dock later this afternoon. What fool would call a ship 'Prince's Seaduction' anyways?"

Regina's knife nearly went through her finger on its way to the floor from her suddenly nerveless hands.

~♦♥♦~

Regina stared the Sheridan family physician straight in the eyes.

"I need a sleeping draught," she said.

Since the Sheridan family physician was also the Sheridan family poisoner, Regina would normally avoid them at all costs, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

After all, Regina was fairly sure her family needed to keep her alive at least long enough to engage her to the crown prince of her nightmares. Secretly, she also thought that even if the physician did poison her, at least she would stop seeing frolicking blond men every time she closed her eyes.

Surely she would stop dreaming when she was dead?

Having to see a shiny blond man in her dreams in various locations around the Capital of Carcosa was almost as annoying as spending a week of waking up every morning and having people discuss what she had dreamed over breakfast… as events that would occur at some point in the future.

It was not so much that Regina was in denial. Something this ridiculous was too stupid to even credit as reality. It was that she was now convinced her entire family was playing an elaborate joke on her and that the family power was actually the ability to manipulate dreams.

Of course, this meant that her entire family was thus trying to drive her mad, but that also felt more realistic than the alternative.

Regina had enough experience of strong sleeping draughts after the death of her sister to be able to determine if one was a real draught or not. The ones that the Sheridan doctor provided erased all memories of the night and potentially several years of life. At the very least, Regina would be able to tell if she was given something weaker or mixed with poison.

"Are you sure you wish for something this strong?" said the physician.

Regina pulled out the bag that contained most of her life savings she had once considered as a potential escape fund.

"If I am," she said, "to best support the Sheridan family's honor in my engagement, I will need a good night's sleep, will I not?"

Once she reached the hallway with her sleeping draught and a "complimentary" stock of fertility enhancing medications, tinctures for hair gloss, and a roll of "mints for increasing the sweetness of breath", Regina finally was able to breathe in relief.

"Tonight," said Regina, "not even a single frolicking blond is going to penetrate the darkness of my misery."

~♦♥♦~

Regina looked in the mirror the next morning, the anger in her eyes almost as dark as the circles under them.

"I have," she said through gritted teeth, "seriously underestimated the abilities of frolicking blonds."

It was not just anger in Regina's stare. There was also a grim resignation that she had been trying very hard to avoid. As it was, she realized this was her last chance to refute the truth she had been fighting.

With the march of a woman making her last stand against the cruel stupidity of the universe, Regina marched down to breakfast, for once grateful that both her parents were there. The number of times she had seen them in the last week was more than in the three years prior.

(Some people might suspect it was parental fondness at work. Regina assumed her parents just wanted to make sure Regina would not run away from the engagement now that they had committed to paying an eye-watering dowry).

Regina did not even try to pretend she was going to do anything other than face her truth that morning. With visions of a frolicking blond man in the middle of a race track where Prince's Charm was handily beating the other horses, there was only one thing left to confirm.

"Mother," she said grimly, as she tried to arrange her eggs into something that looked vaguely like a nest of blond hair, "what horse do you plan to bet on this afternoon at the races?"

Regina had always wondered how her mother's terrible gambling did not result in the bankruptcy of her family, but it was undeniable that her mother had an uncanny sense of good horseflesh.

Her mother smiled over the antique knife she was gently polishing. "Why Prince's Charm of course, darling. Why do you ask?"

'Because an incredibly flashy blonde man was busily frolicking in the small circle of potted plants in the center of the track and I heard the announcement of the race winner' was not going to be a winning answer, Regina could tell.

"I like horsies," Regina blurted out instead in blind panic.

'Well,' thought Regina, as her parents exchanged a dark glance at her words, 'I might not have time to go fully mad if my parents murder me for being too stupid to sell off to Carcosa's future king.'

Yet even as Regina quietly left the table, her strangely looking human eggs remaining behind her, she slowly resigned herself to the truth she had been fighting.

Even working her way through the day that she could not remember could not keep the resentment from slowly building until it finally exploded when she collapsed onto her bed that evening.

"All I want," she snapped to no one in particular, "is to marry out of my murderous family and live a safe, normal life with the human equivalent of a potato. But instead – instead –!"

She thrust her finger up at the ceiling as though she were pointing the finger at fate itself.

"Instead, I finally developed my family's magic power, a power that will make my family either marry or murder me if they realize I possess it, and it has the stupidest limitation possible!"

After all, the more Regina thought of it, the more it made perfect sense that her family's mysterious magic, the same magic that had propelled them from being mere commoners to nobles on the verge of marrying into the royal family, was a form of precognition.

Being able to tell the future was a truly terrifying and astounding power… and if that was the Sheridans' secret gift, Regina could finally understand how her family had risen so far and chosen to keep their abilities secret.

However, Regina had realized an even more horrifying truth about her own version of this power as the nights had passed.

She could see the future, yes.

However, her power to look into the future apparently only manifested with… some shiny, pretty, and completely bizarre blond man who loved to prance and frolic throughout Carcosa.

There were no visions of the future without this man, and Regina had seen enough to realize it was unlikely that was going to change. So any glimpse of the future she received was somehow connected to this strange man she did not even know.

This was terrifying in more than one way.

Regina had a sinking feeling that if her family realized how limited her power happened to be…

"I have to hide my power," Regina whispered, suddenly paranoid of anyone that might realize what had happened to her. "No one, not even Henrietta, can know that I can tell the future in this utterly absurd way! If my family learns about my powers, they will not even marry me off to Cousin Gomer with the constantly itchy ears - they will arrange an 'accident' between me and the nearest balcony!"

Then, Regina's sinking stomach only sank further, possibly deeper than the depths the Poisson family fished, as she realized something else.

"Yet if my visions are correct and I get engaged to the Crown Prince… I will die after I get framed for being a villainess. The problem is that alerting anyone to this will result in my immediate death by 'accidental' falling or poisoning or falling repeatedly on my mother's knife! However, if both routes lead to death… how can I protect myself?!"

Muttering curses against her family, the universe, and the physician who thought that her hair needed to be any more glossy, Regina fell into a deeply unhappy sleep.

~♦♥♦~

The next morning, Regina asked her parents a bold question at breakfast.

"Mother and father," she said in the sweetest voice she could muster, "I wonder if you could both grant me a favor?"

Her parents exchanged surprised looks and then her mother said, "Of course, Regina. You know that we would do anything for you. You need only ask to receive."

Regina considered it a testament to her self-control that she did not throw her eggs at her parents' face. They were only slightly less yellow than the hair of the blond man who had spent all night frolicking through her mind and a field of flowers.

Instead of screaming or assaulting her parents with food, Regina sweetly asked, "Then could you arrange a party for me in the capital city before my engagement to the crown prince takes place?"

Her parents looked equally puzzled before her father asked, " You ? Want a party ? For yourself ? But you are so very… very…"

"Prone to blending into the wallpaper and not saying much of anything to anyone, yes, I know," Regina chirped, though she was actually proud of her excellent camouflage skills.

"Yet if I am to wed the crown prince and become the future Queen of Carcosa," Regina added, "I cannot rely only on my ability to perfectly match any given shade of beige! I must meet other nobles, polish up my social graces, and not seem like a – a –"

Regina supposed admitting she was an inbred shut-in might seem like an insult to her family, as accurate as the term was, so she just trailed off while soulfully staring at her parents.

'Come now,' she urged her mother and father in her head as they stared at her and then at each other. 'You both know that I have all the social graces of a hedgehog run over by a carriage because I was never allowed to meet anyone outside of this bloody manor. My request makes perfect sense so please, just agree!'

Nothing Regina said was incorrect, even if she was leaving out the critical fact that she wanted a debutante party in the hopes of meeting a new groom.

'After all ', she thought, 'I was obviously framed during my engagement to Crown Prince Aaron Alpin because someone hated the thought of me being the future queen. If I can just find and convince any other nobleman to marry me… even as I hide my powers from my family…'

Still immersed in her thoughts, Regina only jolted back to attention when she heard her mother stab her knife into the table and say, "Fine! If a debutante party is what you want, Regina, then a debutante party is what you will get!"

"No one," Regina's father said grimly, "can say we do not do our best by you."

Though Regina doubted that last part very much, she was delighted that her parents were willing to aid her in cuckolding the crown prince of Carcosa.

Feeling a small twinge of conscience, Regina justified herself with the knowledge that she was not even yet actually engaged and it would probably be awkward for her parents socially if their daughter was declared a traitor.

Really, everyone would be much happier when Regina found her gentle potato man and went off to fight geese and poor hygiene in the countryside.

Surely, nothing else could go wrong and the universe would cease to torment her.

~♦♥♦~

While the Sheridan manor was in the West of the Carcosa, it was not so far from the Capital city, but every movement of the carriage away from the manor made Regina feel an unfamiliar sense of distance.

She still could not believe that she was finally leaving the lands she had been so afraid would be her grave and all she ever saw before she died.

As it was, Regina was keenly aware that a grave might still be waiting for her if she failed to change what her visions had shown her.

The night before Regina attended her debutante party in Carcosa's Capital, she lay in her bed in her family's unfamiliar town house and hoped desperately that no strange visions would trouble her.

"Please," she said to whatever higher power might be listening to her, "just give me one night of rest. I have to find another fiancé at this party and I can hardly do that if I arrive looking like something scraped off a horse's backside. So please just let me sleep without dreams."

Unfortunately, Regina was starting to realize that her secondary power was for the universe to provide the opposite of what she desired.

Regina was once again wearing her nightgown, standing in an unknown garden and staring at an all too familiar blond man.

"You would think," she grumbled, "that I would at least be able to choose my own clothing, but no, I must see the future while dressed as stupidly as possible."

Her complaints were abruptly interrupted by a group of men nearly as blond as her shiny frolicker suddenly appearing and surrounding her goldfish man.

"So you thought," said one of them with a large sneer, "that you could get away with harassing the future bride of your elder brother?"

The goldfish man had a surprisingly blank look on his face as Regina watched in horror as another-Regina was pulled out from the group of men.

"He did not-" said not-Regina as she was shoved in front of them.

"There are two options here," said the sneering man. "Either you are a loose woman who willingly spent time alone with the second prince when you are about to be engaged to the crown prince or the fool prince harassed you and deserves to be punished."

The last thing Regina saw before she woke was the strange look of resignation on the face of her shiny dandelion man.

'Well,' thought Regina, as she rose to consciousness, 'those are not the only two options, you misshapen pieces of egg!'

However, before she could ruthlessly castigate her dream bullies, Regina found her eyes fluttering open as her cousin Henrietta poked her awake.

"Come on," Henrietta mercilessly said as several unknown maids began advancing terrifyingly towards her. "It is your debutante ball this evening and your mother has already prepared your dress. I hope you are not planning on any breakfast because that corset will not lace up with even a single egg."

Thus, all thoughts of pretty but imperiled blond men faded from Regina's head as the horrifying preparations for the party proceeded…

…which was how Regina found herself at her surprisingly crowded debutante party… while cursing her past self for her terrible planning.

'What was I thinking?!' Regina asked her past self, even as she pasted a frozen smile on her face and curtsied to every new noble who offered her their congratulations (or barely-disguised condolences) for the 'happy news' that was soon to come.

'Did I really believe that I would be able to waltz into this party and… and… and meet some man who I could convince to marry me? I am an inbred shut-in who barely saw sunlight in my last one-and-twenty years of life! Who would want to marry me and how would I even manage to convince them short of assault, kidnapping, and blackmail?!'

Even as Regina's parents dragged her from one set of nobles to another, Regina felt as though her heart was about to explode from anxiety, a state not helped by the tightness of her corset and her lack of adequate nutrition.

After spending her whole life cloistered within her family estate, surrounded only by relatives and retainers, moving to her family's town house in the Capital had been a complete shock… and her current debutante party was threatening to overwhelm her.

' If I have to make small-talk with yet another noble I do not know ,' Regina thought to herself, ' I may rend my awful garments in despair and take off into the night. How am I supposed to do anything when all of these strange people keep breathing at me?"

In the end, Regina kept herself together with the reminder that this party was her one and only opportunity to escape her engagement to the Crown Prince… someone who was thankfully (and suspiciously) absent.

Just the thought of that terrifying and treacherous Crown Prince gave Regina motivation to keep attempting her literal man-hunt.

'No,' she sternly told herself. 'I cannot lose my mind the way poor Cousin Jenkins did in that regrettable incident with the mannequin and the squirrels. Even if I hate being surrounded by so many people, I shall do whatever I must to stay alive, even if it means smiling inanely every time someone tries to assess my magic or my teeth. No matter what, I will persevere!'

Besides, after consultation with Henrietta and Henrietta's extensive romance novel collection, Regina had a good idea of how she would achieve her goal of finding a substitute husband.

'Even if I have never seduced a man before,' Regina confidently told herself, 'the romance novels make it seem so easy. I just need to find a likely target and hurl myself at him. Then, according to them, after stunning him so that he cannot run away, I will incite that man's passion by showing him some of my bosom…'

Regina took a discreet look at her unimposing cleavage and sighed before rallying.

'Well if that does not work, I will hope the stars align and the man burns for me anyway because those romance novels never give much of a reason for why men fall in love… but that must mean that most men who do not wish to murder you are easy to please!'

Thus fortified and forcing a smile back on her face, Regina prepared for the next eligible bachelor she might meet.

'Anyway, I am easy to please as well. In fact, I will take any man in want of a wife whose life he does not wish to destroy !'

That was when a man that Regina recognized all too well slid into view and Regina learned again to regret her words.

In person, Lord Grass Hair was even more striking than he had been in Regina's hazy first vision of him.

In her dreams of him, she had been rather too busy trying to make sense of her sudden betrayal, imprisonment, and then death to focus on his appearance, but as he introduced himself to her, Regina could not help staring .

"My lady," Lord Grass Hair said, even as Regina stared at his handsome face, warm smile, blossom boutonniere, and characteristic mop of wavy brown-and-green hair. "Forgive me for forgoing a more formal introduction, but I could not resist the opportunity to meet when you are, for once, not surrounded. It is my pleasure to greet you during your debut to society. I am Robin Buren, a branch count of the Buren Duchy. How do you do this evening?"

Regina might have even managed an answer of some kind if she did not find her gaze drifting from Lord Grass Hair, no, Lord Robin Buren , to the other noblemen scattered around him.

After all, it was hard not to notice Lord Leaf Brooch, Lord Red Hair, Lord Ocean Waves, and Lord Feet Fish all arrayed in the crowd as naturally as they had been at…

…at Regina's doomed engagement party.

Regina could only hope that her face wasn't as pale as her milk-white dress as she quietly set her glass on a nearby table, hand still shaking, and stammered out a clumsy excuse to leave.

"Pray forgive me," she stammered, even as Lord Robin Buren looked understandably puzzled. "I just realized I have an appointment for… another appointment which is obviously, erm, crucial for me to meet!"

Lord Robin Buren looked almost adorable in his confusion as he replied. "An appointment? But my lady, we are at a party… "

Regina was beyond caring, however.

No matter what, she had to run .

After all, she now knew that the people she had seen in her dreams were truly real .

The events she had seen happening had actually happened .

There was only one piece still missing… and Regina was determined not to find it.

"I have," said Regina, her eyes wide and panicked, "an appointment to… to make my hair glossy!"

Shaking like a leaf, Regina abandoned Lord Robin Buren and ran as though hungry, howling hounds were chasing her.

Even as she slipped out the back of the hall and towards the room meant for refreshing young ladies, Regina was trying to find a way to understand, to put it together…

She paused at the threshold to the door, her already stressed nerves sensing the looming presence behind her.

"Hello," said a strange man with watery blond hair and watery blue eyes, "you must be Lady Regina Sheridan."

Now this, Regina thought grimly, was a man who knew about inbreeding, if only by the shape of his chin.

"I am afraid," Regina said rather frostily, "that I do not have the pleasure of your acquaintance."

Something… unpleasant passed over the man's face before he put on a very smarmy grin. "I imagine for a country miss like yourself, being in the more sophisticated Capital must be very… overwhelming. I have been trying to meet with you for some time to let you know that you can always refresh yourself with the lovely flowers in the garden that no doubt is more comfortable than the ballroom."

'Firstly', Regina thought, barely keeping her eyebrow from quirking, 'this is the Sheridan manor that I live in so why would I need some watery blond to tell me about my own garden? Secondly, why would a watery blond who obviously thinks I am an idiot want to get me out into that garden?'

The man in front of her suddenly shifted and started muttering as if Regina was not even there. "Well if she is too lumpen to move that far, we can always get our cousin. No need to deal with country mice, although she would be the most useful."

Regina wondered if he thought she was deaf as well as stupid, but he was gone again before she could ask.

As she tried to put the pieces together, suddenly everything finally made sense.

With a slow deliberate stride, Regina walked to the back of the manor, opened the door and stepped out into the gardens that were so beautifully lit for her debutante party.

"Oh hello," said the very pretty, very shiny blond man frolicking in the flowers in the garden in front of her. "Are you here to see me?"

"By the blood," said Regina, hating the universe and everyone in it as she finally met the man of her dreams, "I think that I am."