She was awakened again, as she had requested, when the sun was already high in the sky and her sore limbs ached as she got up to stretch. The carriage was still imprinted on her backside, she could tell.

Only Ava was there to help her wash and dress. And when she went down to the dining room, she knew what was going to happen.

Norina, who came in with a cart and a kitchen maid in tow, smiled brightly when she saw her mistress.

"Good morning, Lady Rowena," she said, though she rarely used her name to address her, "I made sure to get all your favorites for your first day."

She emphasized the words just as another figure appeared in the doorway behind her. "Just hers?" Colin said, pretending to be a wee bit fazed by the remark.

And when she sat down to be served, he placed himself right in front of her, on the other side of the narrow but long table, since she hadn't chosen the master seat.

Several plates with different dishes were placed between them. Colin didn't even know what to look at first. This was a Sunday lunch on a Monday, but instead of just pork, potatoes, vegetables and gravy, there was also steak, and he even saw a crab consommé.

Rowena, on the other hand, secured the map that had been placed softly next to her plate and silverware before she could get engrossed in her lunch and forget about it. "Thank you."

It took about ten to fifteen minutes for the older brother to realize where he was wrong. When he had sat down, he had expected the kitchen to be over-prepared, now that not one but two Varnhagen heirs had graced them with their presence.

But he had known something was wrong the moment the blonde maid had looked at him with such badly concealed smugness.

She was young, so subtlety was probably not her strong suit. 'It really was brought just for her?'

As he watched his irregularly small little sister wolfing down plate after plate with barely enough elegance to call it "manners", he had to understand where that smugness came from. In fact, he had to wave down the kitchen maid who had come up with the annex maid to get some food as well.

"You... do have an appetite today. What happened?"

"Hm?" Rowena looked at him with a blank stare, wondering why he was bothering her while she was eating, when she suddenly remembered that she had told him to talk to her during lunch somehow. 'Tough luck, I thought he would forget about it. I sure did.'

"I was just wondering if the trip up north had really taken its toll on you." Maybe that was why she was so mellow now?

Rowena herself wasn't exactly interested in arguing with anyone during her first meal of the day,  she still had to meditate, and she wanted to figure out a way to find Ansgar, the blacksmith from the book.

But first, she concentrated on the magnificent steak in front of her. She really did get everything she liked best, as one would expect from Norina. As she chewed happily, she didn't notice the suspicious look that was shot at her from the other side of the table, only interrupted when a new plate was placed between them.

When her brother started to eat his pork chops with potatoes, he resorted to giving her the stink eye instead of actually nagging her, because there was nothing else he could say. He had actually come here to scold her for the things she had done this time, for she had gotten herself into deep trouble for once.

She hadn't been particularly easy to deal with over the past few years, but the way she hid in her annex made her position as the only biological daughter of the Grand Duke of Varnhagen impregnable. But while Colin himself, as well as their first brother Alan, had already found their place in the future of the family and the Empire at large, she was the only one without a purpose.

Not that he would force her, they had enough wealth, but she wouldn't live it down to become known in society as the crazy annex lady. It was also damaging to the family name. Marrying the crown prince and bearing the heir to the Empire would be one way to avoid that fate.

But the Emperor had already set his sights on something else, using her as a scapegoat to cover up a deal between the Arlen Empire and Lodden. Now that even the Crown Prince didn't seem to want Rowena anymore, and rumors of his interest in the Saintess had gotten loud, there was no way their engagement would be announced at her social debut.

A debut that had already been postponed from this summer to next spring, even though she would be eighteen by then. It would be obvious to nobles with even the slightest sense that something wasn't right.

Frowning, he stared holes into his meat as he tried to cut it with far too much force. "You're going to break the table," Rowena dropped nonchalantly, before silently dabbing her lips with a napkin, eyes closed as if she hadn't said anything at all, to get rid of the grease.

"I won't," he replied, sounding a bit offended for real this time, "so are you going to tell me what you needed a map for now?"

She opened exactly one of her eyes to look at him. "Have I not already told you?"

"Not that I remember."

"Good," she said, closing the eye again and getting up from her seat, grabbing the infamous map, "because I still can't remember when that became any of your business, Young Master Colin. Now, will you excuse me?"

"Wait," the lavender-haired boy who looked nothing like her raised his voice, startling his sister across the table, "I mean it, you can't leave the chateau. If I have to follow you wherever you go to make sure you don't, I will."

"Be my guest," she said coldly, turning away and walking out of the dining room. 'Seriously, what did he even want?'

Her brother couldn't quite fathom all the ways this had gone wrong, but he decided to just stick to his word instead of wallowing in his loss. Meanwhile, Rowena returned to her assigned room, obviously the original Rowena's bedroom, sat down at her desk and took out a quill.

There was something she wanted, and she had to make sure she got it. Starting with a blueprint was her first step towards getting just that. A ruler at hand, along with a graphite pencil and a few other simple tools from her drawer, she scribbled away.

Norina, who had cleaned up the rest of the mess they had made by putting away her mistress' clothes a little faster than planned, wondered what said mistress had been working on all this time. Then again, it was not her place to know.

"Norina," the blonde maid heard and sharpened immediately, "could you get me some matches?"

Since she had a set of sealing wax and even the tools to use it in her workspace, but nothing to actually light a fire and melt that wax, she was in a bind.

"Right away, my lady," Norina replied, diligent as she was, and hurried into the kitchen where she knew she would find what her mistress was looking for. Again, she wondered what for, but she didn't think it would be anything too serious after all.

"Matches?"

The questioning word, uttered by none other than her colleague Ava, made the younger maid smile and say: "For Her Ladyship."

"Does she want to set the room on fire after all?" It wasn't a mocking tone, in fact, she said it very matter-of-factly, tilting her head.

"What? No!" But Norina didn't see it as anything but slander. "How could you say that?"

Ava, who knew she had said that to the wrong person the moment the words had left her mouth, already held her arms up in defeat. "Don't get mad, I was just joking." Although she wasn't.

Norina smacked her shoulder twice for it anyway, then stormed off, ready to return to her mistress with the matches. It would be a lie to say that she hadn't thought of a similar reason, but the way her mistress had asked for them, and the way her pen had been scratching over the paper for at least three hours, there was no connection to any ill feelings.