“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.

Author's Note: Hmmm... I wonder if you have any ideas about how Regina is about to get out of her two routes toward doom? I promise you that we'll have a little twist on the villainess-in-danger formula with what Regina does next!

Also, massive kudos to the people who realized that Regina's family's magic lies in foreseeing the possible future... even as Regina got a particularly "interesting" variant on it. It turns out that if you want to see the future, you still need some kind of "focus" -- and having your focus be a frolicking blond man you do not even know has some drawbacks. Then again, perhaps Regina will be clever enough to turn this to her advantage!

As always, if you enjoyed this story, please check out our developing game, Save the Villainess. We will be releasing our demo & Kickstarter funding campaign this summer. Please see more of our game below!

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