After a relatively peaceful sleep spent dreaming of poor Artem getting the rest she had continuously denied him, Regina woke up to the chirping of the birds and Henrietta’s pokes.

“Wake up,” Henrietta mercilessly said as Regina groaned.

“By the blood,” Regina spluttered as she tried to shift away from her cousin’s prodding finger. “Hen, can you not wake me gently?”

“Not when it is the day of your engagement ball,” Henrietta replied, her pokes stopping as Regina bolted upright. “You have another long day ahead of you… and you know our family wants you to make a perfect debut.”

“How lovely,” Regina muttered as she finally began dragging herself out of bed and toward a day sure to be filled with her two least favorite events… assassination and socialization. 

Grimly aware that she needed to prove her worth to her family as a political piece while dodging the poisons that might land her body in the middle of the Alpin treasure vault, Regina got dressed and departed for the palace with her family.

Once there, she was left in a private dressing room with Henrietta, who she dismissed as fast as she could. 

“I need,” Regina plaintively said, “some time to myself. I am taking such a… a giant leap in life as I come closer to being one with my beloved Artem. I need some privacy to – to –”

“Please do not say anything else,” Henrietta replied, already backing away from Regina. “I do not need more details on how you plan to be one with your flower prince..”

“What in Carcosa do you mean–” had been all Regina could say before Henrietta had vanished, looking as though a pack of hungry Sheridans were nipping at her heels. 

Still, as odd as Henrietta’s actions were, Regina did not question her luck in driving her closest friend away. 

As tolerant as Henrietta usually was, Regina did not want to explain why she had to ransack the room she was in to search for hidden sources of poison.

Once Henrietta was out of sight, Regina wrapped her handkerchief around her face and pulled out some gloves from her bodice to cover her hands. Properly covered, Regina began immediately searching every surface she could find as she tried to think about how poison might find her.

“My assassin might have tried some kind of contact poison,” Regina muttered. “Perhaps it could be something I am supposed to touch with my hands or my face. Could it have been a substance placed on something I might touch… like my armoire or my face powder or my dress?” 

Her face powder and dress for the ball that night would likely be safe. Her father had repeatedly stressed that he had gone to great lengths to buy her only the finest clothing and accessories for her engagement ball. Said clothing and accessories were being guarded by loyal Sheridan retainers who would hardly let anyone else tamper with them. 

(After all, the Sheridan family only wanted their relatives to die if that was their will.)

However, the furniture at the royal palace could easily be contaminated by contact poison… and if Regina opened every drawer and searched for hidden compartments, she might find the poison meant to kill her. 

Unfortunately, Regina’s thorough, if time-limited, search for poison was hardly noiseless. 

Thus, when Henrietta came back with eyebrows raised, saying, “I appreciate your ardor for Prince Artem but can neither of you be a little more discreet?”

...Henrietta found Regina doing something far more embarrassing than listening to Artem’s serenade.

“Er,” Regina said, flushing as she was caught ransacking the beautiful dressing room like a bridal bandit. “I just… love hearing the sound of wooden drawers coming off their hinges? As does Artem? Which is why I thought I would start practicing before the actual wedding?” 

“Makes sense,” Henrietta replied, looking around the disheveled room with something akin to respect. “I enjoy the noise that comes from lifting large vases up and down.” 

“Huh,” Regina said, blinking as she moved away from the ravaged drawers and took off her gloves. “That does explain your amazing physique.” 

Yet before Regina could say much more, Henrietta disappeared while mumbling something about commissioning more pottery… just as a nearly unnoticeable servant arrived to take Regina to her next destination.

“My lady,” the man said, his features as bland as his voice, “your breakfast awaits…  as do your parents. Please follow me.” 

There were no assassination attempts as Regina made her way to the breakfast room. 

However, as Regina stared at the lavish spread before her, she feared this meal might turn into the means of her murder. 

“Why are you not eating?” her mother asked after she had lovingly buttered a fresh biscuit with one of her ever present knives. “I even told the palace chefs to make you little cakes as a treat.”

‘Well, mother,’ Regina thought but did not say, ‘this is because normally I do not need to fear being poisoned at a routine meal.’ 

After all, even if the little, cream-filled cakes in front of Regina looked delectable…

Her assassin might easily murder her by coating her meals with poison while the palace chefs were not looking. It was even possible the palace chefs themselves were baking horrifying poisons into the center of the little cakes, knowing no creature on earth could resist that combination of cream and sweetness.

In fact, her food was not the only thing that could be contaminated. For all Regina knew, her assassin might have targeted her plates or cutlery!

Thus, everything in front of Regina was far too dangerous for her to even touch. 

Yet even as her parents stared at her and she stared at her forbidden cakes, Regina felt her head swim and her mouth water.

She had not eaten anything at the party last night, caught as she was in a social whirl, and Henrietta’s merciless morning call had left no time to sate her appetite. At this rate, Regina feared that if she went without eating for much longer, she might faint in the middle of the engagement ball and die by the hands of her angry disgraced family. 

On the other hand, Regina realized, just because the assassin wanted to murder her did not mean they could possibly get away with murdering all the Sheridans around her… 

…Including her parents, who had been happily eating for the last fifteen minutes with no signs of discoloration at any extremities or frothing from the mouth. 

So, with a feral snarl born of equal parts desperation and hunger, Regina almost leaped across the table to begin eating from her parents’ plates with her bare hands. 

The items on her parents’ plates were some of the only things she could safely eat in the palace. After all, they had already taste-tested it for her. 

It was only when Regina was halfway through her father’s steak and her mother’s biscuits that she finally realized how horrified both of her parents looked… and realized she needed to make an excuse before she was deemed defective enough to destroy. 

“I just,” Regina weakly noted, “decided in the last period of life I have with my… er… loving family, I wanted to share one last thing with you…”

Her parents’ clear confusion only deepened, to Regina’s utter embarrassment and horror.

Thus, in clear desperation, she grabbed her father’s remaining steak and mother’s last biscuit in her hands and thrust them into the air, as though she were going to battle swathed in gravy.

“I want to share our last meal not just at the same table but from the same plates!” Regina cried. “Mother and father… I know our family has not been the same ever since…”

Regina swallowed, unable to continue that particular sentence, even in service of saving her own life. However, she managed to rally with a great lie to distract from her mistake, “...But I love you both so much, I just wanted to do whatever I could to be closer to you!”

Then, Regina crammed items from both of the meals into her mouth at the same time, furiously chewed, and said, “We must be united one final time before I am wrenched away by marriage. This is one last time where we can be the family we were meant to be!”

It was all lies and nonsense, of course. Regina did not harbor any hopes that she and her parents would ever turn back to what they had been in the past, before her sister had died…

The foolish part of her that had ever longed for such a thing had long since been destroyed.

To her surprise, Regina’s ridiculous words actually caused her parents to soften. In front of her astonished eyes, her father’s perpetual anxiousness and mother’s cynical mask both wavered for a moment until they looked nearly the same way they did in her distant memories.

Unfortunately, her mother then asked, “Does that mean you wish to call for dessert?”

That was when Regina grabbed her mother’s goblet of wine, drank it to the last drop, and ran off with the hasty excuse that her dearest Artem was calling her.