Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time that Elodie dies, she never sees the arrow coming. It was the first time she'd left the castle since returning there, since returning home, and she'd thought—maybe, just maybe, it would be okay to visit a friend. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't feel like she was disrespecting her mother's memory if she dared to attend a birthday party.

In the end, that was the least of her problems.

Elodie dies in a carriage, bleeding out from an arrow with her name on it, and the last thing she wonders is where she went wrong. Did someone want to kill her? Or was it simply a matter of being in the wrong place in the wrong time? Would everything have turned out alright, if she'd dallied slightly less before departing for Gwenelle's party? Or slightly more?

She doesn't know. She supposes she'll never know, now. Maybe if she'd realized what that sound meant, she could have at least tried to dodge it. Maybe if she knew better, she'd be able to do something—anything—to bind the wound. But she doesn't know better. And now she'll die for it.

...Maybe it's for the best, she thinks, staring at her own blood as it leaves her body. She wouldn't have ever lived up to the queen her mother was.

(At least Elodie will see her again soon.)

Elodie dies in a carriage, alone and afraid.

And yet Elodie awakens in a carriage, equally as afraid but considerably less alone. It's the same carriage. The royal carriage. But there's no blood, no arrow, no bandits—no sign of anything amiss except her own erratically pounding heart.

"Elodie? Are you alright?"

…Her father is here. Joslyn, King Dowager, Duke of Caloris, and the closest family she has left. She'd seen him just this morning, before setting off for Gwenelle's birthday party in the same carriage. She'd seen him just this morning, and she'd known as she lay there dying that she would never see him again.

But here he is. Here she is.

Her heart won't stop hammering away in her chest. It seems to have missed the memo that she is, apparently—somehow, and she doesn't know how, and that terrifies her—no longer bleeding out alone. She isn't dying anymore. A part of her almost wishes she was, because that would at least make sense.

The rest of her stands on feet that aren't only shaky from the moving carriage, crosses to sit next to Joslyn, and takes a seat there.

Her father takes one look at Elodie's face and wraps an arm around her, pulling her in close, and it's everything she can do to keep from sobbing. A queen doesn't cry; a queen-to-be shouldn't either, but whatever else has happened, she is still fourteen years old and she never thought she would see him again. She didn't want him to have to bury her, too.

"I… had a bad dream," Elodie says, eventually—because perhaps saying the words out loud will make them more true. Surely that is what it was, wasn't it? Nothing but a dream?

(Twenty-eight weeks passed since the last time Elodie was in this carriage. Twenty-eight weeks had passed since her mother passed, and... it seemed too detailed, too real, to be a dream. A vision, perhaps? But why would she be granted one of those?)

Joslyn has no reason not to believe her. She doesn't cry, but he holds her anyway, rubbing circles into her back as the carriage draws ever-closer to its destination.

It can’t last. Before long, the dirt road gives way to the cobblestones of the capital city.

"We're almost home," Joslyn says gently. "Your room is just the way you left it."

But her room isn't just the way she left it, is it? She'd left it twenty-eight weeks in the future. Except... that wasn't real. That can't have been real, or else this can't be real, and… she wants this to be real. She doesn't want to be dead. She doesn't want to die, not yet. Not so soon.

"I know it's hard to leave your school and all your friends," he continues, "but I've arranged the best possible tutors for every subject."

…Oh. She's still wearing her boarding school uniform. She hadn't worn her boarding school uniform in weeks.

Joslyn keeps going, though he's still looking at her with concern. "You'll have to work hard this year to prepare yourself before your fifteenth birthday, but I know you can do it. You'll learn quickly and you'll make a wonderful queen. It's what your mother would have wanted."

She remembers having this conversation before. It hurts to have this conversation again.

"This is not what Mother would have wanted!" Elodie insists. Her gaze finds the floor of the carriage. "She wouldn't have wanted to die and leave me."

"No." She notices, this time, the shaky breath that Joslyn takes. "She wouldn't. But sometimes bad things happen. We have to pick up and carry on."

But what if I can't? Elodie wants to ask. She doesn't. She manages something approaching a nod, instead. She should be better at maintaining her composure than this.

"All of Nova depends on us," he says. "On you."

Elodie sighs. "I… I know."

"I will be here to guide you until your coronation, but the decisions you make are ultimately up to you."

The carriage rolls to a stop. They have arrived. Joslyn steps out of the carriage first, opening the door and holding up a hand to help his daughter down.

"Come," he says. "Your maids are waiting."

But what if she doesn't make it to her coronation at all? What if everything goes wrong all over again, and this time, it isn't a dream?

Her heart hurts. Her head hurts. She takes Joslyn's hand anyway, because now they are no longer father and daughter but King Dowager and Crown Princess, and it is not becoming for a near-adult to be carried back to her room, no matter how much she wishes it still could be.

She is nearly an adult. She needs to act like it, especially in public.

Elodie knows all too well just how closely the people of Nova are watching.

The first thing Elodie does, once she has returned to the privacy of her own room—not the way she left it before leaving, but the way she returned to it twenty-eight weeks ago—is to politely request that her maids leave her for a little while.

The second thing she does is to bury her face in her pillows and sob for longer than an almost-queen has any business doing.

And then… then, it is time to sit down at her desk and think.

Perhaps the past several weeks were only a dream; she certainly cannot remember as much as she should be able to. But she can recall some things, at least, and that will at least make her feel slightly better about... everything.

First and foremost: Gwenelle's birthday party. It was the first thing that Elodie had really dared to look forward to since her mother's death, and trying to attend it had only gotten her killed. Much as it pains her, Elodie cannot risk going to that birthday party again. Not unless she has some way to be certain she'll survive.

(She can't be certain she'll survive. Somehow, she's more afraid of what lurks outside the castle than she was the first time around, which is almost impressive.)

Sorry, Gwenelle.

Apart from that, nothing had gone extremely wrong. Charlotte had arrived with her family in the first week, the Duchess of Ursul near the end of the second. There was the situation with Ixion, which... could have gone better, and also accidentally getting betrothed to the Duke of Sedna all over a pretty necklace.

Still. This time, things can go better.

For the first time since waking up in that carriage, for the first time since bleeding out from a wound she no longer has—Elodie dares to let herself feel hope again. That maybe, just maybe, this can work—if she's careful.

The arrow never hit her. The arrow couldn't have hit her. But in awakening from a terrible dream where that arrow found its home in her body again, and in quickly checking to ensure that she is not bleeding out all over again, Elodie makes a horrifying discovery: she has a scar. 

It's hidden away easily enough beneath her clothing, at least, and she wouldn't have known the scar was there at all if she hadn't been looking for it. But it is there. In precisely the spot she remembers the arrow landing, in precisely the place where it had torn through fabric and skin like nothing, her skin is... lighter, there, than it is elsewhere. As if the wound hadn't been fatal, as if it had healed somehow.

But it had been fatal. She had died. And then she had woken up again on the carriage ride home, twenty-eight weeks in the past.

She attends classes on battlefield medicine, that first week, instead of composure. As important as Elodie knows it is to maintain her composure, a little crying in private will not kill her. Arrows will, and… what if there are more?

Charlotte arrives with her parents and her younger siblings. Elodie all too vividly remembers the snake in the gardens. She'd been bitten, last time, and… honestly, she doesn't remember what happened well, probably because of the snakebite, but she didn't die there and she is reasonably certain it was because of Charlotte.

She also remembers that Lucille, Countess of Nix—her aunt, Charlotte’s mother—had insisted her entire family return home early because of the incident.

This time, she prepares. She spends the second week training her reflexes, and maybe she'll be ready this time. Maybe, this time, Charlotte won't have to go home yet.

(She spends her free time on the first weekend home visiting Charlotte, just in case, and it probably can't hurt to do the same thing on the next weekend too.)

During the second week, the Duchess of Ursul arrives to pay her respects. Last time, Elodie told her in no uncertain terms to leave, as politely as she could manage towards a woman connected to her mother’s death. Which… really was not very politely at all.

This time…

Elodie wants nothing more than to do the exact same thing she did last time. But she remembers this happening before. She remembers an ill-fated carriage ride. She remembers dying. That isn't the sort of thing that happens every day.

…The un-dying, that is. And the unexpected leap backward in time.

Dying happens every day, as Joslyn had pointed out when a keythong from the Old Forest started eating people. Maybe it won't this time, but Elodie isn't sure there is anything she can feasibly do to prevent that, and… her father isn’t wrong.

What doesn't happen every day is Elodie's situation. Magic has to be responsible for that, somehow, even though she hadn't wanted anything to do with it herself. It's anyone's guess how magic is actually responsible for that, but… Julianna is a Lumen, so surely she must know something about what has happened to her.

(About how Elodie is even alive. About what happened, and if this can happen again. Hopefully—hopefully—she won't ever be in a position to need a third chance.)

But if her father is right… if Julianna is responsible for her mother's death…

Maybe her only options aren't just letting her stay or sending her off. Maybe she can test whether Julianna was actually all that loyal to her mother or not. (And... well, if nothing else, it's unlikely to be something her father disapproves of.)

"You are a traitor to the crown and I ought to have you executed," Elodie says, trying to channel her mother's quiet fury. "GUARDS! Arrest her!"

She definitely didn't succeed in the quiet part, that's for sure. Maybe she does need to start taking composure classes. Again.

For her part, Julianna's only reaction to Elodie's furious shout is to raise a single brow. Her only reaction to being approached by the guards is to simply hold out her hands, to allow herself to be clapped in manacles. Elodie doesn't think any other noble would take it so well, or so quietly, which is… weird.

Really weird.

Then again, everything else about Elodie's life right now is significantly weirder than she expected it to ever become. And she's starting to get sick of it.

"Throw her into the castle dungeons and let her rot!" Elodie proclaims, looking not at her guards but at Julianna again. Who… doesn't even flinch. Doesn't even react. How dare she not even bat an eye at being arrested?

"Well. I suppose she won't be a problem anymore," says Joslyn, and Elodie can't tell if he approves or not. Which she supposes is the point of learning to be queen, but…

But it would be nice to know, all the same.

Elodie almost goes to visit the dungeons immediately, when she has time to spare from her studies. It doesn't help that the stairwell leading there is just slightly further down the hall than the quarters where Charlotte and her immediate family are staying. They've always stayed there, for as long as Elodie can remember—and probably before that, really, before either Elodie or Charlotte were born—whenever they actually visit.

Ultimately, she resists the urge. She has countless questions for Julianna, Duchess of Ursul, but actually figuring out how to word them in a way that makes sense—in a way that doesn't make her sound utterly insane, and doesn't risk giving too much away to a woman Elodie doesn’t like or trust in the slightest—is much easier said than done.

More importantly, there is a high chance that Charlotte is going home next weekend. Elodie thinks her reflexes will be good enough to deal with the snake, this time, but she isn't quite sure.

If neither of them gets bitten… then maybe, just maybe, Charlotte can stay a little longer.

(Charlotte mentions, while they're playing in her room, that her mother thinks people fear Lumens out of jealousy, of all things. Elodie, personally, thinks that sounds ridiculous, but maybe Aunt Lucille knows something that Elodie doesn't. She, and most of the kingdom, probably know a lot of things that Elodie doesn't.)

Her reflexes are good enough! This time, she manages to flip the snake away from them without being bitten herself. Without Charlotte having to do… whatever it was she did, that others consider to be bad and weird but had almost certainly saved Elodie’s life.

…Unfortunately, Charlotte tattles to her mother about the snake before Elodie can warn her not to. And then Aunt Lucille insists that her entire family return home, because it's simply too dangerous here. Never mind that (Elodie thinks) her mother hadn’t died at home.

At least Elodie got to spend some time with her favorite cousin, before she went. Maybe Charlotte going home is for the best, because it means Elodie no longer has an excuse to stay away from the dungeons, not once she has her list of questions and the presence of mind to ask them without quailing in fright at the woman who (might have, maybe) had some connection to her mother's death.

She has her list. She doesn't have the presence of mind. So she resolves to study that next week and visits her father instead.

Magic isn't safe, Joslyn says with the gravity of someone who knows this firsthand—and admittedly, a lot of other things aren't safe either, but she really wishes he would be more specific.

(Of course, Elodie thinks as she returns from the King Dowager's chambers, what if even her father doesn't know the specifics? Is the Duchess of Ursul really her only option?)

Julianna, Duchess of Ursul, must have the answers that Elodie seeks.

Julianna, Duchess of Ursul, is also extremely uncooperative when it comes to answering any of Elodie’s questions unless and until she agrees to become a Lumen herself. The next Lumen Queen of Nova. And that—that rings a bell, faintly, but she’d studied that months ago, and she can’t recall the specifics now.

Elodie does hear Julianna out. She doesn’t taunt her—that strikes her as a very, very bad idea. And perhaps her mother had trusted Julianna, perhaps with her own life—

But her mother no longer has a life to trust others with. All that remains is Elodie.

And Elodie…

Elodie doesn’t quite trust Julianna. Not enough to free her. Not when she won’t tell Elodie what killed her mother, either.

A gift arrives from Talarist, Duke of Sedna. A beautiful necklace, just as beautiful as it had been the last time she received it—though she hadn’t realized then what it meant until the Duke of Maree pointed that out. She knows enough about court manners, now, to realize what it could mean, if she wants it to.

…Hmm. Does she want it to?

She honestly isn’t sure. He was courteous and kind, when last they met—a meeting that hasn’t happened yet, and that she thinks was directly precipitated by her accepting that gift then. He certainly helped her save face at the gala when—

Oh. Right. The gala.

At some point, she needs to learn how to dance. Or she could rely on Talarist again…

That, she doesn’t particularly want to do. She recalls, faintly, wondering if she had made a mistake in agreeing to marry him so soon.

In the end, she does keep the necklace—it would be a waste, after all, to dispose of such a nice piece of jewelry. But she doesn’t wear it, not in public. Not this time.

And, the following week, she begins learning how to dance.

Something different happens.

Something different happens, and that is the most terrifying thing that has happened to Elodie in the last six weeks after awakening from her own death.

Elodie is expecting the priestess (...what was her name?) to approach her after a service and offer to train her in magic. She hadn't accepted that offer last time, but this time… maybe, if she is trained in magic, then she can figure out what sort of magic resulted in her being flung back in time. This time, she fully intends to accept.

That is, of course, before the priestess approaches her after the same service and says something entirely different. There isn't a word about training Elodie in magic herself. Instead, she insists that Elodie free Julianna from the dungeons and learn from her, instead.

Elodie can’t help but feel a little pressured, to say the least. How does this priestess even know the Duchess of Ursul?

She can't free Julianna. She won't free Julianna. Not now.

Elodie may have forgotten that the Duchess of Ursul even had a brother. She certainly wasn't expecting him to visit, but once it occurs to her who he is, she has a pretty good idea of why he’s here. It's for the same reason that the priestess approached her last week: because she imprisoned Julianna instead of sending her away.

(She had no idea that the Duchess of Ursul had so many allies. She really thought that no one liked her? Because no one likes Lumens?)

Except—it turns out, halfway through the conversation with Ignatius of Ursul, Elodie realizes that she might not have been as wrong as she thought. He is here because Elodie imprisoned his sister, yes—but he honestly sounds like he just does not care whether she frees his sister or gives him her titles.

But he does bring up the option as a thing that Elodie can do. Because... it is a thing she can do. She can just... do that. She is the Crown Princess of Nova, currently acting as the queen even if not in name, and she certainly doubts that her father would object to this.

And he does raise a good point—someone needs to be in charge of the duchy.

"Fine, then," Elodie says. "You can be Duke of Ursul."

And Julianna, former Duchess of Ursul, can stay in the dungeons until she's willing to answer Elodie's questions—whether she's agreed to become a Lumen yet or not.

Ugh, Banion. Duke of Maree, Earl of Serenitatis. More importantly, someone who has caused Elodie no end of headaches that she can at least plan ahead for now.

Realistically, Elodie would have no reason to be immediately annoyed by his presence. Technically, he has never actually met her before, or if he has it was earlier than she could remember, because he certainly is old enough to be her father, isn't he.

Ugh. She isn't looking forward to negotiating with the Ixionites, but—

Wait a minute. She hadn't known this yet last time. But recently—especially after awarding the new Duke of Ursul his sister's titles—she decided that maybe it might be a good idea to brush up on her knowledge of political affairs local and otherwise.

It was Brin, Duchess of Hellas, who was the aggressor here—not Ixion.

She knows enough—just enough—about the internal affairs of Nova to command the Duchess of Hellas to marry an Ixionite without angering her too much. There is no armed conflict between Ixion and Nova, which is definitely good, and this time Elodie doesn't have to pay an embarrassing majority of the Novan treasury to make Ixion back off—a massive improvement over last time.

…There is no letter from Talarist. No impending visit, when the next week comes. Elodie is a little sad about that, but not as sad as she thought she would be.

Putting more sick people in one place, just so that they can die faster, still sounds as ridiculous as it did the first time Elodie heard it.

And then there's the condemned woman brought before her by Kevan, the Earl of Io, who is... loud, and angry, and the fact that he'd just cut down the woman where she stood when Elodie dared to ask a clarifying question last time was…

…Well. Elodie doesn't enjoy having nightmares. She hasn't had those nightmares in a while.

She definitely can't pardon the woman, and she isn't sure that she should pardon the woman if she even could. Trying to kill several nobles is trying to kill several nobles, whatever the actual reasoning behind it may be. But she doesn't want to just have her put to death, either.

(In the end, it doesn't matter. In the end, the woman ends up rushing Elodie in an attempt at... something… and is cut down by her own guards. In the end, Elodie still has nightmares for weeks, but instead of being about the Earl of Io, they are about a woman with desperation in her eyes and nothing left to lose.)

She messed up. Again.

But at least she’s prepared, mostly, when her father warns her about the gala. She entirely forgot about the parade the weekend before, though.

…She doesn't have the time to prepare anything for the Procession of the Good Lady. She didn't attend it at all last time.

But she remembers the judgmental look in Alice's eyes when she stayed behind, last time. A maid has no right to make her feel that way! And yet, and yet…

At the very least, Elodie would like to maintain some dignity in the eyes of her servants.

So Elodie goes, this time. She doesn't make a speech, and she doesn't manage anything particularly special, but she goes, and she isn't assassinated. Which is… less of a relief than it should be, really.

Was it really a coincidence, when she died? Was it truly just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It… couldn't have been, could it have?

There are no assassins at the parade. There is, however, a deeply unnerving omen. A spring of salt water, ocean water, out of nowhere.

Her clothing is almost dry again when she returns to the castle. She still changes before returning to her studies.

As if she needed any less peace of mind, that night, the former Duchess of Ursul vanishes.

(Elodie should have just sent her home.)

This time, Elodie makes her entrance to the gala like a queen. She isn't a queen yet, but she will be, and her present and future nobles need to remember that.

Sometimes, oftentimes, Elodie needs to remind herself of that, too. Like when she's dancing with the Duchess of Hellas, and remembering all too suddenly that Brin seems very much to favor women over men, and Brin knows that Elodie knows this, and that the risk she took in dancing with her may have been a calculated one in her head but she has spent absolutely no time studying accounting and it shows.

Banion.

Overall, the gala goes… alright? The Duke of Maree and his attempts to force her to marry him aside. It could have gone better, but it could have gone worse, and Brin even sends Elodie some very nice flowers afterwards, flowers she is more than happy to accept.

Elodie is significantly less happy to accept what her father is up to. Again.

(She had the composure, last time, to greet Countess Sirin politely. She didn't do so then. She wouldn't now if the thought even occurred to her.)

"You will need the goodwill of your nobles as well as your commoners," her father says as Sirin leaves in a hurry. And he isn't wrong, certainly, but perhaps this particular noble shouldn't be pursuing Elodie's father less than half a year after her mother's death if she wants any of Elodie's goodwill.

"You need to be more aware of your surroundings," her father says, and she has no idea what he is talking about. Because she is plenty aware of her surroundings. Isn't she?

Taxes. Another condemned prisoner. She'd pardoned him last time. She pardons him again this time—it doesn't seem like he is lying, and she still doesn't know enough about magic to know if demons can make people do anything. If demons even really exist.

(Not for the first time, almost certainly not for the last, she regrets imprisoning Julianna. Elodie has thoroughly burned that bridge, and while the new Duke of Ursul seems quite resolutely on her side, the priestess who attempted to intercede with her on Julianna's behalf won't so much as look at her these days. She can't quite blame the woman.)

Then there's the squid poem, again. Apparently she hadn't done anything differently enough to avoid that, but she at least has the sense to avoid climbing out after it this time.

(That hurt, last time. She remembers the healers saying she was lucky to be alive. She doesn't trust that she'll be lucky again.)

Fabian, the Duke-Regent of Elath, dies. Again. Presumably of natural causes, because he was rather old, though she thinks it happened around this time last time—and while allowing his son to remain with his stepmother Arisse could be a bad idea, and really is putting a lot of power in her hands, Adair had been assassinated when sent to live with his grandfather and Elodie would really rather avoid that happening.

…Well. She doesn't know anything really bad about the Duchess of Lillah, does she?

(Maybe she should have studied Internal Affairs more.)

She leaves him, this time, with Arisse.

Elodie—or more accurately, Nova's treasury—didn't have the funds to hire the musician last time. She does have that money this time, and Elodie likes what she hears just as much as she remembers liking it last time. Two hundred and fifty lassi is nothing, and they have the money!

She walks away from that particular day feeling rather pleased with herself, as minor of a thing as this was. She'd regretted not having the money to hire her—Sabine, she introduced herself as, once Elodie made it clear that the crown would quite happily serve as her patron—before.

This, at least, is something that she is entirely certain she did better with.

But, of course, the week that she died looms ever closer.

Did she prepare enough? Should she even risk going at all? Does she want to?

A letter from Adair thanking her for letting him stay with the family he knows, a star falling from the sky that surely has to mean something, and… the week that Adair would have been assassinated on, she's almost certain, passes entirely without incident. Which is new, and terrifying, and makes the day that she realizes it on significantly more beautiful than it already would have been.

And then, she receives two more letters in the mail. On the same day, no less. One from Briony, who she had honestly barely even spoken to at school, talking about how she's excited to see her at Gwenelle's upcoming birthday party. The other, of course, is the invitation to said party.

It is a good thing, a very good thing, that someone on the palace staff (most likely Alice, her maid) simply saw fit to bring her that correspondence and leave. Elodie doesn't have to worry about anyone seeing the way that her hands begin to shake as she picks up that letter, as she reads it once and again.

She hadn't given the letter's contents much of a second thought, the first time. Now... well, there doesn't seem to be anything amiss with the letter, and she and Gwenelle are friends. It was the first time she had talked herself into leaving the castle, and the last time she would bring herself to leave the castle because she—

Because she died.

One shaking hand goes to the place where the arrow struck her. She can still feel it now. The pain had lessened, over time, but it had never fully gone away, and lately it has begun to ache even more. Perhaps this is because the time is nearly at hand once again.

Elodie had really and truly wanted to see her friend, especially now that she would be the Duchess of Sudbury for real. She still wants to see Gwenelle.

But she—

She can't risk dying again. She honed her reflexes early, specifically because she thought that perhaps if she had better reflexes she might be able to somehow dodge the arrow, but that sounds increasingly ridiculous now that she is faced with that choice.

She doesn't want to die. Not like this.

And that is her decision made for her, isn't it?

Elodie sighs, writes out a polite reply making it clear that she truly does wish she could attend, and spends the next hour sobbing into her best crying pillow. She has really been making use of that pillow far too often lately.

The twenty-eighth week since her mother's death comes and goes. Instead of the Duchess of Sudbury herself writing back, her mother does, and Lieke (Countess of Dis) seems very displeased with Elodie, so it seems she wasn’t able to write as well as she thought she could.

Social faux pas aside, she is still alive.

…Which means that, from here forward, everything is new and she really can't be careful enough.

Briony apparently vanished off the face of Nova after Gwenelle's birthday party, which is unfortunate and worrying, but Elodie had only ever written to Lady Mead a handful of times and she had never been the one to initiate that correspondence, so Elodie really isn't sure what she is supposed to do about Briony now. She says as much to the Duchess of Mead, and presumably that will be the end of it.

Elodie's father suggests holding a tournament to lift the mood in the capital, and… personally, Elodie couldn't agree more. Though the treasury is starting to look a little barren, so awarding monetary prizes to the winners is out of the question, and status and praise alone seems… to not quite be enough.

So, the tournament will be a recruitment drive. Elodie's certainly excited for it to arrive!

Maybe she’ll even be able to participate!

The chocolates are delicious. Elodie knows she should have saved them for later, really, but they looked so tasty. She couldn't not eat them, and it was a reasonable assumption that doing so early in the day wouldn’t ruin her appetite for dinner.

…At least, that is what she thought.

She doesn't have an appetite when it is time to be summoned for dinner. Her room is darker than it normally is at that time, and Alice reacts with surprise when Elodie mentions this, but obediently goes off to inform the King Dowager that his daughter would prefer to eat up in her room tonight anyway.

By the time that Alice returns, Elodie can barely see. Can barely move. But she forces herself into an upright position once Alice has departed again, attempts to force something down to no avail.

Eventually, she no longer has the strength to even hold a fork. It slips from her fingers, clattering against the mostly-full plate, and Elodie can't pick it up again.

Her eyes flutter shut as her heart stops.

Her eyes open, once again, to the royal carriage. To her father sitting across from her, frowning out the window, a look of vague grief and unease in his eyes. He hasn't realized that she is awake yet, but she knows what he will say once he does.

"We're almost home," Joslyn says gently. "Your room is just the way you left it."

The good news is that if this… reset, of sorts, was able to happen once, if this happened twice, then… presumably, it will continue happening again when she dies, again, in the likely-near future. Because, at this point, she is considering that a when and not an if.

The bad news is that Elodie made it four weeks closer to her coronation. And then… she isn't certain what happened, not really, not for sure. But she has never had that problem when eating chocolates before, and she didn't do anything else out of the ordinary that entire rest of the day, so it must have been the chocolates somehow. Which is horrible! She loves chocolate!

She doesn't have any new physical scars, at least. The one from being shot in her carriage aches the least that it ever has.

But if she can't figure out why the chocolates killed her, she'll never be able to eat chocolate ever again without her stomach turning.

That would be a fate worse than death.

It was poison. She was poisoned. By chocolates.

She doesn't find this out for months. But this time, things are going better, for the most part. She still couldn't bring herself to actually become a Lumen, not yet, not when it scares her father so much and may very well have killed her mother. So she didn't send Julianna to the dungeons, but she didn't accept her offer—or the following offer from that priestess—for training, either.

It isn't as if she has time for training to become a Lumen. Not along with everything else.

Knowledge is one thing. Obviously, her notes don't get taken back in time with her. The only things that do are her memories and… well, the scar from where that arrow hit her. It's entirely possible that if she dies violently in some other way, she'll have a scar from that, too, but she isn't much inclined to test that out.

Her notes don't go back in time with her. Her memories do. She won't make the mistake she did of assuming Sedna is a Novan duchy ever again, not after how embarrassing that was the first time, and she can't un-learn knowledge that she already has, even if details can slip her mind easily.

Physical skills, on the other hand…

…Well. She learns the hard way that knowing how to climb means nothing if she hasn't practiced it this time. Which she hadn't, when climbing after a certain very outlandish poem that seems to be written around this time every time no matter what she does.

(She was told that she should be more careful, that she was lucky to be alive after a fall like that. Elodie barely held herself back from saying that she wished she wouldn't have been, because at least then she could start over sooner and not have to hobble around for the next week.)

She is, at the very least, starting to get a good idea of what is coming and what to do about it. Things… could be better in Nova, a lot better, but this time around, she has gotten farther than she ever has before.

This time around, Elodie has a plan, even if she still has little to no idea of what causes this. But if she was sent back to the beginning twice, it'll probably happen again, and she can better prepare for what's coming if she knows what's coming closer to her coronation. Because something has to be, surely.

The plan is this: this time, study everything that she reasonably can expect to remember, and do whatever she can to get as close to her coronation as possible. Knowledge will go a long way—she never found out before that the Duchess of Lillah probably killed her second husband, or that the supposed 'king' of Shanjia was formerly a commoner and presumably still is a Lumen—and she can remember small, important details if they're likely to be relevant.

Then, next time—because, at this point, she isn't optimistic enough to think she'll make it to her coronation at all—she can start studying the more physical things.

Next time… maybe, she'll start meddling with magic. Maybe. But she doesn't want to risk messing with what is almost certainly magic carrying her back in time, over and over, when it is currently the only reason she is still alive. No one would believe her if she told them, except maybe the Duchess of Ursul. But...

…Next time. Maybe.

Elodie's plan almost works a little too well, but in the end goes very badly, which is an assessment that’s starting to feel representative of everything she's ever tried to do in her fourteen years of life.

She had no idea that Shanjia was going to attack—or at least, not this soon. Maybe it had been naive of her, or stupid of her, to hope that they would wait until after her coronation.

(It had definitely been both naive and stupid of her. She won't make that mistake twice.)

There isn't anything she can reasonably do to make a difference in a battle on the high seas. She would be far more likely to drown and wake up in that carriage again, without any knowledge at all of what might come after that battle. So she stays home and sulks about it and makes a mental note to spend more time studying military strategy, if she can actually spare the time for it, which is looking increasingly dubious.

And then, the King of Shanjia arrives.

(He should be King-Consort, at best. He was a commoner who married his way into the throne.)

Togami is a man with long white hair, eyes like molten steel, and a viper's smile. If Elodie didn't know better, she would have assumed he was born into his power. She does know better, but the knowledge doesn't change the fact that he is here and he is winning the war against her country.

She remains composed, barely. She knows a sympathetic act when she sees one. She'd prefer it from the devil she knows—someone like Banion, who at least never leaves her in the dark for long when he could gloat over what Elodie doesn't know yet instead.

Shanjia doesn't ask for Nova's surrender, unconditional or otherwise.

"Better to settle things in a civilized manner," Togami says, and Elodie trusts him even less.

He knows that the rulers of Nova have been Lumens, historically—it makes sense that he would, he is a Lumen too. But Elodie hadn't been expecting to be challenged to a duel.

(Well, that settles things. She's about to die, here, four weeks before her coronation, because she was too afraid to learn magic any sooner. Next time, she'll insist Julianna stays.)

"Saving it for the coronation, were you?" His question is rhetorical. He must know, somehow, that Elodie hasn't learned a thing about magic, because Julianna isn't willing to tell her anything unless she becomes a Lumen. "Such a pity that you'll be unprepared."

He almost—almost—sounds like he actually pities her. More likely, he was hoping she'd put up a better fight.

"Well, then. Go and find your crystal. Becoming a Lumen is a very simple matter. Then we can have our duel."

Elodie finds her words, eventually. If she is to die here no matter what, she can at least get as much information out of Togami as possible before she does.

"What's the point?" she asks. "You know I can't win. Why don't you just kill me now?"

"Because that's not the game." She would like to say some words that are thoroughly inappropriate for a crown princess to know, never mind utter, to this man. "You want to save your people, don't you? I want to fight a Lumen."

Oh, she'll give him a fight. Next time.

(At least now she knows this is coming. But this is going to hurt.)

Togami must catch a glimpse of something in her carefully-guarded expression. "I'll sweeten the deal. If you meet me in a formal Lumen challenge, I'll call off the invasion even if I win."

Oh. That is interesting. And promising, in case dying by magic ruins this and she stays dead this time. She hasn't before, but... if she does die here, and Nova is safe, then maybe that's okay.

"Really?" Elodie asks, because she trusts this not at all.

Togami nods solemnly. "I swear it by the gods. Nova will be free and safe."

He seems completely sincere. She trusts that even less.

"Why take that risk? You're winning the war."

"It's not your land that I want," Togami says. "It's your crystal. To gain your power, I am willing to wager my own. Shall we begin?"

Elodie... doesn't really have a choice here, does she? Hopefully, finding whatever a 'crystal' is won't result in Nova going on without her. 

And if it does…

…Well. Nova will survive.

"Then... I must," Elodie says, and silently apologizes to everyone who cares about her. She'll see them again soon.

She can't meet anyone's eyes. But her father finds her gaze anyway. Something resolute enters his expression as he strides across the room, purposefully putting himself between Elodie and the King of Shanjia, the latter of whom only raises a curious eyebrow.

"No," says Joslyn, King Dowager, Duke of Caloris—and Elodie's father. "Not my little girl!"

She is not a little girl, not anymore, but this doesn't seem like the best time to say as such.

"You want to fight the Lumen ruler of Nova?" Joslyn reaches into his pocket. He pulls out... a crystal, certainly. A Lumen crystal? "Illuminate!"

…It's a Lumen crystal. It's blue, like her father's eyes, which glow as the crystal does. Did he just become a Lumen?

"Fight me," her father says, his eyes still glowing faintly. The air around him shimmers faintly blue. "Leave her alone."

"Well!" Togami clasps his hands together. "This is not what I expected, but it will serve my purposes just as well."

"Daddy?" Elodie whispers. Her voice cracks.

Joslyn doesn't even look at her. "Be quiet, Elodie. You are not a queen yet."

And he's right. She isn't a queen yet, as she has been reminded over and over by him and by others. But she catches the meaning behind what he says. She understands what he isn't saying.

If he dies here, she doesn't have to.

If he sacrifices himself to the King of Shanjia, Elodie can still become queen.

Her father has no way of surviving this, just as she would have had no way of surviving this.

But for a moment, during the fight, she'd dared to hope he might somehow anyway.

Togami has the audacity to smirk as he claims his prize. Her father's crystal isn't blue anymore, and her father… isn't, anymore.

And then—then he says something that Elodie can't let stand.

"You what?" He must be lying to make her feel worse. 

...But what reason would he have to do so now that he has gotten what he wanted?

"You didn't think her death was an accident, did you? That took careful planning!" Togami's smirk grows, as if he's proud of the fact that he has made Elodie an orphan. "And now the Novan power is mine, and you even get to live."

A part of her wishes she hadn't. That her father had chosen to do nothing but watch. Instead, he'd chosen to make her do so instead.

"Now kneel," Togami says, "and kiss my hand."

She has a choice. An even worse one, somehow.

(She has four weeks remaining before her coronation. Her father is dead. She should have become a Lumen when she had the chance. Should she risk the chance of dying permanently to go back, one more time, when she might not even be able to save him?)

Elodie kneels. Elodie kisses Togami’s hand. And the first thing she does, once he has departed, is wash out her mouth with soap.

She'd tried bringing Adair, the future Lord of Elath, to the castle this time. He's a very timid boy, honestly a little too timid for Elodie to genuinely enjoy his company.

But out of everyone who tries to comfort Elodie, in the week after her father's death, no one manages to actually make her feel better except for a little boy who likes beetles and frogs.

For the first time, the day of her coronation arrives. Elodie knows she has made mistakes. Countless mistakes.

But she is fifteen, finally. A legal adult, dubiously.

She is the queen of Nova, and... if this is the end of it, she can live with that. She tells herself that as each of the nobles swear themselves to her. Mazomba, Ursul, Merva. Kigal, Lillah, Mead, Sudbury. Hellas and Maree.

No Caloris. Her father only had one child. And Elath, currently, is under the direct control of the crown.

This is... not great. But it could be worse.

(The newly crowned queen continues to tell herself that, even as she cries herself to sleep.)

When Elodie awakens, it isn't in her mother's too-large bed. She nearly cries when she recognizes the sound of carriage wheels on cobblestone beneath her.

She does start crying when she hears her father's voice.

"We're almost home," Joslyn says gently. "Your room is just the way you left it… Elodie?"

She crosses the carriage. She wraps her arms around him. And she sobs.

Though he has no way of knowing why—Elodie couldn't even begin to tell him—her father holds her, and lets her cry.

This time, Julianna stays—and not in the dungeons.

"As you wish," her father says, his utter lack of approval as clear as the crystal he likely still carries somewhere. Elodie wishes she could tell him that he will die if she doesn't do this. That she will be forced to watch him die, with nothing she can do about it. Togami, her real enemy, is a Lumen. She'll need to be a Lumen to stop him.

She says nothing, because he doesn't need to know. Because what he knows won't hurt him, not so long as she gets it right this time.

(It occurs to her, halfway through the day's lessons in naval strategy, that he might be operating under a version of the very same logic. She doesn't know how to feel about that.)

Julianna helps with the snake in the grass, which is new. Apparently milk vipers aren't native to the area, which is a surprise.

Charlotte's mother takes her home anyway, which is neither new or a surprise.

First things first: Elodie needs to find her crystal. Not the one her father has. She bore witness to it before, very briefly, after the coronation. It's pink, and it's beautiful, and while she'd been happy to hold that crystal in her hands then, it had been... a bittersweet happiness. She couldn't bring herself to activate it, not then. Not when her father had been murdered so soon after doing the same thing.

But now... now, she has a chance to do something differently. To do something better.

She does go to her father first.

His response, when she asks about her own crystal—her mother's crystal—is predictable. It still hurts.

(She remembers him having undoubtedly trained to use magic, even if it was never put into practice until he became a Lumen himself to duel Togami, because how else would he have known to do anything at all? She somehow doubts he would be at all willing to train her in the same way, even if she tried to tell him it was to protect herself from Lumens, because she'd have no reason to fear them now. Not in this timeline, where she'd stood against him to insist that the Duchess of Ursul stay.)

Though the guards are almost certainly under strict orders to not allow her treasury access, and especially not to depart with something specific, Elodie is acting as queen. They can't reasonably deny her access to her own treasury.

But it doesn't escape her notice that one of the guards rushes off in the direction of her father's quarters almost as soon as she's stepped inside.

It's a good thing, then, that she finds her crystal quickly. When she exits the treasury, there is still one less guard than there was when she arrived.

Elodie won't be waiting for that guard to return with company.

She isn't able to slip off to visit the Duchess of Ursul all week. She throws herself into her other studies instead. It occurs to her, in the middle of one of her ciphering classes, that she really should have agents of her own, shouldn't she? Her mother certainly did, and they likely answer to her father now, but... they should answer to her. She is going to need all the information she can get to make this work.

…Musicians can be used as agents, can't they? Togami had been a musician before ending up on the throne of Shanjia. And a specific one by the name of Sabine has arrived without fail to request the court's patronage at the same time, every time.

Sabine probably isn't a spy yet, but maybe Elodie could train her to be one? Something to think about, certainly, if nothing else.

Finally, finally, Elodie has the time over the weekend to tuck the little box from the treasury under her arm and rush off to visit Julianna, Duchess of Ursul, in her guest quarters. It helps that those quarters are close to Elodie's own, closer than the dungeons are for certain.

…Has Julianna stayed here before? Elodie had only ever met the Duchess of Ursul in passing, before, had been vaguely aware of her as a noble that her mother often sought out the company of, but she can't remember ever being privy to any conversations between the two women. Or of her specifically staying here. Though that guest room has definitely been occupied before by someone that her father did not like.

And, well. He has made his disdain for Lumens abundantly clear.

(Will he hate Elodie, too? She would like to think that he wouldn't, truly she would—he had died for her in that other timeline, and he obviously hadn't hated her mother—but she is going behind his back to do this.)

"Pick up the crystal with your bare hands," Julianna says, not wasting any time. "Press it against your chest, over your heart, and say 'illuminate'!"

That's it. That is the component of becoming a Lumen that Elodie was missing, last time. The priestess hadn't told her what to do, what to say, only offered her the crystal she had almost immediately handed right back. She probably had been about to before Elodie explained through tears that she couldn't, not yet. She hadn't been able to admit out loud that, if she were less afraid of Togami, that answer might have instead been not ever.

Elodie takes a deep breath, picks up the crystal with her bare hands, and… hesitates.

She is, at this point, all but certain that the reason she did not stay dead in the carriage or from the absolute horror of poisoned chocolates—the reason that she awoke again back at the beginning with her father still alive instead of as queen with him dead—must have something to do with magic, somehow.

But she can't just ask Julianna outright about her situation.

(Well, hypothetically, she could, but she really does have no idea how she would even begin to word it all, and also she still remembers ordering Julianna to be thrown in the dungeons, which is not the sort of thing she has any faith in her ability to hide from her new magic mentor for long. So telling Julianna anything outright is out of the picture, at least until she figures out how to lie better.)

Instead, she asks, "Is this dangerous?"

Julianna raises an eyebrow. She hastily adds, "My father said that using magic can kill you."

Because, well, he did say that. He didn't say that this time, but he did.

(Using magic wasn't what killed him.)

"Bonding with a crystal," Julianna says slowly, "is not dangerous. Using magic can be dangerous, but that is why I am here to train you."

...Oh. Well, when she puts it like that... Elodie is suddenly having a lot more trouble thinking of anything she can bring up that doesn't make her sound like she has utterly lost her mind.

"My mother was trained, wasn't she?" Elodie says at last.

"Yes." It's a short, clipped answer, and Elodie does wait to see if she'll say anything more, but... she doesn't.

Elodie averts her eyes, staring instead at a crack in the floor. It isn't very large, but maybe she should tell someone about it sooner rather than later anyway. Telling one of the servants about the crack in the tile would hurt less than thinking more about her mother's death.

Instead of going to fetch one of the servants, or fleeing back to her own room, Elodie murmurs, "My father said she used too much magic, and over time it built up and killed her."

"Your father means well, but he is not a Lumen." He was, briefly, but Julianna would have no way of knowing that, not even in the previous time unless someone else present at the duel had told her. "I have drawn power many times over many years, and I am unharmed."

Elodie is going to regret asking this. "Then what did happen to my mother?"

Julianna hesitates. "I don't know."

She can't accept that. If Julianna were directly responsible for her mother's death, then she thinks she would probably know by now… probably. But she trusts her father, as impatient as she is starting to be with him at times, and she doesn't think he would be so insistent on something if he himself didn't truly believe it.

"I think you know more than you're saying," Elodie says, and desperately hopes that this won't end with her being blasted to death too. "My father blames you for her death. What did you do?"

For the first time, the Duchess of Ursul looks genuinely ruffled. Disturbed, even. More than that—she looks like Elodie has thrown a fist out and had it connect with her face, minus the actual facial injury that would result if she had.

"I did nothing," Julianna says slowly, "because I was not here. That is my fault. I did not know she was in danger."

Julianna sighs. Her shoulders slump as she continues, in a smaller voice, "I was not here to help her."

"Oh," Elodie whispers, but Julianna isn't done.

"I never thought of Fidelia as fragile. I believed she would outlive me. I expected to die in her service." Julianna sighs again, this time meeting Elodie's gaze with her own. "I do not believe that magic had anything to do with her death, but I will never know, because I was not here."

Elodie can hardly blame her for that. She wasn't here, either.

(Could she have done anything if she had been?)

"But now, I am," Julianna says, the meaning abundantly clear.

"I'm sorry," Elodie blurts out. She knows when she's stepped out of line, and she definitely did here.

(She remembers the ground shaking beneath her feet when she'd tried to taunt the Duchess of Ursul in the dungeons. She remembers Julianna vanishing in the middle of the night, with no one any the wiser as to how she had accomplished such a thing save for the fact that magic surely must have been involved.)

In response, Julianna merely inclines her head in the very slightest of nods. "Then, if you understand, take up the crystal and let us begin."

Elodie takes up the crystal. Its power thrums under her fingers, just as it had in the other time, the other place.

She will never let anything like that happen, ever again, to the people she loves. If this power can stop that, then... she is willing to take the risk that Julianna doesn't know about, too.

"Illuminate!"

Becoming a Lumen feels immediately right in a way that few things ever truly have. It feels like walking on air, like dancing under the moonlight, like hugging her mother and never letting go. 

Most of all, becoming a Lumen feels like coming home.

Sabine's music still sounds as lovely as it ever has, and Elodie quite happily hires her to be the court musician. Elodie doesn't really have time to train her to be a spy, though, so it's probably for the best that she already has agents. And she knows she has agents, now.

(She really wishes her father had told her about them sooner. Or at all, before she brought them up first.)

And then… then, there is the birthday party Elodie hasn't attended once. She'd tried to, the first time, and all that had earned her was an arrow to the gut, a trip back to the beginning, and a scar that aches even now if she thinks about it too hard. She tries not to think about it too hard, but she's not always very good at that.

She isn't very good at a lot of things. She hasn't accepted Gwenelle's invitation since that first time. Once, she managed to avoid it being taken as a massive social faux pas, but only once.

But... she is starting to realize that, no matter what else she does, Briony—the only daughter and heir of Corisande, Duchess of Mead—vanishes after that party. The party that Briony writes to her about every time, without fail, and hopes that she'll see her there.

Something is happening every time, and Elodie doesn't know what. But even if she and Briony were never really friends before all this, her letters are a point of consistency in the magical mess that is her life now, and even if they weren't…

Elodie doesn't just want Briony to die. Which is, in all likelihood, exactly the fate Briony meets with every time that she 'disappears.' Elodie hasn't been able to be optimistic, not really, since her mother died.

So this time, Elodie steels herself, makes plans to travel to Gwenelle's party in Sudbury, and throws herself into her classes in the hope that her reflexes might save her.

Her reflexes do not save her, and it takes all the composure Elodie can muster to avoid panicking. Honestly, the only reason she doesn't is because she's spent enough time studying battlefield medicine to know that taking the arrow out is a bad, bad idea.

The arrow hadn't been what killed her, not so much as pushing it through the other side had been. She knows that now.

(It hurts. Elodie reaches Sudbury alive.)

Briony is at the party, and is quite happy to see Elodie there, though probably not as happy as Elodie is to be there at all. Briony is also extremely bored, what with not being permitted to return home from school, and has decided that she absolutely must do something drastic to reclaim her parents’ attention.

Elodie… kind of gets it, actually. Though she'd never considered the Old Forest before, she does remember that her mother had seemed… more distant, than normal, the last time she'd seen her. Elodie had almost wondered if she was doing something wrong, if she needed to do something more to make her proud—

And then her mother had died, and Elodie felt terrible for doubting her in the first place, and she suddenly had much bigger problems.

Hopefully, Briony will never have to deal with a situation like that. As far as Elodie is aware, Corisande is in reasonably good health. But as far as she'd been aware, her mother had been too.

…Elodie still has much bigger problems. Such as the dawning suspicion that, for every time Elodie hadn't bothered to go to Gwenelle's party at all, Briony had gone off to the Old Forest on her own and had never made it out again.

She can't just tell Briony that, though.

What she can do is offer to help.

Offering to help Briony was a mistake.

Elodie knew that something wasn't right, but knowing that something isn't right and actually being able to do something about it are two different things entirely. That monster had Briony, which means there has to be some way to force it to let Briony go before it can eat them both, and the answer occurs to Elodie the week before attending the party: they are in a forest, and there almost certainly must be something in their environment she can use.

The next time, she's ready for the monster.

…But not that ready for the monster, because stinging plants only irritate it, and Briony's feeble attempt at fighting back does nothing.

Neither of them run fast enough to escape.

And so, once she finds herself back at the beginning again, Elodie studies running too.

But that isn't enough, either. Because their horses flee without them, and Briony trips, and Elodie could save herself but she'd never forgive herself for leaving Briony behind, and she's too out of practice with the fancy footwork usually required for dancing to help Briony out of danger.

Finally, the fourth time Elodie makes the mistake of riding out to the Old Forest with a girl she barely knows, she is skilled enough—but only just—to keep them both alive. They'd scarcely even made it into the forest. It took months of preparation to get out alive.

(And then, she forgets about the chocolates until it's too late. Again.)

Unfortunately, Briony is very unlikely to listen to anything Elodie has to say about how dangerous the Old Forest is, or how both of them have died no less than three times there, and unfortunately just throwing her in the dungeon until her mother comes to collect her would probably anger Elodie's magic tutor.

Elodie would like to not anger her magic tutor. She has seen some of the things Julianna can do. She is well aware that Julianna can probably do a lot more than she knows Elodie knows about, to say nothing of what she can't know Elodie knows about. She has no desire to be on the receiving end of any of those things.

It isn't even about dying, not anymore. She's scarcely afraid of death anymore, more of having to go back to the beginning and start over.

But she is—slowly—figuring out what to do, one thing at a time. One mistake at a time. The mistakes where she dies are almost better, because at least then she can start working immediately to fix them.

(Maybe, if she can kill the king of Shanjia—maybe, if she can avenge her mother, assuming he wasn't just lying about that to make her feel worse, which he really might have been—then everything will be fine. She just has to figure everything else out before then, and not die badly along the way. First things first: talk Briony into going home without getting herself killed.)

Her aunt is a Lumen.

Her aunt is a Lumen!

Every time, at the ball, Elodie had felt something—a strange tingle at the back of her mind—but until now, until today, until this time, she hadn't realized what it meant. She knows what it means now—she'd learned what a Lumen's power felt like just last week—but she hadn't connected the dots, not fully, until now.

She almost never sees her Aunt Lucille. She won't have another opportunity to talk to her about this for ages.

…Unfortunately, her Aunt Lucille doesn't know much more about being a Lumen than Elodie herself does, which is really disappointing. Still, more Lumens is more Lumens, and...

Elodie has an idea.

She entirely makes up the position of Lumen Minister on the spot, and she thinks her aunt knows that as well as she does. But Lucille looks genuinely touched by the gesture, as well as taken aback, and… she accepts!

It's nice to spend time with friends and family, isn't it?

Elodie is sufficiently trained to be able to survive the bandit attack on the way to Sudbury, so she goes, because she's learned by now that Briony cannot be dissuaded except in person and that Corisande is highly unlikely to believe Elodie about her own daughter unless that conversation, too, is carried out face-to-face.

And also, she would like Briony to not die. Even if she is not looking forward to being told she's smarter than she looks.

She spends the entire carriage ride to Sudbury waiting, just waiting, for an arrow. But the arrow never comes. Neither do the bandits.

Somehow, that is more unnerving than if she had been attacked.

She had been prepared for the chocolates, but... they don't arrive, either, and Elodie can't figure out what she did differently. The only big change she's made was giving her aunt a position that didn't otherwise exist, so maybe that affected both of those things somehow?

...She hopes that whoever is trying to kill her isn't trying to kill Aunt Lucille now, instead. She hopes that making her aunt the Lumen Minister didn't put a target on her back. But she can only hope so much, in the end, because she knows way too well what Nova thinks of Lumens.

"This is the sort of disaster for which a Lumen's power may be worth the cost," her father says, and he's never said that before.

He has never said that before, because she has only ever made it this far once before, and then...

She wasn't a Lumen, then. Because she'd listened to him and decided she was better off waiting. All that had done was get him killed, and give her no choice but to yield to the most horrible man she had ever met in her life.

(And she has, without fail, had to deal with Banion's antics—whatever they end up being—every single time.)

"If the fleet could be destroyed before they reached our waters, many lives would be saved," Joslyn continues, and he is right. It would save many lives... if such a thing were possible.

"I... I'll have to talk to my mentor," Elodie says, and makes herself scarce before she can see too much of the disapproval on her father's face.

Sinking the fleet with magic is possible, but not with just one Lumen. With three or four skilled and trained Lumens, it would be.

But between herself, Julianna, and Lucille, there is one fully-trained Lumen and two half-trained ones.

It won't be enough. And so Elodie doesn't take the risk.

She throws herself further into her studies instead, focusing on honing her magic at the exclusion of all else.

Elodie doesn't have to be the most skilled Lumen to ever walk the earth. She simply has to be better than Togami.

She isn't.

The last thing she sees is the horrified look on her father's face. She wonders, in the seconds she has before brief oblivion, if he’d seen something similar.

Elodie will never know. That timeline is gone. With her death, so is this one.

Her eyes are heavier than normal, when she awakens in the carriage. Her father is concerned about how heavily she had apparently been sleeping, but nothing more, a far cry from the man who watched his daughter be murdered. She won't let that happen again. She can't let that happen again.

And this time—this time—she knows exactly what she must do.

(There are burn scars running up her arms, now, in addition to the scar where the arrow had killed her.)

Elodie trains more, this time, and trains harder.

As a consequence of this, she notices something about her aunt that she hadn't, last time. That there are traces of something older, something far more powerful, than what Lucille had claimed before. If Elodie had known that last time, then maybe she could have demolished the Shanjian navy before Togami could come close to Nova.

But she didn't then. She does now.

She can't not press her aunt for more details. She'll make her the new Lumen Minister anyway, so what's the harm?

The next nineteen weeks of Elodie's life pass painfully slowly, and also painfully in general, because she can't move. According to her aunt, who Elodie could hear perfectly well, she'd requested to speak with her about something privately and then simply collapsed.

Julianna was suspicious. But Julianna wasn't given the chance to even try to help with Elodie's condition, because Joslyn blamed the known Lumen.

Elodie couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Could barely even breathe.

Her father scarcely leaves her bedside after having Julianna thrown into the dungeons. He cares, he has always cared—that has never been in any doubt.

But in the nineteen weeks Elodie has to wait for her aunt to finally finish the job, in the nineteen weeks that she spends waiting to die, she has more time for introspection than she ever has before. It isn't long before she comes to the conclusion that her father... is kind of useless, actually, considering that he's allowing his hatred of Lumens and of magic to blind him to the magic user that is right there.

At least she doesn't have to watch someone else deal with Togami. Lucille, evidently, doesn't care to use a comatose Lumen as a bargaining chip.

It takes all the composure she has in her and then some not to start yelling when, at last, she awakens in that carriage and can move again. It doesn't help that she is in the carriage with the man who had all the tools he needed to figure out that it was Lucille behind his daughter's sudden magical illness, not Julianna, and still let his hatred blind him.

For the first time, she doesn't hug her father.

(For the first time, Elodie can scarcely bring herself to look at him.)

"Pick up the crystal with your bare hands," Julianna instructs. "Press it against your chest, over your heart, and say—"

"Illuminate!"

As risky as Elodie knows it is, to meddle with magic when it is likely the only thing still keeping her alive, becoming a Lumen had felt right, and awakening on the carriage ride home without her crystal had felt like a part of herself had been torn away.

Elodie hasn't turned away the Duchess of Ursul once since the first time she became a Lumen. She hasn't been able to make anywhere near as much progress as she needs to, not yet—and it absolutely doesn't help that she has to relearn the same basics every time—but she has been getting faster and faster at retrieving her crystal.

With the transformation complete, with her crystal back where it belongs, Elodie looks at Julianna and asks, "When do we begin?"

Except... there's a puzzled look on Julianna's face. That is new. Why is that new?

"How did you..." Her brow furrows. "Did your mother tell you?"

"Did she…”

Elodie trails off as she realizes, suddenly, that she has made a mistake. No, not just any mistake, a Mistake. Julianna might actually believe her, if Elodie confided in her of all people, and that is precisely why Julianna cannot know.

"I don't remember!" Elodie says hastily. "It just… felt like the right thing to say? Is that not normal?"

Julianna frowns. "No. It is not."

But she drops the matter there, at least, and doesn’t press any further.

She trains extensively, at the exclusion of just about everything else, to ensure she has the skills she'll need for the Grand Ball.

...The skills she will really need for the Grand Ball, that is. She realizes on the stairs that it entirely slipped her mind to practice dancing. Or maintaining her composure. Or just about anything else that would be relevant here.

It's fine. While she'd prefer to avoid stepping on any toes, literal or otherwise, not being a victim of the world's slowest murder is a much higher priority here. She dances with Julianna to get it over with and scarcely pays attention to the gala at all, otherwise, before she has a chance to talk to Lucille alone.

Her heart is pounding, once she does. She already feels cold.

(Elodie hadn't stopped feeling cold after Lucille cast her spell, not until she found herself back at the beginning. She had almost forgotten what warmth felt like.)

"Dear? Are you alright?" Lucille asks, and it takes all the restraint Elodie has in her not to shudder at the mere sound of her aunt's voice. "You look rather pale."

"I'm fine," Elodie says. She takes a deep breath. "You're a Lumen."

If she says the same things as she did last time, does the same things as she does last time, then Lucille should attack her the same way as she did last time. Julianna had been more than a little perplexed at Elodie's request to learn how to counter the magic of others, but she had agreed to teach her how better to resist magic regardless, and... it'll be enough. If it isn't, she isn't sure that she'll make it another nineteen weeks without losing her mind along the way.

Lucille says the same things, at least, claiming that her crystal called to her though she knew very little of its workings. Elodie knows that to be a lie now.

(She could just attack her now, but... Lucille is still her aunt, and... perhaps a part of Elodie is hoping, somehow, that the last time had been a fluke. That maybe, just maybe, Lucille will be more reasonable.)

Lucille is not more reasonable. Lucille tries to do exactly the same thing, but this time, Elodie is ready for her. This time, she stands her ground, watching as Lucille's own magic is turned back on her, and...

...And then her aunt is there, lying on the ground, as Elodie herself was. Except not as Elodie herself was, because Elodie then was still alive. Lucille isn't breathing.

"Elodie!?"

Oh. There's her father. Dimly, she remembers that he had been the first to enter the room last time, when she...

"Aunt Lucille was an evil Lumen," Elodie says, miserable for multiple reasons. "She tried to kill me."

She doesn't trust herself to say anything more.

Someone Elodie doesn't even know is murdered, inexplicably, by... what seems to be some kind of residual magic in the aftermath of what wasn't quite a duel between her and Lucille. That doesn't bode well for the duel she intends to win against Togami, but if Julianna can take care of the aftereffects of this, then... presumably she can do the same for that. If something happens.

With her luck, she entirely expects something to happen, but as long as no one Elodie cares about dies—she can live with that.

There are no bandits on the road to Sudbury. There are no poisoned chocolates sent to her as a gift.

Elodie supposes that answers the question of who was responsible for both of those.

(Could Lucille have been responsible for the snake in the garden, too? Milk vipers aren't native to the area, and at this point Elodie wouldn't put anything past her. At least she's dead now… even if Charlotte will probably never forgive Elodie for killing her mother.)

When the King of Shanjia arrives, his eyes like molten steel, Elodie is ready for him. She agrees to the duel with so little hesitation that even the man himself is taken aback, but evidently not enough to back down, which is good.

Before Lucille, Elodie had never killed anyone before. It's easier, to kill someone she has no personal connection to—especially when she remembers what he will now never have the chance to do.

Togami lies dead, and the Shanjian army in disarray. Nova will likely have a bandit problem for years to come.

That's fine. That is a fixable problem.

Everything else has, at the very least, gone alright. Briony didn't go off to get herself killed, neither Maree nor Hellas wants her dead, and she even managed to keep Adair alive without having to give Arisse more power than she already has. Her father isn't getting married to Countess Sirin, too, which is great!

So… maybe, just maybe, it's time to break the magic she has found herself continuously entrapped in.

…Even if there is no way she can do so alone. But if she was able to defeat Lucille, if she was able to defeat Togami, then surely she can handle one uncomfortable conversation.

"You wished to speak with me?" Julianna raises an eyebrow. "There is nothing more I can teach you, I'm afraid—"

"This isn't about that," Elodie says. "You wanted to know how I knew how to activate my crystal."

Another eyebrow goes up to join the first. "You did know, then.”

She doesn’t sound entirely surprised.

"I lied to you," Elodie confesses. “Sorry. It was for a good reason, though. I’m sure you’ll understand!"

“...Elaborate,” Julianna says.

Elodie breathes in. Breathes out again. If she enlists Julianna’s help to break this… this continuous, consistent looping of time… then there will be no going back.

There are a few things she could have done better. But nothing crucial.

And she’s very, very tired of waking up in that carriage.

"Twenty-eight weeks after my mother’s death," Elodie says evenly, "I was attacked and killed by bandits. Thirty-two weeks after my mother’s death, I was fatally poisoned by chocolates. Thirty-six weeks after my mother’s death—"

Her breath hitches. Thirty-six weeks after her mother’s death, her father had sacrificed himself to save her, because she wasn’t good enough.

(Her patience with him might be all but nonexistent at this point, but… he cares. He always has cared, so much, both for her and her mother.)

"You ‘died’ again?" Julianna asks.

Elodie nods, because if her reckoning was correct she had actually died then when Lucille killed her.

(Though, if she is right about the bandits—about the chocolates—then Lucille is directly responsible for far more than just that single time.)

"I remember dying," Elodie says faintly. "Every time, I wake up back at the beginning. Back at the carriage. It isn’t always because I died—there was… one time when I reached my coronation and found myself back at the beginning shortly afterwards, but that… isn’t a bad thing. Really. Considering everything that happened that time."

"I see," Julianna says. There is an unreadable look in her eyes. "Do you have any proof of this?"

"The fact that I know what will happen in advance," Elodie challenges. " I knew how to activate my crystal because I have done it before. I knew that Lucille would try to kill me because she has done it before. I knew about Togami…"

"Hmm." The duchess looks unconvinced.

"And," Elodie says, "I… I have scars. From every time. The ones that left marks, at least, and… at least most of them are fairly easily hidden, but…"

Swallowing her inhibitions, she pulls up the sleeve of her shirt. She hasn’t been able to wear anything with short sleeves since Togami killed her, because her arms had taken the brunt of the blast that did her in. The burn marks are still visible.

(She doesn’t think Alice believes that they came from an accident at school, but Alice is a maid and a commoner and has no real way to verify this.)

"I don't know what caused this," Elodie continues, "but I suspected it was magic before I began learning how to be a Lumen. Now, I've learned everything you have to teach me, but... nothing tells me how to break this. How to make certain that I don't have to go back to the beginning, again, once I reach my coronation."

"Hm," Julianna says thoughtfully. "Strange things happen when powerful Lumens die."

"…Like Aunt Lucille?"

(Julianna had tried to help. But Elodie's father drove her out, and the Duchess of Ursul quietly departed before she could be stripped of her titles. It... wasn't much, it wasn't enough, but it was more than anyone else had managed at all.)

"Like Lucille, yes," Julianna agrees. "Her final desire, in all likelihood—"

"—was to kill me," Elodie says. "But the creeping shade..."

"What remained of her will was undirected. Unconscious. Had it been conscious, that shade likely would have instead come for you."

Elodie shudders. "Then, my situation with time? What caused that?"

Julianna regards her for a long moment. At last, she says, "Given when it began..."

"My mother," Elodie realizes. "So she did die from magic!"

"I did not say that. Though it is possible, I... I was not here." Julianna sighs. "She could have died from magic. But it is equally possible that she died from other means."

"But it likely is my mother's death that caused... this." She can feel the beginning of tears welling up in her eyes. So much for maintaining the composure that everyone in this court holds in such high regard. "Why? I don't..."

"Remember that a Lumen's last desire is unconscious," Julianna emphasizes. "I would not be surprised if Fidelia's last thoughts were of you. Of protecting you."

"Oh," Elodie says numbly. "I… I had no idea…”

Though that does explain why this horrid time loop continues to send her back to the carriage ride home, and no further. Why it has never once allowed her to see her mother again, not alive.

(The casket, at the funeral, had been closed. No one has ever been willing to tell her why, and Elodie supposes it ultimately doesn’t matter, except for the simple, crucial detail that she is beginning to forget her own mother’s face.)

Something else occurs to her, then. Something that someone hadn’t said, this time, but certainly had in another time. Another life. Another loop.

"Togami told me that he killed my mother,” Elodie says. "I don’t know if he was lying."

Julianna’s eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly. "He did, did he?"

"If he was able to attack someone from all the way in Shanjia, then..."

She trails off. She thinks Julianna knows what she's not saying: why only kill her? Why not murder Elodie, too, before she could become a threat?

"It is entirely possible," Julianna says, "that he was simply taking credit for an assassin he hired."

Yes, alright, that is... very possible, Elodie will admit that. But she had hired an assassin herself, if not in this particular timeline, in order to quietly do away with Arisse before she could become a major problem. That had worked fine. Less fine was the fact that the Earl of Io somehow knew. (Or, possibly, blamed her for Briony's death instead—Elodie is pretty sure that asking him to clarify exactly whose blood was on her hands would have only made him angrier.)

If she had felt the need to gloat about Arisse's death—which, for the record, she really didn't, she regretted it before the next time she found herself back in the carriage—then she wouldn't have taken credit for the work of another. But maybe Togami is different.

…Strike that, Togami is obviously different. Togami is the sort of person to marry his way into more power than he ever should have seen in his life and not be contented with it.

It would take quite a lot, Elodie thinks, for her to ever become anything like him.

(Wouldn't it?)

The issue of Togami aside—for he is dead and shall remain dead, unable to hurt anyone Elodie cares about ever again so long as she breaks the loop here—Julianna does have an idea. She isn't quite willing to share what her idea is with Elodie, because she wouldn't be Julianna of Ursul if she wasn't at least a little vague and cryptic about important things, but Elodie has gathered that it will require at least one other fully-trained Lumen.

For obvious reasons, Lucille is out of the question. Elodie herself also is out of the question, though for entirely different reasons, as she is the subject of the enchantment that needs to be broken and cannot participate.

"So it's hopeless, then?" Elodie asks.

Much to her surprise, Julianna shakes her head. "There is another. Have I never told you of her?"

"No," Elodie says. "Never."

"Hm," says Julianna thoughtfully. "I suppose she must never have had sufficient reason to reveal herself."

"...You aren't going to just tell me who she is, are you?"

Julianna almost smiles. "It is not my secret to share, little princess. But I do believe she would be willing to act in aid of you, provided that her identity remained safe. I will speak with her. We have until your coronation, yes?"

"We do," Elodie confirms.

"Then I will meet with you again next week,” Julianna says, and that is that.

That would be that. It should be all there is to it. But magic is fickle, at times—Elodie knows that well now.

It is a coincidence that Elodie happens to be walking by the temple when the main building simply collapses.

For a few moments, Elodie can only stare. Then she runs, for while she is far from competent in most fields, she knows her skills when it comes to magic.

Those skills, unfortunately, aren’t quite enough. There were only two people in the building at the time of the collapse: a priestess of the Second Circle, and the Duchess of Ursul.

One was injured. The other perished, crushed to death in the ruins of a building that had, up until that point, seemed entirely structurally sound. A single Lumen crystal was left behind in the wreckage: a pale blue, like a clear sky reflected in water.

...Julianna’s was blue, is blue, but a darker shade. Elodie knows it isn’t hers before the healers confirm that Julianna yet lives, and the priestess does not.

"That priestess was the secret Lumen you mentioned," Elodie says, once she and Julianna have a moment alone in the hospital she helped fund. "I should have known. She’s approached me before, but I thought… well, offering to teach one magic doesn’t necessarily mean the instructor knows how to use it from experience…”

Julianna scarcely acknowledges her. Or maybe she doesn’t acknowledge her, it’s difficult to tell. There is a haunted look in her eyes, like a part of her perhaps died with that priestess. Maybe a part of her did. Julianna hasn't spoken to anyone else since the building's collapse.

Now that Elodie thinks about it—she had known that the two women knew each other. It was that priestess who sought Elodie out on the occasions that she had Julianna imprisoned or sent away, and when she hadn't, she had seen Julianna with her in the gardens on… at least a few occasions?

Admittedly, Julianna had seemed busy. But Julianna has also never been romantically linked to a man and is likely more interested in the Duchess of Hellas than her brother, the Duke of Maree.

Several things are falling into place quite suddenly, several things that Elodie perhaps could have—and should have—discerned far sooner.

(She never took that priestess up on her offer. She never even learned her name. Now the priestess is dead, and Elodie's magic mentor is the least composed she has ever seen her.)

"What was her name?" Elodie asks, very carefully, taking a seat on the edge of the cot Julianna is currently confined to.

"…Selene," Julianna says. Her voice is hoarse. "Her name was Selene. She was beautiful."

Elodie slowly nods, unsure of what else to say. What else to do.

"Might I ask what happened?" Elodie asks out loud.

What went wrong? she doesn't say, but from the half-hearted glare she receives from Julianna in response, she has a feeling Julianna knows exactly what she wants to ask and hasn’t. Julianna has always been… very, very stoic. And very good at reading people without giving much away herself.

Elodie has gotten better at reading people, slowly and painstakingly, but she lacks the natural knack for it that many nobles seem to have. She wonders if Julianna ever had to learn that skill, too, for it to seem so effortless now.

"There are two possibilities," Julianna says, closing her eyes. "We had been discussing your situation. Selene… she was always more adept at divination than I. She thought, and I agreed, that we should at least attempt to scry what your future could hold before beginning any spellwork in earnest. She was about to start the spell, or… perhaps she had when I looked away..."

Julianna's gaze, when she looks at Elodie again, is distinctly unfocused. Elodie remembers a lesson in her medicine classes, suddenly, about head injuries. If Julianna has one, it would explain a few things. Like why she's being so oddly forthcoming.

…Though that also could be the grief. It could easily be the grief.

Grief, Elodie has come to realize, looks different for everyone.

"How would that cause the building to collapse?"

"The spell set by your mother's death may be more powerful than either of us assumed," Julianna says. "…Or, the timing could have been a coincidence. It could very well have been something else."

"What else?" Elodie presses.

"I have taught you enough, more than enough, for you to discern that on your own." Julianna eyes her meaningfully. Or as meaningfully as she can, given her condition, which is still surprisingly meaningful.

And the thing is, Julianna has taught her a lot. Elodie won't deny that. But there is so, so much more that she hasn't taught her, that she hasn't told Elodie unless she literally had no other choice, and—

"I'm tired of having to figure everything out on my own!" Elodie bursts out. "I'm so, so tired of no one telling me what I need to know to be a good queen! Or even an okay queen, I just... I just want to keep Nova together, and apparently I can't rely on anyone to help me do that! I... I-I can't..."

Something warm and wet trickles down her face. She raises a hand to her eyes, dabbing at them desperately—uselessly—but to no avail. She's crying. She'd been so, so good about not crying for so long, and it isn’t like there are extenuating circumstances this time.

Queens aren't supposed to cry. Nova doesn't have one of those anymore, and won't formally until she turns fifteen. But informally—

Informally, she has to take her mother's place somehow, or no one will.

(Surely her mother must have cried before, at some point or another in her life, but she never has that Elodie remembers. She probably hasn't since she was Elodie's age. Elodie can't picture either of those things.)

"…Princess," Julianna says. "No. Elodie. Look at me."

Elodie looks at her.

"When I see you, I see your mother," she continues, holding Elodie's gaze. "I failed your mother, and Nova, by not being there for her when she needed me. I should have been there for her. I am here, now, for you, but it is… it is easy for me to forget what you do not know when you look so much like her."

"Do I…" Elodie's words come out in a hushed whisper. "I look like her?"

"Your eyes are your father's," Julianna says. "But everything else about your appearance harkens back to her, in one way or another."

"I'm not her!"

"No," she agrees, "and you never will be. I should have recognized this long ago."

Elodie blinks hard. Once again, she feels far younger than just a few weeks shy of fifteen. Far less mature.

"Would you tell me the answer?" Elodie asks without much hope. "Please? Just this once?"

"Strange things happen," Julianna says, "when powerful Lumens die. A particularly powerful Lumen died recently."

Julianna... isn't outright telling her anything, even now. But that is a far better hint than the one she'd given Elodie before. It’s actually enough for her to piece the rest together on her own, which Elodie supposes might have been the point of not telling her to begin with.

"Togami," Elodie says, and receives an answering nod. "His death caused this?”

"It certainly could have," Julianna allows. "Or it may have been Selene’s own magic interfering with the remnants of your mother’s in a way that the latter did not like... or a combination of both."

Slowly, Elodie nods. "So I have to avoid meddling with... my mother's spell...?"

"Most likely, it will break on its own when you meet the conditions for it." Julianna frowns. "If I were to guess... Fidelia's final wish was for you, her daughter, to be safe and happy."

"So I need to be safe and happy for it to end?"

Elodie is, technically, safe enough right now. But she definitely isn't happy. Not when an innocent woman is dead, one way or another, because of her.

"That is likely, yes," Julianna says.

"...I can't kill Togami again," Elodie realizes. "I... likely can't risk killing Lucille again, either. But she is going to keep trying to kill me, and so will Togami..."

"Not with magic. Not directly." There is a pained look in Julianna's eyes, and Elodie can't tell if it's because of her or because of the head injury. "If your powers do not directly clash with another Lumen, then there will likely be less in the way of side effects. More manageable ones."

"Less lethal?"

Julianna nods. "Considerably so."

"Then I need to find another way to kill him and Lucille," Elodie says resolutely. Her shoulders slump. "I have nothing but time."

"You have more than that." Julianna breathes out, breathes in again. Exhales slowly, the air escaping in a manner just as measured as everything else she does. "Your mother would be proud of you for trying."

Elodie blinks hard. "But she wouldn't want this."

Julianna inclines her head in a slight nod and says nothing more. Her gaze follows Elodie as she departs the hospital.

It isn't until her hand is on the doorknob of her own chambers, until Elodie is about to step inside and politely ask Alice to find something to do elsewhere so she has the privacy to break down into even more of a sobbing mess than she had in front of Julianna, that it occurs to her that Julianna might have been trying herself—however ineffectually—to make Elodie feel better.

The next weekend arrives. For the first time since the carriage, Elodie goes to pay her father a visit.

He looks... surprised, very surprised, to see her. Elodie can't quite help the stab of guilt in her heart at the fact that he hadn't been expecting her to visit at all.

"Good afternoon, Father—are you busy?" Elodie asks, and a part of her almost hopes that he will be.

But Joslyn shakes his head, and sets the report he had been holding down upon his desk, and crosses the room to wrap his arms around her without a word. Her father holds her tightly, very tightly, like he’s almost afraid to let her go.

Maybe he is afraid to let her go, in a more figurative sense.

Elodie hugs him back. Tears prick at her eyes even now, but she blinks them back before her father can see. This conversation needs to happen. Perhaps it is selfish of her to have it now, when time will certainly cycle back to the week of her mother’s death in only a few short weeks, but if it goes catastrophically wrong…

(She had agreed to let Julianna take drastic action to secure her Lumen crystal once, and only once. Seeing that look in her father’s eyes had hurt, even more than the knowledge that Julianna had killed people because she wasn’t fast enough on her own.)

"We need to talk," she says, once she's pulled away. "About... a few things. Several things."

Joslyn silently raises an eyebrow.

Elodie takes a deep breath. Lets it out. She's had time, a lot of time, to plan on what exactly she was going to say.

Of course, perhaps the fondest saying among her military instructors is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and she very much understands why. Her father isn't the enemy, not even close to it. He's just... frustrating, sometimes, immensely so.

"...Elodie?" he asks.

"Why do you hate Lumens so much?" Elodie asks, instead of anything she had actually planned. "Mother was a Lumen. I'm a Lumen."

You were a Lumen. And then you weren't anything at all.

"I don't hate Lumens," her father says slowly, carefully, and she wants to argue but she doesn't think he's actually done speaking yet. "I strongly dislike the high cost that magic always results in, and I disagree just as strongly with the Duchess of Ursul's teaching methods, but I would not say that I hate either."

"Of course you wouldn't," Elodie grumbles.

He sighs. "Elodie—"

"I'm not a child anymore," she says. "I may not be queen yet—"

"You are not queen yet," Joslyn says.

"I know!" Composure. She needs to remember her composure. "But half of the time, you act like I am and I have all the answers that I don't. The other half, you act like I'm still too young to understand anything about courtly affairs. I can't... I can't be too young and not at the same time! Stop being useless! Stop treating me like I'm useless!"

So much for composure.

"Elodie..."

"Maybe you don't hate Lumens," Elodie says, "but you're letting your strong dislike for magic and its users blind you to how it can be useful. If I hadn't begun training as a Lumen long before Togami ever arrived, I wouldn't have stood a chance at winning against him."

"If it had come to that," Joslyn says stiffly, "I wouldn't have let you die."

"I know," Elodie chokes out. "I know, Father."

He sighs deeper this time. There's a sadness in his eyes when he looks at her again. "Elodie... you're a very talented young woman. Your mother would be very proud of you."

"What about you?"

"Of course," Joslyn says without hesitation.

"Even the fact that I'm a Lumen?"

He nods, albeit slowly. "You have your mother's heart."

"I know," Elodie whispers. "This won't even matter soon, but... is it too much to ask for you to help me?"

"It isn't," Joslyn says.

"Then why aren't you?"

"I..." He frowns. His brow furrows. "I am doing what I can to, Elodie. Is there something you would rather I do different?"

There are quite a few somethings Elodie would rather he did differently. Starting with putting her in contact with her mother's intelligence network regardless of whether or not she remembers to actually mention it. But all of them are things that it is... far, far too late to do differently now.

"...Just listen," Elodie says. "Please."

Maybe she'll have better luck with this at another time. A much earlier time.

The day of her coronation arrives. She's somehow less of an emotional wreck than she was the last time, because this time her father is actually alive. Julianna is recovering slowly from her injuries, but has recuperated enough to swear Ursul's fealty to the crown.

"LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!" the people say, and Elodie knows it can't last.

But she has a plan. If she can't kill Lucille with magic, then she'll have to kill her another way. The same thing goes for Togami. She should still be able to use magic for other things, so long as she doesn't leverage her power against any other Lumens.

…Assuming, of course, that Elodie has the opportunity at all.

"Tonight?" Julianna asks, when Elodie slips back into her quarters.

"Tonight," Elodie agrees. "...You won't remember. You never have before."

"Hm," she says. "Good."

(Julianna would never have offered to train her if she'd remembered what Elodie did to her before she knew better. Maybe she would have forgiven her, maybe she wouldn't have. The fact of the matter is that Elodie will never know.)

"I think I'm going to try to win the naval battle," Elodie says, all too aware of how little time she has left. "I'm not sure how. Maybe if we can build more ships... but that still might not be quite enough."

"Perhaps your powers can make the difference," Julianna says, and... that's a good idea, actually, she hadn't thought of that. "Good night, Queen Elodie."

Elodie nods. Hesitates, before retiring to her own room.

"Goodbye," she says, "and thank you for everything."

"We're almost home," Joslyn says. "Your room is just the way you left it."

Her room isn't just the way she left it, but Elodie does appreciate the thought. It isn't as if her father knows the difference.

(When the Duchess of Ursul comes to pay her respects to Elodie's mother, she says—and does—exactly the same things that she had the first time and every time since. Elodie knows her a little better now, but Julianna doesn't know her at all.)

Winning the naval battle against Shanjia is much, much, much easier said than done. If nothing else, she has ample time to prepare for it, even if a lot of that time is spent finding a reason for building extra ships. If nothing else, she has the time to figure out how to deal with her other big Lumen-shaped problem.

She can't kill Lucille with magic. But she can't just have her executed without proof, either—for one thing, it likely wouldn't work, and for another, she would lose the support of almost every other noble instantly. She has had enough problems with Arisse already. More with Hellas and Maree.

...Mostly Maree. Mostly Banion of Maree. Honestly, it's almost comforting watching him consistently try to twist things in his favor, because he does it the same way every time.

It almost seems like the best option for handling Lucille is to create the position of Lumen Minister for her. The assassinations—most of them, anyway—had stopped once she did that.

(But Elodie couldn't forget what Lucille had done to her if she wanted to.)

Not going to command the Novan navy herself always seems to result in a loss, no matter what else she does. Attempting to sink the entire Shanjian force with the combined force of herself, Julianna, Selene, and Lucille works at far too high a cost, and if she could go back to not knowing what effects it would have, she probably would.

Yet going personally—even as a Lumen—can't guarantee a victory.

The first time Elodie goes, she drowns. At least it's over quickly, then.

The second time Elodie goes, she doesn't drown, but they still aren't able to win, and she spends the next week recovering from nearly drowning. Which is, honestly, worse.

The third time, though? The result there, at last, is a hard-fought victory.

(Togami does not invade Nova, this time. But Elodie has it on good authority that he managed to escape drowning or capture somehow, which means this can't work, that this can't last. That she needs to go back, yet again, and find another way.)

Lucille is one thing. Lucille is, at least, a lot more predictable now that Elodie knows she wants her dead. She's a Lumen, and she wants her daughter on the throne instead of Elodie so that she can have more power, but... for now, at least, making her a Lumen Minister seems to appease her.

And then there is Togami, who is starting to feel like a cockroach. Nothing Elodie seems to do can actually kill him, except doing so herself with magic, and she knows all too well what effects that can have.

She isn't willing to risk those, not if she doesn't have to. And she has all the time in the world to figure out how she doesn't have to.

And so it is that she makes an impulsive decision, puts the problem of Togami aside for a while, and begins lessons in something entirely new.

Elodie has always loved music. But for a long time, it had been too painful—too personal—for her to even begin to rip the bandaging off and begin training in earnest.

Her mother had little to no formal training, and Elodie has no way of knowing if she had anything in the way of talent. But she'd sounded fine, more than fine, to Elodie. She was Elodie's mother.

(She's gone now. And it has always hurt too much, in the past, for her to even consider taking formal classes in music. But Elodie did miss it, and... if she has all the time in the world, then it can't hurt to spend a loop or two just... taking some time for herself, for once.)

For the first time ever, Elodie has formal musical training when Sabine the musician comes to seek the patronage of the court. For the first time ever, she comes to realize something: that while this musician's skills are certainly nothing to sneeze at, they aren't anywhere near as impressive as Elodie had formerly assumed they were, which makes her think that perhaps Sabine's true skills lie elsewhere.

It is ironic, immensely so, to learn that the woman Elodie had considered training as a secret agent when she actually had the time... had, in fact, already been a spy all along.

But now she's Elodie's spy.

(And now, Elodie knows what to hire her for in the future.)

...Elodie wins the musical competition.

She hadn't been expecting that at all. She'd been expecting to do okay, like she had in everything else she happens to have the skills for when the tournament time arrived. In the past, she'd managed to win the first round, but nothing more, when it came to jousting and fencing. She'd done okay in falconry, and managed to lead the mounted parade well enough, and somehow managed to place in the top ten in archery.

She'd never tried to compete in the musical competition before, not after she made an attempt at competing in something she had no actual skills in once and came to regret it thoroughly afterwards. It was at that point that Elodie discovered she actually hated failure far, far more than she thought.

She hadn't expected much.

She really hadn't expected this. Having to place a laurel around her own neck, as near-queen, is a little awkward, but she makes it work, and the other winners accept her among them graciously.

After the tournament, Sabine approaches her—impressed by her showing at the tournament, and wondering if they could perhaps play together in the future. Sabine's main talents might lie as much in spycraft as Julianna's lie in being a Lumen, but she certainly seems to think that Elodie's lie in music, which is… very, very flattering.

For her part, Elodie once again finds it immensely ironic that she had thought she would have to train this woman to be an agent.

Togami arrives.

Elodie isn't ready. 

In fairness, she's done some amount of training as a Lumen, but she remembers all too well that her training alone hasn't always been enough. Togami, obviously, has been a Lumen for far longer than Elodie has. Brute force simply isn't going to cut it.

Last time, she'd managed to distract him with illusions.

But this time… this time, she isn't sure if she can win the duel against him. She has spent some amount of time training in visual decoration—she had to, or else her instructors wouldn't let her continue with her musical training, and she really wanted to keep going with music—but not enough. Not unless she gets really lucky.

(If she has learned anything throughout her countless attempts at reaching her coronation with herself and her family and Nova all in one piece, it is that luck is reserved for everyone but her.)

As Togami awaits her answer, Elodie hesitates. She isn't alone here, of course. She's surrounded by her own court, most members of which were selected by her mother. Some, though—Julianna, Selene, Lucille—are her own selections, for better or for worse. She doubts her father knows that there are five Lumens in this room, not two.

If the situation comes to it, Elodie would bet that Togami would have a very difficult time fending off four Lumens at once. But she doesn't trust Lucille to not change sides if it suits her, and even in a best-case scenario, it would still be killing him with magic.

(But she can't just lay down and die. And she can't let anyone else die for her, either.)

"To gain your power, I am willing to wager my own," Togami says smoothly. His eyes gleam with malice. With greed. "Shall we begin?"

Elodie doesn't have a choice. It's time to die to Togami again, to try again from the beginning. Perhaps this time without wasting any time on silly frivolities like music lessons. What good did they ever do for her, anyway? She should have known better.

…Except.

Her gaze lands on Sabine, who meets her eyes and mouths something. The word 'musician.'

Togami was a musician before he became a king, wasn't he? Elodie had thought of that when hiring Sabine this most recent time, and she’s honestly not surprised that Sabine knows about that too.

Maybe she can appeal to his better nature, if there is one to be appealed to at all. If there is, it must be buried deep. Very deep.

But Elodie doesn’t want to die here. Even if it doesn’t matter, in the end. Even if it won’t stick.

(It can hurt to try. But that hasn’t stopped her before.)

"Wait! We’re civilized people here," Elodie says, prompting a raised eyebrow from Togami. "And if I might die… I need to compose myself first."

Togami doesn’t stop her. And so, Elodie takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and begins to sing.

Elodie's favorite song isn't a particularly long one, or a particularly involved one. But it is the song that she sang in the tournament, and she'd sung it then, not because she thought it was her best song, but because she'd first learned it from her mother. Because her mother, busy as she was, loved Elodie with all her heart, and this song—

This song had become inexplicably connected with that, for Elodie, to the point where she couldn't even listen to the words or melody for... some time.

(Before the tournament, she hadn't sung the song since she began training formally.)

"...Pretty," Togami says, otherwise silent until she had finished. "What is it?"

"Something my mother used to sing to me," Elodie says. "She was the Queen. She was always so busy, but she loved me. When she had time to be with me, to hold me, to play and sing... I miss those moments."

Elodie isn't a child anymore. Her fifteenth birthday arrives in less than a month, provided she is alive to see it. If she isn't, then it won't matter anyway in the grand scheme of things.

But it does, because Elodie has lived the same forty weeks—certain parts of it less than others—over and over and over. She's lost count of exactly how long it has been for her, since her mother died, but it has probably been multiple years at this point. She should have been able to move on from her mother's death by now. She should have been able to move on from a lot of things by now.

She hasn't, because—literally and figuratively—she can’t move on. She can’t keep going. Not yet.

"Are you crying?" Togami sounds incredulous. "How pathetic."

Elodie doesn't rise to his goading, not today. "Don't you sing to your children?"

He stiffens. "That is no business of yours."

"Isn't it?" Elodie isn't sure about this anymore. But the worst that he can do to her is kill her. Again. "If we fight—if I defeat you somehow—then your children will miss those songs."

Togami's gaze hardens. "Well, then. Perhaps you had better lose."

"And what happens then?" Elodie asks.

"What?"

"When you've killed me," she says bluntly enough that she hears someone else in the room gasp out loud, "and taken my crystal. What do you do then?"

There is an unreadable look upon the Shanjian King's face. But he doesn't stop her.

So Elodie keeps going. "You came from nothing and made yourself a king. But that wasn't enough for you. So you pushed boundaries, you conquered territory, you came after Nova."

He has continued to come after Nova, every time, no matter what she does differently. She probably can't stop him from coming for Nova, not unless she could somehow go back further than she already has. Whether he was responsible for her mother's death at all—directly or via proxy—it was probably her death that set his plans fully in motion.

After all, Elodie isn't queen yet. She hasn't been a Lumen for very long, and if she hadn't known better (learned better via trial and error and so, so much death) she could very well not be a Lumen at all when Shanjia comes knocking. Compared to her mother, she seems a much easier target.

But maybe she can use that. She doesn't know how old Togami's own children must be, but she has been informed—time and time again—that she looks younger than she is. That, if others didn't know better, they wouldn't think she was on the cusp of adulthood at all.

"After me, do you go home to your children?" Elodie asks. "Or do you go after another crystal, another domain?"

"Be quiet," Togami snaps. "You know nothing of the world."

Elodie certainly doesn't know everything about the world. But she has learned a great deal more than nothing where it's concerned, perhaps more than any fourteen-year-old girl reasonably should know if she wasn't reliving the same weeks after her mother's death over and over and over. For so long, Togami has been nothing but this harrowing enemy to her, someone who has to be stopped one way or another. Somehow.

Maybe there is still a man behind those molten eyes.

Maybe, just maybe, that man still has a heart. 

Togami surely must have had a heart once. If he hasn't shattered it in his rise to power, or had it shattered by others for him—and even if that is the case, there must still be pieces of it left behind. She has no way of knowing if he ever was a good person, exactly, but Elodie doesn't think he could have possibly started out life with a desire for murder and power and Lumen crystals.

(And even if he always was like this... what does she have to lose?)

"You have the world!" Elodie bursts out. "But if you're not happy, what's the point?"

The Shanjian delegation seems shocked by the fact that she'd dare to talk back at all. The Novans here seem equally shocked at Elodie's audacity. Admittedly, that shock isn't exactly unwarranted. The Elodie that existed before everything went wrong wouldn't have dared to stand up to Togami, would have been too busy shaking in her nonliteral boots for the option to even occur to her as something to try. But that Elodie is long gone.

As far as anyone else knows, it has only been thirty-six weeks. Elodie knows that it has been, and also far, far longer.

"It doesn't have to be like this." For a brief, fleeting moment, Elodie feels like she can live up to her mother's legacy after all. "You and I—we could be friends. We could learn from each other. We could be part of something greater than ourselves. A new peace."

She looks into Togami's eyes and finds something there she has never seen before: hesitance. He is actually, miraculously, listening to her.

Elodie can't stop now. So she doesn't. Instead, she adds the finishing touch: "And you can sing to your children."

"I..." Togami looks far more hesitant. He admits, at last, "I have not sung in a very long time."

She can't believe this is working. But it seems, somehow, like it is working.

So Elodie beams at him and says, "I'll teach you my songs."

She holds out two open hands. Two empty hands. He of all people should know that she doesn't need a weapon to attack, but in this position it would be difficult to.

(It would also be very difficult to defend in this position, and she suspects he knows that as well as she does. She’s doing it for a reason.)

"We can do this," Elodie says hopefully. "Together. No one has to die today. Not me, and not you."

For a long moment—long enough that Elodie is terrified that this mad plan hasn't worked, that this isn't enough to sway him—Togami stares at her. Frozen. Unblinking.

Elodie holds his gaze, willing him—insomuch as she can without using magic, because he would notice her using magic, and... maybe, just maybe, her words alone can stop a war.

He blinks first. Then he sighs, and he takes Elodie's offered hands in his own.

And the war between Shanjia and Nova comes to an end, just like that.

Elodie isn't sure if she has done everything right, this time, but Nova is looking far better than it ever has before in the weeks leading up to her coronation. Briony didn't go off and die in the Old Forest. Adair wasn't assassinated. Gwenelle doesn't hate her for not being able to attend her birthday party without dying, and as far as public opinion regarding Lumens goes, it has never been this high before. Lucille has stopped trying to kill her. Togami stopped his conquest to return to his family.

She could settle for this.

A part of her wishes that she could somehow kill Togami, even now. Lucille, too.

But this outcome is honestly better. If this peace can last, if this peace can work—and she thinks she can make it work—then this could change the world for the better.

(The scariest part is, of course—if this is enough to break the loop, then everything onward will be entirely new and terrifying. She won't be able to fall back on waking up in that carriage anymore. If she dies, she'll stay dead.)

(...She's tired of repeating the past, over and over and over. It's time to move forward, if she’s still capable of that. Some days, she isn’t sure anymore.)

The day of her coronation arrives. She's nervous, but not at all for the reasons that everyone else involved must think.

"People of Nova, I give you Elodie, daughter of Fidelia, your true sovereign. What say you all?"

The words LONG LIVE THE QUEEN echo in her mind long after the coronation is over. Elodie doesn't know, not for sure, if she'll be able to live up to that.

But she can certainly try.

Elodie falls asleep as the newly crowned Queen of Nova, albeit after a not at all insignificant amount of time spent staring up at the ceiling of her bedchamber and hoping fervently that she won't awaken for the umpteenth time in a moving carriage.

She awakens for the umpteenth time in a moving carriage.

"No," Elodie says out loud, uncaring of the fact that she isn't alone here, because she never is alone here. "No, I... I did everything right! Or I thought…”

"Elodie?"

She'd scarcely paid the figure sitting across from her any mind, because why would she? It has always been her father, concerned but uncertain what to say to make his daughter feel any better, and there is no reason that would change now.

Except apparently there is some reason, because she recognizes that voice, and it does not belong to Joslyn, Duke of Caloris. It doesn't belong to Elodie's father.

She'd know it anywhere, regardless, even now. It is that realization that makes her head snap up and her eyes widen.

Sitting there, on the other side of the royal carriage—seated in much the same place as her father always has been, albeit with her hands set in her lap and no crown on her head—is Elodie's mother.

The noise that escapes Elodie at that is a decidedly un-queenly one. She decides she doesn't care.

"Mother...?"

Queen Fidelia smiles, though there is something indescribably sad in her eyes. "Hello, my darling."

The tears start flowing, then. They don't stop flowing as Elodie entirely gives up on composure and throws herself bodily across the carriage into her mother's waiting arms.

For the first time in well over forty weeks, Elodie embraces her mother, and her mother embraces her right back.

"I'm so sorry," Elodie sobs. "I'm so sorry. I've... I've been trying, Mother, but I'm not you, I can't be you—"

"You don't have to be," Fidelia says gently. "Nor should you be. You are you, Elodie, and you have done very well."

"I really haven't," Elodie chokes out. "I... Mother... I died."

She pulls back just enough to see understanding, of all things, in her mother's eyes.

"I know, darling, I know." Her smile becomes even sadder. "I wanted nothing more than for you to live, Elodie, no matter the cost. I thought that I would be paying that cost. I never wanted for you to have to. I should have been there."

"...I wish you were," Elodie whispers. "I know that's selfish of me. But I do."

A part of her wants to ask if she knows what killed her. If she knows who killed her. But Elodie knows that this, whatever this is—it cannot last long. The dead aren't meant to intermingle with the living. It's already a miracle that she can see her mother again at all.

It's with this in mind that she says, "This is a dream?"

Her words come out as more of a question than she'd meant for them to. Fidelia looks startled, briefly—then laughs.

(Elodie had forgotten what her mother's laugh sounded like.)

"Something like that," Fidelia says. "I am... quite dead, of course."

Elodie's gaze finds the floor of the carriage. "...Of course."

"But strange things happen when powerful Lumens die, to quote our mutual friend the Duchess of Ursul," Fidelia continues, wrapping an arm around her daughter anyway. "I was able to extend some measure of protection to you. And that protection meant that I could watch you progress. That I could decide if you… if both of us… were ready to let go."

"I don't want to let you go," Elodie says. "Julianna said that she thought you would outlive her."

"As did I," Fidelia whispers, holding her tighter. "I love you, Elodie, and I always will. Death itself cannot change that."

Elodie is fifteen years old, newly crowned queen, and... barely holding back her tears, yet again.

"Are you safe?" Fidelia asks. "Are you happy?"

"As much as I can be," Elodie jokes, or maybe half-jokes, forcing a sad smile of her own. "I love you too."

Elodie awakens in her bed at home. She is still fifteen years old, she is still the Queen of Nova, and her mother is still dead.

...But for just a few seconds, before she awakens fully, she can almost still feel her mother's arms wrapped around her.

At last, it is over. She can move on, she thinks. She can decide who to marry when she feels like it, because she is the girl—no, the woman—who stopped the Shanjian invasion with little more than her voice. There is a new alliance now, and more hope for the future than there ever has been before.

She doesn’t know what is coming, or when it will come. But it will, and she’ll meet it as Elodie, daughter of Fidelia and Joslyn, a Lumen and a musician and a friend.

Long live the queen, indeed.