"I do not force anyone to do anything. That would ruin any good intent in their heart — and mine. I know the temptation that the others felt, and I saw what happened to them."

— Dei

Gnarl wanted to throw Henrietta into the dungeons for endangering the tower, disobedience towards the overlady, and other such offences. He lectured Louise at length that, since Henrietta was a princess, 'being thrown in the dungeons' was the only language she understood. In fact, now that they had dragons, it was fundamentally overly-ethical to not imprison a princess in the dungeons given the slightest excuse.

"No."

"But your wickedness—"

"No!"

Louise might not be happy with her friend, but she wasn't going to burn her bridges by imprisoning her. She wasn't sure what she would say when she confronted Henrietta. The anger was a gnawing worm inside her, but it had withered since last night. Then she came face to face with Henrietta; grey-face, sallow, bedbound, apologising. The worm shrivelled, crushed by the need to make-it-all-right for her friend.

"I'm so sorry," Henrietta croaked for the fifth time, looking up at Louise on the chair next to her bed. "It was meant to work! It was meant to! I'm sure I did everything perfectly! I did, I d-did! But he didn't come back and… and everything's falling apart! I… wanted him back. Everything I've done. It was meant to get me that." She coughed weakly. "And maybe I just wasn't good enough. I'll never be good enough."

Leaning against the wall on the other side of the bed, arms crossed, Jessica gave Louise a meaningful glare. It imparted certain things vis a vis 'what happened to that determination to talk things out with her'. Louise's answering glare tried to imply that now wasn't the time for being firm, but she doubted it was getting across. Her glares were mostly angry, and lacked nuance.

She had been prepared. She had been ready. She had thought about their relationship and their interactions and focussed on that nagging feeling that she was doing most of the work here while Henrietta moped. But it would have to wait until Henrietta was better.

"It's not your fault," Louise said instead, squeezing Henrietta's hand. It felt old. It felt frail. Like her friend was ninety. She couldn't let herself be angry now, not when it would involve shouting at a sick woman. Not when there were streaks of white at Henrietta's temples that hadn't been there yesterday.

"Well, I mean, it is sort of your fault because this magic is super dangerous," Jessica interjected. Louise glared at her again. This one carried a much simpler message of 'shut up'.

"It should have worked," Henrietta insisted. "I don't know what went wrong." She began to cough, the hacking much louder than her voice. "So it ha-ha-has to be me—"

"There, there." Louise helped her sit up, which seemed to help. "You can do anything you set your mind to. You're my princess."

"No more resurrection rituals until we know how it went wrong," Jessica said, pacing over to Henrietta's desk to flick through the working materials there. "That's my advice, at least! Advice that you oughta listen to. This time we were lucky that the things that came back were so… well, pathetic. But Gnarl mentioned that there's a cache of dragon bones buried down there and several hidden tombs and a dark sarcophagus holding a dead dark god — the list went on. So, yeah."

"The vampire who ruled this tower before I ended up here came back," Louise said. "I burned him to death. Again. Or to re-death. Again."

Jessica laughed, a short bark that wasn't all that amused. "Yes, Lou, but he was kinda crap. Sure, personal empowerment and mark of how you've grown and all that, but he was a shit vampire. Like I said, there's nastier stuff down there that the spell didn't wake up. And which we don't want it to."

Louise couldn't disagree that they'd been lucky. "Henrietta, please, I think Jessica is right. This is too dangerous. For you. And for all of us too."

"I didn't mean to! It wasn't deliberate! I don't know why it failed, and it shouldn't have, it shouldn't because this was in the book as the most reliable spell there is for this!"

"Maybe the book was lying," Jessica said heartlessly, tapping its leathery cover.

"Or wrong," Louise added. "Trust me that this happens sometimes. There are always a few defective spells in any tome of evil magic."

Jessica snorted. "You mean like that fireball where someone had misplaced a negative sign somewhere in the occult formula and so it came out backwards?"

"Yes, Jessica, that was the one I was talking about. At least it only hit minions."

Henrietta sat bolt upright, and broke down into coughing. Louise tried to guide her back to lie down, but she refused. "Th-then if you've d-done this before, maybe you can look over the spell and get it working," she managed.

"Well…" Louise began.

"Lou isn't a necromancer. You'll have to do it, and you can't even think of starting until you're better," Jessica said. "She doesn't know how this kind of magic works. Only you do. So just lie down and no magic."

"But pl-please! Maybe I missed something," Henrietta pleaded. "I just don't know what went wrong."

"I suppose I can take a look," Louise said, wishing she could say no to that tear-streaked face. Jessica kicked her. "But-but-but! Only if you rest, Henrietta. And drink some soup. That isn't, in any way, whatsoever, rat soup. I want to make that clear, because the minions have been making a lot of it with what became of the horde of undead rats."

"I… didn't realise that there was a chance of it being rat soup," Henrietta said weakly.

"Well, it isn't! I had to make sure of it, but it isn't! It's a perfectly normal chicken soup. With no rat at all."

The fact that Pallas took the chance to stalk into the room and pounce-murder a zombie rat which had been hiding under the bed only emphasised her point.

Henrietta sat and slowly drank her soup, while Louise and Jessica flipped through the book on Henrietta's desk, looking over the rite. The fell images and arcane glyphs seemed to move in the candlelight, which did not make understanding the original author's shoddy handwriting any easier. Neither did the fact that Jessica kept distracting Louise.

"Seriously, why didn't you talk to her?" Jessica hissed under her breath.

"I can't. Not when she's like this."

"And it's always going to be 'like this'. There's always one thing or another."

"Yes, but—"

"You always find a reason to avoid conflict with her. And you're so… pushy with everyone else."

"I know, I know, it's just—" Louise glanced back at Henrietta, and the way her hands were shaking. "Look at this spell."

"I am looking, trust me!"

"She's burning her own life to try this. Even this failed attempt will take months for her to recover from. If she's lucky. It would have been so much worse if she'd actually managed to share her life with him."

"And that's why you need to put your foot down and stop her. Stop her from using magic that…" Jessica trailed away. "Oh dark gods. It's that stupid." She raised her voice. "Henri! What did you think you were doing, trying this magic?"

Deliberately, Henrietta put down her spoon and folded her hands on her lap, before she answered. "I was trying to bring my love back."

"No, no, no, I know that." Jessica rolled her eyes. "Like, I know that and everyone knows that. You go on and on about it."

"Jessica, you're being rude—" began Louise, worried that Jessica was feeling she had to protect Louise by saying everything she found herself unable to spit out.

"I don't care." She hefted the book over, and laid it down, jabbing at a part of the spell. "This is a rite that can only be used by, and I quote, 'a virgin of the purest blood willing to sacrifice his or her own life to bring back one pulled from the world by violence or sickness'. Yeah?"

"Yes?" Henrietta frowned "What is your point?"

"My point, you idiot, is that it was never going to work! So why would you even think of using it?"

"Of course it was going to work—" Henrietta began, sitting up violently.

"No, it wasn't!" Jessica snapped, fire flaring above her forehead as a burning tiara manifested.

Louise tried to get between the two of them. "Please, stop raising your voices, Henrietta is ill and—"

"Then explain it to me since you're oh so clever!" Henrietta said, ignoring Louise's attempts to cool down the tempo.

"You don't qualify! It would never work for you!"

"What?" Louise blurted out, as Henrietta blanched. "That's impossible! She's the crown princess!"

"B-b-but… no! Was my mother unfaithful? Or… or those rumours about my mother's true father, were they true?"

"What, no! I mean, maybe, but I'm not in a position to know. Unlike the virgin thing. Which you don't qualify for! And haven't ever since I met you!"

"How can you say that? How would you even know that?" Henrietta demanded.

"Incubus, remember? Sorta-kinda lust and the way it manifests is my dad's whole deal? So, yeah. I can see that your blood isn't going to work. Mine neither, I mean, even if it counts 'crown princess of the incubi' as noblest blood. And—"

"N-n-not a word from you!" Louise stammered.

"Oh like we don't all know you're a blushing virgin. The only one in the room, just to be clear."

"Sh-shut up, Jessica!"

"… how?" Henrietta's voice rose in pitch. "It has to be wrong! It has to be!"

"In-cu-bus. Do I tell you how to raise the dead? No. So don't lecture me on how to tell if someone's indulged in lust."

"No! I refuse to believe it!" Henrietta crossed her arms. "I was very, very careful! I checked in books about that sin! We did nothing that could have threatened my virginity!"

Jessica's eyes lit up and she raised her finger. "Wait. Wait wait wait, before anyone says anything else that might cause a flaming argument or something like that…"

Louise felt that was a little hypocritical of her. "Yes, let us just… calm things down," she said.

"... okay. Yes. Yes. You can sit down, Lou. I'm calmer," Jessica lied. "When you say books… what kind of books? Because if they were romance novels—"

"Not like that!" Henrietta scowled. "They were proper books! From nuns! No, not that kind of baby-sacrificing infernal nun, the actual kind of nun!"

"Um," said Louise. "C-can people stop shouting?"

"Shh, shh." Jessica drummed her fingers on her thigh. "Okay. Okay. So when you say you 'did nothing'... what did you do?"

Henrietta blushed. "Well, I mean, we did kiss…"

"Yeah, that's not it. And just to make it clear, it can't get you pregnant either." She paused. "I mean, unless it's one of those creatures that inject their eggs through the mouth, but you'd have to be super weird to be into kissing one of those things. Anything else?"

"We… um," Henrietta cleared her throat. "We did hold hands."

"Disgusting! How lewd! That has to be it!"

"Really?" Louise demanded, eyes boggling. "That… that counts?"

"Nah, just screwing with you. Holding hands isn't… ow!" Jessica rubbed the back of her head, where Louise had cuffed her. "Okay, okay. Well, then, Henri. I guess… what did you get up to with your bee-eff? "

Henrietta turned bright red. "Do I have to?"

"I mean, it'll be faster. And we're all women here. If you want, I can tell you some of my stories. They might be educational!"

Henrietta frowned, screwing her eyes shut. "I mean… I guess…" she said hesitantly. "Do… uh… do you think…"

"Go ahead," Jessica said encouragingly.

"Do you think touching… um… with your hands… um counts?"

"Touching… yourself?"

"Yes," Henrietta said. She paused. "And also no. I suppose I should start at the beginning…"

In the miserable swamp around the broken stump of Louise's tower, the sun was shining. It was almost pleasant, if it wasn't for the geography and the flora and the fauna. But there were birds, and there were bees. And the birds and the bees were doing what came naturally to them.

In the distance; the song of birds, the buzzing of bees. The panicked alarm calls of birds who were having rocks thrown at them by minions. The screams of minions who had tried to eat bees and been stung repeatedly in the mouth. Nature found a way, even if it was the kind of way that led through crime-riddled, poverty-stricken districts of cities with poor hygiene.

And in the case of the disreputable characters known as minions who were inhabitants of said slum, nature was allegorically being held up at knifepoint.

"All right lads! We stole the eggs and the honey!"

"Oh no, the birds an' the bees is mad Run!"

Allegorically, and also literally too.

"… and, well, the last time I saw him was that time he visited Bruxelles — that time I had a potion of slipperiness close to hand so it'd be more comfortable — but I made sure to give him a crystal ball so we could see each other when we were separated. Oh, to gaze on his face once again late at night, and see that form I loved so much! And recount fantasies of what I would do to him next time we met — and he of what he would do to me! I would often get very flustered and— "

"Uh," said Jessica, sounding exasperated. "Okay. Okay. Henri, you can probably stop now. I've heard enough to get what's going on. Also, I think you broke Lou."

"Buh," Louise said, staring into space. Her eyes were barely glowing.

"Yeah, snapped her in half." Jessica rubbed the back of her neck. "Henri, I don't know how to put it, but… that counts."

"Really? Which bit?" Henrietta protested.

"Pretty much everything that you got up to south of kissing and hand-holding, if I'm honest. Oh, and the crystal ball bit, that's just regular scryber sex, but that doesn't count. But all in all, you were a busy girl."

"… but we never made love! I am unsullied!"

"Gneh," Louise contributed. She had things to say, but her mouth wasn't responding.

"Okay. Hmm. Mmm." Jessica took a deep breath, her burning infernal crown flaring. "Just shut up and listen. I'm not sure what you would define as 'making love', trust me, but you two were at it like bunnies. Bunnies who weren't using the usual, uh, warren, but still bunnies."

"Our love was pure and chaste! My maidenhead remains intact!"

Jessica was silent for upwards of ten seconds, working her jaw. "I… I'm… look at what you're doing to me, Henri. You're breaking me. I'm the crown princess of the Incubi and you… argh!" She grabbed a cushion and screamed into it. "I need to beat into your fat stupid head that… argh! The lack of sex education in the surface world is literally criminal! No wonder you two don't have a fucking clue! About fucking, just to be clear! Or, well, Louise doesn't have a clue, and you have too much of a clue but don't realise that's what you were doing!"

"But sex only counts if—"

"No! No, for darkness sake, no! Just… just… I'm leaving. I can't deal with this kind of denseness!" Jessica stomped over to the door and wrenched it open. "I'm going to see Hooke. Just don't… don't do any more goddamn stupid rituals, got it!"

The door slammed behind her. The silence stretched out, painful and sharp. Henrietta, eyes welling up with frustrated rage, coughed into her hands. She kept her attention on Louise, sitting there with her hands twisting her dress into knots.

"Are you ang-," Henrietta's voice cracked, "angry at me too? Because— because it turns out that what I got up to with my true love counted? At-at least for this magic."

"No," Louise said, taking a deep breath. "I'm not angry at you because of that."

Henrietta missed the emphasis she placed on that. "Really? But it means that…"

"I am not angry at you because of that." Louise was lying. She was irritated that this was yet another thing that Henrietta had not told her. And during that now so-long-ago trip, Henrietta had Louise cover for her and it turns out that she had been sneaking away with her beau. Louise did not like being used.

"You're not angry because… because the Council will be able to claim they were right?"

Louise hadn't even thought about that. And she realised that no, that didn't matter to her. "I've seen the things they've done. The comte de Mott was a hedonist and decadent. The Madame de Montespan was consorting with a dark goddess — and arrested my sister under false charges. And we know they've been working with the Albionese Republic. So, no. They'd have found some other reason to overthrow you. Maybe they'd have had bandits assassinate you. Something, anything. These are not people who should be trusted to be leading this country."

"I'm glad! I couldn't face you turning on me too!"

"Oh no. No." Louise looked up, and Henrietta saw the barely restrained fury in her eyes. "Henrietta. I thought the reason you ended up in bed, sick and… and not able to stand was because the spell failed. Because something went wrong. Not that this was your plan all along!"

"I… you knew this."

"No. I did not. Not until I read the book and found you were going to burn half your lifespan by doing this. Even if it went perfectly." Her hands flexed. "I am not letting you do this."

"But—"

"No. No ifs, no buts. I forbid you from killing yourself as part of s-some stupid plan to bring a dead man back from the underworld! Or hurting yourself or— or anything like that! I am doing this for you. Everything I've done has been for you. I'm your friend. And-and-and I think part of being your friend means putting my foot down. I can't let you die. The country needs you alive."

"It's always what the country wants!" Henrietta retorted.

"You're the crown princess! You have no siblings! Your mother never remarried! Tristain needs you! I need you!"

Louise's voice hung in the air. And in its wake, a hurt silence.

"So. That's it. I'm just another tool for the country. A means to ensure the succession," Henrietta said, tears welling up, her voice cracking.

"You have a duty. We all have a duty to the crown," Louise said. It was much easier to hold to simple, concrete duty than explain how she needed Henrietta.

"Oh, you're definitely your mother's daughter. An overlady reciting the Rule of Steel to me."

Louise crossed her arms. "If I have to, yes. You've forgotten your duty. And your friends."

"And it's clear I'm your princess rather than your friend!"

"By the Founder! Henrietta-Anne! We're talking about you sacrificing your own lifespan to bring back a dead man! This is not some minor matter! This is a spell that's left you bedridden even when it failed and didn't draw as much from you as you expected!"

"I'd rather be dead than live without him!"

"Y-you don't mean that," Louise stuttered, flinching. But she knew that yes, Henrietta did. And that was that. The finality rushed in and filled Louise like a dark ocean. Her dreams might have just been dreams, but she could have clung to them before. Tried to fool herself that she had a chance. But she didn't have a chance. She never had. Henrietta didn't reciprocate her love. And she couldn't change that.

(No, she could. There were dark magics that could. Dark magics she knew. It would be so easy to use them. It would fix everything.)

"He was the only person who's ever treated me as not just a princess. The only person who ever made me feel like what I wanted mattered. When I was with him, everything felt right. Without him," Henrietta coughed, "everything went wrong. Everything."

Louise inhaled. "So you think… you think I only see you as a princess. Not as a friend. Or-or-or anything else?"

"I think you have made it very clear that when it comes to it, your duty comes before your friends," Henrietta said, voice icy.

"I don't want you to die! Because you—"

"I believe you've made your intentions quite clear. Good day, Louise-Francoise. Or good night. I want to sleep."

Cheeks blooming with red, Louise jumped to her feet, and snatched the tome up in her arms. "Then I will ensure you get your rest. Without the distractions of this book. And looking for new spells within it."

"Give it back." Henrietta's voice was low, flat.

"No."

"Give it back!"

"I will do no such thing. You're ill. You don't need necromancy. You need to rest."

"I need it. I don't care if it kills me! If it kills me, I'll be back with him. It'll be better than this bland, grey, world. Suffering for decades without my Cearl!"

Louise wanted to scream at her, wanted to call her a selfish idiot; wanted to do something to make her understand that she was breaking Louise's heart and she should just get over him. Not even for Louise, for anyone! Just like Louise would have to get over her now, because she wouldn't give up a man who was dead!

"You have lived years without him, Henrietta-Anne. You can live a few more days. And then we can talk. When you're better."

She had reached the door when Henrietta had one last barb for her. "This is it, then. You are going to imprison me. Just like everyone else does. Lock me up, helpless, and alone."

Her left hand clenched at her side, the rage and heartbreak and fury at Henrietta's bloody-minded obsessive self-indulgent grief swirling together into a toxic, potent brew of dark magic. Right now she could do anything. She could probably—

blow up the whole tower so she wouldn't have to live with the knowledge she'd been so foolish to fall for a girl like this

toss the darn princess into the void outside reality until Louise had burned his remains to ash and cast them to the wind so she couldn't throw her life away

pluck the memories from Henrietta's head so Prince flipping Cearl had never existed and she wouldn't feel the urge to do any of the idiot things she wanted to for him

—make it all right. Her stupid, stupid self-righteous prattling about how she wouldn't even though she could — so pathetic! So weak! What did that matter if she was going to save Henrietta from something like this! She'd done so much for Henrietta! And she wasn't prepared to even try to move on! How dare she? How dare she!

Louise inhaled, feeling the dark magic tingle on her tongue, trying to settle on the right word in the Dark Tongue for what she wanted. What she wanted and couldn't have.

"I will imprison you. If I have to. I am an evil overlady, after all," Louise said, over the sound of her own heart breaking.

She let herself out, wiped her tears on her sleeve, and then gave orders for Henrietta's workroom to be sealed after the necromantic equipment was taken and transported down to the vaults to be locked away securely.

"This is my first order to you, Agnes," she told her new dark general. "No magic for Henrietta. Not until she recovers. I won't let her hurt herself."

Agnes slammed her fist into her chest. "Yes, my dark mistress!"

And all that accomplished was to make Louise feel worse about the whole thing.

In the master bedroom of the deepest depths of the dark dungeon of the dreaded overlady, the lady of evil wrapped herself in her blankets with her cat sitting on her lap, and had a good cry. Or an evil cry. It was mostly snotty.

"Did I do the right thing?" she asked her cat Pallas, who so far had been very cat-like in her refusal to provide an answer. "I don't want her to die. I don't. And sh-sh-she has to move on. Yes? No?"

Louise let out a big trembling choked sigh, and wiped her eyes on her sodden nightgown. It was only just past noon, but today did not feel like a getting-dressed day. Even if she had previously been dressed, that just meant she had to go get back into her night things and wrap herself up in blankets.

She felt like a monster. She couldn't let Henrietta hurt herself. Even if she wanted to. This was all her fault for putting her best friend, her love in a situation where she could be tempted by this. But what else could she have done differently? So many things. And now she was stuck in a situation where she wasn't sure how she could help make things better, wasn't sure how she could fix things when Henrietta had made it very clear she didn't want to be helped.

And it hurt. God, did it hurt. After all, Henrietta had basically told her that she should just go to hell and—

Go to hell. Or more strictly, the Abyss. Louise wiped her eyes on her sleeve, not daring to breathe. She… she had that summoning invocation from Izah'belya. Maybe she could do something with that. Like contact her. And see if she was free this evening for dinner. The yawning gaping hole in her stomach told her very firmly that while the idea of going to dinner with a succubus was scary, staying here in the tower would be so much worse.

Pulling herself out of her blankets, Louise dug through her still-not-yet-unpacked bags from her trip to Albion. She found the invocation where it had been serving as a bookmark. The burning rune wavered through the tears. Maybe she shouldn't be doing this. Calling up a demon for… for improper purposes. Or at least the possibility of them.

No. Who cared about that? Everything she'd done had been for Princess Henrietta, and Princess Henrietta had made it entirely clear that she wasn't interested and she was going to throw her life away for-for-for a stupid dead man. Men! They were either Wardes who was a cheating dog who was loyal to no one or were Henrietta's prince who was too loyal and didn't know how to let go! Or were Emperor Lee who Louise just couldn't read and blew hot and cold seemingly at random! It was ridiculous! It wasn't like women (who weren't Henrietta) could be any worse!

So she was going to do it! She was going to call up Izah'belya and she would see if she was free and if she was then Louise would… would probably start hyperventilating and feel sick, but once she'd done that she'd go over to Jessica and beg her to dress her up nicely and she'd go on a date and… and she'd show them all! Who she'd be showing was less clear, but they would definitely be shown!

The slightly hysterical laughter of the overlady rang out through her tower as she began the dark ritual.