She sat up so fast the blankets went flying. It was morning. It was already morning.
She scrambled around on the bed in a small frenzy, hair everywhere. She had overslept. She had a mountain of things to accomplish and she had slept through half of it.
Her papers were where she had left them. She spread them out and found the one she wanted: a crayon drawing of a carriage, on its side, broken.
First priority, she told herself. Stop the accident that injures Daniel.
He had been hurt young — very young. She could not remember the exact month, and that was the problem. And an accident that maimed the heir of the Adrien house was not a small thing. If she let it happen it would not stay an accident; it would become an incident, and the incident would grow, and everything after it would follow the same road as before.
So I stay near him, she decided. I don't let him out of my sight—
The door opened.
"Rosette."
Duke Adrien stood in the doorway, smiling at her. "Good morning, my daughter. It's time to eat." He looked her over. "Ah — you are awake."
"I'm sorry," she said, flustered, pushing her hair down with both hands. "I slept so long."
He came in and reached for her, and she shyly admitted that she would love to eat with him.
"You seem to have grown close to Daniel," he observed, lifting her. Then his expression shifted slightly, and she felt it. "There's something I should tell you."
Rosette went still.
"Daniel has gone to the Imperial Palace."
For one full second her mind produced a carriage with fangs, hurtling along a cliff road with Daniel inside it, and going over the edge.
"The crown prince summoned him," the Duke said, amused at whatever was happening on her face. "They're old friends. He'll be back this afternoon."
No, she thought, still stunned. He left because of Joshua. She pressed a hand to her chest and tried to be reasonable. Was she overreacting because of a dream?
The memory came back anyway — the prince weeping at the bars — and she sighed, and a small confused Daniel wandered through her thoughts, and she could not decide what any of it meant.
At the palace, a servant bowed and said, "I heard Your Highness had a nightmare."
Prince Joshua flung both arms out and beamed enormously.
Daniel watched this performance from across the room.
"Stand up," the prince said, seating himself regally. "I require a physical examination. Turn around."
"Your Highness—"
"Turn around."
Daniel turned around, protesting the whole way. "I am perfectly healthy. I have never been anything other than perfectly healthy. I genuinely do not understand what you think you're looking for."
He glanced back over his shoulder, slightly unnerved. "You're acting strange today."
"I had another reason for summoning you," Joshua admitted.
"Besides the inspection."
"Besides the inspection. Is it true, what they're saying? Your father has adopted a daughter?"
Daniel's whole face lit up. "It's true."
"And?"
"She's our youngest. She's tiny, and she's shy, and she's the loveliest thing you've ever seen. She apologizes for existing about nine times a day and we're working on it."
"When can I meet her?"
"You can't, yet," Daniel said cheerfully. "She's far too shy for new people. It'll be at least half a year before her official debut."
Joshua sat up. "Half a year?"
"At least."
"There are exceptions to these things. I'm the crown—" He caught himself. "I'm the emperor's son. An exception could be made."
"No exceptions," Daniel said, smiling.
The prince opened his mouth and found nothing in it.
Daniel rose, tugging his green coat straight. "In any case, I should be getting back."
Running away from an argument he's losing, the boy thought, pouting at him.
"I'll come again soon to pay my respects," Daniel promised.
The prince said nothing, which was itself a command, and Daniel smiled and agreed to it.
A carriage rolled along the palace drive below the window.
"Even a fine carriage can have an accident," the boy said. "You should always have it checked before you ride in it."
He stood there afterward, thoughtful, listening to his own words.
Out in the courtyard beside his carriage, Daniel wondered about that. It had been such a serious face for such an ordinary thing.
"Sir Daniel!"
A small pink-haired girl came running across the gravel toward him, half in tears. "Sir Daniel! Did you come back safely?"
Daniel turned, going pink with surprise. "Rosette? Did you come out to greet—"
She went straight past him.
"—me," he finished.
Rosette threw herself at the carriage and began inspecting it: the wheels, the axle, the coupling, the straps, both doors, hauling herself up on the step to peer underneath while Daniel watched in total confusion and a maid hurried after her scolding her for running on gravel.
At last Rosette let out a long breath and sagged, and the maid sighed in relief that there was nothing wrong with the carriage after all.
"Is it really all right?" Rosette asked, looking up with enormous concern. "I heard there have been accidents lately. Lots of them."
"Did you," Daniel said.
"So please be careful when you ride in carriages. For a while. Please." She thought about it and then smiled at him brightly. "Or it would be even better if you didn't go out at all."
Even a fine carriage can have an accident. The prince's warning came back to her, ominous now that she had heard it repeated. Rosette looked at Daniel and wondered what on earth His Highness could have meant by it.
But Daniel seemed to be agreeing to go out less, which was the important thing. Now she only had to attach herself to his side and stay there.
"You know what, you're right," Daniel said, brightening. "For the time being I'll just focus on my swordsmanship training here at home."
Rosette froze where she stood.
"Rosette? Did I say something wrong?"
The training grounds. If Daniel spent all day at the training grounds, she could not follow him there, and she could not protect him from whatever happened in between. She despaired quietly at the gravel.
Is there any way to keep this from going off the rails entirely?
She began to mumble to herself. Daniel and the maid both leaned in to hear.
Then her eyes lit up.
Rosette's perfect plan, as she assembled it in her head, went like this.
Mission: save Daniel, who is scheduled to be injured in a carriage accident.
In her past life she had pieced the clues together long after the fact. It had not been a broken axle or a startled horse. There had been an explosion. Something had been placed in that carriage before it ever left the estate.
The Adrien family had never found the culprit. But Rosette, who had been the adopted daughter of Marquis Dallas, had a guess. She remembered how the Marquis spoke of the Duke — the hatred in it, patient and detailed — and she had no doubt at all that he was the one behind the attack on the Adrien child.
Which meant there was almost certainly a spy from the marquisate planted inside the Adrien household, waiting for a chance to get near Daniel.
And she could not stay near Daniel, because Daniel would be at the training grounds all day, and small girls were not permitted at the training grounds.
She pictured herself as a tiny knight in an oversized helmet and noted, with dismay, that even Daniel looked considerably stronger than she did. The tiny knight regarded her comically enormous sword and drooped.
Back in the courtyard, she was still mumbling, and Daniel and the maid were still watching her do it.
Rosette lifted her chin.
"I want to receive swordsmanship training too."
She would follow him to the training grounds. She would be at the training grounds. It was flawless.
The maid put a hand to her mouth, surprised and amused, and Daniel laughed out loud.
"The young master started his own training at about that age," the maid recalled.
A hundred-point plan, Rosette thought, deeply satisfied with herself.
"I'll ask Father," Daniel decided. "It should be fine, as long as you don't overdo it." He crouched in front of her and added, gently, "But you've never held a sword. Holding one at all will be too much for you at first, so don't be discouraged."
"Yes, Brother," she said obediently, standing very straight beside him and the maid.
And she smiled to herself, privately, because she had learned the basics of swordsmanship in her previous life and had not forgotten a single form.
That night the flowers on her nightstand had begun to wilt, and she sat up in bed among the shadows they threw, troubled and determined.
It occurred to her, rather late, that her plan might not be a piece of cake after all.
A new day came up gray at the window.
Rosette sat cross-legged on her bed and closed her eyes. Get a grip. Concentrate on the flow of mana. Nothing else.
She reached for the current and tried to gather it low, in her abdomen, the way she had a thousand times before. Her face tightened with the effort. Her cheeks went red. She trembled, holding it, holding it—
She exhaled sharply and fell backward onto the pillows, wrung out.
"Failed again," she panted at the canopy. "Why is making a mana core this hard?"
She had been bedridden once already for using magic without one. She could not keep doing that. She needed a core, and she needed it soon.
She slumped. She knew the method perfectly. She knew every stage of it. Her body simply did not have the stamina to hold the process to the end.
She lifted her hand and looked at it, small and soft and useless, and sighed. She had genuinely not understood how weak she was.
She sat up and steeled herself anyway. To protect Daniel she needed magic. And at the moment, she was entirely incapable of it.