Alasdair and Tatiana both looked hilarious with their mouths wide open in shock. Blythe would’ve chuckled if she weren’t feeling so taken aback by the whole situation.

  “Do you mean you still feel that way?” Alasdair asked.

  Tatiana waved at the servants, and they all filed out of the dining hall in an orderly manner. “We thought you might have been just saying that, honey. It’s been a week after all.”

  Blythe was appalled. “How fickle do you think I am?”

  Reuben let out a light cough. “Very? What about that time you asked Dad for some stupid purple flowers in your garden? By the time they arrived, you said you didn’t want them anymore because you’d moved on to pink flowers. Don’t act like that never happened.“

  “Be nice, Reuben,” Alasdair said mildly while still facing Blythe. “Sorry for making assumptions. Well, I’m glad to hear that afternoon tea tomorrow won’t be a problem, then.”

  “That’s it? You’re not going to help me break off the engagement now that you know I’m being serious about it?”

  A hint of a grimace flickered across Alasdair’s face. “Blythe, we’ve talked about this …”

  “I know,” Blythe said, sighing. “Sorry for asking.”

  “No, I wish I could do something for you.” Her father let out an even heavier sigh. “No promises, but I’ll see if I can talk to King Abel about this, okay? But I can’t guarantee it’ll happen anytime soon. He’s not in a good mood these days.”

  “Oh, what happened?”Blythe asked, only half-curious.

  “He had an argument with the queen or something,” Reuben said, his knife clinking against his plate as he sliced up his steak. “I’m sure it’ll blow over soon.”

  “Don’t speculate,” Alasdair said. “Have you been listening to gossip again?”

  While Alasdair chided Reuben, and Tatiana tried to mediate between the two of them, Blythe ate her steak. It was even more tender and melt-in-your-mouth than the ones they served in the academy’s dining hall.

  After dinner, Blythe retreated to her room and worked some more on the handkerchief embroidery for Magnus. She didn’t have an hour to spare for it every night, so she worked on it a little bit at a time. Thanks to the original Blythe’s embroidery skill, progress was rather fast. It was likely she’d be able to finish it tomorrow.

  She continued poring over the past years’ study guides. When she flipped open the one for Botany, she got her notebook open and ready for anything that might catch her eye.

  A couple of nights ago, when she’d gone back to review the earlier pages to see if she’d missed anything, she’d been exasperated by what she’d found. One paragraph in the earlier pages was dedicated to reminding the reader of a few of the most notorious dangerous plants native to Beryllia.

  The vorachute was included in that list, but there weren’t any illustrations of any of the mentioned plants to help a newbie identify it in person. The study guide promised to cover these plants in greater detail later on, so no further details were provided in that section. Without the aid of an illustration, Blythe easily forgot about the paragraph and went on to the more informative sections.

  This time, she’d keep her eyes peeled for anything that was described as dangerous.

  ???

  The promised afternoon tea was held at a gazebo in the main estate’s humongous garden, where Blythe and her family members sat at the round white table covered in a sumptuous spread of food. Today was cloudy, with rays of sunlight peeking through the gaps in the clouds onto the estate grounds. Each breath she inhaled of the crisp and fresh air thanks to the greenery around them rejuvenated her just a little bit more.

  She leaned back in her chair to relax, disregarding Reuben’s side-eye. He was sitting upright, his back straight, which explained the judgment. As a result of adding burpees to her training menu this morning, her core and leg muscles were killing her.

  After her morning exercise and shower, she wasn’t in the mood for doing anything except lying in bed reading the romance novel she’d previously found in her parents’ library. She’d only gone down for lunch after Suzy’s suggestion of bringing food to her room.

  All the sweets and afternoon tea treats piled on this table looked like a reward for all her hard work from this morning. There were sponge cake slices layered with whipped cream and fruits, assorted cookies with filling in the middle, fruit tart slices, scones with clotted cream and jam, refreshing finger sandwiches for a more savory taste … Blythe wanted to try them all. She delightedly picked a green macaron off the fancy afternoon tea stand in front of her.

  The outer shell was crisp as she bit into it, giving way to a soft and slightly chewy mouthfeel in the middle. The sweet, pistachio-nutty flavor lingered in her mouth as she chewed away and rested her back against the chair. Once she could muster the energy, she’d eat her fill of sweets here.

  Daintily setting down her teacup onto its saucer, Tatiana eyed Blythe with some worry. “Are you feeling alright, Blythe? Why do you look so … floppy?”

  Reuben, who was in the middle of sipping his own tea, sniggered and promptly broke into a coughing fit. Blythe didn’t bother acknowledging him. In the background, she heard Alasdair tell him to drink slowly.

  She simply smiled weakly at Tatiana and said, “I’m just tired. I overdid it a little when I was working out earlier.”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  “You’ve improved a lot,” Reuben said reluctantly once he curbed his coughing fit. “The number of reps you’re doing has increased too.”

  “I know, right?” Blythe agreed. She’d worked too hard to be humble about it.

  Glaring at her, he said, “I just gave you a compliment. At least thank me for it.”

  “Why? Do you give compliments for the sake of receiving thanks?”

  She had no idea why, but she got some points for that.

  As they mildly sniped at each other, their parents looked on in amusement. Their afternoon teatime as a family passed by pleasantly, with their parents mostly chatting about mundane things like the cool weather and asking Blythe about interesting things that had happened at school.

  There was no way she was telling them about the disaster that had just happened last Monday. According to the game, the original Blythe was apparently great at toning down her nasty nature when interacting with people in authority, especially when it came to her parents and Magnus’ parents. They probably didn’t know about her bullying of Daisy. It also seemed unwise to tell them about her thoughtless venture into the restricted area of the school greenhouse.

  Instead, she shared the unimportant but still notable stuff with them. They all expressed surprise to hear about Jacqueline’s participation in the upcoming Hunting Race. Thanks to her family members, Blythe learned that Jacqueline’s father, apparently one of Alasdair’s friends, brought up his two sons’ respective achievements in archery and swordsmanship at every opportunity. Tatiana suspected Jacqueline’s pursuit of archery was in part to win the approval of her father.

  It made Blythe feel bad for Jacqueline.

  When their lovely afternoon tea session was over, her parents seemed taken aback that Blythe wanted to stay in the gardens.

  “The weather’s so nice,” she said. “I want to sit by the pond and feed the ducks.”

  “Hey, I was going to do that,” Reuben complained.

  “Good, then you two can do that together,” Alasdair said. “Felix!”

  Felix, one of the male servants standing by in the gazebo, went to Alasdair and bowed down to hear whatever her father was saying to him.

  “At once, Your Grace,” Felix said quietly before straightening up and walking away.

  “He’ll be back with some bird seed,” Alasdair told Reuben and Blythe.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Blythe said.

  “Oh, great,” Reuben said. “I was running out anyway.”

  Shortly after that, Alasdair and Tatiana left, and Reuben and Blythe strolled to the pond side with their personal servants trailing behind them.

  As they sat down on the same bench, Felix showed up with two small bags of bird seed for them both. Blythe eagerly opened hers, and Reuben reached into his jacket to pull out an almost empty bag of bird seed.

  He whistled. Val the duck left the pond and came waddling, calling out to him with short quacks. When Blythe tried tossing some seeds near her feet as well, Reuben’s hand flew out as if to block them from reaching Val.

  “Hey, hey, hey! Get your own duck to feed. Val likes me. Don’t try to poach her.”

  “Sorry you’re insecure.”

  That earned her a glare. Secretly, she found his protectiveness amusing.

  Rolling her eyes, she stood up to get closer to the pond. Most of the ducks and swans crowded over on this side when they realized she was about to feed them. The moment the bird seed landed in the water, they clamored among themselves for the food.

  She returned to the bench, enjoying the peaceful view of the ducks and swans gliding across the water and preening themselves.

  “You don’t,” Reuben said, watching Val waddle back to the pond to join her friends, “visit this part of the main estate much. Why the sudden interest in these recent weekends?”

  “Just felt like it,” Blythe said. “It’s nice and calming.”

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “Reuben. Are there any dangerous plants in the school garden I should be aware of?”

  “What are you talking about? Of course not. Aren’t those all in the greenhouse’s red zone? Why, did they plant something new since I’ve graduated?”

  “No, I’m only asking. So there’s no chance of me accidentally running into a harmful plant outside of the greenhouse right?” She really didn’t want a repeat of that incident with the vorachute.

  He made a face. “I don’t think so, no. Unless you went into the forest, but you’d only go there during Summer Nightglow and the school would handle the safety and security measures anyway. Seriously, why are you asking? You asked me a bunch of weird questions the other time too.”

  Thankfully, she wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a forest on her own, so that wasn’t a problem at all. Summer Nightglow was the annual year-end celebration where the player was treated to a CG—a digital illustration within the game—with the love interest of their choice, assuming they had sufficient favorability points with that love interest.

  She flipped it on him instead. “I’m testing your memory. I wanted to make sure you haven’t forgotten. You’re getting old, you know. You can only keep your mind sharp by testing it every once in a while.”

  He scowled at her.

  “I’m only three years older than you, you insolent brat! Are you calling Mom and Dad old?! I’m going to tell Mom.”

  Bickering with Reuben was kind of nice in an irritating way. During the hour they were seated on the bench, Blythe momentarily forgot about all her troubles.

  With this renewed energy, she resumed cramming after returning to her room. She was beginning to become familiar with Beryllia’s basic history and common plant life. Since all the life-threatening plants were confined to the greenhouse’s red zone and the forest behind the campus grounds, she would have nothing to worry about if she stayed away from those places.

  She then continued working on the rest of the handkerchief embroidery. It was just past ten when she finished with it—an eagle with its wings spread out sat in one corner, the bright yellow and dark grey threads striking against the white of the silk.

  A strong wave of achievement washed over her as she held the handkerchief up in front of her. On a whim, she checked its status.

  Huh?

  For a long time, she stared at the ‘Quality: Normal’ tag beside the item descriptor.

  What does that even mean?

  When she couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation after several minutes of pondering, she shrugged it off. It probably wasn’t that important. Carefully, she folded it up and put it into a silk drawstring bag she found in her desk drawer. At least she’d gotten it out of the way.