LTSV - Lost & Found 53 (Patreon)

Cecily stayed for the rest of the afternoon, chatting with Mira and snipping back and forth with Adra, until a very junior priestess finally tracked her down to Mira’s study and told her that Princess Millica and Lady Serapha had been looking for her.

Mira escorted her to the front door, where Cecily lingered uncharacteristically before she finally mustered up the courage to ask, “Are we made up now?” she asked. “I really am sorry for what I did at the Temple. I should have trusted your judgement.”

Mira gave up pretending that she was mad and gave her little sister a reassuring peck on the forehead—pressing just hard enough to leave a lipstick mark that she decided to not tell Cecily about. 

“Now we are,” she said with a gentle smile. “Come back for dinner. The other Princesses have moved to the other annex buildings. Vesper and Papa have said they’ll start coming here for meals, now that our residences have been decided on. If Lady Serapha can spare you, I have plenty of rooms for you to pick from if you still want to live with your sisters.”

“Of course, I do!” Cecily smiled like the breaking dawn. She clasped both of Mira’s hands in her own and bounced on her toes. “Thank you! I’ve missed being at home with you, Vesper, and P-papa so much these past few days.”

Oh, Bertram had gotten an upgrade since Mira had last spoken to Cecily. 

“As have I,” Mira admitted. The other future princesses were nice enough women, but she didn’t know them very well, so sharing meals with them had ended up feeling a little uncomfortable now that she’d gotten used to sharing personal updates and gossip with her family at mealtimes. She wasn’t ready to give that up yet, either.

She understood why the townhouse wasn’t secure enough anymore. It was basically the Priestlys’ retirement home. Violet’s mother had never had a chance to live there. While she’d technically been one of the Princesses serving in the late Queen’s Court, she’d never been asked to try for a baby due to her delicate health. Even after Violet’s mother married Bertram, the late Queen had expected them to wait a little longer before getting pregnant. It was just their bad luck that Violet had been conceived on their wedding night.

Princess Millica had made it crystal clear that (no matter what she and Adra were getting up to in their private time) Mira would not turn off her contraceptive until the Royal Hospital had cleared her to try for her own babies. She was the last Priestly, for now, and couldn’t put herself at risk until there was a framework in place to support her health, should her pregnancies wind up being as delicate as her mother’s had been.

“How long do you think it will take her to realize that’s on her face?” Adra asked as they watched Cecily trot off towards the gates that separated the Rosepark grounds from the central palace gardens. 

“I think I’ll be the one in trouble when she gets back for dinner tonight,” Mira chuckled. “Did you have something you wanted to share? Normally you just snoop on my conversations through your shadows.”

“I came to tell you that her Highness has decided what to do with Miss Viola. She’ll be making an announcement in the next few days,” he reported. “I decided against mentioning anything while Miss Cecily was around.”

“That and you were in the mood to tease her, but not actually hurt her feelings,” Mira observed.

Adra sobered. “I wasn’t pleased to learn about the Godservant’s fate,” he admitted. Mira noted that he’d stopped calling her the ‘Godslave.’ “Of the entire group, she seemed the most sincere about her concern for your welfare. I might have found her annoying as an opponent, but I could never fault her for her intentions. She didn’t deserve to die like that. I thought, sometimes, that I should have just killed King Huron that night when we first met. I had the opportunity, but I knew he was connected to the spellpaint, somehow, and I was afraid that something would happen to you if he died before I got it off you.”

It would have been just like Mira’s father to have such a failsafe and Adra wasn’t wrong to make his plans accordingly.

Mira leaned against him. “I don’t think there were any clear right or wrong answers for us, at the time,” she admitted. “I’m sorry she didn’t get to live a long life. I always pictured her living to be a wizened old crone and dying in bed, surrounded by an adoring cloud of little junior Priestesses to see her off.”

“I’ve always pictured the False Hero dying of syphilis in a ditch,” Adra countered. “That could have still happened.”

“You keep calling him that,” Mira hadn’t had a chance to bring it up and she was curious about how Adra perceived this story cycle they apparently kept repeating. “You called Melody the Godslave, once, too. What did you mean by that?”

He glanced at her, meeting her eyes, and it was one of those moments where she remembered just how old and alien he was under all his ridiculous, chaotic peacockery. 

“I’ve known all these souls a long time,” Adra said, quietly. “I’ve almost never bothered with learning their names until recently. They’re always the same Archetype, so it hardly matters. Cecily is always a servant of the Gods and their most beloved agent. She is always a holy woman of some sort; a valiant and loving person. The False Hero, meanwhile, is always a smug, sanctimonious little prick. He is always your enemy, eventually. You say he gets tolerable in his later years, but I can’t say I’ve ever stuck around long enough to see it happen.”

“He does,” Mira agreed. “He mellows with age. He’s better as an adult than he is as a young man. Even the Lost Daughter game depicts him as a very sweet and funny boy when he’s been romanced.”

“Yes, but consider that I don’t like him,” Adra replied with a huff. 

Mira chuckled and then sobered. “Although, now I wonder how true that is. Melody has reminded me that so much of our stories happen after I die and I know that the stories I read ahead of my reincarnations are not always fully accurate. There’s no such thing as a reliable narrator, after all. So now I’m left to wonder which parts of ‘Lost Daughter’ were real prophecies and which were just adjustments that the writers made to the original concept so the game would sell.”

“The fourth prince’s route must have been pure fiction. I’ve never known him to have much of a sense of humor, even with his friends,” Adra pointed out and added, “In any event, I have cast my vote for the Zorander boy and will not be changing my mind.”

That was an interesting question, actually. 

“I wonder which route we’ve ended up in,” Mira wondered aloud as they turned to wander back into the house. “I can’t tell if Cecily has been spending any extra time with just one of the boys. Andrei has been under house arrest and she’s still pissed off at him. They’ve never made up this fast once she’s that angry with him. Bryn got reassigned to the Knight’s Academy as a supplemental teacher before the coup even started and none of the other boys had access to the Palace Complex so they had no way to participate in the final action. The Male Lead role was practically left empty!”

“Was it?” Adra asked. He opened the front door for Mira and followed her inside. “You said there were multiple endings that didn’t rely on there being a single, successful romance; the Friendship Route and the other one—what was it?”

“The Lonely End,” Mira reminded him. “That one doubles as the Worst End where Violet gets murdered by Andrei and all the boys abandon Cecily. You have to make very out of character decisions for that to happen. We didn’t end up on either of those routes. I’m obviously alive and, in the Friendship Routes, all the boys appear to help during the climax of the game.”

“That’s not my point,” Adra chuckled and held his hand out to help her climb the stairs. “I think there must have been a new Route in the last game and that’s the one that Miss Cecily chose.”

“What would you know? You didn’t even know what a dating sim was until I explained it to you,” Mira said, taking his hand and lifting her hem with the other. These infernal gowns were lovely, but she was getting to the point where going around in petticoats and bum pads at all times was more annoying than being able to enjoy the silhouette of her gowns was worth. At least she wasn’t stuck in a crinoline or bustle cage. If the Gods were kind, then maybe hemlines would rise again in the next few years. “What route is that?”

“The Family Route…” Adra said with a smile. “...or, perhaps, the ‘Sister’ Route?”

Mira took a moment to really think about that. It made sense, actually. Cecily had chosen, time and time again, to turn to her sisters for guidance, help, and comfort. She still talked to the boys, particularly Randall, but whenever she’d been given a choice between a Love Interest and Mira—why, she’d always chosen Mira. 

Mira felt herself turn pink as she realized that, yes, that really was what had happened. She dropped her skirt and pressed the back of her hand to her cheeks to try and cool them before stealing a sidelong look at her husband. 

“Adra,” she asked. “Do you think you could sneak out and get the lipstick off her forehead?”

He threw his head back with a laugh before pulling her close for a lingering kiss. Then, he leaned in to whisper intimately into her ear…

“No.”

In a perfect world, that would have been where the curtain closed, but this was not a perfect world.