Chapter 60: Home

For a long while, neither of them said anything. Clara pressed her face into Iris’s hair, and Iris kept her arms locked around Clara. There were noises all around them—Clara recognized Emma’s sobbing, and Morris, the duchess, and Lochlann’s animated voices, at least—but she didn’t pay attention to them.

Then Iris sniffled loudly. “You smell horrid. Did they have no baths at whatever rundown tavern you were staying at? They should have known to treat you better—”

“Good morning to you too, my lady. Or good afternoon, I suppose. I have no idea what time it is.”

Iris pulled back and wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief, reassembling her usual composure remarkably fast. She lifted her chin. “Clara Casewell, you are an absolute fool. What were you thinking putting yourself in danger?”

“That’s quite a greeting for someone who nearly died,” said Clara.

Behind Iris, Clara noticed Warren sitting in a chair. There were bags under his eyes, but on his lips was something she never really thought she’d see.

A sincere, honest-to-goodness smile, with no trace of arrogance, mockery, or condescension behind it.

When she met his eyes, he nodded.

“Nearly!” Iris pointed a finger at her. “Nearly is doing an enormous amount of work in that statement. Conrad almost had to cut off your arm to save you!”

Her arm? Was that related to the tingling she felt before? Clara sat up to have a look at herself.

“Lie down,” said Iris, trying to push Clara back onto the pillow. “You are not sitting up yet. Professor Morris, tell her she isn’t sitting up yet.”

“Miss Casewell, it really would be for the best if you got some more rest,” said Morris.

“Yes, Miss Clara, you need to take care of yourself,” Emma agreed. “I can go get you some sweets!”

Clara turned to Morris. And that’s when she saw her.

Helena Rosewood, sitting in a chair, with Lochlann kneeling on the floor next to her, holding her hand in his. Her eyes were closed, and there was a soft golden glow around her, fading slowly. The ends of her hair were white.

Father Leofric’s words rang in Clara’s mind. ‘Lady Helena will shine brighter than any of us could.’

Morris came closer to the bed. “Lie down and let me examine you, so we can confirm if Lady Helena’s miracle removed all the corrosion.”

Miracle? Corrosion? Was Helena responsible for that warmth?

Clara wanted to ask several questions, but she wasn’t sure it was safe to do so in front of Helena.

Clara lay down facing Iris while Morris examined her. “My lady.”

“Don’t,” said Iris.

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“I don’t need your apologies.”

Clara chuckled. “Actually, I was going to say thank you. To you, to the duke and the duchess, and Lord Conrad, and Righton. And, it seems, to Lady Helena as well.”

Iris straightened her back. “Well. You should be thankful. It seems my family went through a great deal of trouble to rescue you. Not to mention what it cost me to come all the way here when I have so much material to review for the upcoming finals. Indeed, you should be extremely thankful. Oh ho ho!”

Clara reached over and took Iris’s hand.

“Thank you,” she said again.

Iris looked at her. The rims of her eyelids were still red.

“…You’re welcome,” she whispered.

Professor Morris cleared his throat. “Miss Casewell, I believe I have some rather earth-shattering news to share.” He didn’t hide the academic excitement in his voice.

“Well, this is it, Miss. As I mentioned in my advert, it’s a relatively new build, with a good location.”

Clara followed the man into the mostly empty two-story building, a quaint townhouse near the center of Westwick, about halfway between Claves and the city center.

It was a good location. Not only was it close to the most important parts of Westwick—Claves, the city hall, the shopping district around Kettle Street—it would also be close to Elysia itself, in a sense, when Westwick’s railway opened next month.

“What happened to the previous tenant?” she asked.

“Relocated to Elysia, Miss.”

Clara nodded. Looking over the newspaper adverts for a suitable property to lease was one of the few distractions she’d had during her week on the makeshift hospital bed at the Westwick Plaza. She had wanted to leave immediately, since she’d been totally fine from the moment she woke up, but Iris and Warren weren’t having it, so Clara had been forced to stay for a while.

I guess that was the first time those two agreed on something.

It ended up being a very long and uncomfortable week, mostly because Iris and Warren kept coming by with flowers, each trying to one-up the other with elaborate arrangements. By the end, the room had been closer to a botanical garden than a hotel suite.

Iris, in particular, had been very insistent on showering Clara with gifts and affection, all in the name of bringing Clara back into her service. Clara had, so far, refused—with the money she’d earned defending Rowena, she’d be able to move on with life plans that weren’t exactly being a lady’s maid.

“Now, as I said, this place will cost six marks per month, Miss. I can’t go lower than that.”

This was the third time the man had reminded her of the monthly rent in the short time they’d spent together. Clearly, he didn’t really believe someone like Clara, in her lower-class casual outfit, would have enough money to afford a nice place like this.

She smiled in response. “Yes, as I said, that won’t be a problem.”

She’d have more than enough when Lochlann finished paying her; the prince said he’d settle it as soon as she opened a bank account.

Which, it turned out, was quite a bit more difficult here than it had been in her world. But Clara was sure she’d eventually sort it out.

She continued looking over the ground floor. There was a relatively small landing area, enough to fit a desk and a few chairs, a large living room-type space, and a couple of smaller rooms on the side. She tried to picture whether the setup she envisioned would work in a place like this, and her conclusion was that yes, it would.

She went up the stairs. Both floors were around the same size, each roughly eighty square meters. Not huge, but certainly not small either. The drapes were closed, so it was quite dim. Clara’s first instinct was to simply open them and let the sun come through.

But the first idea is only the first, as her old mentor once told her.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out her new wand, which Iris had gifted her the day before. The wood was white ash, and the gem at its point was a large ametrine.

It wasn’t charged.

Clara pointed it up and chanted, “Fiat lux.”

Magical energy flowed through her. She still hadn’t quite gotten used to the feeling. It was one thing to feel it around her; it was another to feel it inside her.

The room lit up.

Not that there was that much to see, since the place was completely bereft of furnishings. She walked around, picturing where she could put a small kitchen, a dining table, a sofa, a reading nook, and a bedroom.

Clara still couldn’t quite believe everything that had happened in the past two weeks. After the incident with Leofric, she’d apparently been hit by the remaining eldritch magic—which Morris had called ‘corrosion’, though both he and the duchess remained remarkably tight-lipped about what it actually entailed—and Helena Rosewood had saved her from amputation by performing a Goddess-granted miracle.

Iris, of course, had forbidden anyone from mentioning that in her presence.

Leofric had died, executed by Conrad before the corrosion could take control of him and turn him into a monster like Aldric. Warren was told, by Clara and Duke von Rhenia, that the high inquisitor was the real culprit behind Ricardo’s death. Having witnessed Leofric’s madness for himself, Warren couldn’t deny the duke’s words, even though this confirmed that the Blessing of Truth had failed. So, the prosecution dropped all charges against Dame Rowena.

Since the case was resolved with Leofric’s death, the Ecumenical Council didn’t have to publicly admit that the Blessing wasn’t perfectly reliable. Instead, they put out a short statement to the effect that it was possible, because of ‘human error’ and in ‘very limited circumstances’, for the Blessing of Truth to ‘correspond only to a subjective truth’.

Not that anybody paid much attention to it, since the papers were all busy speculating about the ‘red sky’.

After Rowena’s release, Duke von Rhenia and Duchess Adelheid had left for the capital to sort out the political fallout of the high inquisitor’s conduct, investigate the conspiracy, and ‘rediscuss’ their relationship with the royal family. Before they left, Clara made sure to give the duke all the details she’d gathered about Leofric, but she had yet to figure out how to tell Iris everything about Stella. Clara didn’t want to keep the von Rhenias in the dark any further, but with how many constant visitors she’d gotten in her sickbed and how busy Iris was preparing for the Claves finals, there simply hadn’t been the chance to have a delicate conversation like that.

Besides Iris, Warren, Morris, and the von Rhenias, there’d been many others who came to see Clara. Emma, to start with, was an almost constant presence when she wasn’t working. Then there were Rowena and Ciarán, who’d passed by to thank her, and Professor Harwick, who had grilled her about her sources for the ‘historical’ gavel usage in the Elysian Empire, much to her chagrin. Even Bishop Dicton had come to see her, bringing her a wheel of cheese as a gift.

Vivienne and Helena had visited more than once. Clara appreciated Vivienne’s company, but she still didn’t know what to think about Helena, the girl of a million contradictions. From her attitude to her relationships to her competence to the very suspicious things Leofric had said about her, there was nothing about her that was simple.

Was she involved in the conspiracy Leofric had been part of, or was she just a pawn like Stella? And what was the ultimate goal of the conspiracy, beyond damaging House von Rhenia’s relationship with the royal family? There was no way to know for sure yet.

Clara thought back to My Fair Villainess: A Maid’s Guide to Social Climbing. How was the story supposed to go, if it hadn’t gone haywire with her intervention? Was Stella really meant to die, given that she was the main character? If not, why had she died? Even with all of Stella’s memories, Clara couldn’t make sense of everything—not to mention how messy it felt to have a whole other person’s memories inside her.

And who was the male lead, anyway? I’m pretty sure My Fair Villainess was a romance novel.

Her mind immediately went to Warren, and her cheeks flushed. Obviously, it couldn’t have been him directly, but maybe it was whoever he’d replaced, the original heir to Duke Albion? Maid-noble romances were very popular, after all.

All that aside, it was undeniable that Helena had saved Clara from losing a limb—or worse—and restored Stella’s memories and her magical power while she was at it.

Helena had gotten a very convenient reward out of the ordeal, as seemed to be par for the course with her: she was now officially a Saintess, someone who’d directly channeled the Goddess into her body to unleash magic far beyond the ordinary. Or she would be, soon—after the end of the term at Claves, Helena was due at the capital to prepare for her official canonization ceremony and to study how to control her new powers. For the time being, the Church had apparently forbidden her from using magic at all, lest she cause some sort of disaster by accident.

Clara, as the miracle’s recipient, would have to take part in the ceremony when the time came. As would all the witnesses who were in the room when it happened, including Iris, who was not looking forward to what was essentially a public celebration of Helena Rosewood. There was, at least, one silver lining to Helena’s new status: it meant that Clara was safe for the foreseeable future, since she was the living proof of a new Saintess. Even the Ecumenical Council and the higher echelons of the Church needed her, for now.

Clara’s stomach rumbled. I could go for a bite right about now.

The day was warm and sunny. It’d be a waste to spend it alone. The current Clara Casewell was someone who had friends and enjoyed their company. It’d be nice to eat with Iris, but the girl, like the rest of Claves, would be busy revising for the final exams starting Monday.

Maybe I’ll invite Professor Morris for lunch, if he’s not busy tutoring. He’s been very interested in studying my recovery and my newfound magical abilities.

Or even Warren, if he’s open to ‘eating with a commoner’.

Clara descended the stairs and told the owner she’d be in touch when she finished viewing a few other properties. But deep down, she had a feeling this would end up being the one.

As she watched him lock the door, she took another look at the house in front of her. The upper floor would be her home, yes. But the lower floor… she had other plans for that.

Clara raised her left hand and made an L shape just above the door, trying to figure out where the best place for a sign was. One she hoped would, sometime in the relatively near future, say ‘Casewell Law Offices’.

Looks like I’m the one who’ll make partner first, Righton.

CLARA CASEWELL, ATTORNEY TO THE VILLAINESS

BOOK ONE END