As a mutant, Ishakan had superior physical capabilities. He only had to press the cloth to his bleeding forearm for a little while, and the flow of blood staining the cloth soon stopped. Morga pulled out a clean bandage to wrap around the wound and then Ishakan rose, taking his pipe with him.

Slowly, he walked outside, where Genin and Haban had been quietly waiting.

“The Tomaris are here,” Genin reported, pushing open the doors. Ishakan smiled.

“Let’s hear what they have to say.”

Descending the steps to the second floor of the inn, he found dozens of people kneeling as they waited. Looking at them, he exhaled a puff of smoke.

“Have you guys made up your minds yet?” He asked, lowering the pipe in his hand.

The old Toma woman kneeling at the front of the group answered.

“We will do anything,” she said. “Please spare our lives.”

That was the old woman who had given the hair color changing potion to Leah.

“Not everyone is here,” he observed.

“There are still some who follow Cerdina, but it is only a small minority…” She spoke with determination. “We will do as King Kurkan wishes.”

***

Once she had made the decision to return to the palace, Leah’s biggest concern was still Blain. She knew he would never leave her alone. Before he could do anything to her, she planned to make him believe he had already had her.

Leah had given him a substance to cause hallucinations.

He had never noticed her pouring it into his glass. After he had consumed it in his wine, he had hallucinations of s3x with Leah all that night, and as he gasped alone on the bed, she had cautiously approached to pluck out a few strands of hair.

Slipping the hair into a glass bottle, she had left it on a window sill of the Princess Palace. The bottle had disappeared the next day, then reappeared a few days later, filled with a black potion inside.

She would use it eventually. Until then, she hid it in a safe place.

Blain was still hallucinating. Leah kept him constantly supplied with the potion when they ate together every day, but as soon as he felt the slightest disparity between the real Leah and his fantasy of her, he had done exactly as expected. He had ordered her to be made into a doll.

When Leah was dragged to the Queen Mother’s palace at his command, she had seen Cerdina again, so completely disheveled that the only thing unchanged was her sparkling eyes.

That was the day Leah had almost become a puppet.

“We can risk it because the baby in your womb is like his father,” Morga had explained, and added that they would create a magical tool that would help her temporarily resist the spell. Though Cerdina’s power was unstable, she was still powerful. Morga hadn’t been sure that Leah would be able to resist her.

“……”

Leah looked at the engagement ring on her finger, shining brightly in the light.

It had worked perfectly. But its power had burned out from its only use, and from now on she would have to do it alone.

Alone, Leah walked through the palace, searching for the fragments of her memory. This was her last chance. Everywhere she felt a sense of déjà vu, she lingered, but nothing came to her mind.

Everything else was prepared, but she still couldn’t find the thing that mattered most to her. Every day she was more impatient. The day of wedding was coming, and it seemed that she might never recover her memory.