“Madame Oedheim, do you have anything to say?” said the High Representative Klaus, head of the Palmas Kingdom’s house of lords.

“...” Vanessa looked up from the book that she’d been reading, whilst only half paying attention to the bluff and bluster of the aged elites that currently surrounded her on all sides.

After begrudgingly taking on the role of princess she was now properly begun fulfilling the role of a member of the kingdom’s legislative body. Voting as she needed to vote, using the McBriar clan’s five vote weight, to forestall the powers that would otherwise be able to allow the imperial house of Helios run roughshod over them all.

She put her book aside, stood and cleared her throat.

“Ahem….I have nothing to add.” said Van.

Then she sat back down again. Picked up her book, and resumed reading.

An additional threes hour more of dull talk would need to go by before the council members were allowed to actually vote.

She’d pass her vote, in opposition to a certain trade deal, that certain persons in the kingdom had been trying their damndest to make happen, and feel a mixture of piercing and appreciative stares in her direction.

Only once bothering to look up, before dismissing the room and returning her attention to her book. Thus she made the first vote of many that she’d make to make a pain of herself to her family’s enemies.

*****

On Monday they tried to blow her up. Placing a bomb beneath her carriage that went off whilst she was about to leave her manor in the morning.

On Tuesday they tried to poison her. Placing a rare and supposedly incurable poison in her tea during a visit with one of the so-called friendly parties that the good Lord Hunfred had said she should make herself acquainted with.

On Wednesday they tried to curse her to death, calling a small, and surprisingly, flavorful, electrical storm that left her soaked, but oddly refreshed, and awakened to the realization that she could eat or absorb fire, lightning and other forms of raw power. Which was yet another thing that she felt that Edwin probably should have made her aware of.

Unless he did, and she just hadn’t been taking him seriously at the time. Something that happened less often as she grew more aware of just how outlandish the man’s capabilities actually were.

On thursday, they attempted a kidnapping, which in her opinion should have probably at least come before they attempted all that other stuff.

Life in the capital was a tedious, troublesome affair, and at many points during the week after her release from the royal dungeon, Vanessa questioned why she didn’t just go home. The people were snobs, the ladies and men were all needlessly catty, and every single interaction was some kind of pointless power play.

Her parents even said that things for them probably be okay if she just went home. It would possibly mean they’d have to end some of their plans and hasten a few others, but they could manage if they had to.

The one thing that life in the capital wasn’t, despite all its attempts to prove otherwise, was dangerous.

To begin with, her parents wouldn’t have let her go if they thought she was in any danger whatsoever, whether it was personal strength or due to her status, the only thing that the people of the capital could hurt were her feelings. Though she was loath to admit that they were actually doing a fairly adept job of that.

The vis-Oddmunds had said, that if she so chose, she could give up her attempt to deal with the unknown enemies that had brought down their parent clan, and simply come home.

Even if the Count decided to try and make things difficult for them he couldn’t physically lay hands on them, or threaten their lives, which meant there was no reason they couldn’t just pack up their things and move on if things got tough. Better yet they could call Edwin and have him take them elsewhere to settle down again.

Even if the Kingdom was planning to give way to the empire that had helped destroy the Oedheim clan, and could very well make an attempt to wipe out the Oddmund clan and its branch family’s they, the vis-Oddmund would likely be safe, even if those enemies were persistent in their murderous endeavours, and could likely protect a few others who were within their reach.

However she’d decided to stay anyway, because if one could handle something before it became a more unmanageable issue she believed it was best to try.

After all, she had nothing to lose by trying, which she knew was part of why her ever pragmatic...lord father...had pulled her into this mess. They couldn’t kill her, there was nothing to use to blackmail her with, she wasn’t working for anyone but herself. Her only stake in the fight that these old money elites were having amongst themselves, was a desire to head off and or get a better view of a force that could potentially serve as a threat to her family.

She’d known it, as soon as he pushed the position onto her, that something of that sort was what was afoot. It was the same nonsense she’d used to do to her own siblings, and she was less than amused to find her sire, playing the same trick, getting up to mischief and then pulling in someone else who really couldn’t be effected to use as a shield.

Her father and her brother Wallace, had guessed something similar as soon as she’d told him what the old man had done. Wallace in particular had guessed that the old man wanted something since he’d mostly kept his distance before. Even sending his congratulatory wedding gifts through the McBrian clan’s servants, rather than making any real attempt to see her in person.

She on the other hand, had been, sort of, kind of, hopeful, that the old man would show some conscience and leave her out of whatever he was planning, but had gone along, knowing herself and knowing the old man enough to understand that whatever means he’d have to pull her in and make her go along with his madness, beyond his troublesome persistence, would probably include her family’s welfare somehow.

In other words she’d gone there, almost knowing what would happen, before it’d happened. It was the same way one knows one will likely be struck in a fist fight, before the actual fistfight happens. Or how someone in a terrible relationship might ardently, but futilely wish, that the other person would stop sucking quite so much.

She very much hadn’t wanted it to happen, and had resisted as much as seemed reasonable to her, but it was essentially just giving in to the inevitable. Her birth-father was like smoke, and where he was, there was always some manner of blaze to be worried about.

She’d lived in the McBriar household for long enough to know how her father worked, and she was well read enough to know continent’s nations were run.

The only reason the Count would want to speak to Vanessa in person was if he wanted something. The only way he’d think he could get her to give him what he wanted was if he could get her to suspect it was some how in her own interests.

Hunfred couldn’t hurt her, and even the king would be hard pressed to touch her, which was why the family let her, which she was to be McBriars’ new princess. She was the only one who could inherit the title and survive.

She was the wife of an inner-sect member of one of the three greatest sects in the region, her family now personally held a fair amount of the secular strength within the kingdom by sheer virtue of the physical improvements brought to them by the elements that now flowed through their bloodstreams.

In other words, she was an untouchable, uncapturable, unbreakable pawn. Perfect for his purposes. Vanessa was playing nice because it’d be inconvenient for herself, and her family, for her to do otherwise.

As he parents said, they and her brother-in-laws could probably manage if she didn’t comply but it would interrupt many of their plans and lead to several consequences and hardships that she would rather not inflict on them. The vis-Oddmunds weren’t quite ready to leave Otmar county and the Palmas kingdom yet, and considering that she had nothing to lose except for time, and that it seemed to be in their own interests for her to play the part of a willing pawn, she’d stayed.

As a result she now had actual first-hand proof that she bore a constitution so stalwart that only part of being blown up by that essence-crystal bomb that had actual disturbed her was the damage it had done to her dress.

An invisible kinetic shield appearing at the moment of the blast and absorbing enough of its energy to keep the horses, carriage driver, and nearby bystanders from suffering anything more than a bad fright.

Which was why she still continued to stay put, if arrows, spells, and blades couldn’t hurt you, it was best to deal with one’s foes before they went back to the drawing board and brought out something bigger.

It might not have mattered in any other case, or in any other instance, or with any other foe, but in this case, in this one instance, with this one foe, her due diligence was necessary. The Empire was no danger to the Van and her family, but behind them lay the real threat.

The faceless enemy that the Oddmund clan purposely forgot in the hope that the favor would be returned. A threat that even with all the power that Van and her family had gain, might well still be far stronger than they were prepared to handle.

While the Empire and the Kingdom were the hands that were used to tear down the Oedheim clan, the head that gave orders belonged to divines, immortal gods of Embla. An unknown ancient power that presided over the cultivator world, that the family wasn’t quite ready to meet head own.

Which was why Van had decided to take one for the team, so to speak.

In between the various tea times, and evening dinners that she had to sit through, pretending to play nice with personalities on either side of Alcide’s political landscape, she’d been able to glean that something big was indeed happening.

The earth was trembling, shifting in a way that suggested that the heavens might be making moves as well. People spoke in innuendo, and made references to friends and masters whose mere names were enough to make the great lords shiver in fear and anticipation.

The old man wasn’t just full of hot air. Their more enemies were getting desperate, to try anything to remove her from the board, which made her dig her heels in even more. Anxious and angry when she considered how little she knew about their immortal enemy.

She wasn’t sure how far she was going to take this, but she was fairly certain that she probably shouldn’t leave until she at least had a proper understanding of the threat that lay just beyond the horizon.

In the meanwhile she’d been calling Edwin and filling him in, having him see if there was anything that they could do, should the family end up butting heads with literal deities. She found it both comforting and discomforting, when he answered to the affirmative, implying that he had many weapons that he could put to use, should the family have to go to war with a number of Embla’s gods.