The Goth Villianess

Victory for Highmooreshire

Harvey and I never spoke about that drunken kiss, we didn't want our friendship to change. The others had found out we had kissed because Helena had ran back to Lady Stephanie's room and told her what just happened. Tara was upset she missed me confronting Ashley as she too also wanted to threaten her. Sophia wasn't bothered at all from the news, she said she had suspected something like this would happen eventually since Harvey and I gotten closer as friends. Michelle, Lydia and Nina squealed with excitement when they heard and rushed to give their congratulations go Harvey and I when we were sitting on my balcony as if the kiss never happened. I told them quickly that Harvey and I weren't together and that kiss was purely to annoy Helena. I also made a point to explain this to Sophia and Tara when they came into my room minutes after the three girls came into my room. They all seemed disappointed that Harvey and I weren't together and Harvey was usually quiet during the whole thing. I didn't pry since if I acknowledged it then we would have to have a very uncomfortable conversation about what our relationship was at that point and I wanted to stay far away from that conversation for as long as humanly possible.

Winter had gone and spring had arrived and just as the King promised back at the winter ball the war was over.
King Brandon gave a speech from his throne room which announced the end of the war. After a long and very bloody final battle Highmooreshire came out as the victor. This meant that Prince Sebastian would be returning to the castle and take his normal duties over again as the crown prince. I knew that this would started the next plot point of the novel. I knew that changing the story lines had consequences and some things were just unavoidable. When I wasn't beheaded by Timothy when our engagement ended this meant that the story had to balance itself out. Since I wasn't killed Timothy and Sir Darren were killed off instead to add the drama into the story that the original Lady Raven's death had. It seemed that Lady Helena and Lord Harvey were always destined to break up, there was nothing I could do about that. However it seems that my words had an impact on Helena, she distanced herself from Ashley and for now seems to be sulking with her other friends.

Ashley had begun trying to get closer to Prince Edward. My friends and I all agreed that we couldn't let Ashley take Prince Edward from Tara, at least one of us should still get married by the end of the year which Prince Edward and Tara were meant to since their parents agreed for them to be married by the winter of their eighteenth year. In-between studying for the upcoming exams and attending a few balls here and there where Prince Sebastian would be in attendance as I tried to get closer to him, my circle of friends made every effort in sabotaging Ashley's efforts in romancing the prince. We would create elaborate schemes to foil Ashley's plans in our spare time and we would dedicated a person for each day of the week to ensure that Prince Edward was not falling in love with Ashley.

With all the drama happening with Ashley I had to make sure to not forget about Prince Sebastian. He was acting just how he was described in the book. He was withdrawn where he would normally be very outgoing and trying to talk to everyone in sight. He seemed he was trying to stay out of large crowds the best he could that wouldn't make him look odd by societal standards. He also seemed weariy of going down dark corridors alone and he seemed to be hypervigalent. Whenever I saw him I would try to engage him in conversation and did my best to be understanding and patient as he had gone through something quite traumatic just a few weeks ago. It hadn't even been a month since the war ended and people were expecting him to just return back to normal life like nothing had happened which wasn't fair to him at all. From the death toll with the list of names of the soldiers that had died I recognised a few names of my classmates siblings among the dead and I knew that some of these people were in the same year as Prince Edward. Many of them would have been his friends and he lost a lot of them to the war. I didn't know how to help him through this, I wasn't a therapist 3 there was no books about PTSD in this world as they were as caught up to the modern world in terms of medical knowledge. My main goal was to make sure that Prince Sebastian maintained his position of Crown Prince until the King abdicated and would hand over the crown in early autumn of this year.

On top of everything else going on Oiche finally contacted me, it wad only a brief meeting but he warned me to prepare since something big was going to happen in summer and as his chosen I would have to deal with it. He also told me I couldn't tell anyone about it and I wasn't about to disobey my god so I kept quiet about what I knew. I practised using the sword and went to the high priest for lessons on how to use it properly since all high priests and priestesses are trained to use weapons that feature the most in the stories of their gods and their chosen.

The royal family was hosting a ball after all the official papers that had been sighed to officially end the war and a treaty between the two kingdoms to ensure that it would not happen again. I was sitting at my desk, studying for exams, since the academy did the final exams earlier than other schools in the kingdom and neighbouring kingdoms, when Sandra knocked on the door. I allowed her in and she handed me an envelope with the royal crest on the wax. I opened it and saw I had received a personal invitation to the ball from Prince Sebastian. The reason was that he considered me a good friend for being there for him since he returned from the war. I didn't really expect this since we hadn't seen each other much but did write each other letters every now and again. Sandra was looking over my shoulder at the letter, she looked delighted. "M'lady this is wonderful, oh your parents will be delighted that the crown prince invited you to this ball as his personal guest!" She told me while she smiled with pride at me. Sandra had been looking after me for my whole life so of course when she saw that I was succeeding in life she was proud of me and herself for raising me to be the person I am.