Chapter 3: 03: The Villainess Eats Cake

Some shitty noble is throwing a tea party for his ditzy little kid and Ecclesia is swallowing tea cakes whole, like a snake. Her mother, the esteemed Lady Spencer, gracefully parkours across the party every time someone of high rank tries to talk to her and leads the conversation away, but as far as Ecclesia can tell, the kids are fair game.

“Yo,” she says to one of the cherub-faced girls, who is watching her intently.

The girl startles when she’s addressed. Her hands come down nervously to smooth down her dress, which is a frilly pastel blue number that Ecclesia personally couldn’t pull off, but looks very nice with the girl’s blond hair and green eyes.

“I g-greet the first daughter of the House Spencer,” she says, with a curtesy.

Shit. Formalities. Ecclesia swallows the teacake she’s chewing and drops a hurried curtesy of her own. “I greet, um. Hmm. The daughter of Marquess. Bolton…?”

A beaming smile, like a light switching on. Not that light switches were a thing, yet. Ughhhh medieval times.

“Call me Amy,” she says. “Um, my name is actually Amelia, but—”

“I shall call you Amelia,” Ecclesia says with a nod. She swallows another teacake while her mother’s head is turned away. “It sounds princessy. What’s up, Amelia?”

Amelia looks around furtively. They are surrounded by adults in Count Something-or-Other’s huge garden; the few kids that had attended were mostly hanging behind their parents, peering up with moon-sized eyes and dipping nervous bows to the adults that spoke to them. There is a small group of girls sitting together at a table not too far away, having a miniature pretend version of the same tea party. No one is in their immediate vicinity.

“My father told me that you were a genius,” Amelia whispers. “A prodigy with the blade and the written word alike. Is that why you eat like that?”

Ecclesia sweats. “Like what.”

“Without chewing, or taking ladylike bites. I think I shall try it too.”

Before Ecclesia can stop her, this little psychopath takes a buttered crumpet and shoves it whole into her mouth. Her eyes go wide. Her face goes blue.

“Hrghf,” Ecclesia says. “Spit it out! It’s too big!”

“Hrghf,” Amelia agrees. With what looks like herculean effort, she swallows. Her eyes are shining when she looks at Ecclesia. “You are truly exceptional! I could never think of doing such a feat so effortlessly!”

“Right.” Ecclesia’s starting to suspect that this girl is kind of strange. Had there been someone this gullible in the game?

She squints. Amelia’s pretty blond hair and emerald eyes jolt a memory in her: “Ah!” she squeaks. “You’re the protagonist’s love rival, later to become her best friend!”

“Hm?”

“You’re the ingame mechanism to check our stats and get updated on new gossip!” Then, Ecclesia adds, kind of panicked, “Why are you trying to eat that again?”

Looking crestfallen, Amelia puts the teacake back down. “But this is the most fun I’ve had at one of these parties! Lady Nelenna never lets me join with whatever she has going on.”

Ecclesia’s ears prick up. “Lady who now?”

In reply, Amelia nods at the table that Ecclesia had dismissed as looking excruciatingly boring. There’s five ladies sat around it, all dabbing their mouths with napkins in terrifying unison. At the head is a familiar face, even young as she is: the dark blue hair and eyes of Nelenna Thistlewallow. The fiancée of the crown prince, she had some diabolical plans that would have put even the villainy of Leonard Faeth to shame.  

She just looks like a boring, proper little lady now, though. Ecclesia is consumed with the urge to go and push her over.

You are reading story Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy? at novel35.com

Even as she thinks it, her mother’s glare burns the back of her neck. She turns to Amelia and says, “So, I gotta run, but—”

“I can come with you!”

Amelia’s so pretty, with her fine blond hair and emerald green eyes. In seven years, she will lead the confrontation against Ecclesia alongside whichever prince the protagonist chooses, but for now, Ecclesia’s finding out very quickly that she’s bad at saying no to her.

“O-okay.”

Amelia links their arms as they wander off. Across the party, Ecclesia’s mother narrows her eyes at her like a tiger stalking its prey, but the gaze softens when she spots Amelia. Her thoughts are written large on her face: oh thank god she made friends for once.

Grand Duchess Lady Ekaterina Spencer is kind of a hater.

“This way,” Ecclesia says, veering away from her mother’s scary glare and into the thicket of trees that grows along the property. She’d read that the river Solymorph ran through somewhere around here.

“What are your hobbies, Lady Ecclesia?”

“Um, fencing? I also kind of like chess. I don’t win very often, but the look on that slime Leonard’s face whenever I do makes it all worth it.”

The sound of a tumbling river reaches their ears. Ecclesia quickens her step. Dutifully following her hack of rucking up her skirts to her knees, Amelia does the same.

“Ah, the seventh prince! Father tells me that you two will be betrothed soon.”

Ecclesia stops. “You’ve got to stop believing everything your father says, Amelia.”

The sick shiver of disgust that crawls down her spine dislodges a memory. Not betrothal related-ew- but something a little more relevant, a little more practical—

Is she forgetting something?

She casts back furiously to her memories of the game. Damn it, why didn’t she pay any attention to the lore, why did she only collect CGs and borderline ecchi fanart of—

On the eve of a tea party thrown by Marchioness Clovermead, one prince pushed another into the river, and a lifelong feud was born.

The light in the thicket changes. It throws Ecclesia and Amelia in shadow, illuminates two figures further down, near the gurgling river.

The first prince nobly forgave the seventh, who brought dishonor to the royal family by not confessing to his crime.

There are two boys fighting near the river, hilariously mismatched: one is large and strapping, one small and insignificant. She can’t make out the features of the bigger kid but the smaller one is unmistakable: she’d know that dragon-dung hair anywhere.

She watches as the bigger boy puts Leonard in a chokehold. The sunlight dapples along his flexed forearm. She watches as Leonard thrashes like a wildcat, the force of his struggle making the bigger boy lose his footing.

The light changes, the forest lets out a sigh. Illuminated by a beam of light, Ecclesia finally sees who it is, a split second before he falls into the river:

The crown prince.

You can find story with these keywords: Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy?, Read Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy?, Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy? novel, Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy? book, Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy? story, Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy? full, Thornheart: Isn’t Being a Villainess Too Easy? Latest Chapter