Theodore invited Rishe to the chapel to tell her that her brother is a murderous monster who even killed his own mother, and his killings aren’t limited to war time. Rishe responds that she’s “fully aware of the facts” and has still chosen to be Prince Arnold’s bride. Before Theo can protest, Arnold arrives, no doubt tipped off to the meeting by Rishe.
Arnold shoos Theodore away, then tells Rishe he warned her to stay away from him. When Rishe asks why everyone says he’s so cruel when she’s only seen him as a kind and considerate man, Arnold hisses that he’s looked after her too well. Putting his hand around her throat, he orders her to disabuse herself of that false notion. But she won’t. She trusts what she’s seen, and can’t see him as a cruel person.
Arnold sees in Rishe’s eyes the resolve of someone on the battlefield, prepared to stay true to their convictions even if it leads to her death. He’s killed others with that resolve in the eyes of others, and they’re the ones he feared most. Rishe decides to frame her situation as having dreams that she’s been killed, and the lingering fear she’s already dead and just living in a long dream after her death.
She tells him that whether this life is a dream or not, she’s not running away. If there’s resolve in her eyes, its the resolve to live as his wife. Stunned by her words, Arnold moves his hand off her throat to her chin, pushes her close, and kisses her, saying “there’s no need” for that kind of resolve.
The meaning of those words eludes Rishe, who is working herself down to the bone developing the product she’ll use to win over Chief Tully and Aria Trading Company. That product is nail polish that protects and strengthens nails. Her maid Elsie is enchanted by the look of Rishe’s sparkly, smooth nails, and Rishe applies some on her hand as well.
While doing so, Rishe learns that Elsie can’t afford to live her life for herself; it’s all she can do to put food on the table for her poor family. Poverty seems to be a deep-seated problem in the empire; Rishe wants to do something about that, and being the crown princess-to-be, she actually can.
In the meantime, she offers Elsie a bottle of the polish in whatever color she likes. Rishe’s kindness brings tears to her eyes. They’re tears she insists are of happiness, but we learn later it’s more than that.
Rishe knows going into her meeting with Tully that simply presenting the product of nail polish won’t be enough to persuade him. She’s not a fellow merchant but a customer, and Tully says the finest merchants choose their own customers.
Rishe proposes building upon the prince’s establishment of a minimum wage and hiring labor from the slums. Tully dismisses this as needless charity, but Rishe uses his own words from one of her previous loops to ask him why simply choose customers when they can produce them.
Giving the poor jobs will give them money to spend, thus making their employees their customers as well. Inspired by Elsie’s story, Rishe is determined to turn the slums from a place of despair to a place of hope and opportunity, where the common folk don’t have to give up their dreams, big or small.
When Tully sees how badly Rishe wants to work with him, he tells her he could use that fixation to wring her dry, but that’s when she whips out her trump card: she knows that Kaine’s little sister Aria, namesake of his trading empire, has an illness, just as she did in her previous loop.
In loops since then she’d become a skilled herbalist and scholar, and discovered a medicine that can cure Aria within a year. When Tully bends to one knee and basically surrenders, Rishe tells him she’ll give him the ingredients and formula for the medicine without conditions.
Rishe would only ask that Tully consider that the families in the slums care about their families as he cares about his, and humbly asks if he’ll help her. Tully again bows and tells Rishe that her words have moved him to think about the people of the slums for the first time. If he can help their families as Rishe is helping his, then they can do business together.
Rishe should be proud for finally defeating Tully in a business negotiation, but she’s not one to rest on her laurels. A lot of logistics and planning will be needed, both for the nail polish concern and her wedding. But as was previously established, Rishe had barely slept for days. When she collapses out of apparent exhaustion, it comes as no surprise.
What very much does come as a surprise is the fact that once she collapsed, her trusted maid Elsie and her guard Kamil, two of the people she’s come to trust most, betrayed her by kidnapping her and handing her to Theodore in those very slums. Perhaps Elsie’s tears were more about guilt than happiness.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Theo threatened her and Kamil’s families in order to make them work for him. If he didn’t, then even someone as shrewd as Rishe wasn’t able to see the traitors among her. Regardless, their betrayal is a brutal gut punch after such a well-fought victory.
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