Touch My Brother and You Die - Volume VIII #1003050

Truth or lightning!

The First Roxburg Truth Game runs on roast turkey, cold beer, and one rule: answer honestly or take a full-power spell to the face. Rosalite loses the opening rock-paper-scissors (she threw rock, which apparently everyone does) and lays almost everything on the table, looping lives, basement sword and all.

Madam Serena knows who planted it. Celine: memory-bending dark mage, twenty-year stalker of Rosalite’s mother, and Serena’s own descendant. Touching the sword sent her a summons, so there’s a pillar of light over the estate and an unwelcome houseguest on the way.

Naturally, Roxburg writes a manual. Mana restraints by every fire hydrant. The Duke and Glen evacuated first and told nothing, which Glen will have feelings about. Rion, memories back and welded to his sister’s arm, appoints himself bodyguard. And Rosalite has one advantage Celine doesn’t know about, good for exactly one use.

Also on the calendar: a royal hunt where the birds have gone suspiciously quiet, a dead maid reporting for duty under a new name and a hand-drawn mole, and a prince who has stopped writing back. The last thing Lucy-Lucy took home from Rohil was Glen’s cane.

The moment Celine sets foot in the duchy, she’s dead. That’s the plan, anyway.