An Invitation from the Imperial Family
"Saintess, here is today's schedule..."
"Saintess, you are expected at today's prayers..."
"An orphanage has received a donation made in your name..."
Today, as ever, a single extraordinary title rang through the Church without fail. Saintess—the Goddess's own representative. The woman beloved of God. Far from ordinary, she was gifted with a power beyond extraordinary.
"It's the Saintess! It's really her!!"
"Jane, don't go running like that. You'll trip and hurt yourself, you know?"
"Okay! Hehe..."
She was passing through the day much as she always had—an ordinary routine, the same quiet hours she had kept before the Church came under attack.
She returned the greetings of nearly every believer who came her way, spent a while laughing and chatting with the children under the Church's protection, then withdrew to the prayer room, where from time to time they would confess to one another as they prayed. Such was the Saintess's daily life, and the daily life of the faithful.
...And yet, I suppose things can never truly go back to the way they were...
Before her stood a single stone pillar, rising serene and solitary, its every corner densely inscribed with people's names.
"Riley, Braum, Kern, Tike..."
Her fingers moved over the pillar. No—to be precise, over the names carved into it. And with them, the remembering began: the faces that surfaced behind each name.
Riley, who had always greeted her so warmly, his smile bright as morning. Braum, who had squared his shoulders and told her to leave the Church's safety to him. One after another she traced the names of the countless others, and with each one the memories returned.
But for every memory that bloomed fresh again, the sense of loss deepened to match. The truth cut her to the bone—she could never return to the Church these people had filled—and round and round her head circled the same thought: if only she had tried a little harder, might she not have spared even a few more of them?
Why, of all moments, had she been so utterly powerless that day? Why had she let that damned bishop capture her? If only she had done her duty as Saintess when it mattered, would it not have ended differently?
Every manner of poisonous thought was writhing through the Saintess's mind when—
[Oh dear, child. None of this was your fault.]
The voice echoing through her head scattered every last one of those thoughts. The voice of the One she had believed in and followed without a shred of doubt.
...But... because of my foolishness, there were people who might have lived...
[Oh dear, but that was beyond anyone's power. How could trusting another ever be counted a sin?]
The voice went on echoing, striving its best to comfort her, yet the bitterness would not be hidden.
[...It is not that I do not know your heart. Even so, I am glad—truly glad—that you came through unharmed.]
...
[A terrible thing for me to say, I know... but to me, you are dearer than the other children.]
Th... that's...!
"Saintess!"
At the sound of a voice calling her from somewhere, the communion with the Goddess snapped shut. She had not even finished what she meant to say.
Thinking there was nothing for it, she turned to find a nun calling her name, glancing this way and that.
"Sister Meli, is there something you need of me?"
"Ah, Saintess! I've finally found you!"
"S-Sister, please, calm yourself for just a moment... If you could simply tell me what this is about..."
"Oh, right... I'm sorry."
The nun had seized her hand without warning, bouncing on her heels and crying that she'd found her at last, and quite unable to keep pace with her energy, the Saintess had paused to catch her breath. Before she knew it, the girl had composed herself and was pressing something into her hands.
"Wh... what is this, Sister?"
"A letter arrived for you just a little while ago, so I came to deliver it..."
"Oh, I see. Thank you so very much, Sister."
"Oh... no, it's nothing. I only did what I was meant to."
A single sheet of paper passed into the Saintess's hands—an envelope that spoke of wealth at a glance. No enchantment lay upon it, and not even a sender's name was written. A suspicious envelope, to be sure.
No one had told her to expect anything, and a thread of wariness began to wind through her—
"Oh, that's right! Saintess, have you heard the news?"
"...I beg your pardon? Wh... what news?"
The bright voice at her side scattered her caution to the winds. The rather fascinating news it carried was a bonus.
"He's come back, Saintess! They say he's returned!"
"He...? Who do you mean?"
"The Saint, Saintess! The Saint!"
"Ah..."
"He went to the Great Forest this time, you see, and they say he arrives back today!"
The Saint. She knew at once who that meant.
A man who bore upon his forehead the crest said to mark those who had beheld the Goddess's divine form—yet who, for reasons unknown, had not a speck of reverence or awe for Her. No, if anything he seemed to hold Her in something very like loathing. Jenison. The man at the heart of the rumors that had set the Empire ablaze of late.
...At first, I took him for nothing more than a good-for-nothing delinquent...
A man who drifted about toying with women, indulging in the pleasures the Church forbade. She had simply assumed that was the whole of him.
...Was it truly all a mask, worn only because of the rumors the world spread about him?
The rumors swirling around House Reinhardt had set the whole Empire buzzing of late. Word of them had spread to every corner of the realm—so widely that even a toddler passing in the street knew of them.
And reactions were as varied as they came. The houses that had sworn devotion and loyalty to the Reinhardts—the ones who had spent years currying their favor—denied the rumors with all their might, insisting such a thing could never be. The followers of the other Great Families of the Four, meanwhile, were upon them in an instant, the moment far too good to waste.
Like wolves and hyenas starved three days running. Their hunger to seize this chance and clip the wings of House Reinhardt and all its adherents was palpable even from where she stood.
...If only it had ended there, I would have called it a mercy.
Unfortunately, House Reinhardt's enemies did not stop there. Even the Imperial Family had begun to involve itself in the affair, and in earnest. Nobles who had long gnawed at the throne's authority—and chief among them, the four ducal houses said to be the most dangerous of all. Now the honor of one of those very houses was plummeting into the abyss. How could the crown possibly let such an opportunity slip through its fingers?
All that remains... is whether the rumors are actually true. And I suspect, more likely than not, they are.
The moment she had first sensed that something about him had changed coincided exactly with the time he had been cast out of his family. And judging by everything he had shown of himself since, the rumors were almost certainly true.
...How tragic, if they really are true.
The mother who bore him had been taken far too soon, and the man who was his father had spent him as the family's scapegoat. Even if he had wished to refuse, he could not have. It was the command of Duke Reinhardt himself, after all. With no strength, no learning, no power of his own, he could only obey—only keep pressing forward, even knowing the road was nothing but thorns.
Back then... I should have been the one to reach out my hand to you...
The Goddess who loved all creation equally—and she, Her representative, entrusted with a measure of that power. Even to him, a sinner, she ought to have extended her hand. It was what her office demanded.
But she had not. She had only ever turned from him in disgust. She had gone out of her way to avoid him and never once hidden her dislike, so surely some part of the wounds he carried had come from her. If he hated her for it, she had no defense to offer.
And yet, even so—he had saved her. She did not know why, but he had saved her, and saved the Church as well, when it had all but perished. So this time it was her turn—hers and the Church's—to stand behind him.
Fath— no, forgive me. His Holiness the Pope will surely wish to help him as well, but...
"─Saintess...!"
They have not yet revealed to the world that he is the one our Goddess chose, so to openly take his side would be...
"Saintess!"
"Oh—!"
If they were to help him—how, exactly, should they go about it? As she sank into the question, a pair of hands settled on her shoulders.
Light hands, alighting soft as a falling leaf. Startled by the touch, she lifted her head—and there stood the nun, still beside her, watching her with worried eyes.
"Saintess, are you feeling unwell? You've kept your head bowed this whole time..."
"N-no, I'm quite all right, Sister. Thank you truly for your concern."
"Hehe, it's nothing..."
Leaving the nun to her sheepish grin, the Saintess turned back to the envelope she had received earlier. Once again it showed no trace of magic—an ordinary envelope, its sender unnamed. She peeled back a layer of the luxurious paper and found a soft cloth folded neatly within.
"S-Saintess, th... this is—!"
"...Yes, Sister?"
"Y-yes?"
"Forgive me, but... might you prepare a garment for me?"
"Oh... yes... yes, of course!!"
A brilliant yellow cloth that called gold to mind, wrought over with beautiful ornament. And at its center, bold as a declaration, a single embroidered crest: a sphere stitched round in black and crimson thread, and beneath it a lion seated in all its majesty.
The kind of emblem said to snap a drunken brawler in the street back to his senses at a single glance. Embroidery that made even this one scrap of cloth impossible to dismiss. A crest that even she, Saintess of this land, dared not treat lightly—
It was none other than the Imperial House. The symbol of the Imperial Family itself.
"So you are Jenison?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"At this level... not bad, not bad at all..."
"...?"
"There is something I would ask of you."
"By all means, Your Majesty."
"Have you any thought of becoming betrothed to my daughter?"