Will Things Change If I Marry You?
A flicker of something unusual settled in Chyo's eyes. At my bombshell declaration, instead of recoiling in shock, she had simply let her eyes gleam. Chyo truly was different from everyone else—any ordinary person would have laughed it off as the naive chatter of a child dreaming of marrying a prince. But Chyo didn't laugh. Her eyes flashed. It was the look of someone meticulously calculating exactly what she stood to gain from my words. And yet she didn't quite believe my words would become truth; suspicion ran beneath it all.
"You're saying you'll marry Prince Cassion?"
I nodded, big and emphatic. He'd turned down my proposal for now, but Cassion taking my hand was only a matter of time. I had every confidence I could arrange it.
"Ha!"
Chyo let out something between a sigh and a scoff. I couldn't read what she was feeling at all, so I laid out my plan slowly.
"I'll marry His Highness, inherit the house, and pour serious money into your guild, Aunt. In exchange, you put my requests first—whenever I ask, whatever I ask."
"So you want me to work for free up front. Is that it?"
"Of course not."
I grabbed the necklace at my throat and wrenched it off. The gold chain ripped free, leaving a raw gash across my neck, but I paid it no mind. Chyo's eyes narrowed to slits. Jenice went rigid with silent horror. Casually rubbing the wound at the back of my neck, I held out to Chyo the necklace with its jewel as large as the joint of my thumb.
"Consider that your first retainer. Find me a person. The capital's slums—sky-blue hair, age, hm... sixteen? His name is Rebert."
There was no time to waste. I needed that lunatic of a doctor immediately.
Chyo accepted my commission wearing a face of pure disbelief—after pocketing an emerald bigger than the knuckle of a grown man's thumb. And while Chyo handled my request, I busied myself with my own work.
"It's me, Your Highness."
Another midnight visit. I said my greeting as I eased open the door of Cassion's room. Sneaking in here every single time is exhausting. I brushed the grime off my dress, dirtied from crawling through the dog hole. Not that I could come and go in the open, either. If word spread that I was meeting Cassion, Count Kolkos would start scheming, and Dayson would raise hell. Absolute secrecy. Though who knows how many more days Count Kolkos will stay this quiet.
I'd heard that Count Kolkos, still smarting from the humiliation I'd dealt him, was holed up at home holding meetings with his retainers. Word had it he was also telling everyone who'd listen that a guardian needed to be appointed for me without delay. I have to win His Highness over, and fast. My heart grew restless.
"Your Highness, are you asleep?"
Unlike usual, Cassion was silent. Stepping into the room, I found him in a mood that boded nothing good. He sat at the moonlit window with a blanket draped around his shoulders, gazing up at the sky. Had he been a healthy boy, it would have made a lovely picture—but with Cassion so gaunt and still like that, the whole scene felt precariously balanced, poised on the edge of something.
He looks like he could die any moment. He carried the heavy scent of deep resignation, as though he might cast his life aside at any second and surprise no one by doing it.
"Have you eaten? Is Flac taking good care of you?"
I crossed the room and set a chair down beside Cassion, striking up conversation as I sat. Still, no answer came. The familiar silent treatment. For a while Cassion had treated me like an uninvited guest, working himself into a lather trying to throw me out, but after passing out a few times mid-tirade, he had settled into a policy of flat-out ignoring me. I'd known I'd be ignored before I ever came, so it didn't sting. I hypnotized myself into good cheer and beamed at him. They say you can't spit on a smiling face—I'd hoped Cassion's mood might lift at mine, but today he wouldn't even turn his eyes my way. He looked like a cat throwing a tantrum, and I ached to seize his cheeks and jiggle them. Except I was too afraid his head might come off to try.
"Your Highness, stop being stubborn and marry me already?"
I'd assumed today's fixed repertoire would play out as always. Marry me? No. Marry me? Get lost.
But then—
"...If I do, will things change?"
An answer I hadn't expected slipped from Cassion's lips. At some point he had turned around on the windowsill and was looking straight at me. Only then could I see his face properly. Cassion was in terrible shape today. The hollows beneath his eyes had sunk deep, and blood he hadn't finished wiping away smeared the corner of his mouth.
That Flac—I told him not to miss a single report! I knew perfectly well that Flac was in no position to send word often, yet the moment something went wrong with Cassion, my blame found Flac first. What on earth had happened this time to my prince, so delicate—delicate in health alone, that is?
"Answer me. If I married you, would anything change?"
A slender hope. He was searching for it in me. And strangely enough, the sweet words that would normally have poured right out only circled my lips, refusing to come. Why today of all days?
"I'm asking whether marrying you would cure this wretched disease—and whether it would let me smash Dayson's face in."
So Dayson had come by, had he. I remembered the filth he'd spewed at Cassion the last time he came to the palace. Fortunately he hadn't seemed to notice how much the living conditions had improved, but it was easy to guess he'd left plenty of cruelty behind this time as well. I held Cassion's gaze and answered.
"Yes. I'll cure your illness, and I'll let you grind his face in—no, I'll even put Dayson's neck in your hands if that's what you want."
Vows, more or less, spilled from my mouth. I spoke each syllable clearly, pressing the force in so that Cassion could believe me.
"How?"
It wasn't a question born of disbelief. It was a plea: please, give me something to believe in.
"I told you—I have money. There's nothing money can't do. Just say the word. Name anything you want."
"You talk as if buying a whole kingdom would be nothing to you."
Not nothing, but easy enough. If I became head of the house and could spend the Ehrenberg fortune freely, I could keep a small kingdom alive starting this very day. And I intended to grow that fortune far larger still—because everything Dayson stole would soon be mine.
"Want a kingdom? Then just... take ours. I'll make it happen—me."
The kingdom that would one day be Dayson's—I meant to snatch it out of his hands anyway. When I finished, Cassion shook his head as though he'd heard every species of madness in existence. And yet the corners of his mouth had gone soft.
"Don't be so negative. If it's land you want, I'll carve off an estate near the capital for you, clean and simple. So—will you marry me, Cassion?"
I would give Cassion the finest things I had to offer. For now, that meant money; before long, it would be power. Though from where he sat, I probably sounded like a windbag spinning castles in the air.
Cassion said nothing for a long while.
"No. I won't."
And when his answer finally came, it was still a refusal. And here I'd thought he'd already tipped over the edge! Is this brat toying with me right now? My fist clenched of its own accord, but I swallowed it. What else could I do? I was the one clinging to him, begging for a wedding.
"Fine. Don't, then."
I let the spine I'd held up so hopefully collapse and slouched carelessly into the chair. Today's courtship would end here. In the end, life was always a long string of 'no, no, no' before the final 'yes, yes, yes' anyway.
Cassion's stare fastened on the side of my face. His expression was as blank as ever, but mischief glittered and gathered in his eyes.
"Wait. Did you just talk down to me? That's lese-majesty, you know."
"Then report me."
Cassion gave me a look that asked how one person could possibly be like this, then heaved a sigh. He stepped onto the footstool propped against the wall and climbed down from the windowsill, then walked slowly and crawled beneath the covers. I kept careful watch on his every movement while pretending not to. If he swayed, even for an instant, I would have to catch him. Fortunately, he reached the bed in one piece and even burrowed under the cozy blanket.
Since I'd begun looking after him, Cassion's health had improved, however slightly. There was a time he would have stopped several times on the way to bed, dragging in great heaving breaths, but today he made it there without a single pause. I clamped down on the expression of pride that threatened to crumble my whole face. Cassion despised being fussed over, so I couldn't let it show. Don't you dare pity me, he'd warned. Not that I ever had. I was good to Cassion because it profited me, not because I found him pitiable—and because the conscience of the adult I used to be demanded it, too. But I couldn't exactly explain all that, so I'd simply said, It's not pity. Naturally, Cassion hadn't believed me, and he scowled every time worry crept across my face.
"Have you eaten?"
I'd made a point of telling Cassion that this one didn't count as worry—just the sort of question anyone could ask anyone. It had worked, too; lately he'd rewarded me with at least a short reply. Today, though, he didn't even pretend to have heard.
"Asleep already?"
I approached the bed. His eyelids were shut fast. I waved a hand back and forth before his face. The long lashes didn't so much as tremble. The poor thing had been wilting like a kitten that never once got its fill of its mother's milk—and it seemed the sleep demon had swallowed him whole in no time.
I need to find him faster. The search for Rebert was moving more slowly than I'd hoped. Before I died, Chyorny had gathered intelligence faster than even the bureau the royal palace ran—fast enough to leave Dayson clicking his tongue. This is driving me insane. The moment I married Cassion and won free rein over the family fortune, investing in Chyo would be the very first thing I did. I drew the blanket up and tucked it snugly around him, sealing in every gap. Still—what on earth happened to His Highness? Cassion's question lay on my chest like a stone.
At long last, the Chyo I'd been waiting and waiting for came to find me—right around the climax of the mystery novel Jenice was reading aloud.
"Aaagh! You scared me half to death!"
Jenice nearly leapt out of her skin at the sight of Chyo pouring in through the window without a sound.
"You're here, Aunt?"
"What kind of child doesn't even flinch?"
Well—I had seen her shadow first, after all. I shrugged. Jenice snapped her book shut and retreated, muttering something incomprehensible along the lines of, why does nobody ever tell me anything.
"About the job I gave you?"
"Found him."
"I knew you would."
Chyo's brow lifted.
"You know, sometimes you carry on like an old woman of a hundred. Anyone watching would swear you've lived two lifetimes."
Not a hundred years old, no—but life on round two? Guilty as charged.
"I'd love to sit around trading idle chatter with you, Aunt, but I'm in a hurry. Where is he?"
Only last night, Cassion had fallen gravely ill. Even the medicine Dallas had prescribed couldn't so much as dull his pain. Which was why I needed the man I was searching for—this instant. A man whose genius medicine and revolutionary new remedies had rocketed him in a single bound to royal physician of the palace, until the mania called necrophilia dragged him down into the abyss.
Rebert. The year I turned fifteen, he had developed a drug that eased pain as though by magic. I still remembered how Cassion's condition had improved, just a little, after he took it.
I have to pull that drug's development forward—as fast as humanly possible.