Let's Get Married
Running headlong toward my goal ever since I regressed, I hadn't even noticed how out of breath I was — but I was exhausted, and apparently I needed comfort.
I gazed quietly at Cassion and held out my hand.
Why don't you be the one to comfort me, Your Highness.
The hand resting meekly on the blanket flinched.
It's about time you found some courage, isn't it, Your Highness?
I swallowed the urge to scold him and stretched my hand out further. Cassion's head snapped away.
But unlike his turned face, his hand drifted toward me, skimming just barely past my own.
"Hold it properly."
Still, it was too much to expect more from such a shy prince. I closed my own fingers around his motionless hand myself.
His knuckles were stiff. When I brushed over the cracked skin — dry as a tortoise's shell — Cassion shuddered, a man unaccustomed to another's touch. I pretended not to notice and spoke.
"Thank you, Your Highness."
"For what?"
"For worrying about me."
"Worrying is all I can do."
"That's plenty."
You already gave me the greatest gift in my previous life. In this one, all you have to do is accept the gifts I give you.
Cassion's head turned back, slowly. His eyes met mine, and he didn't blink once.
His golden eyes had changed, unmistakably, from before. In that newly resolute gaze, there was now a will to live.
"You're certain?"
he asked. The certainty I owed him came in several varieties.
"Which one? That I'm rich? Or that you can get your revenge if you marry me?"
Cassion let out a long breath.
"The fate of the people who pointed fingers at the curse dolls. You're asking if I'm sure about that."
Cassion was no naive child — he knew perfectly well I'd made the story up. And if he was asking again anyway, then what he meant was:
"If you're not certain, I'll make it certain for you."
It was a plea — do that for me.
"You will?"
"If you want it, Your Highness, we'll do it together."
The corner of Cassion's mouth lifted. In that instant, the grown Cassion of my past life seemed to overlap with him.
That dignified figure from whom health had poured from every inch of his body. That oppressive presence, as though all the world lay beneath his feet.
"Your Highness…"
"Let's do it. Marriage."
His grip tightened on my hand.
"Let's do it. Marry me."
He finally found his courage.
"Really? You'll really marry me?"
Those big, clear eyes flooded with joy. Eyes that had once been a deep forest beneath storm clouds turned the clear green of a meadow after rain, heavy with the scent of wet leaves.
In that instant, Cassion's heart lurched and he snatched his hand back.
Diana, who ordinarily would have grabbed his hand right back and demanded to know why he let go, seemed entirely unaware that she had been the one to pull away.
She's completely lost in a dream. Is marrying me really that wonderful?
Flustered, Cassion dragged a hand beneath his nose.
"Say it again, Your Highness."
Diana seized his collar and shook him. Cassion only stared mutely at the hands that would once have been struck away without a second thought.
A fine, pale grip, clutching his clothes and shaking them. It wasn't a bad feeling at all.
"What? Say what again?"
"What you just said to me."
It wasn't as though marriage meant living together right away, and it wasn't a marriage born of romantic affection anyway — so what was there to want to hear again?
Right. I owe her one.
Grateful to her for rattling Julia and driving her out, Cassion said it with all his strength.
"Marry me, Diana Viola Ehrenberg."
Diana's mouth fell open. She blinked with unfocused eyes, as if she couldn't grasp what she'd heard, then asked,
"Why? Why do you want to marry me?"
An unexpected question came back at him.
He'd proposed, and she'd said really?, and when he'd dutifully repeated himself, now she wanted a reason?
"Tell me, Your Highness. You must have a reason for wanting to marry me."
Reasons? There were more than enough. Every night since meeting Diana, he'd fallen asleep turning her proposal over and over in his mind.
If I marry her, I can take my revenge. That had been the biggest reason his heart had leaned toward marriage.
Even this wretched Third Prince's Palace will become a place fit for a person to live.
She'd said she was rich, so his life would surely grow comfortable.
And she said she'd cure my illness too.
Whether by some magic or what, ever since he'd started taking the medicine that blue-haired man had brought, it had become easier to move. The pain that used to ambush him at all hours vanished whenever he took it, and life felt far more livable. That alone was enough to make Cassion feel he'd gained everything.
So yes — reasons to spare. But the decisive one, the thing that finally tipped him toward marriage, was something else entirely.
"Come on, Your Highness. Is it because I have money?"
Cassion's eyebrows twitched.
"Because you think I'd be good at fighting?"
Definitely not. Cassion shook his head.
"Because I'm the Lady of House Ehrenberg?"
If the Lady of Ehrenberg had been someone else — if some other lady had made the exact same offer — would Cassion have accepted the marriage?
"No. It's not because you're the Ehrenberg heir."
"Then because I'm pretty?"
The last one was pure teasing on Diana's part. And yet the visible skin of Cassion's face flushed a deep red.
"Th-that's — that's not it!"
Cassion stammered and flapped his hands like a startled crane.
"Why are you getting so worked up? It was a joke. Your Highness, are you running a fever? Feeling unwell? Never mind, stop talking. I don't even need to hear it."
Insisting it had been a joke, Diana tried to lay him down. Cassion resisted, but he couldn't beat Diana, who was older than him, taller, and stronger besides.
In the end, despite feeling far better than usual, Cassion found himself laid out neatly in bed with the blanket pulled all the way to his chin.
Diana patted his stomach.
A mere two years between them, yet Diana treated Cassion excessively like a child. A child herself, at that.
Perhaps it was the softness of Diana's hands. Sleep came.
"Thank you for agreeing to marry me."
"The reason I want to marry you is—"
He felt he owed her a definite answer to her question and had just begun to speak when Diana cut him off.
"I know, I know. I'll take care of everything for you. Just trust me. I'll buy you Twilight Mansion too! And get your revenge for you! I'll even put a crown on your head!"
"That's not—"
"There's so much to do, I'll be busy. I was planning to give you Twilight Mansion as a betrothal gift, but I suppose it's a wedding present now! Your Highness, I'll be going. Rest well!"
"Diana, I haven't finished—"
Before he could even get the words out, she vanished like the wind.
Cassion stared blankly at the spot where she'd been sitting, then burst into a helpless laugh.
The mood that had bottomed out after meeting Julia had, without his noticing, lifted itself back up.
Cassion buried the answer he'd never delivered in his heart and closed his eyes. A smile kept escaping, little by little, from the corners of his mouth.
In the same hours that Diana had wrung an acceptance of her proposal out of Cassion—
"Phoenix Bank is going bankrupt?"
Julia snatched up whatever her hands found around her and hurled it at Anderson.
The first and second throws were cushions. The third was a vase.
The vase struck Anderson in the stomach and shattered on the floor. Anderson counted himself lucky it hadn't been his head.
"Where did you hear that?"
"Does it matter where I heard it? Tell me — is it true or not, that Phoenix Bank is on the verge of collapse?"
Julia advanced on him as if to tear him apart with her teeth. At the thick scent of lilies that reached him, Anderson held his breath.
"It's not true. Many are withdrawing their deposits, but I will take measures to see it doesn't come to that."
Julia thumped the table, grumbling furiously.
When Diana had first brought up Phoenix Bank, Julia had dismissed it as idle rumor. What had made her angry, in truth, was that Diana knew of it at all while she herself had been ignorant.
"Anderson! I told you to report anything and everything concerning Phoenix Bank, didn't I?"
In the space of a moment, Julia forced her anger back down. Whatever fury she'd bottled up, she could vent later on a suitable target. Anderson was a person she needed — there was no sense in wasting a pointless outburst on him.
"Forgive me, Your Majesty the Queen."
The apology was so clean, so free of excuses, that Julia swallowed her retort and sank onto the sofa.
At Anderson's gesture, the maids filed in. They slipped Julia's shoes from her feet and began kneading them.
Julia closed her eyes. She was deep in thought.
That girl of House Ehrenberg.
Why did she keep meeting Cassion — and in secret, no less? Was someone backing her after all? Beyond that, how was she coming and going? Was there an accomplice inside the palace itself helping her?
By Julia's reckoning, sneaking in and out like that implied a definite purpose — yet the House of Ehrenberg held nothing Cassion could use as one.
"I'll look into the matter of Phoenix Bank,"
Anderson said.
"No. There is something you must do first."
Anderson bowed his head. Julia waved to the attendants, and they filed out one by one.
Only when she and Anderson were alone did Julia speak.
"Diana of House Ehrenberg. Find out everything about that girl. Ah — and how it is she comes and goes from the palace, that as well."
A cold smile curled across Julia's lips as she ordered the investigation.
"The sooner we erase that gate, the better."
Whether that gate was a person, or a door that truly existed.
The moment I heard Cassion had accepted my proposal, I returned home. There was something I wanted settled before our marriage.
"Out somewhere, are we?"
The moment I opened the study door, a familiar scent of cigarette smoke greeted me. Red hair swayed in the breeze. Chyo waved at me.
What on earth was I to do with an aunt who smoked a cigarette in her underage niece's study? When I shot her a disgruntled look, she pointed at the window behind her.
"The window's open."
"You climbed in through the window and forgot to close it, didn't you."
"Caught me?"
Chyo grinned so breezily that I lost whatever I'd meant to say.
This room wasn't mine alone — Rebert came and went here too. One day, Cassion would as well.
Which meant the habit of lighting up whenever and wherever she pleased had better be fixed.
Well, that could wait for another day. Business first.
"What's become of the Phoenix Bank matter?"