Even If This Relationship Ends in Catastrophe
Ania was crying.
Cradled in my arms.
Begging me not to leave her side, she clung to me and wept.
The sight of her gasping and sobbing was so utterly alien that I could only stare blankly at the crown of her trembling head.
“Ania….”
I had been certain she would leave me.
Because Ania Brontë did not love Edward Radner.
She was a woman who did not know what love was.
And yet she was telling me not to go.
Begging me not to hate her.
Was this also a ploy to win my heart? To turn Edward Radner’s heart toward herself?
But if these trembling shoulders and this cracking voice were an act, then what in this world could I possibly believe?
That was why.
Even though I had resolved to leave—even though I had decided to end our relationship beautifully before the catastrophe that would one day claim us—I still took hold of Ania’s slender arms.
“Please….”
I grasped the arms of the woman who was already pleading and pulled her to her feet.
Ania kept her head bowed low. Her disheveled golden hair hung like a curtain before her face, and from her flushed cheeks, breath warmed by feverish heat escaped in pale white puffs.
“Ania. Look at me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I want to talk for a moment.”
“No! You’ve come to hate me, haven’t you! You’re going to say… let’s get a divorce!”
Yes.
That was exactly what I had been about to say.
Until she cried and begged.
But I had thought that was what she wanted. I, who could not even properly protect her alone, had simply assumed she had grown to hate me.
I still did not know the reason. Why she desired me so desperately.
If I asked, would she answer?
Ania Brontë… could I believe your words? If you said it was because you loved me, could I take it at face value?
I did not know. But if it meant I did not have to leave, then I would stay.
Even if the end of this relationship might be catastrophe.
Even if, in the end, this heart of mine might kill me.
“I won’t leave.”
A snow-laden wind blew. I draped my outer coat over Ania’s body, which was growing colder by the second.
“I won’t leave you.”
Dragging my own cooling limbs, I gently pushed her back. Our footsteps climbing the hill were heading toward the same place.
After that, the harvest festival ended without further incident.
Since I could not take Ania—who had collapsed from the cold—straight back to the mansion, we decided to remain at the estate one more day and set out for home the following morning.
Valentine Brontë, fretting over his daughter, refused to leave her side for a long while. I thought he would keep vigil through the entire night if left alone, but fortunately one of the servants mentioned that he would need to be up and moving early the next morning, and so the duke finally returned to his own chambers.
Only after Valentine Brontë had gone did I make my way to Ania’s room to check on her condition.
When I opened the door, white moonlight flooded the interior. It was a truly spacious chamber—so vast that, had a servant not informed me beforehand that it was a bedroom, I might have mistaken it for an accidental intrusion into a grand hall.
A pure-white bed stood by the window. Lace trimmed with a shawl draped over the headboard, and from the neatly arranged bedding rose the soft, clean scent unique to well-laundered linens.
I approached slowly and sat gently beside where Ania lay. She rested with her eyes closed. When I pressed my palm to her forehead, I found, to my relief, that she had no fever. I had fretted over how long she had remained outdoors in the bitter cold, so this was a genuine mercy.
After brushing back the strands of her hair that had grown damp with sweat, I lifted my gaze and surveyed the room—and a strange sensation washed over me.
This chamber I was entering for the first time in my life somehow radiated an atmosphere of uncanny familiarity.
“Ugh…”
At the same moment, a sharp throb lanced through my skull. It was the same sensation I had felt upon climbing the hill. Fragments of scenes flashed once more through my mind.
A girl lying upon a bed, and a boy perched upon the windowsill.
The two of them are talking, faces bright with enjoyment.
In an autumn season when the leaves are turning red.
That boy and girl… are almost certainly Edward and Ania.
Then my consciousness returned to Ania’s room, where snow drifted past the window. The present landscape and the past scene overlapped and slipped past one another like layered glass.
Why was I seeing these visions? Were they memories still lingering within Edward’s body?
Even if I forced myself to ponder it, no satisfactory answer presented itself. So I simply remained seated at Ania’s side and continued to stroke her hair.
“Good… morning.”
“Did you… sleep well.”
A week had passed since our return to the mansion.
“Shall we… eat?”
“Yes……”
The season had shifted. The snow that had piled high was melting away, and the biting winds were being driven out by the gentle warmth of early spring.
Yet it was not only the weather that had changed.
“It’s delicious.”
“It is delicious.”
Our relationship, too, had grown strangely altered. Ania’s demeanor in particular… how to put it? It was markedly different from before.
She was avoiding me, one might say. Where once she had approached with natural, unselfconscious ease, now she could scarcely meet my eyes. The moment I so much as considered speaking to her she would startle so violently that I could not even begin a proper conversation.
And somehow that pattern had repeated itself for an entire week.
Clatter, clatter…
In the dining room, only the sound of utensils striking one another echoed through the silence. I felt as though I might choke on every bite.
I ought to say something—anything—yet nothing suitable came to mind. A peculiar feeling rose anew. Before things had grown this awkward, what on earth had we talked about during meals?
“......”
Looking back, almost every conversation had been initiated by Ania. How was my sword training progressing? Would I care to take a walk with her? And so on…
Perhaps that had been her own form of consideration. Since I had been openly radiating a stiff, forbidding atmosphere, she had been trying, in her way, to soften it.
“My lady.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and called to her. A sudden clatter rang out. The fork slipped from Ania’s fingers and rolled across the floor.
“I shall prepare a fresh one.”
“Uh… yes.”
Looking flustered, Ania drew out a handkerchief, dabbed at the corner of her mouth, and nodded.
“Yes, my husband.”
“My lady… is there something you particularly like?”
As though she had never expected the question, the hand wiping her lips suddenly stilled. Then she smiled, soft and bright.
“You, my husband.”
“N-not that. I meant favorite objects, or hobbies.”
“Hobbies…”
She seemed to ponder for a long moment before answering, with a small smile, “I like the garden.”
A garden. Conveniently, I knew of an excellent place.
“Then how would you feel about visiting the capital’s arboretum tomorrow?”
“Is this a date proposal?”
“It isn’t that…”
“Then what is it?”
“Because even though we are married, it seems we have been living without knowing what the other likes.”
“Hehe…”
A flush rose on the cheeks of the woman seated across from me. She rose from her chair, crossed the space with quick little steps, and settled lightly into the seat beside mine, looking up at me.
“Thank you.”
“For what…?”
“For being curious about what I like.”
Before I knew it she had taken up a fork and was holding a bite of food to my lips. There was no need to feel embarrassed over something so trivial, so I accepted it with a composed expression.
“Do you know something?”
“Know what?”
“I do like the garden… but not nearly as much as I like you, my husband.”
“That is quite a flattering thing to say.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I mean it as well.”
Ania furrowed her brow and puffed out her cheeks, then promptly burst into laughter. Watching her, I could no longer hold back and laughed as well. We sat there for a long while, simply looking at each other and laughing—
—when suddenly a voice cut through the air.
“You two get along remarkably well, Edward.”
Startled, we both turned our heads.
“Your Highness?”
“Eldrigon?”
The voice was unmistakably that of the Crown Prince, yet the Crown Prince himself was nowhere to be seen. In his place stood a servant holding an object of some kind.
“A telephone?”
Something resembling an old phonograph rested in the servant’s hands.
“Oh! Edward, you’ve already heard of this device? You’re quite the man of the world, aren’t you?”
It was not that I was particularly worldly. Yet I could see how it might appear that way. In this world the telephone had only just been invented and was beginning to become known, little by little, among certain scholars and men of business.
“I heard of it by chance.”
“What a pity. I had hoped to surprise the two of you with a gift while you were away from home. Ah well.”
“At any rate… that is not the important matter. Edward, I have something rather urgent to discuss with you.”
“With me?”
“Yes, with you. I heard you arrested a fellow named Yuren who was recently transferred to the capital detention facility. He is a criminal under imperial warrant, and we have been having a devil of a time with him.”
“It was nothing of consequence.”
“You may think so, but I do not. Therefore, come to the capital tomorrow. Preferably with Ania as well. I shall see that you are treated with the utmost hospitality.”
With that, Eldrigon laughed heartily and ended the call.
I looked at Ania and offered a somewhat helpless smile.
“What shall we do?”
Ania smiled without the slightest trace of fluster.
“Let’s go. As long as I am with you, my husband, anywhere is fine.”