Three Days Before the Wedding
After the talks with the Allied Kingdoms concluded and I returned to the duchy, I threw myself back into work.
Perhaps because that day's memories had left such a vivid impression.
Whenever stray thoughts crept in, the lascivious image of Aria would surface unbidden, landing me in unintended, rather awkward distress.
'Is it because I managed to accomplish so much before heading down to the capital?'
Coming home to be greeted by nothing more complicated than signing paperwork, I felt a strange mix of pleasure and disquiet.
'That aside...'
With the talks having concluded the way they had, the Allied Kingdoms, for all practical purposes, had no choice left but to trust the contract itself.
Even if they held their silence for a while and searched for some alternative plan, the moment the new religion I had seeded through Bathory's diseases began swelling in size and pressing on the tide of public opinion, they would have no option but to fold their hands quietly and come to terms.
And so I finished signing the documents, stretched alone in my office, and gazed out at the scenery beyond the window.
'...Summer isn't far off, is it.'
Which meant the greatest event of all — my wedding with Lapis — was drawing near.
I had no memory of my past self ever having married, so the feeling stirring in my chest was something new... but my circumstances didn't exactly allow me to simply bask in the joy.
Still, it was a touch too late to be weighing any other decisions now.
Even if the ceremony was to be held in summer, it would be early summer at that — the schedule was practically upon us.
One blink, and I'd be heading back down to the capital again.
So the only thing I could do right now was give everything my best.
Just as Rohen had guessed, the time that slipped by in an instant soon carried them into early summer — three days before their wedding.
Everyone attending the ceremony had long since descended to the capital and taken up residence there.
"Just a little longer, dear. I never knew you were such an impatient man."
"Th-that may be, but...!"
At the door of Lapis's chamber in the Imperial Palace of the capital —
Duke Asis, fidgeting restlessly, finally earned himself a scolding from his wife.
"Our daughter says she wishes to show her father the sight of her in her wedding dress... how could I possibly not be eager?"
"You weren't like this when I had mine made to order."
For nobles, it was a matter of course that the bride and groom enter the ceremony dressed in garments crafted by the hands of a renowned artisan worthy of the grand occasion — but a wedding dress, carrying an entirely different weight of meaning all its own, held a value apart from all the rest.
It was not merely a garment to be worn on a special day, but a garment made for the special day itself.
And so, even among noblewomen already married and living their lives — women who would never wear one again — it was common enough to go out of one's way to commission a wedding dress regardless.
At his wife's remark, Duke Asis was struck by an unintended surprise.
"Did you just feel jealous of our own daughter?"
"...Before I am a mother, I am a man's woman."
"It's been far too long since I last saw this side of you."
Her charming jealousy, so rarely witnessed that the image of his daughter in a wedding dress was momentarily driven clean from his head, drew a beaming smile from the Duke, and he offered her a light kiss.
Startled, yet refusing to pull away, the Duchess flushed red and glanced nervously down the corridor.
"There's no one nearby, so there's no need to look about."
"It seems I'm still seen as a woman, fortunately. Apparently we haven't yet reached the stage of merely coexisting out of long familiarity."
"Not once in my life have I ever thought of you as anything but my woman."
How could he be so shamelessly good at saying such embarrassing things?
And yet — hadn't she fallen for exactly this reckless honesty of his, and married him for it?
"You may come in now."
At last, it seemed the attendants had finished, and as the maids walked out through the door, Duke Asis and his wife stepped inside.
There sat their daughter — looking less like a woman on the eve of her wedding than an angel descended from the heavens, and the two of them lapsed into a long, silent stillness.
At the sight of her parents saying nothing at all, Lapis rose awkwardly from her chair.
"Does it... not suit me?"
"N-no, it does!"
Seeing the sulky expression settle onto Lapis's face, Duke Asis shook his head in a fluster.
And when he did not stop there — when tears began to fall, drop by drop, from both his eyes — it was Lapis who found herself thrown into confusion instead.
"F-Father?"
"...Thank you for growing into such a beautiful woman."
Their daughter had spent most of her childhood as little better than a vegetable — a full-body paralysis in all but name, without feeling below her neck.
That same daughter had grown up so splendidly, and now stood fully prepared to become a man's wife. As the Duke felt that realization wash over him once more, he could not help but choke up.
"Y-you hardly need to cry over it."
"People sometimes shed tears out of joy, you know."
At the sight of her father wrapping her in his arms and sobbing, Lapis quietly reached out and gently stroked his back, soothing him with soft pats.
Her father, who had always seemed so unshakably strong, was showing her this side of himself — and an unexpected ache of tenderness welled up in Lapis's own heart.
What kind of reaction would he show, she wondered, when she someday bore a child of her own and cradled the little one in her arms?
Of course, that was a far, far distant future.
And there was a great mountain yet to be crossed on the way to that future — but Lapis decided not to trouble herself with it, not in this moment.
"You are about to become a man's wife and the next Empress, so mind how you carry yourself."
"Thank you, Mother. You've had such a hard time of it all these years, haven't you?"
"You're the one who suffered, not I..."
Twenty years ago.
The scene before her was a perfect mirror of her own parents on the day she herself had wed, and as tender memories bloomed fresh in her mind, the Duchess wore a soft, faint smile.
Please — let this lovely daughter of mine walk a road of happy days from here on, always.
Under that fervent wish and prayer, the family spent a warm, intimate while together for the first time in a long while.
"..."
"..."
Late at night, playing a quiet game of chess with my father, I found myself mired in a decidedly uncomfortable silence.
"Checkmate, it seems."
"...So it is."
Perhaps now some real conversation between father and son might come.
With that thought, I naturally poured the power of my Lingual Magic into the exchange and spoke.
"It seems you have rather little aptitude for reading the board."
"Is that not precisely why I brought along a strategist of my own?"
"...True. That you did."
Three sentences. That was the entirety of the exchange to follow a long stretch of silence — and my father, seemingly no less awkward about it than I, swallowed dryly and wiped a hand down his face.
"To be honest, far from guiding you as a father should, all I've shown you is a married life that serves as little more than a cautionary example. I would like to offer you some advice, but I hardly have the standing for it."
"I do believe I've told you that no self-deprecation beyond the necessary amount is required, Father..."
"I keep forgetting, it seems."
"Well — actually, as for the father who so kindly served as my cautionary example, it's not as though I have nothing to say to him, advice or otherwise."
"...?"
Having swept the pieces cleanly from the board, I forced open my stubbornly reluctant mouth and spoke.
"There is another woman I love... as much as I love Lapis."
"..."
"I know that taking multiple wives is nothing unusual, and I have no intention of lessening the devotion I pour into Lapis even if I take the other as a concubine in time. But it's true that a not-insignificant guilt weighs on me, which is why I've refrained from speaking of it to anyone until now. Lapis seems to have noticed on her own, in her way... but still."
"I see."
A startled look crossed his face, but my father quickly recovered his composure and took a long drink of cold water.
"Rohen."
"Yes."
"I have little to say to you on the matter. However prettily one might dress it up, could sharing the one you love with another ever sit well with the heart? If our positions were reversed, I don't believe I could ever tolerate it."
"That... is exactly how I feel as well."
"Which is precisely why arranged marriages among the nobility exist — to prevent jealous melodrama from erupting over mere emotion when there are multiple wives in the household. When a man and woman are joined purely for the interests of their houses, the source of any conflict lies in gain, never in love."
"I share that exact thought as well."
"So no matter how well you conduct yourself, when multiple wives are taken out of love rather than politics, harmony in the end rests upon the shoulders of the women themselves."
I fell into thought at my father's words.
Lapis hardly seemed the type to invite discord.
And Aria, too — for all her towering pride, seemed more than willing to fold it up with her own hands where Lapis was concerned...
'Will it truly be all right?'
I didn't know.
Perhaps I was simply distorting my own thinking, wishing it would be all right.
"This other woman you love — might she be the young lady you brought along as your strategist?"
"...No. And besides, Dana never wished for me to treat her too affectionately to begin with."
"Out of concern for how things might look to outsiders?"
"Less because of appearances than because — having been chosen as my strategist, she said she hoped there would never come a board on which she plotted strategy as a woman pining for a man. She never said it outright, but the metaphor behind her words could hardly mean anything else."
"Hah. Now that is a strategist's true devotion."
"It is. In any case, it's grown quite late. I should be getting up now."
Our conversation had reached its natural end, and with a faint smile toward my father, I rose from my seat.
"Rohen."
And then, one last time, my father called my name.
"Yes."
"...Congratulations. On your marriage."
"Thank you. And rest assured — I haven't forgotten that you promised to officiate."
"Good. Have a good night."
"You as well, Father."
Click.
With the door closed behind me, the quiet stillness of the tranquil corridor greeted my arrival.
It was the perfect setting to pick back up the worries I had failed to settle in my talk with my father — but I made a deliberate effort to shake the thoughts loose and set my feet moving.
If nothing else, standing at the altar with Lapis while still buried in those thoughts would be a discourtesy to her.