The Wedding That Looked Far Too Familiar
“I’ve seen her a few times while I was at the Grand Ducal residence. What about you, Eric?”
“I only got in by train this morning. I barely said hello earlier while she was getting ready for the wedding.”
It was true. The procedures for a military cadet to leave school were absurdly complicated. He had come as quickly as he possibly could, and the morning of the wedding had been the best he could manage.
“What did Chloe say?”
“What do you think? I didn’t even get to talk to her. I barely saw her face before I got dragged off.”
He had rushed to the temple where the wedding was being held, but all Eric had managed was to exchange a glance with Chloe as she came out of the prayer hall.
Because he, too, had been seized by the Grand Duke’s servants.
“You’re Warrant Officer Amboise’s younger brother, aren’t you?”
Even the bride’s family had a proper mode of dress required for the time and place.
The servants confiscated the uniform Eric had worn and trimmed his hair. A woman named Julia even brought back Eric’s cadet uniform, which had been wrinkled from the train, pressed into razor-sharp lines. He almost wanted to ask if she had served in the military.
“For all that, you turned out pretty impressive, didn’t you? You look radiant.”
At Leah’s admiring look, Eric shot her a glare and snapped, “What the hell is all this? Total strangers dragging me off, washing me, dressing me however they want—it’s ridiculous.”
“Why? I like it. Iris looks adorable too, doesn’t she?”
Leah, likewise dressed in a strikingly fine gown and even wearing silk gloves, lifted up their dozing youngest sister and smiled as if nothing could be more natural.
Even Eric, who was hopeless when it came to things like this, could tell at a glance that the fabric of Iris’s dress was the kind of luxury the Amboise household could never dream of affording.
And her hair had been styled so prettily that the mark behind her ear—the one people always pointed out or asked about whenever they saw Iris—hardly drew attention at all.
Even so, Eric still couldn’t hide his displeasure.
“You’re grinning like an idiot just because she’s wearing some damn dress? People are running their mouths behind our backs like that, and you’re happy?”
Leah quietly stared at her hot-tempered brother, then grabbed his arm and twisted it hard.
Eric barely swallowed the scream that almost burst out of him.
“Then should I cry?”
“Hey!”
“Shut up and stay still. When have you ever seen Chloe be wrong?”
“Yeah. Back in school, she got ethics questions wrong all the damn time.”
Eric had forgotten something.
His younger sister had not yet dug her nails into the hand pinching his arm.
Eric couldn’t even scream. He only writhed in place until he was finally spared.
Leah whispered quietly, “This is what Chloe chose. Let’s wait and see.”
Faced with the danger of losing his arm if he refused to wait and see, Eric had no choice but to shut his mouth.
The guests who had been chattering away finally found their seats only after the bell rang to announce the start of the wedding vows.
That did not mean they stopped whispering.
“As the representative of the dragon Ibaneres, I stand before the blessed union of Curtis Shan Berk and Chloe Amboise.”
Even as the priest came forward and performed the ritual of offering to the dragon the scrolls from the purification ceremony and blood-oath ceremony that had preceded the main rite, lips continued to move without rest.
“They did put together the necessary forms, more or less.”
“Grand Duke Berk’s temper hasn’t gone anywhere. If even one thing were missing, His Majesty would surely make him pay for it.”
“Prince Frederick is really something too. No matter if he is the sole heir to the throne…”
Since this was the royal prayer hall, the guests were seated shoulder to shoulder on long pews lined up beneath the great altar.
They were closer than usual, giggling and murmuring as if afraid someone might hear, so their gossip did not travel far.
But the Royal Guard members standing for the ceremony on either side of the aisle heard every word clearly.
“Fuck, they sure can flap their mouths,” Georges, the 1st Squad Leader standing at the very front, muttered under his breath.
Ezra, standing opposite him, twitched at the corner of his mouth.
The 3rd Squad Leader standing behind Georges quietly spoke up.
“Hey, I still can’t believe this. Is this really happening?”
“I feel like I’m dreaming too. Somebody stab me with a knife.”
“Both of you, shut up.”
At Ezra’s sharp rebuke, everyone closed their mouths.
Their eyes remained fixed on the altar.
But as the priest’s preliminary rites and prayers dragged on, Georges could not hold back and opened his mouth again.
“Honestly, I volunteered for the saber ceremony just to see if it was real.”
“You too? Me too…”
“Hey, come to think of it, Ezra, are you okay? Your parents and Chloe…”
“I said shut up. We’re in the middle of a ceremony.”
Ezra cut him off even more fiercely than before.
Georges, embarrassed, stuck out his lips in a pout.
Only for a moment.
The instant his eyes met those of Grand Marshal Victor of the kingdom’s army, who stood just below the altar, he pulled his mouth right back in.
It was hardly a secret among them that, three days earlier, the king had summoned Grand Marshal Victor and thoroughly raked him over the coals, saying, Why did you go all the way to the navy to pull in an aide, and have you lost your mind assigning a female aide to Grand Duke Berk?
Of course, from Grand Marshal Victor’s point of view, it was an injustice.
He had barely managed to procure an aide no one could find if their life depended on it, only for the two of them to fall for each other and earn him the king’s abuse.
Perhaps because of that, Grand Marshal Victor’s gaze was murderously sharp.
If you got caught at a time like this, you were finished.
Whether they cared or not, the priest descended from the altar.
Grand Marshal Victor sighed as if changing shifts and stepped up onto the altar.
Prince Frederick, who had been seated on the royal family’s side, also rose and stood below the altar.
The procedure of reporting to the god was over.
Now it was time for the wedding vows to begin.
The court orchestra, silent during the rite, began to play.
Ezra turned and called out in a loud voice, “All units, forward!”
The guard members who had been lined up before the entrance to the wedding hall marched in with crisp precision and joined their squad leaders.
At the same time, as if every guest had made the same promise, all of them rose and turned around.
They wanted to see the protagonists make their entrance.
“Present—swords!”
The ceremonial sabers were far longer and straighter than the ones the guard members usually wore.
When the guards raised their swords all at once, it made for a magnificent sight.
Even the guests who found this wedding utterly unwelcome let out soft cries of admiration.
At the same time, everyone was reminded once again that Grand Duke Berk was a war hero.
Expectation swelled naturally.
The man who would appear from the far end was someone no one in the capital could match for splendor, wasn’t he?
“How handsome do you think he’ll look today?”
“Goodness, he’s devastating even in nothing but a military uniform. I came today to look at His Grace.”
What a waste…
Already, several young noblewomen were sighing in regret.
It had long since become known that the woman who would be the bride was no great beauty.
Still, this was the wedding of Grand Duke Berk’s bride.
Surely she would be dressed well enough to match that name.
Plenty of ladies had their eyes shining with covert expectation.
“I heard Prince Frederick opened the royal treasury.”
“Why, rumor says even Queen Mildred’s sealed toilette room was opened.”
“It’s only been a week. How much preparation could they possibly have done?”
“Still, the Grand Duke is wealthy. And since the woman falls so far short, he’ll at least have to dress her properly.”
“That’s true. I do wonder if it’ll end up looking like pearls on a pig.”
Among the sinister snickers and the hand gestures warning others not to get ahead of themselves, there was unmistakable anticipation.
How splendid would they look?
How extraordinary would the dress be?
How luxurious would the jewels be?
The doors opened.
The two people at the center of all those rumors entered the hall without so much as a dramatic pause.
People sucked in their breaths.
In the sudden silence, Ezra looked straight toward the entrance of the wedding hall.
Grand Duke Curtis Berk, dazzlingly beautiful as always.
And beside him stood Ezra’s dearest friend.
The tension drained out of Ezra all at once.
Until he had come to the wedding, he had continued to doubt the fact that the two of them were getting married. But once he actually saw them standing side by side in the hall, the sight was astonishingly familiar.
Except for the part where their arms were linked.
But when he thought about it, of course it was natural for them to stand side by side.
The two of them were a superior and his aide.
Hadn’t he seen the two of them standing together as a matter of routine whenever he went to the Royal Guard training ground?
Aside from the linked arms, this is what I see every day.
Once he thought that, his own tension seemed absurd, and his strength left him.
Ugh. What was I even thinking?
Ezra squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and began to call out loudly.
“For the blessed marriage of Brigadier General Curtis Siarnach an Ibanes Berk and Warrant Officer Chloe Amboise…”
Wait.
Mid-sentence, he belatedly realized something was strange.
The sight he saw every day?
It shouldn’t be the sight I see every day!!
His call broke off on its own.
The next words would not come to him.
“For the—the blessed marriage…”
For the Royal Guard to make a mistake in the middle of the saber ceremony at a Grand Duke’s wedding.
Under ordinary circumstances, everyone would have been horrified.
But no one blamed the 2nd Squad Leader of the Royal Guard, nor did anyone send him a reproachful look.
More precisely, no one noticed Ezra’s mistake.
And naturally so.
“…What in the world…”
Today’s bride and groom, Grand Duke Berk and Warrant Officer Chloe Amboise, looked impossible to call the main characters of a wedding, no matter how hard one looked.