The Annex She Chose
From the butler's manner, Odelli realized she was being treated as the woman who had caught the archduke's eye—cherished for a little while, then cast aside the moment his interest cooled. A bitter feeling lifted its head, but she pushed it back down.
I didn't come here to be given special treatment in the first place.
She reasoned with herself and swept the sentiment from her heart, as firmly as if she were brushing away dust.
For five years, a woman worth a contract marriage.
That much was enough: a pretext for staying attached to him, a right to remain at his side. She needed no feeling beyond that. All she wanted was, within that span, to turn Ludville's gaze somewhere other than herself. Anything would do—a future rather than a past, possibility rather than lack or loss—so that he might look toward a life that could be wholly his own.
I have to see that he finds true happiness.
She was settling that resolve anew when the butler spoke.
"Then I shall take my leave."
He observed the proper forms, yet turned without hesitation, moving as if this were a familiar duty—a procedure he had already repeated many times. And no wonder. At the longest, the room's occupant changed within a fortnight; at the shortest, within a day.
"Wait."
Odelli stopped him.
"Not this room. I'd rather have the annex on the outer grounds."
"Pardon?"
Theodore's hand, already on the door, gave the faintest twitch.
"If you mean the annex on the outer grounds, there is only one. Surely you don't..."
"Yes. That one."
It was an absurd request. Theodore, the butler, narrowed his eyes, as if weighing whether she meant it. When a noble made a demand that outrageous, it was usually a signal—humility put on for show, meant to pry loose a better room. But Odelli closed her mouth after that single sentence. She asked for nothing more, and wanted nothing more.
"That place is so old it might as well be a storehouse. A great deal still needs repair, and it has hardly been put in order. If this room does not please you, the main palace has many finer guest chambers."
"I saw it on the way in. It looked quiet and secluded, and I liked it. That will be enough."
"...If you prefer a desolate atmosphere, I will not insist otherwise."
Theodore looked torn over whether he ought to talk her out of it.
"I want to choose where I stay."
"..."
"I should have at least that much say."
A say in things... She would go so far as to invoke her rights, all to be sent to an annex that was little more than a storehouse? He hid his bewilderment and answered with careful courtesy.
"Then I shall have the annex prepared. I will see to the heating, the lights, and the bedding at once."
"Good. I'm counting on you."
Once he had left the room, Theodore narrowed his eyes.
...Strange. Isn't she the precious youngest daughter of House Cardel?
He knew the rumors about the third daughter well enough. Born with a frail body, she had grown up monopolizing her family's love and attention, and because of it word had gone around that she was difficult and willful, nothing like the child of a heroic house. Yet the young lady before him was the very opposite of those rumors. She had stepped forward herself and asked to be lodged in a worn, gloomy annex.
After the annex had been put in order, Theodore guided her there, and Odelli carried her things inside without the slightest hesitation, as if the room had been hers for a long time. He watched her in silence, and confusion overtook him.
"..."
Suspicious. She was suspicious in every particular—so much so that it would have been quicker to look for something that was not.
Why would His Grace decide to keep a woman like this in the castle?
The answer was obvious. Because she interested him, and for no other reason. Theodore swallowed the sigh that rose of its own accord.
Of all times for her to appear...
He could not bring himself to say it aloud, but his lord was no longer the man he had been. As if he had crossed a river from which there was no return, he had become someone else entirely. Things unimaginable in the days when he was called the Iron-Blooded Archduke now happened every day. Impulse outran reason, and madness took the place of strategy. Luxury, women, drink, slaughter—a tyrant stamped from the classic mold.
And if that young lady, hoping to hold the archduke's interest, were even to pour oil on that madness...
The worst would befall the archducal house.
The mere thought of it made the world tilt before his eyes. Yet Theodore buried every suspicion and every fear quietly in his chest and bowed his head, expressionless.
"I will select a maid and assign her to you shortly."
There was nothing he himself could do. And besides—
Whatever I do, she'll be driven out within a fortnight anyway.
As always. And yet, looking at a young lady who differed, if only a little, from the women he had watched these three months, another thought rose unbidden. What if, this once, it was different? What if someone who could bring His Grace rest and peace had truly appeared, like a miracle...
...Impossible.
Even the so-called Blue-Eyed Woman was a woman who existed only in a fantasy. Nothing but an illusion. All he could do was hope the situation would not grow worse than it already was.
He bent slowly at the waist in a bow, then turned and walked away into the silence. His face was as blank as ever, but a heavy resignation hung at his back.
Odelli had insisted on staying in the old annex at the castle's edge, and it was not merely because the place was familiar. There was something she had to do first.
Ludville won't remember at all what he resolved to do, or what he actually did...
The day Odelli regressed was the day the Ludville of her previous life had proposed to her. Which meant that until three months ago—until Ludville himself regressed and lost his memories—events would have unfolded exactly as they had in that former life. Surely it was still here, in this annex.
Ludville would have forgotten even that it existed, but Odelli, who had seen his memories, knew.
It should be somewhere around here.
The moment the butler withdrew, she went straight to the storeroom. When she opened the door, odds and ends of every kind lay tangled together in the dust. She looked about and found an old wall clock hanging on one wall.
Found it.
The years had bleached it and peeled away its color, and even the pendulum had fallen off: a piece of junk no one would spare a glance. But Odelli went to it without hesitation and felt along the underside. A faintly carved groove caught at her fingertip.
Click—
She pressed it, and somewhere inside came the sound of gears meshing. Odelli turned the hands the wrong way and set them exactly on six and twelve.
June 12. The first wedding anniversary in the lives of Ludville and Odelli. The day he had given her a ring.
"..."
Only afterward did she grasp what the cipher meant, and she faltered.
...That isn't what matters now.
This was no time to sink into sentiment.
Creeeak—
An ominous sound rose, and in the same instant the clock tipped forward, whole. A gap in the wall, elaborately disguised, opened to reveal a passage so narrow that a single person could barely slip through. Odelli gathered up her skirts and pushed herself into the dark.
At the end of the narrow way, a small domed room came into view—a lightless space, like a little cave, its floor engraved with countless arcane sigils.
It was the last resort by which the Ludville of her previous life had saved Odelli.