We Will Not Meet Again
The northern sky was ashen, as it always was, and snow scattered on a bitter wind.
A black flag descended slowly, to the measured strains of a dirge.
"That's a daughter of House Cardel."
"Didn't they say she vanished after the divorce, and no one knew whether she was alive or dead?"
"So she was alive after all. When her father was searching himself sick for her, she never so much as showed her face..."
"Shouldn't we inform the ducal house of Cardel?"
"And what is she doing, looking like that?"
The murmuring around her reached her only belatedly. Whatever they chose to gossip about, it did not matter in the least.
Odelli's gaze was fixed solely on the coffin set alone at the center of the hall. As if something drew her, she moved toward it on unsteady feet. When she came near, a sight she could scarcely believe fixed itself, sharp and clear, before her eyes.
He lay surrounded by pure white flowers, as though he were only asleep.
Ludville Exepsion. Her former husband.
The traces of the battlefield, blood and dust tangled together, were gone. What remained was only a neat, quiet figure, as if he had found peace and rest only after he was dead.
Odelli remembered what the aide had told her in the carriage.
"Every expert reported that the precise cause of death could not be determined. There is no end of talk—suicide, murder—but the truth is something only His Grace the Archduke could have known."
Even as he said it, he watched her as though he hoped she might know something more. Odelli knew nothing about Ludville. From the beginning, theirs had been nothing but a contract marriage. In truth, they were little more than strangers.
Then why did you do it?
She could not begin to understand why a man like that had left her his entire inheritance and gone. Not even now, standing in this funeral hall.
"Odelli. As of today, the contract between us is concluded."
"This is the compensation I promised. Accept it."
"It made no difference to me who it was."
"We will not meet again."
Had that been what he meant?
She wanted to ask. But there was no longer anyone anywhere in the world who could answer. Only after the black coffin began its slow descent into the earth could Odelli admit it—that he was truly dead.
Until the funeral ended, she could not move, as if nails had been driven through her feet. Only the black hem of her skirt stirred, listless, on the cold thread of the wind.
The first time Odelli met him was six years ago.
That day the square seethed with the heat of festival, for every year, at this season, a grand rite was held.
"Look, over there!"
High on the rampart, mages in white uniforms stood arrayed along a circular ritual formation.
"O heir of ancient blood, lamp of purification."
"Guard this empire from all that is unclean."
While the incantation repeated like a hymn, the man standing at the center was conspicuous above all the rest. Sacred silver hair streamed on the wind, and a low, firm voice rang out through the crowd.
Gawin Cardel—heir of House Cardel, called the Messenger of God.
Hundreds of years before, the Luminere Empire had been driven to the brink of collapse by monstrous beings steeped in wicked power. In that crisis the dragon, revered as a Divine Beast, spread a barrier of ancient magic across the whole empire, and that barrier shut out every threat from beyond and preserved the realm. But as time passed, the barrier lost its strength. And when the people's dread had grown thick enough, they appeared.
The ducal house of Cardel. The only house able to wield ancient magic.
Each year House Cardel presided over a rite to repair the barrier, and the people came to call that day the Day of Guardianship. The tradition had continued, unbroken, down to the present.
Beneath his feet, ancient letters stirred as if alive and poured forth light, and a pillar of golden mana rose high into the sky. In that instant the barrier revealed itself faintly overhead: a vast dome of a wall, glittering like a membrane of glass. Proof that the empire still lay under the dragon's protection.
The crowd looked up at the sight with eyes full of awe.
It was the moment Gawin cried the last words of the spell. Light spilling from the mages' fingertips joined into one and split the sky. A golden flash ran along the rampart, and the outline of the barrier was etched clear all the way to the far horizon. As the flash faded, the barrier turned transparent and concealed its trace. But everyone knew that the shield would guarantee one year of peace.
"Long live House Cardel!"
"Scion of the dragon! Blood of heroes! Long live!"
"Glory to the Luminere Empire!"
The square was buried in cheers and the clamor of festival.
But beneath it, in a place sunk immeasurably deep—in a secret chamber that could be reached only by passing through a labyrinth of security—Odelli was shut away.
"Cough—!"
The hem of her white dress soaked through red. When she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, blood ran in drops between her fingers.
This was Odelli's role.
Scion of the dragon? Ancient magic? It was a fraud House Cardel had maintained for hundreds of years. All the talk of ancient magic guarding the empire was an illusion, nothing more than a carefully written script. There was only the offering, grinding her own body down so the play would look convincing.
This year is... worse.
Odelli murmured it inwardly and swallowed the blood. Her throat felt as if it were burning away.
In each generation, exactly one person was born to House Cardel with the power of purification. Those who could cleanse every impurity in the world, the house named Purifier. And every Day of Guardianship, everything defined as evil was driven into the Purifier's flesh. A single, one-sided sacrifice, offered up for a house that had endured for hundreds of years—that was the truth of the ancient barrier House Cardel so proudly claimed.
"Kh— cough!"
Odelli vomited blood again.
A Purifier's life was not long. Thirty, at the outside. Once she died, a Purifier bearing that same power was invariably born into the next generation, as if even heaven endorsed the cruel cycle.
How much longer can I hold on?
Leaning back against the wall, Odelli slowly closed her eyes. Afterimages of light wheeled behind her eyelids and spread like flame.
That was when it happened.
A lock turned. In this place, where no one was permitted to enter.
Gawin.
Come to indulge some fresh cruelty. Odelli forced her eyes open. Through her faintly wavering sight, the other person's face grew clear by degrees.
And then her eyes met those of a man she was seeing for the first time, and yet who did not feel like a stranger.
Ludville Exepsion. The Iron-Blooded Archduke who ruled the north. A famous man, in more senses than one.
Odelli could not imagine why he was here, but she lacked even the strength to ask. He stared down at her, then spoke as if it were nothing at all.
"Allow me one proposal."
She gave no answer.
"The term is five years."
He seemed a man who had made this sort of offer hundreds of times. In a dry voice that betrayed not the slightest feeling, he went on, almost bored.
"Serve without incident for five years as the lady of House Exepsion, and I will sever every tie between you and House Cardel."
Surely this isn't a proposal.
She thought it was madness. She thought it was impossible. But what he said next made her falter.
"As you are, you will be dead within a year."
Odelli blinked. The man before her did not vanish. So it was no hallucination.
Five years...
She did not even know whether she could survive the year already upon her, and the span he named seemed impossibly far. Even so.
"You do not appear to have much to consider."
If, before she died, she could stand in hot sunlight and feel a cool wind. If she could live one ordinary day.
"...No. I don't."
"Good."
Light. Salvation. He was a man impossibly far from words like those.
"Can you stand?"
"Yes."
"Then stand."
"...Yes."
There was no gentle comfort, and he did not offer his hand. Even so, his presence felt strangely vivid. Odelli slowly raised the body that had been slumped, strengthless, upon the floor. Ludville did not wait to see her rise. He turned at once.
He walked out without hesitation, passed through the secret chamber, and opened the door that had been locked.
"...!"
Light poured in, fierce enough to sting the eyes. Odelli squeezed her eyes shut on reflex. When at last she could open them, she saw a single shaft of light, and golden dust drifting through it like a wave.
It had been a life in which she had given up both expectation and hope. Why, then, for no reason at all, did she suddenly want to live?
For the first time, Odelli drew a long, deep breath. A faint hope was held inside it.
Very small. But certain.