The Former Archduke's Standard
"What chronic illness, exactly, are you suffering from?"
"…"
For a moment Odelli had no answer. No one had ever pressed her about it to her face. The vague rumors House Cardel had put about were enough for everyone; they simply believed, and let the matter pass.
"…My heart often aches."
She offered that in place of the truth. The side effects of purification showed themselves, more often than not, as pain in the heart or as blood brought up from the throat, so the lie sat close to something real. Perhaps it was even convenient. She was well enough for now, but as time went on her failing condition would begin to show on the outside. Such a thing must never be allowed to happen. Even so, against the day she was found out, it might be wiser to settle in advance upon what illness she was meant to have.
She was turning that over in private when Castia's questions refused to end.
"In any case, it is not a constitution that would pass to a child, I trust? In House Cardel, a mutation of bodily weakness—you are the first."
"…I should think not."
"That one thing is fortunate. Beyond it, there is nothing worth the looking."
For an instant she thought she understood why Ludville had confined the former archduke. No. She must not think that way. An eccentric temperament did not mean a person deserved to suffer such a thing.
It had been a long while since her patience was tested so far. Even so, she forced an awkward smile.
"Even so, you will of course have learned the sword. That much, at least."
"…No."
"No?"
Castia looked at her as if such a thing were past believing. Only after taking Odelli's hand lightly in her own did she narrow her eyes, as though she finally understood.
"Smooth, tender skin… not a trace of training anywhere upon it. A single blizzard would lay you out."
"It is not quite so bad as that…"
"Have you ever brought down a monster? A lizle, at the very least—surely you have some experience there."
"…Must I really bring one down?"
"From the look of you, you have never caught so much as a mouse, let alone a lizle."
She had nothing to say to that. She never had.
But why would I have to catch one?
Not since the regression had she been left quite this speechless. Was high combat ability the former archduke's measure of the woman who would become her adopted son's wife? Surely that was not the reason she had taken Ludville in.
When Odelli fell silent, Castia studied her for a long moment, then breathed out a sigh.
"Your heart is frail as well, it seems."
If she went on standing there with her mouth shut, she would be taken for some soft thing a single breeze could carry off. She had no choice but to speak.
"I am not as weak as I appear."
"Is that so? Then throw a punch at me."
"…Pardon?"
Castia was not speaking for effect. She meant it. A broad, thick palm, ridged all over with calluses, opened and was held out before her, as if to say she should strike.
Why has she been testing my strength since the moment we met?
Beneath that fierce gaze, and the wordless urging that did not let up, Odelli threw the punch at last.
It landed with a thud. Quite hard. Against her future mother-in-law's hand…
"Are you in jest? Do it again, and do it properly. I wish to see the young lady's sincerity."
It had been sincere.
Odelli was sinking into a bottomless sense of her own powerlessness when footsteps sounded from the end of the corridor. The weight of military boots. A disciplined stride. Cold authority and a keen-edged madness crossed one another, and even the air seemed to grow a blade and turn chill.
It was Ludville.
He came on without a heartbeat of hesitation, caught Odelli about the waist, and drew her behind his back as if there were nothing more natural in the world. As if he were pulling her into a domain that belonged to him.
She nearly flinched hard enough to show it. Only a beat too late did she remember.
That's right. We agreed to marry as though we had truly fallen in love.
Even so, she had not expected him to touch her with quite so little ceremony.
He might have warned me beforehand.
Her heart had very nearly dropped out of her chest.
Ludville, at any rate, fixed Castia with cold eyes and spoke.
"I would ask you to refrain from needless remarks to the woman who will be my wife."
"…"
The woman who will be my wife.
It was a form of address that ought to have felt strange and uncomfortable, and yet it seemed at last to have found its proper place. All of it, surely, because of the thousands of regressions she had witnessed through Ludville's memories.
Odelli pressed down hard upon the heart that kept leaping of its own accord, and did her best to pretend she did not know what she felt. Then she remembered what he had said a few days before. More precisely, she had been the one to ask.
"If the former archduke were to come, how would you have me receive her?"
His answer had been indifference itself.
"Pay it no mind. I call them my adoptive parents, but the tie is no different from the contract I made with you. It exists only because each side has need of the other."
He was quiet a moment, then went on.
"Once the ceremony is over, you will never have to meet them again, and they will not reach deeply into my affairs. There is nothing to concern yourself with. What could they do? They took me as their adopted son and went so far as to yield the title. They have no right left by which to seize it back."
"…Hm. Still, if they grate on you, I could also see to it that you need not spare them a thought at all."
"…"
"If you need that, tell me."
He was a man she had once loved with a terrible fierceness, and still, whenever he was like this, she could not help losing every word she possessed.
What, in the end, had the former Archduke of Exepsion seen in him, to take such a man as an adopted son?
His ability, after all?
Castia had done nothing but measure her and find her wanting. The likelihood seemed high. Judged by ability alone, one could scour the whole world and find no one to match Ludville. She had asked Edwin, and learned that in this life, too, he was already rumored to be a genius—not only for the excellence of his sword, but because whenever he met mages or shamans upon the battlefield, he took up their arts with ease.
He would have lived through all of it before the regression.
But if one set ability aside and looked instead at his character…
Odelli stole a careful glance at him, trying to read his mood.
Ludville stood without any particular reaction, silent, and simply… uninterested.
I ought to be grateful that he is keeping his mouth shut…
He did not yet seem to mean to dispose of the former archduke. More precisely, it was closer to the truth to say he lacked even the will to bestir himself over a nuisance of that order.
Even so, she could not allow the former archduke to be confined. Ludville had a hundred years of life ahead of him. She would not let him be branded an unfilial son from the very beginning. In all likelihood the genealogy of House Exepsion would record the disgrace of one who had defiled the house.
And the former archduke as well. To come to such an end in her later years, only for having chosen the wrong son to adopt, was too pitiful.
…I'll give up on winning the former archduke's favor.
If the standard by which that woman could look kindly upon her was a hardy body, outstanding prowess in battle, a practical soul who could survive a fight with monsters, then Odelli was already disqualified. True, when she called upon her purification she was a being without peer, and she even had to her name the feat of catching a thief with her bare hands. But that was not the ability Castia wanted.
I think she simply wants a Ludville who happens to be a woman.
She had no choice but to abandon her first aim of making a good impression, and revise it from the ground up.
Even if my qualifications do not please her, let me at least not be someone she feels compelled to drive from the archduchess's seat. That will be the goal.
That much alone would already be a success.
It was just then. Watching Ludville set Odelli behind his back as though to shield her, Castia quietly knit her brow, and sighed like a woman whose head had begun to ache.
"I thought you were a wise man. Wiser than anyone at seeing what is real."
"…"
"Even when you suddenly took to raving about blue eyes and running wild, I let you be. I believed that when the time came for you to settle, you would return to your rational self and think of an heir to carry on the house."
Her gaze traveled once down over Odelli: a silver-haired young lady, slender and pale, with an air about her as if she might vanish at any moment.
"And this frail woman—you mean to set her up as Archduchess of Exepsion?"