Learn the Word Family
Click. Click.
It was only the sound of shoes along a corridor, and yet each step fell with the crisp authority of a commander's boots crossing a battlefield. Every head turned at once.
"Hah. Listen long enough, and this is what you hear."
Had she been there from the very beginning?
Castia cut into their midst, the tails of her coat snapping behind her.
"Invited to someone else's wedding, and you salt your congratulations with blame. So this is the courtesy of House Cardel."
Shoulders cut as sharply as a uniform, gold insignia at the breast, a dark skirt falling over heeled boots—clothing that seemed to stand on the border between a battlefield and a ballroom. She came forward without hurry, mouth set hard, and let her gaze travel slowly over Gawin and Belloa. The look was heavy, and it was cold. At that single glance the air around them sank into a chill.
"Blood kin, are you. And yet how softly you murmur, with a blade hidden in every word."
A quiet anger burned in her as she rebuked the Cardel brother and sister with nothing veiled at all. Odelli blinked, dazed. Castia had appeared at a moment she had never expected, and she was taking her side.
"Your sister offers a single word, and the lot of you come swarming down to insist she is mistaken. And on top of that... you treat the North as though it were some barbarian country."
Gawin made to answer, but Castia's presence crushed the words before they could leave him. Fluent as he was in the indirections of noble speech, he had no defense against a rebuke delivered straight. Belloa fared no better. The cunning play of her tongue and the false smile stopped dead, and she wore the face of someone whose words had failed her.
Castia did not let the opening slip. She lowered her voice, and the tone of it was made to grind a person down.
"Noble House Cardel. You inherited a great deal, and yet not a scrap of shame came with it, nor a scrap of responsibility. Before you take power and honor into your mouths, you had better learn the word family all over again."
"Your words are... rather excessive."
"A noble ought to carry dignity in speech and in conduct. All I see in the two of you is a scrabble for rank baser than beasts, and a handful of cheap tricks."
Even that, it seemed, was not enough. She let out a breath and drove the last nail home.
She would go that far?
The crowd that had first been startled could no longer hide its dismay. All through the banquet hall, the castle servants who had been hurrying about stopped where they stood and broke into a cold sweat they dared not show.
...Your Highness, you must not speak that way before the in-laws!
You said a noble ought to have dignity in word and deed! Where has the dignity gone? The dignity!
This marriage is the peace we only just clawed back. What are we to do if the whole thing falls apart...!
But she was not finished. Castia's eyes turned once more to Odelli.
"If you are as frail as they claim—the sort who simply keels over—then you would do better to return to Cardel at once."
The voice was as cold as before. The meaning of it, however...
Is she worried about me?
Odelli blinked in confusion, then wiped the thought away at once. Surely not. Not when she remembered what Castia had said to her only a little while ago. Perhaps it was simply the woman's nature never to swallow what she meant to say to anyone—the sort of temperament that could not bear to hold back a cutting remark once she wanted to deliver it. And Castia, as if she had said everything she intended, turned on her heel with evident satisfaction.
The guests could only stare after her, struck dumb. It was as though a storm had swept through the hall and gone.
The confrontation with the Cardel siblings ended more emptily than she had expected. Belloa simply took Gawin and withdrew.
Because Lady Castia rebuked them in front of everyone, no doubt.
She had called out, in the open, the hypocrisy House Cardel wore like a virtue—and with a bluntness that was almost embarrassing. They must have judged that another word exchanged would only make them look worse.
"Dear me. It seems Her Highness the former Archduchess has misunderstood us... Though I suppose we had it coming. Even if we never meant to, we did make you sad, didn't we."
"We bless your marriage with all our hearts. We want to show you—not in words, but in deeds—that we have always stood behind you."
To the very last they played at cherishing their younger sister, at loving her. They left those tender, pointed words behind and disappeared.
Not long after, Ludville appeared—the man who had been watching the whole scene from a distance.
"So. Did the family manage a proper heart-to-heart?"
A suppressed sneer clung to his voice.
"While the man who is to be her husband was shoved into a corner of the banquet hall."
In truth, Odelli herself had asked it of him only a little earlier: while she faced House Cardel, he was not to interfere, and he was to keep his distance. He had endured it, watching the house he loathed because she had asked him to, and in the meantime Castia had stormed in and raised a commotion. He had every reason to be irritated. But Castia's conduct had been an unforeseen turn for Odelli as well.
Why would she do that?
This was the private affair of a woman who had opposed the marriage so fiercely. Odelli found herself thinking that Castia was a person she simply could not read.
"If you had no intention of using me, why tell me to play the lover?"
Finding her sunk in thought, Ludville lifted a brow and asked again. He seemed thoroughly displeased that she had faced Gawin and Belloa on her own.
...I don't believe I ever told him to play the lover.
That had plainly been something he took upon himself. And because of it, hadn't she come off as some lovestruck little fool as well? Not that Odelli cared what anyone thought of her. Public opinion would turn soon enough in any case.
"As you know, crushing them here and now would mean nothing."
"I suppose it wouldn't. You sound exactly like my aide."
He had already been given an earful, then. She had thought from the moment they first met that his hatred of House Cardel ran unusually deep. Odelli glanced at him, then asked, carefully,
"Did it bother you?"
"..."
Ludville did not answer. He only looked at her for a long time, his mouth closed.
"...I misspoke."
Odelli worried her lip with her fingertips and took the words back. What had she hoped to gain by saying such a thing?
Personal feelings shall be wholly excluded.
Each party shall deal with the other accordingly.
It was written into the articles themselves. And had she not engraved upon her heart a rule clearer still?
Whatever Ludville feels for me, I must never let him remember.
She was not even permitted to wonder what the feeling stirring in her truly was.
"Yes. It bothered me. A great deal."
"...!"
All at once Ludville caught the tips of her fingers. Odelli flinched and, before she knew it, tried to shake his hand off—
"This is a banquet hall, Odelli. Of course I ought to pay attention to my betrothed."
He murmured it low.
"There are a great many eyes on us. If it came out now that our love was a lie, what do you suppose would happen? Every plan of yours would come to nothing."
Dismay crossed Odelli's face. She had no answer she could give.
Right. That was it.
He had said that once the wedding truly began, he would conduct himself like a man mad with love.
"So I let it pass this once. From now on, you will not be able to peel me away from you."
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Ludville slid an arm around her waist.