A Wedding He Does Not Remember
……How on earth did he know?
Aside from the single fact that the man was himself, he had not missed a thing. It was true she had learned to dance from him. True that she had once been a knight. True that he had saved her. And true that, in trying to save her, he had died and rewritten that death thousands of times over…….
When Ludville broke off mid-dance and turned the steps into an interrogation, Odelli thought she might break into a cold sweat. He must have seen the dismay on her face. Even so, he showed no intention of letting it pass. He drove at her as if the question were one on which life and death might turn.
"Why don't you deny it?"
"……Because no such man ever existed in the first place."
"You're lying."
"……."
Why ask, if he had no mind to believe her? He was already certain his own judgment was the right answer. He remembered nothing at all, and yet it was only in moments like this that he bared that beast-keen instinct.
Instead of answering, Odelli looked away. Simply dancing this close to him was enough to drag old memories up without end.
"Odelli."
Ludville said her name as if to hurry the answer she was refusing him. His gaze left her nowhere to hide.
She drew a short breath, then lifted the corners of her mouth, very slowly—as if nothing were amiss. No: as if she were wearing the tender face of a woman in love. She leaned in a little and set her hand upon his shoulder.
"……The song is ending."
The music that had filled the banquet hall drew quietly to a close. Applause broke over the room, and Odelli looked at Ludville and smiled, soft as courtesy. But she took her hand from him, bent in a bow, and let the distance open between them as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"……."
"There should be a little time before the next turn. Keeping company as husband and wife matters, of course, but ought you not also spare some of it for the guests who came to bless us, Ludville?"
She asked it with a perfectly calm face, as if nothing at all had passed between them.
"Even now, that man—"
Ludville's lips had just begun to shape another question when a familiar voice cut in from the edge of the hall.
"Your Grace."
Both of them turned at once.
Ludville's aide, Edwin, came forward with careful steps, his face screwed into every grimace at once. It was the look of a man who truly, absolutely, if the world allowed him any mercy at all, did not want to open his mouth at this particular moment. He had seen that the air between the two of them was anything but ordinary. But he had only just managed to finish, inside the allotted time, the task His Grace had ordered, and so he had no choice but to wedge himself in, bitter as the duty was.
"Your Grace, the thing you told me to prepare the other day is finally—"
Ludville clapped a hand over his mouth.
"There is a matter outside that must be dealt with at once. I will return shortly."
"……Yes."
Odelli's answer was lukewarm. Did he truly have to be so urgent that he would stop his own aide's mouth? Some confidential errand, then? If it was urgent, of course he might go……. But what if it was dangerous enough that he felt he had to hide it from her?
She lowered her voice until the words could reach only him.
"Ludville. This isn't you going off to kill someone, or kill a monster—some sort of massacre, is it?"
"……What, exactly, do you take me for?"
As if he had any business asking.
Odelli and Edwin wore nearly the same expression at the same moment. Whether they did or not, Ludville looked thoroughly displeased at having been cut off before he could finish pressing her about her "man from before." He let out a breath as if forcing the frustration down, then turned his eyes back to her.
"……I will return soon."
For a moment he looked at her with regret and wariness tangled together, as if he were already mourning the tail of the words he had just lost. Odelli blinked once, short, and nodded. The instant his fingertips left her, she let out a careful breath. She was relieved not to have to weather any more impossible questions—and yet, for a reason she could not name, she felt a little hollow.
Odelli stood before the mirror. Over the white of her shoulders, lace drifted with a faint blue sheen, and below the waist a pure-white skirt traced in silver thread spread in an elegant fall.
"……Truly, I think I might forget how to breathe."
Leona, finishing the last of the powder, let it slip out before she could stop herself. Behind Odelli, the maid arranging her hair nodded.
"I've never seen eyes so clear, or so deep. Like a lake, and like ice……."
"I almost understand why His Grace went mad— ahem. Why he searched so hard."
The maids kept to their work and still could not keep from glancing aside. Small wonder. Today's bride was beautiful with the unreal loveliness of a goddess stepped out of myth.
"Even so, what a relief. His Grace has finally found the one he missed so terribly."
"Every one of us in service is glad from the heart. That isn't empty courtesy."
"Me too. I'm truly happy that the Blue-Eyed Woman turned out to be you, my lady. The ones who came to the castle before…… goodness, really……."
"Girl, how can you bring that up on a day like this?"
"Ah— I'm sorry. I got ahead of myself……."
For all their fussing, Odelli herself said nothing. Beneath the long lashes her blue eyes were still, and her lips stayed firmly closed. She was drawn tight as a string.
Just how many weddings is this?
She knew it was somewhere in the thousands. The exact number escaped even her. Three thousand, perhaps, or nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine……. All she could hold was that she had done it an unthinkable number of times. And still she could not understand why she was trembling.
Odelli laced her fingertips together and let out a long breath.
She had seen their weddings through Ludville's memories. After thousands of them, he might once have skipped the rite, or rushed it through. He never had. Not once had he finished it carelessly. Every time, he had prepared with his whole heart and taken Odelli as his bride, and that man kept flickering before her eyes.
And this time, too…….
He doesn't even remember, and still he's holding the wedding at the Great Cathedral…….
He had gone so far as to obtain the imperial sanction, linking a magical warp from the Archducal Castle to the Great Cathedral and pouring out the cost without a moment's stinting. It was every luxury a wedding could indulge, gathered into one.
In truth, Ludville had always been that way. Even in the days when he opened banquet after banquet, searching every day for blue eyes, his own dress stayed plain and spare. He had never once spent money on himself. Every resource, every power, he had poured toward Odelli alone. And now he was spending without reserve on a wedding with her.
Upon my death, I bequeath the entirety of House Exepsion's territories, titles, authority, and assets to Odelli Cardel.
He had lost his memories, and still Ludville had not changed. Enough, sometimes, to shake even the resolve she had set so firmly in herself.
Get a hold of yourself.
She laid a hand lightly against her chest. Cold metal met her skin: an ornament that had once held the Jewel of Regression, and now kept only the setting.
"You don't mind leaving that old necklace on?"
One of the maids asked it carefully, and Leona hurried in to answer for her.
"The ring won't show in any case. The dress covers it. She said it was something important to her. We've already changed the necklace cord to match the gown, so it doesn't look out of place at all."
Leona knew Odelli wore the necklace every day. That was why she had stepped in front of the question.
"Well, if that's how it is……."
"My lady, we're very nearly finished."
Another maid said it as she set a fine dust of ground pearl, light as breath, over Odelli's cheeks and collarbones.
And at last, thirty minutes before the ceremony was to begin, the maids withdrew as one. A short while later the head maid, Freya, stepped quietly into the room. She leaned to the ear of the woman standing before the mirror and whispered.
"Everything has been seen to, my lady. Just as you instructed."