Chapter 49
Chapter 49
"It was proper etiquette."
But Brisa, oblivious, still took her former fiancé's side.
"That engagement was a loss for them in many ways. But sending the letter ending the engagement the very night it was decided I wouldn't become the heir was the same as announcing to society that my only 'problem' was no longer being the heir."
"......What?"
Alpheus didn't understand at all.
Brisa explained patiently.
"There were too many variables anyway, so it would have been hard for us to make it all the way to marriage without trouble. There were eight years left until I came of age. But if we'd ended the engagement at any other time, people would have whispered that something must be wrong with me."
"Wrong? What in the world could be wrong? What could possibly be wrong with my little sister, who's this smart, this sharp, this brilliant, this clever, this quick-witted, and this grumpy...?"
"A hereditary problem."
"......Huh?"
"The rumor that our mother had madness, Alpheus."
A brief silence fell over the three of them.
Brisa spoke calmly.
"You know by now that it wasn't actually a false rumor."
Leopold remained silent the whole time.
Alpheus, too, had no choice but to close his mouth, not knowing what to say.
"Right now everyone simply thinks, 'Brisa couldn't inherit the marquisate, so her engagement was broken.' They're just letting it pass. In other words... it was the best possible timing because it wouldn't damage my future marriage prospects as a daughter of House Sears."
But even so, Alpheus wanted to argue. He couldn't stand it—he wanted to curse that fiancé of hers somehow.
"B-but isn't the whole point of an engagement to promise you'll marry safely if nothing goes wrong? If there were that many variables in the first place, why get engaged so early? What kind of idiot arranged an engagement like this?"
"Exactly. Mother's greed was excessive."
Alpheus shut his mouth again. He'd lost count of how many times he'd insulted Brisa's mother without knowing anything.
"Marriages among the Founding Five Houses have to be handled carefully. They should only happen once every few generations."
"Uh, huh?"
"Think about it. If we all married within the Founding Five Houses just because our status matched, we would run into consanguineous marriages within a generation. Close kin obviously have to be excluded for the sake of genetic diversity. This isn't something we need to debate, is it?"
In that instant, Alpheus remembered his first conversation with Brisa.
The first conversation where they'd nearly ended up debating livestock reproduction and embryonic development...
"So a marriage among the Founding Five Houses carries enormous meaning. It's a momentous matter that must occur extremely rarely over a very long span of time, so barring emergencies, you should hold that card in reserve."
Wait, wait.
Alpheus forced his shock-frozen mind to work.
"But objectively, we weren't exactly a couple for the ages. Rather than getting swept up in all sorts of political changes, it was cleaner to settle things ourselves before that."
"Brisa, hold on....... Just hold on."
Up until then, Alpheus had vaguely assumed Brisa's fiancé was from the imperial family because Leopold had earlier described the match as "lopsided."
On top of that, Brisa hadn't tried to explain much about her fiancé's family. Alpheus hadn't pressed because he'd figured he wouldn't understand even if she told him.
But... that damned former fiancé was from one of the Founding Five Houses?
First, the northern House Bakahun was a house he knew well.
'Aren't they on the verge of annihilation?'
In other words, they hadn't been in any position to arrange an engagement in the first place.
That left three houses.
He had already met the boys of two of them.
"The Founding Five Houses? Don't tell me...... that Gilav? You were engaged to someone like that? Your fiancé was that kind of kid?"
The person who answered slowly was Leopold.
"Brisa, your brother really seems to hate me."
The boy who had been silent all along swept his hair back and sighed.
"I'm being compared to Gilav right now, aren't I? That's deeply humiliating."
......Huh?
Wait.
This...... this...... what did this mean?
"Right. I haven't known Alpheus very long, so I didn't know he disliked people like you. Anyway, I've certainly learned how bold a war hero can be. I haven't seen spirit like that in a long time."
Brisa replied coolly.
So that damned former fiancé was...
"To think he'd say he'd strike the soles of your feet right in front of the person involved."
This boy right in front of him?
7. The Crisis in the West
The Nozen Grand Duchy.
Hilbury was tapping the name "Brisa Sears" written in the report.
Four years ago. When the curse had manifested in ten-year-old Leopold.
"I'm fine, Grandfather."
The boy had said this.
"But I think we'll have to end the engagement. Unlike my parents... this is a fraudulent marriage, isn't it?"
In fact, that was when Leopold had first become aware of the curse's existence. Until he was ten, he had known nothing about the curse.
That dreadful Ancient Curse had first manifested in Hilbury's son—that is, Leopold's father. And it had happened in the middle of a Monster Wave.
The curse had killed his son and daughter-in-law.
And so Leopold had become an orphan.
When the marriage proposal had come from the Sears Marquisate, Hilbury had been the one who pushed the engagement forward.
"It's a house with many shortcomings! I hear their finances are nearly ruined?"
"And isn't there a rumor that the mother has madness?"
"What's more, a son born to a commoner maid has appeared and may inherit the Sears title!"
At the time, Leopold had been nine years old. No matter how noble the house, it wasn't an age that required an engagement.
'But it's also an age where an engagement wouldn't be strange.'
Hilbury had wanted to bind Leopold in an engagement quickly. It was out of worry that the curse might be passed down to Leopold.
'A girl from a reasonably respectable house, but with no family of her own to rely on and nowhere to return to, would be ideal.'
Brisa Sears fit those conditions perfectly.
The Marquess Sears had been busy searching for his son. His daughter had been an afterthought.
The marchioness raising that daughter was consumed by madness. Moreover, she was quite frail, with little time left to live.
If this engagement, unbalanced in so many ways, went through.
'House Sears would never be the first to break it off.'
And if Leopold and Brisa did eventually marry.......
Even if Leopold inherited the curse, Brisa would have nowhere to return to. The curse only required enduring about ten days of transformation every three months...
'Won't she be satisfied with the grand duchy's abundance and status?'
Or Leopold could simply hide it well on his own.
Even now, aside from the transformation periods, he could live normally.
It seemed he could attend the academy without much trouble too. The timing lined up reasonably well with the four school breaks each year.
For the few overlapping days, he could just be absent. Since they were all noble children, there were already plenty of students who were absent citing family circumstances.
'Perhaps it could be hidden for his entire life.'
House Sears had committed fraud against Nozen anyway, hadn't they?
'It seems they spent a great deal of money trying to hide that the mother of that house had madness.'
Nozen's intelligence network was not that lax.
They had already realized that Brisa's birth mother was mentally unstable. Since the other side also had something to hide, Hilbury thought perhaps Nozen could hide this much as well.
'And judging only by family status, the match isn't that lopsided.'
There was no one to point fingers and ask why on earth such an engagement had been arranged, no one to call it strange.
In any case, the Sears name was honorable. Even if being the last bloodline of Liente had no practical value, the name carried enough weight.
The label "genius girl of the century" that her mother had spread around helped too.
'Even if she inherits her mother's madness, it can't be helped.'
Since they themselves were hiding something, they could accept that much risk.
Of course, the fact that such a curse had manifested in the Nozen bloodline had to be kept absolutely secret. So they hadn't even told Leopold.
If Nozen faltered, the West faltered, and the North showed all too clearly what happened when a region lost its stability.
But one year after the engagement was arranged.
In the end, signs of the curse appeared in Leopold.