IDIBC SS 1

Mariette dragged her weary body to her husband’s room. These days, Stuart would only briefly show his face at the imperial palace during the daytime, spending most of his hours lying in bed.

Ricardo had become king of the principality, and quite a long time had passed since she had begun her regency in place of her son, the crown prince.

She nodded to the chamberlain standing guard before the door, and he carefully opened it. The room, even forsaken by sunlight, was already draped in the heavy shadow of death.

“Stuart, so many things happened today.”

Mariette said brightly, drawing back the tightly shut curtains. Whenever she casually recounted the day’s events, Stuart would offer her faint little sounds of laughter in return.

“Sir Benjamin, who said he would be coming for trade negotiations—”

As she walked toward the curtain on the opposite side to draw it back as well, she suddenly felt a sense of wrongness and stopped where she stood.

Breathing sounds — the more labored breaths that had grown heavier in recent days — were nowhere to be heard. Mariette gripped the curtain until her knuckles went white, and slowly turned to face her husband.

He lay with eyes closed, wearing the same gentle expression that made it seem as though he might rise at any moment and tell her he loved her.

Mariette approached Stuart and took his hand. The fingertips, still holding the last of their warmth, did not stir even slightly.

“Has he gone?”

“…….”

“Has he truly gone? Like this, without leaving me a single word?”

Stuart could not answer, not to the very end. Mariette drew her husband’s still-warm hand to her cheek and offered up a prayer to God.

She wept silently for a long while, but she did not wail. It was a death her husband had willingly embraced for her and their children. She too had to bear the pain that felt as though it were tearing her lungs apart — and bear it as an adult must.

That was the promise they had made together on countless nights, hands clasped. That they would grieve, but would not break.

Mariette lay quietly beside her husband for a time, gazing at his face. She had thought she prepared herself every day for the moment of his departure, yet everything felt utterly in vain.

For a fleeting moment, in the depths of her grief, she thought that had she known her heart would ache this terribly, she would never have fallen in love with Stuart — but it was a useless thought. How could she have ever not loved this man?

The man who had first planted the feeling of love within her had left, teaching her also how sublime a sacrifice love could be.

“I will follow soon.”

When the warmth had begun to fade from his body, Mariette stepped outside the door and announced the Emperor’s passing. After watching the chamberlain dash away in a panic, she returned to Stuart’s side.

She stood silently keeping watch until the chamberlain returned, and then, on the opposite side of the bed, she noticed something of her husband’s she had not seen before.

A book?

Mariette picked it up with a puzzled expression. In recent times, Stuart had been unable to read on his own, and he had not wished for anyone other than Mariette to read to him.

Only when she opened the first page did she realize it was not a book at all, but a letter he had left behind.

The letter began from that very day when the sky had turned pitch black before flooding with light — from the moment Ricardo had manifested.

[Since Ricardo has manifested earlier than his original time, I see no reason to delay the proposal I intended to make to you, do I?]

The vigorous handwriting, set down by a man who had still been in good health, struck Mariette’s heart all over again.

[I wonder what expression you would make if I proposed to you in person.]

Mariette had fallen in love with Stuart the very moment she laid eyes on him — as if by magic. Even measured against every romance novel she had secretly read, having one’s entire soul stolen away by another person was far more dramatic than any words on a page.

Mariette turned with trembling hands to the very last page of the diary first.

[Ariela.]

No strength remained in the handwriting any longer, yet from the name written there, his love and joy for his daughter came through to her wholly and completely.

[My beloved daughter, who takes after Mariette so perfectly — shining like the sun, glowing like the sunset.]

From the time their daughter was born, Stuart’s health had deteriorated rapidly, yet he had tried to spend the greater part of his waking hours with her.

In the end, Stuart had been able to sit in his wheelchair and smile right up until the moment Ariela toddled over to him and nestled into his arms.

It grieved her so deeply that they had never had a portrait painted of the two of them together — that night, Mariette had wept alone for a very long time, silently, in the dark.

Mariette closed the diary and held it tightly to her chest.

Stuart Reid Schneider — endlessly tender, endlessly thoughtful.

“This letter — I will read it again and again. One page a day, savoring every word. As long as I remember you and keep you in my heart, you will forever be a living love to me.”

Mariette pressed the letter he had left to her breast, and at last — she smiled.

She leaned down and pressed a kiss of reverence and affection to her husband’s brow, now grown cold. Then she sat down in the chair beside the bed and opened the first page of Stuart’s diary once more.

Throughout, Stuart had written as though speaking directly to Mariette.

The greater part of the letter was devoted to recalling and recording the original time he had shared with Ricardo.

[Ricardo returned to the capital earlier than he should have. And having already completed his manifestation, no less.]

In the letter, Stuart was joyful, animated.

[Ricardo will certainly keep his promise. He has the power now. But do you know, Mariette? After Ricardo went back to Resotia and returned, he went and achieved his awakening on top of everything.]

Mariette nodded as though he were right there before her.

After Ricardo had completed his manifestation, Stuart had come to her family home and proposed to her in person.

And when Ricardo achieved his awakening, Stuart told Mariette everything — that he had turned back time, and all the sorrowful fate that lay ahead of them.

And then he had asked her. Whether she would walk that path with him, even so.

[It’s probably because of that woman — Lienne. Ricardo was the same before time was reversed. He would show intense emotion the moment he so much as saw Lienne — to a degree that seemed almost unnatural, as though he could not wait to be rid of her. Looking back on it now, perhaps Ricardo had been taken with Lienne from the very beginning.]

Mariette gazed quietly at her husband, who would no longer open his eyes.

She thought with a pang how she had never been able to tell him about the sharp, guarded way Ricardo had looked when she went to visit Rochester Mansion upon first hearing news that Lienne had arrived in the capital.

[When Ricardo appeared having set Lienne, a woman he’d encountered by chance on the road, on his own horse before him, the entire capital was in an uproar. Word even reached my ears.]

Had that really happened? Even though she herself had not witnessed it, Mariette found herself picturing Ricardo and Lienne as though recalling a memory.

The image of a beautiful man and woman on horseback, crossing through the imperial city’s gates — it spread before Mariette’s eyes as vividly as though she had seen it herself.

****

Before time was reversed, Ricardo had wandered from one battlefield to the next, large and small, on the Emperor’s orders.

He preferred it that way. Far better than enduring the offensively bright, cheerful weather of Dermeier’s capital.

On the road back from the southern campaign, Ricardo was riding hard when he caught sight of two figures in the distance and furrowed his brow.

It was a forest path, rarely traveled. Night had already begun to fall, but the woman’s silver hair caught the faint light filtering through the branches and shimmered.

Silver hair?

A certain girl flitted briefly to mind, and Ricardo’s brow furrowed even deeper. He spurred his horse’s flank and galloped toward the two figures.

At the loud, thundering sound of a horse bearing down on them from behind, the man and woman pressed close together and stepped to one side.

When Ricardo drew near to the woman and raised his arm, closing his hand into a fist, those who rode behind him all came to a halt at once.

His gesture made the broad-shouldered man step in front of the woman to shield her. Unable to see the woman’s face, Ricardo felt irritation surge through him beyond all reason.

Then the woman, whose body had been entirely concealed behind the man, rose onto her toes and peeked out just enough to show her face. The moment their eyes met, Ricardo drew in a long, deep breath without thinking, his chest swelling with it.

One of Ricardo’s eyebrows rose sharply, and in the woman’s eyes there flickered a look that suggested she recognized him.

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

Lienne was apparently so startled she could not answer at all.

“Are you still playing the part of the girl who can’t speak?”

Her face had grown somewhat more mature, but she was unmistakably that girl. The mute, illegitimate daughter of Fennel, living in the western wing. The two of them had met occasionally on a hill.

No — “met” was perhaps not quite the right word. Lienne had visited that place often, and she would simply watch quietly as he painted.

The first two or three times, no words passed between them — but later, it was Lienne who spoke to him first.

[My name is Lienne.]

And so the meetings between the nameless child of the eastern wing and the mute illegitimate daughter of the western wing had taken place, unbeknownst to anyone.

“Ah. I do.”

“You’ve survived remarkably well — for someone bearing the Fennel name.”

At his words, a look of steely resolve crossed the face of the man who had been shielding Lienne. He looked as though he were prepared to take on all these knights by himself.

For some reason, the sight of it grated fiercely on Ricardo’s nerves.

“Say something.”

“Forgive me.”

Even under his pressure, Lienne only bit her lower lip and shuffled her foot back half a step. Watching her, Ricardo tightened his grip on the reins.

The truth was that when the order had come down to exterminate the Fennel family, Ricardo had deliberately said nothing about Lienne’s existence.

He had not stopped them from digging up and discovering her on their own — but he had not wanted to be the one to send her to her death. Even as the mere sound of the Fennel name made his skin crawl.

“But what brings you here? A Fennel, in Dermeier — and on this forest road leading to the capital, of all places?”

“…….”

“Have you no fear at all?”

Lienne hesitated for a moment, then reached out and took the arm of the man standing before her, gently moving him aside, and stepped forward herself. Ricardo watched with fixed, relentless attention as her hand touched and then released the man’s arm.

“Actually, not long ago, a decree came from the Resotian royal family. It reached even the place where I live.”

“And where is it that you’re living?”

“In a small village on the outskirts, a little distance from Resotia’s capital.”

Lienne swallowed dryly and continued.

“The Dermeier Empire has learned of my existence. And so they have issued an order to have me killed as well.”

Ricardo was at this moment returning from a campaign in the southern territories. Having been away from the capital for some time, it was not strange that he had received no news from the imperial court.

Judith Fan Monzania had entered the capital, yet Ricardo had not achieved so much as a manifestation, let alone an awakening.

It was highly likely that the Grand Priest had spread rumors attributing Ricardo’s failure to properly receive the Saintess’s role to this woman.

Public sentiment would have been shaken, and whoever had stirred the anxious Emperor to action had likely prompted him to issue the order to find and kill Lienne.