IDIBC SS 2

Ricardo and Lienne, Back Then 

What the Emperor wanted was for Ricardo to manifest the Rochester family’s power. The period between Rochester’s manifestation and awakening was the only time the Emperor could eliminate Ricardo.

“Then wouldn’t it make more sense to flee somewhere even farther away?”

Still unable to meet his eyes, Lienne let out a small, dry smile. At that tiny expression, Ricardo’s jaw tightened.

“For how long?”

“What?”

“Of course, at first I fled. But I soon realized that was impossible. So I came here instead. I intend to go and plead.”

“With whom? With Schneider?”

Lienne looked at him with wide eyes at his casual use of the Emperor’s name. Their eyes met briefly, but it was Lienne who looked away first.

“That’s right. You’re welcome to mock me, but I had no choice.”

“And you have a way to see the Emperor? Were you planning to just march straight to the Imperial Palace?”

The question was laced with amusement, and when Lienne’s lips pressed tightly shut in response, Ricardo realized she had truly come here intending to do exactly that. A disbelieving laugh escaped him involuntarily.

“I’ve heard that Emperor Schneider is a fair man.”

“Hardly.”

A fair Schneider. There could be no more ill-fitting description in all the world.

“Either way, I have no other options. So I intend to beseech His Imperial Majesty to send me somewhere no human foot has tread. That’s better than sitting and waiting to die.”

He stared at Lienne with an expressionless face for a moment, then smiled thinly.

“You know, you’ve gotten quite good at speaking.”

“……”

“You want to go somewhere no human foot has tread? With whom? With this man?”

He jerked his chin toward the man standing beside Lienne. The question was meant to unsettle them both, but when Lienne flushed red and could not answer, Ricardo’s mood sank lower and lower.

“Not going to answer?”

At his pressing, the man standing nearby stepped forward.

“No. I am merely Lienne’s guardian.”

“Guardian?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“I happen to know better than anyone that this woman has no blood relatives left.”

That was only natural. It was the Emperor who had ordered the extermination of the Fennel family, but it was Rochester who had personally seen to it. Ricardo had suffered unspeakable abuse at Justin’s hands, and because of it, he had cursed the Fennel family.

Just as he said, only Lienne had survived. Because she was but a half-blooded Fennel.

“I am Harold Hector, a knight who formerly served the Fennel family.”

“A knight? My understanding is that all knights of the Fennel family are now affiliated with the Resotia Royal Palace.”

Ricardo pressed on relentlessly, as though determined to expose every last lie.

“I left my position about a month before the… that is, before the extermination order was handed down to the Fennel family.”

“Ah, so what you’re saying is that a man who was once a knight of the Fennel family now claims to be the guardian of that family’s illegitimate daughter — is that it?”

“That is correct.”

The plain answer, carrying not a trace of malice, only made Ricardo’s mood worsen further.

When Harold had happened upon Lienne again in the outskirts of Resotia’s capital, he had been unable to turn a blind eye to the danger she was in.

At the time she had been a young child, so acting as her guardian had felt natural, but as time passed, the nature of their relationship grew increasingly ambiguous. He was well aware that others regarded the two of them with suspicion.

Then came the order from the Kingdom of Resotia to have Lienne killed, and Harold resolved that he had to protect her.

When Lienne first said she intended to go to Dermeier, he tried to dissuade her, but in the end he could not break her stubbornness.

And so they had come to make this journey to Dermeier together. He had been thinking that once this journey came to a safe end, seeing her married to a good man would be the last thing left for him to do.

Ricardo pressed his long fingers to both his temples. After a brief moment with his eyes closed, he opened them and looked at the two naive souls before him.

What on earth was he to do with them?

Left to their own devices, they would surely be killed the moment they reached the Imperial Capital, before they could even pass through the gates.

Unable to simply turn away from her for reasons he could not quite name, Ricardo decided to take Lienne and Harold — who insisted on calling himself her guardian — back to his family estate. Lienne, too, could not bring herself to refuse his offer.

It was true that although she had steeled herself to die and set out for Dermeier rather than flee, she had been at a complete loss as to where to begin or what to do first.

“You were a knight, so you can ride?”

“Of course.”

The moment Ricardo’s order was given, Harold was provided with a black horse. For Harold, who had long heard of Demahen’s renown, riding a horse of the Demahen Knights was an honor.

He glanced once at the horse and let out a quiet breath, then extended his arm to Lienne with an air of complete naturalness.

“Let’s go, Lienne.”

Just as Lienne reached out to take Harold’s offered hand, Ricardo stretched out his long arm and irritably snatched her by the arm.

“No, you two cannot ride together. How would I know what you might scheme if left to yourselves.”

Harold’s brow furrowed sharply. In this situation, with the Demahen Knights surrounding them — easily over a hundred men without even counting — what sort of scheming could possibly take place?

It was a plainly absurd thing to say, yet no one could bring themselves to challenge it.

Not wanting to go against Ricardo’s wishes, Lienne quietly prepared to mount a different horse.

“Get on here.”

“Pardon?”

“Surely I don’t need to actually climb down and lift you up myself?”

“N-no, that’s not what I meant, but—”

Ricardo lifted her up and set her on his own horse in one swift motion. The knights watching were startled enough to widen their eyes, but Lienne herself hadn’t even registered that there was anything improper about the situation.

And so it was that until they had passed through the gates of the capital, Ricardo did not let her out of his sight for a single moment.

++++

Stuart’s funeral was held in a solemn atmosphere. To attend, Lienne and Ricardo had returned to Dermeier for the first time in a long while, in their capacity as the King and Queen of Resotia.

Ricardo bid farewell to Stuart in the very same antechamber where he had once forcibly made him Emperor. A multitude of emotions washed over him — yet grief was not the only one among them.

The fearsome and brilliantly cunning Schneider had, in the end, seen every one of his wishes fulfilled and closed his eyes in peace. As long as Ricardo remained, his son would hold the Dermeier Imperial throne without faltering.

Throughout the funeral, Lienne rubbed Ricardo’s arm and offered him quiet comfort. It was only then that he realized — he did not grieve the loss of the Emperor, but he did grieve the loss of a dear friend.

Ricardo and Lienne decided to stay two days at the Imperial Villa before returning home.

Mariette had hoped Ricardo would stay on longer since he had come all this way, but in the end she could not keep them. Back in Resotia, there was a wonderful young prince waiting for his parents to return.

“The prince is growing up well, I trust?”

At Mariette’s question, asked during her visit to the royal couple at the villa, a look of proud satisfaction settled over Ricardo’s face. Edward — their beloved son and the Prince of Resotia — had been born under the Rochester Star.

Word had it that the newly appointed Grand Priest, upon seeing the Rochester Star shining so brilliantly, had fainted on the spot. The Grand Temple, which had been in an agony of worry that the divine will would never again descend, had every reason to be overcome with joy.

On the night of his birth, even through the throes of labor, Lienne had prayed again and again that no divine oracle would be bestowed upon Edward.

And at the moment when the Rochester Star shone at its brightest, just as she had prayed, Edward was born healthy and without any oracle at all.

“Of course.”

At his answer, Mariette smiled warmly.

“I heard he has black hair and blue eyes. He must take after both of you — he must be truly beautiful and precious.”

“He’s grown far too much to be called a baby now.”

Lienne listened to their exchange and let her thoughts drift briefly to Edward.

With hair as black as Ricardo’s and eyes of blue that were the very image of her own, Edward’s features resembled Paula closely enough to make him beautiful. Lienne found that she quite loved that about him.

After that, the two of them continued chatting about this and that. They sat with somewhat more composed posture than before, though the substance of their conversation was not so very different from the old days.

Mariette wanted to tease him, but Ricardo never once let her get the better of him.

Lienne watched them, breaking into laughter at times, and at other times falling into quiet thought. Mariette seemed far too serene to be someone who had just lost the one she loved.

And Lienne could feel that all of that was owed entirely to Stuart’s transcendent love.

As Mariette spoke of how what Stuart had wanted, even in the moments closest to death, must have been the happiness of his family — her face was filled with certainty.

“The real battle begins now.”

At Ricardo’s words, Mariette gave a resolute nod. Though he had been an Emperor confined to his bed, there was a world of difference between his presence and his absence.

On the grounds that the Crown Prince was too young, the nobles would seek to delay his ascension to the throne. That was the first problem to be solved.

“I am prepared.”

Lienne took her hand. Though Mariette’s expression remained gentle as ever, her hand was cold to the touch.

“We will help you as much as we can.”

Mariette nodded, then raised her voice slightly as if to shift the mood.

“Well then, I think the time has come to explain why I paid the two of you such an impolite visit at this late hour.”

Mariette gestured for the lady-in-waiting who always remained close at hand to come nearer. In the lady-in-waiting’s hands was a single thick book.

“Would either of you care to guess what this is?”

Lienne could not make heads or tails of it and only tilted her head. Like those books in the royal archives of Resotia that bore no title on their spines, it exuded an air of secrecy simply by existing.

“I really couldn’t say.”

At Lienne’s answer, Mariette drew up the corner of her mouth in a mischievous smile.

“You mentioned you’ll be staying two days? Then you’ll be quite busy indeed. There’s more inside than you might expect, so it’ll be difficult to finish it all in that time.”

“Whatever could it be, that we must read it within two days?”

“This is a letter and diary that Stuart left for me.”

It was Ricardo, not Lienne, who reacted most strongly to her words.

“A diary? Then it must contain accounts of the time that has passed.”

“Our King is sharp as ever, I see. That’s right. Recorded in here are the two of you — your past. Or rather, your previous lives. And in considerable detail, at that.”

Lienne and Ricardo exchanged a glance as if they had arranged it beforehand.

They had thought they would never know how the two of them, who had shared so little in their past lives, had come to meet again and fall in love — and now to find that such a secret record existed was almost beyond belief.

“I expect tonight you’ll find it quite hard to fall asleep. You’ll be too busy reading.”