MB Chapter 2

"My lady, Lord Alte is here."

"Is he? I'll be right out."

Could you prepare some tea? Annie left the room.

The moment the door closed, Goiyo drew a long breath. She herself had been the one to send for Therio, but even so, she could not be entirely at ease.

She looked back at the mirror. Nothing lacking.

Her chestnut hair, long enough to cover her chest, lay combed in a neat wave. The black velvet dress was not ornate, but gave the impression of care taken. The maid's skill being what it was, the face paint, too, sat naturally, without a raised edge anywhere.

Good to go—and yet she couldn’t pull her eyes away. It wasn't only today.

Ever since she had lain ill for three consecutive days and risen again, she had found herself unable to look away from the mirror. Probably because something in her still clung.

The rounded forehead, the eyes that looked faintly melancholy beneath dark, level brows—the face was far too young and too vivid to belong to someone on the eve of thirty.

Not only that. The long shadows beneath her eyes from years of insomnia—gone. The pale, bloodless color—gone. The hollowed cheeks—gone. Everything she had grown familiar with had vanished.

The face in the mirror was unmistakably that of a young lady not long past coming of age: twenty-two-year-old Goiyo Rubiette, the former self she had thought never to see again.

The Silverbell had been procured by Eden, the loyal butler of House Alte.

Goiyo had needed a blood pressure reducer with greater efficacy than what she had been regularly taking, and Eden had brought her Silverbell.

On the surface, that was all it was.

What no one else knew—that this Silverbell, merely an effective medicine for anyone else, could give Goiyo something she had been looking for—that was a matter known only to herself.

Goiyo swallowed the Silverbell dissolved in wine, and closed her eyes. Death, it turned out, was quieter than she had imagined it.

She only understood it wasn’t over when her entire body began to burn.

It was a dreadful pain. A vicious heat worse than the virulent fever she had suffered at thirteen when her mother died, worse than the illness after Rubiette's ruin, turned her whole body inside out, making every place where blood ran sting as if fire had passed through it.

Her body was drenched in cold sweat, and the area around her eyes, wet with tears, did not dry for a moment.

'Not dead.'

Whenever she drifted back to consciousness, seeing the blurred ceiling and the shadows of people moving through it, Goiyo knew: her wretched life wasn’t finished with her yet.

Why. She had been found sooner than expected, perhaps, or the Silverbell's efficacy had fallen short of what she had hoped, or perhaps a priest had arrived early—

She stopped herself reasoning through the possibilities in the dark of her consciousness.

What does it matter.

Her attempt had failed. Goiyo Alte would have to keep living this tiresome life a little longer.

That was a different pain from the one tormenting her body.

It had now been five years since Rubiette's destruction. Five years since Therio and Goiyo's relationship had changed past the point of recovery.

At first she had believed that time would be the cure. Just as Therio had once put away his feeling for Melishi and come back, she had believed that with time his resentment toward her would soften again.

Not a chance. That hope had shattered in no time at all.

Therio had apologized for his outburst, but it had been a formal apology and nothing more.

After that, Therio's manner had turned colder than winter. His way of speaking became frigid; even the obligatory intimacies of marriage were rough past bearing.

The Therio Alte that Goiyo had known seemed to have been buried alongside the dead Melishi.

But the point at which Goiyo had truly resigned herself to everything was slightly later—after Therio's anger had cooled somewhat.

From around a year after Melishi's death, the anger in Therio Alte had slowly subsided. He became—one might say—quite the gentleman. Not warm, but not rough either. Respectful in the exact measure required of him, no more, no less. He was a cold, exact gentleman.

It was when she saw those navy eyes with the light gone out of them that Goiyo finally, in her very bones, understood that everything had become irreversible.

Goiyo Alte had nothing left. Her house, her family, her love—all lost. The only friend she had ever had was the Therio of childhood.

If she had had some goal she wished to achieve, some dream—it might have been a little better. But Goiyo had nothing she wanted to accomplish.

Days passed in which it would have been perfectly fine to simply stop breathing. Only a small remaining sense of responsibility kept her from it.

Goiyo herself knew that neither her marriage to Therio nor Melishi’s death was her fault—but when one hears oneself blamed repeatedly for a thing, even the firmest belief will waver—that is simply how it is.

The people of House Alte resented Goiyo.

As if she were a witch who had brought suffering to the master they loved, they sent looks at times sharper than Therio's own vacant stare. There were no words, but the looks were sufficient.

Even if there were no direct harm, perhaps there was some indirect fault. Or even if there were no fault—did she even have the right to die, and leave this behind?

It was not only Goiyo who had lost a great deal; Therio had lost a great deal as well.

Because of a youthful carelessness, he had married someone he did not want. The person he had loved had married another man, and died by that man's hands.

She could imagine, at least in her mind, what Therio must be feeling.

Goiyo felt that she bore a responsibility, if not necessarily a guilt. She could hardly run away just because life was unbearable—not when she had played such a central role in the tragedy of Therio Alte.

The marriage to Therio had been Goiyo’s choice and no one else’s. She had insisted when no one else had wanted it—she had to live with that.

All the more so because it was clear that, once all of Rubiette was gone, Goiyo alone had survived and continued to breathe only because of Alte.

She murmured it, by habit.

Until the time comes. Until Therio Alte finds someone else.

And fortunately, Therio's new spring had come sooner than she had imagined.

That wax-figure face had recently regained some color, and the hour at which he returned to the estate grew later and later.

The whispers about Therio’s secret lover had reached her. At last. The moment she’d been waiting for.

The joy of a fragmented heart crumbling further.

Out of a minimum of consideration for those who would remain, Goiyo did not hang herself or throw herself from a window.

Something quieter than that. Something more private. So that no ugly rumor would spread of Lord Alte's wife having taken her own life over his infidelity. So that it would seem like nothing more than an unavoidable death by accident—grieved and grief-worthy, the new Duchess able to enter the house without difficulty.

Yes. Exactly like the story of her own father and Lady Kazehl.

"My lady, are you feeling yourself?"

The eyelids she had not wished to open opened, and as the blurred human shapes sharpened into clarity, Goiyo looked at the person before her blankly.

"Annie—"

"Lord, listen to that voice! Drink some water first."

Hadn't Annie died? On the day Rubiette was destroyed, she had heard that everyone in service at Rubiette had been beheaded.

The charge had been treason, of all things, so even those not connected by blood had nowhere to escape to. On such a worthless excuse alone—that no one could know what they might have seen, or helped with.

Supported by the hands that raised her back, Goiyo sat up awkwardly. As lukewarm water touched her raw throat, an ache she hadn't known was there announced its existence.

She coughed a few times, and Annie, who had offered her the water, hovered, pattering her feet in helpless distress.

"Are you all right, my lady?"

“What... is this.”

Alive? Then why here, at Alte?

The unordered questions all tried to come out at once before they were stopped by the sound of a door opening.

In the midst of the confusion, a familiar set of footsteps—and Goiyo raised her head. In the brown eyes, once again, the face of someone who should have been dead was reflected.

"You're awake."

"Father."

"You've been ill with a fever for three days, they tell me. Are you feeling better now?"

A formal concern that carried not a scrap of real worry—it entered her ears with the ease of the familiar.

The man of middle age, composed and impeccably dressed, was unmistakably Goiyo's father, Kauloros Rubiette.

He was supposed to be dead. Not merely supposed—Goiyo had seen Kauloros Rubiette's body with her own two eyes.

Offered as a final cruelty dressed up as familial consideration, Goiyo had been permitted to look on her father's thin face—severed from his body, pallid and older and more drawn than the face before her now.

The strangeness was not only in him. This room—the bed she was lying in, all of it—was familiar.

This was Goiyo Rubiette's bedroom. Not Goiyo Alte's—Goiyo Rubiette's bedroom. The room in the estate that Goiyo had used until her marriage, which should, afterward, have been consumed by fire.

The suicide hadn’t failed, then. Goiyo Alte had really died. And this—seeing dead people, speaking to them—was what death looked like.

The rising strangeness pressed her hands hard into the mattress. The sheets were so real in her grip it was almost unnerving.

She had believed death was its own ending. So why—

"Goiyo?"

She had been taught from early childhood how to conceal her feelings, and hiding her dismay from others was not something that cost Goiyo much effort. Even so, this time it was a little harder than usual.

Goiyo, who had been silent and looking down, had apparently seemed odd enough that Kauloros called her name.

She schooled her face to stillness.

"My throat is a little sore. Otherwise I'm fine."

"I see. That's good."

"How is Valter?"

Whether the effort was working, Goiyo's voice sounded plain enough—raw and ragged, but ordinary.

Whatever strangeness the Duke had caught in her expression seemed to have returned to its accustomed blankness.

"He'll be disappointed not to have you, but he's taking a nap. He's only seven, after all."

"I know. I was just worried I might have given him the fever."

"Healthy, nothing to worry about."

"Yes, Father."

Goiyo swallowed carefully. In truth, in this incomprehensible situation, it was not Valter's wellbeing she was concerned about.

The clumsy reason she had given—worried she might have passed on the fever—was to make asking after someone else's safety seem unremarkable.

And then—the most difficult name in the world to place in her mouth again. Pressing down on a heartbeat, Goiyo asked.

"Melishi is all right as well, isn't she?"

Her head was heavy and her senses dulled from the lingering fever—but Goiyo Rubiette tried, as rigorously as she could manage, to map the situation.

When she needed to speak at any length, she used the remaining fever as her excuse and avoided it. She drew information gently from Annie and Jeffrey, neither of whom were particularly suspicious.

After three days, she was able to establish a few things about this strange, unnameable situation—whether it was a dream, a hell, or something else entirely.

The first was the date. The day Goiyo had stopped breathing was September of year 151. The calendar here read October of year 144. In other words, there was a gap of seven years between the day Goiyo Rubiette had closed her eyes and the day she opened them again.

The second was the people. Everyone who should have been dead was alive, entirely without incident. From Annie, to the Duke of Rubiette, to Lady Kazehl, to Valter, to Melishi.

And the third—

There was no need to think any further. These two facts alone made it clear enough that the time in which Goiyo was awake and breathing was not the present—it was the past.

Goiyo had not yet fully accepted, in the part of herself that truly believed things, that she had come back through time. A thing that made no sense.

And yet—if it really was true that she had come back to the past, there was one thing she could think of that might explain it.

Or perhaps it was more probable that she was dreaming of the past, or wandering in some version of hell.

Goiyo opened the drawing-room door.

"Hello, Therio. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

Whether it was a dream, a hell, or even reality—Goiyo Rubiette had something she had to do.