MB Chapter 9

Looking at his expression, Goiyo understood, belatedly, that this was the first time she had ever refused him.

That was how it had always been between them. Therio had been the one to extend his hand in friendship; Therio had been the one to confess his feelings and ask for something more; Therio had been the one whose feelings changed and whose resentment had poured over her. And Goiyo had always followed wherever his words led, swept along in the current of what he wanted—body, heart, and everything underneath.

A heart with no love around it was too easily moved. Too easily affected by another’s feelings, too easily pulled along by them.

The result: she had gained a friend. Lost him. Gained a lover. Lost him. Gained happiness. Lost it.

A tender heart crushed beneath the footsteps of a passing giant—not a single blade of grass left standing. Waiting, now, for the end to hurry up. Nothing else left.

And only then, having already given up on her own life, had she been able to say the word no to the one person who claimed to care for her. Only after surrendering everything was she able to refuse.

Devastating—and yet a return she would gladly take.

She had expected Therio to walk straight out of the receiving room. A proud knight, told the relationship was over, had only one appropriate response.

"…Is this because of the Marquess?"

"What?"

But Therio's face was only dark—not wounded, not stung in his pride. Instead of leaving, he raised a subject she hadn't anticipated.

"I'm sorry to bring it up, but—earlier, I noticed a proposal letter from Bethelgius being brought in. I didn't intend to, it was only chance. Did the Marquess tell you to distance yourself from House Alte? Did he threaten you? What exactly did he say to you last night that's making you behave like this—say it plainly."

"What I’m doing has nothing to do with the Marquess. This is my own decision. What does any of it have to do with Lord Alte."

"Goiyo—please. You're not actually planning to go through with marrying him, are you?"

Therio seized the teacup on the table between them in a hard grip. She watched a hairline crack split the handle—and winced. Goiyo gave up on managing her expression for his benefit. She had nothing left to manage it with.

"Think clearly, Goiyo. I don't know what he said to you, but he doesn't love you. You know that. Are you genuinely planning to marry someone who doesn't love you?"

"…I think we’re done here. Please go."

"Your mother told you—a marriage made for politics can never make you happy!"

The words caught her around the ankle as she began to rise.

Her brown eyes went pale and still.

"You're not like that, Goiyo Rubiette—that was never what you wanted!"

"How would you know that."

She asked it back. Something in her chest went white and blank. She had forgotten, completely, that she’d meant to keep him at arm’s length.

Her voice started shaking before she could stop it.

"I never said that to you."

"Goiyo, wait—"

"How would you know that."

She hadn't meant to raise her voice. Therio's eyes went round.

His mouth moved without producing sound.

Goiyo pressed him, her voice hollow.

"The winter when I was sixteen—do you remember? The day you brought me what you claimed was grape juice, and it turned out to be wine."

"What about that day."

"You said I went to sleep immediately after. But I didn't. Not right away."

A winter afternoon when they were both sixteen, and Goiyo had been visibly more downcast than usual. Therio, deciding to lighten the mood with a prank, had gone to the wine cellar and come back with a glass of something red he called grape juice, and waited for her to notice it wasn't.

What he hadn't anticipated was that Goiyo, in the thick of something that needed numbing, had emptied the glass in one go before she'd identified it. The alcohol was stronger than she'd expected and she had no experience with it; the warmth hit all at once and her balance went. Therio, alarmed, was starting for the adults when Goiyo grabbed his sleeve.

'You're not going anywhere, are you, Therio?'

A Goiyo with flushed cheeks and a frightened look on her face, not even certain she'd been given wine, was holding onto him like that.

He hadn't been able to leave. He'd sat back down beside her. And what came after:

"You told me everything. That it was around your mother's anniversary. Everything else, too. What you wanted, all of it."

"You never told me you knew."

"I didn't tell you. When you came back to yourself, you didn't remember any of it, so I thought—it would be better if you didn't know that I knew. Because you were in so much pain while you were saying it."

Everything stormed through her at once. Anger. Betrayal. Resentment. Shame. These were things she had never said to anyone. The wound of feeling abandoned by her own mother, and that small, embarrassing wish alongside it. That it had come out of her own mouth, of all things. Even herself. She felt betrayed even by herself.

Everything felt wrong. Not just failing to let go of Therio. Loving him. Becoming his friend. Even meeting Therio Alte—even having exchanged a single word with him—nothing but a wrong start, the whole of it.

'Perhaps even being born had been the mistake.'

She had thought there was nowhere further to fall. There was.

"Did you pity me?"

"No, not that—I didn't say anything because I thought you wouldn't want me to know. It was wrong of me to make that decision for you. But what I felt when I heard it wasn't pity. I didn't feel sorry for you and I wasn't laughing at you. If anything—that was when I came to care for you. I would never have looked at it the way you're—"

'What?'

"What are you saying. You developed feelings for me because of that?"

"I wanted to protect you. I wanted to be the one to give you what you wanted. That's why—"

Therio let the sentence trail off. She didn't need him to finish it to know where it led.

He wanted to give her what she wanted—a home. A small, warm one. That kind of family. And then the person he wanted to give it to changed from her to her younger sister. He stayed cowardly and silent until the day before the wedding, and after the wedding, he blamed Melishi’s death on Goiyo?

His behavior, before the return and after it, had never felt like the behavior of someone who knew.

If he had known, the minimum that was required of Therio Alte was to say so himself when his feelings changed.

Whatever his reasons for staying quiet until the day before the wedding—whether it was uncertainty about his own feelings—reluctance to break a family arrangement—guilt toward Goiyo Rubiette—for any of these reasons, he should have said so himself.

At the very latest, before Goiyo Rubiette swelled with happiness, certain her wish was on the verge of coming true.

She accepted Therio's claim that he hadn't pitied her. If there had been any pity in him, he could not have been this cruel.

There was no holding it. Goiyo raised her hand and laid it against the cheek of the coward in front of her.

Crack. Terribly small, measured against the anger.

"Is that why you fell for Melishi?"

"…Don’t twist it like that. I just—"

"No. Don't. I'm taking back what I said a moment ago."

She ground her teeth and made herself as clear as she could make herself. She had not known she was capable of this kind of anger until this moment.

"Not just calling on me informally—I mean for the rest of your life. Don't appear in front of me."

"Goiyo, please—I know you're angry, I understand, but now isn't the time to be carried away by your feelings. If you marry the Marquess, you'll be unhappy—I know it!"

Unhappy? She was already sufficiently unhappy. The prospect of being killed by the Marquess didn't feel like unhappiness, measured against this.

"Strange, that sounds like you're hoping I'll be unhappy. Fine then—if not the Marquess, who? Who is there that matches my rank and age? Shall I throw myself at anyone available and beg them to love me?"

"Goiyo! I want you to be happy. Not a marriage like this, not—"

"So that your conscience won't trouble you, I should love someone—anyone—and beg for love in return? I should do that for your sake? Would that put your mind at ease, Therio Alte?"

The color drained from Therio's face. He hadn't known it would sound like that, or hadn't known she would say it outright.

He could only open and close his mouth.

What does Therio Alte even want from me.

He wasn't short of people around him, so it wasn't that he was missing a friend. Then why was he going to all this trouble to make her miserable?

Guilt over ending the engagement? Worry that she might say something unpleasant to Melishi?

No. Not worth understanding.

Bethelgius had sent the proposal letter together with a proposed date. In one blink December would arrive, and when it passed, she would have no occasion to see Therio Alte again. Even if they happened to cross paths occasionally, there was only a year left after that before Goiyo—

She took her time, deliberately cooling the anger that had turned her thoughts white and blank. She lifted her tea and took a sip. Set the cup down.

Therio opened his mouth again.

"You don't have to rush into a marriage."

"I'm at the age for it now. As a Rubiette, I need to marry someone. Or—do you want to marry me yourself, Therio? You, who made that admirable resolution to give me what I wanted—shall we marry, and you can manage that?"

"Goiyo…"

The discomfort plain on his face. Goiyo let out a breath.

"Don't even think about it. For a hundred lifetimes, there will never again be such a thing. Leave."

"Goiyo, the Marquess—!"

"The Marquess, the Marquess—are you not tired of it? Even if the Marquess were the worst garbage in existence, he'd be a thousand times better than you."

Therio shook his head, his face stricken. Tired out by the exchange—the longest argument she'd had in some time—Goiyo surrendered the straight back she'd been holding and let herself sink into the sofa, and exhaled.

A brief silence.

She was about to say leave for the final time when, without warning, Therio called her name. He had, of all things, the expression of a man who had just made a decision.

"Marry me instead. I'll go and speak to Melishi, like you said."

"…Marry you?"

"Go back to the way it was."

Was this a joke, given the circumstances? She studied Therio's face expecting the evidence of one.

His face was entirely serious.

She wasn't even angry anymore. She was simply, genuinely, stunned—and let out a hollow laugh.

"You're actually out of your—"

“On whose authority?”

A familiar voice cut across the middle of her sentence.

Something about this felt like it had happened before. Goiyo checked herself before she could react, and before she had even fully raised her head, Therio—across from her—had shot to his feet.

"I believe I have the young lady's consent already—does 'former' fiancé rank high enough to require his approval as well?"

"Marquess Bethelgius!"

The sofa cushion beside Goiyo sank. In contrast to Therio, who was on his feet, Bethelgius had simply—sat down.

On the sofa beside her.

He sat there with total composure, one leg crossed over the other, arms folded. His face, angled slightly toward Therio, held an expression of easy, unconcerned amusement—and through the surface of that amusement, quite openly, ran contempt.

He sent the letter through a messenger, and now he's here in person—why, Goiyo thought, glancing between the Marquess and Therio in bewildered turns.

"Is there such an unreasonable law on the books anywhere in the Empire, Goiyo?"

"No... there couldn't possibly be such a law."

Goiyo? She blinked at the name on the Marquess's lips. Was that actually her name, spoken like that?

"So there isn't. I'm sorry to repeat myself, but—I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse yourself, Lord Alte. My fiancée and I have a great deal to discuss."

"To walk in without notice and behave like—this is outrages, Mar—"

"Good day to you."

Therio was mid-word, table still reverberating, when the Marquess’s pleasantry concluded him. And that was that.

Teleported.

Gone—as though there had simply been no one there.

The tea had gone over the rim—the only proof, now, that anyone had been here at all. Goiyo stared at the spreading puddle and seriously deliberated whether she was dreaming.