COARV Chapter 11

"But right now, in this blizzard—"

"If I push through it, I think I can make it somehow. Thanks to the map, I know roughly where we are, and if I just keep walking in the right direction, I'll run into the search party eventually."

Kallis's eyes shone with resolve.

"Lina, now that I know this hut's number, I'll send them straight here the moment I meet the search party."

"You're leaving me? Here?"

The glacier looked mystical enough from a distance, but at its heart it was like a vast, trackless sea. Alone in a place like this? Frightened, Lina's whole body trembled.

"Taking you with me is too dangerous."

"Do you really have to go? Couldn't the wedding just be put off a day or two? Isn't that all right for weddings among the nobility here…?"

Kallis spoke, his tone unusually heavy.

"A Stern's wedding isn't all right. Never… it's not all right, Lina."

Lina couldn't quite understand what he meant. Was a Stern's wedding really so different from any other noble's?

"Then maybe if we wait until the blizzard eases even a little before moving… Kallis?"

Lina's eyes went wide.

"Kallis!"

Kallis wiped his mouth. His gaze wavered. A vivid stain of blood on the back of his hand.

"Are you all right? Why is there suddenly bl—"

He said nothing, staring down at the red blood a moment before moving toward the small window. He opened the wooden shutter, and behind it was a second shutter split lengthwise. Opening that carefully, the blizzard howled straight in. Squinting against it, the world outside was still dark.

But of one thing he could be certain.

The wedding was starting—right now.

Kallis coughed and shut the window.

He had to get back, one way or another. As he moved toward the door, his legs buckled like a man taken suddenly ill, and he sank down.

"Kallis!"

More coughing followed. Blood spilled from Kallis's mouth. In that short span, his face had gone pale as wax.

Lina somehow dragged him onto the bed and pulled a blanket over him. She had no medical training, but even to her untrained eye, it was clear Kallis's condition was serious.

Coughing up more blood several times in the meantime, he murmured, half-conscious.

"Seria…"

Lina's face went rigid.

A chain like a constellation of stars rose from Kallis's throat, and began, then and there, to choke him.

"This is—"

Lina covered her mouth with both hands. She'd never received formal instruction on Stern doctrine, but she'd learned a little from the priests' catechism lessons.

That it was the mark of the covenant that appeared on a Stern's betrothed. But then why was it strangling Kallis?

"Kallis! Kallis!"

Lina scrambled to tear the chain-shaped ring of light from Kallis's throat, but it did nothing. The color drained completely from Kallis's face.

The wedding hall, on the day of the ceremony proper, was more beautiful than it had been the day before.

Light shattered off the lavish chandeliers, dazzling. A red carpet ran unbroken from the entrance all the way to the officiant's dais, and along its edges, lush flowers filled glass baskets, dressing the hall in freshness.

Above the flickering candles, the sacred crests glittered. Many priests, come all this way just for my wedding, stood gathered together like a choir. Their expressions were heavy with worry. Sighs, thick with concern, drifted through the room now and then.

Kallis hadn't come.

In a wedding hall without its groom, I stood alone before the altar.

The guest seats, at least, were full. Or—I honestly couldn't say if that was fortunate or not. Standing alone in an empty hall would have been humiliating too, but this was...

The veil the designer Begonia had pinned in place, alongside a teardrop-diamond ornament, hung softly, obscuring my sight ahead.

Just as she'd promised, the wedding dress she'd hand-finished down to the very last detail was genuinely beautiful. With the hall's specially arranged lighting added on top, its hundreds of faceted beads shimmered, brilliant.

Beside the dazzling wedding dress, golden bowls stood glowing on either side of the officiating priest at the dais. From the golden bowls holding the holy water came the quiet, steady sound of droplets falling—drip, drip—without pause. Like a water clock.

A month ago, at the Covenant Ceremony with Kallis at the Grand Temple, there had been a golden bowl just like this one. He'd dipped his hand in the holy water held within it, sworn his oath to become the Stern's man.

The moment that holy water began to fall, the wedding began. And once it had entirely drained, the wedding would end.

I didn't quite understand why something like a time bomb was even necessary.

Composing my expression like a mask, watching only the golden bowl in silence, I heard a scream suddenly break out behind me.

"Miss…? Miss!"

"Lady Stern!"

I registered a beat late that the target of that scream was me. Turning to look behind me, what met my eyes was blood.

Blood spreading out from beneath my shoes as if a bucket had been overturned. A beat later, a cough tore out of me.

Cough.

The pristine white wedding gloves, laced by Begonia's own artisans over two full months of work, went entirely red with blood.

What?

I couldn't quite grasp what was happening.

"Lady Seria!"

Abigail was the first to rush forward. The priests scrambled to seize her by both arms.

"You mustn't! Don't touch her!"

"Have you lost your minds? The lady is covered in blood right now!"

"It's a Stern's ritual! If you touch her wrongly now, her divine power will only tangle further!"

The priests weren't wrong, not in the slightest. Until the wedding concluded, no one but the one who'd completed the covenant could touch a Stern.

An absolute rule.

Even now, when disaster had struck on the wedding day and the Stern lay dying, drenched in her own blood, it still applied. If another's touch reached her, the divine power inside would tangle and might drive the Stern to madness. Only now did I finally understand what the priests had meant, drilling their solemn warnings into me over and over, about strict punctuality on the wedding day.

This cruelly rigorous prohibition bound my entire body now.

"When on earth will the Marquess of Haneton arrive!"

"Gather every crest of the Stern! Use my own divine power if we must, anything—!"

At some point I found myself collapsed, sprawled on the carpet. My head spun.

I thought I'd somehow escaped the original novel's ruin ending, and still—I die like this? Is it because Seria Stern is a villainess, and there's no helping it?

But I never once interfered with the leads. I never coveted either of them. And still, I'm the villainess, so that's it?

What did I do wrong?

Tears fell, dropping one after another. The heavy diamond ornaments and the veil that had crowned my head slid off, falling away together. My tangled hair ached, but the pain elsewhere was so much larger that it swallowed that hurt whole almost instantly.

It hurt—horribly—and even through the pain, I knew it with perfect clarity. That I was going to die here.

That at the Stern's wedding everyone had envied me for, I would die—because the man who swore he loved only me never came.

The whole thing felt like some farce.

"—Ha! Your Highness!"

"The Grand Duke!"

I registered, slowly, that having lost so much blood, the entrance had gone loud with noise. I certainly had no strength left to turn and look behind me.

Metal-plated boots, filthy with white snow and mud, entered my vision. They came closer, step by heavy step. He knelt in front of me. He lifted away the veil that had been covering my face.

"You mustn't, Your Highness!"

"You cannot touch Lady Stern!"

The priests' cries tangled in my ears.

"Everyone's about to die and all you can do is stand there watching? Does that solve anything?"

Grinding his teeth, he shouted this and looked down at me.

"Seria Stern!"

I looked up, dazed, at the man shaking my body. He wasn't Kallis Haneton, my fiancé.

Lesche Berke. On the floor, the veil he'd crumpled in his fist rolled loose. Lesche was staring down at me, his jaw clenched, in my blood-soaked wedding dress.

Even his beautiful silver hair had my blood on it, here and there.

"Get a hold of yourself. Don't die. Don't you dare die on me, damn it!"

I couldn't make out exactly what expression he was looking down at me with. My vision was too far gone for that. My focus kept smearing apart.

Lesche looked down once at his own hand, stained with my blood, then rose to his feet. Through my blurred sight, I saw him stride off, purposeful, and plunge his hand into the holy water sitting in the bowls beside the officiant's dais.

"Prepare the covenant ceremony."

"Sir?"

"Make it brief. Now."

The priests froze like stone for a moment, then, as if compelled, drew out their scripture and read, pressing a hand to Lesche's forehead. A pure white light burst out.

A great many steps had been skipped, and it had been simplified accordingly, but the shape of it was unmistakably similar to the ceremony Kallis had once undergone.

Linon came running and handed Lesche a pair of white gloves. He pulled them roughly onto his hands and came striding toward me.

At some point I realized my body had lifted off the ground.

I registered it a beat late.

That Lesche Berke—this man—had picked me up in his arms.

"Proceed with the wedding!"

I could feel, even from here, the way people scrambled in confusion. The bloodstained veil was still clutched in that man's, Lesche Berke's, hand.

"…And so, to the Stern who has received the star's blessing, an oath of eternity shall be sworn…"

A strange chain-mark pattern seemed to be etching itself into Lesche's throat. It might have been something I was imagining, in this much pain.

And that was how I lost consciousness.

Please don't kill me so horribly.

I want to live.

I want to live.

Don't kill me…

"…tern, Seria Stern!"

I came to, drenched in cold sweat all over. A familiar ceiling filled my vision. This was the bedroom I'd been staying in.

The corners of my eyes were damp. Had I been crying in my sleep? I seemed to have had a nightmare, but I couldn't quite recall it. As I rubbed carelessly at my wet eyes with the back of my hand, something soft settled against my forehead. A man's handkerchief.

"Use that, if you're going to wipe your face."

Only then did I turn my head to look sideways. Clean silver hair. Between his long silver lashes, dark, red eyes.

Lesche Berke.

Normally I'd have been startled awake, seeing him at my bedside like this—but right now I had no strength left in my body. Maybe it was because I'd just survived a brush with death, but I felt only a dull haze. It was as though a tidal wave had washed clean through my mind and receded.

"…Your Highness."

I suppose even after a year, some fear still lingered. I asked, carefully:

"Is it… all right for me to stay lying down?"

Lesche let out a short, dry laugh.