COARV Chapter 18

Dressed and ready for the year-end party, Kallis stood by the window and looked down at one arm. The arm that had once been rotting from the inside, its agony now gone entirely, stood as sound as any ordinary knight's.

At his wrist, a demon-crystal bracelet rattled softly. Seria had given it to him as a gift.

"Seria."

Kallis murmured the name alone. Just a few days ago, she'd been certain to become his wife. This gathering, hastily converted into a year-end party, had originally been meant as the reception for the two of them.

Seria Stern.

She was the eldest daughter of the distinguished western House of Keliden. Though it was said her birth mother's status had been low enough that she'd always been an outsider in her own household. Her half-siblings, her two elder brothers, hadn't even wanted to speak Seria's name. Just hearing her name made them grit their teeth in disgust.

It was, honestly, an understandable reaction.

Kallis knew Seria's wickedness firsthand, after all. The Seria of her younger years had been, in every sense, a girl consumed by extravagance. She'd summoned jewelers and dress designers from the capital nearly every single day.

Among the jewels Seria had bought on a whim was even a quail-egg-sized blue diamond, one Empress Aekizel herself had coveted at the time. So costly had it been that word had it the Marquess of Keliden had sold off an entire island just to cover the bill.

Kallis, being western nobility himself, knew the story a little more precisely than most.

That blue diamond had earned Seria a severe scolding from the Marquess, but even so, her taste for extravagance hadn't waned in the slightest. Her relationship with her family had only worsened from there, and once she turned fifteen and became a Stern, she'd left the Keliden household entirely for the capital's townhouse.

Not long after, Kallis himself had moved up to the Haneton residence in the capital. And at every notable ball in the capital's high society, Seria Stern had invariably been present.

More precisely, there had invariably been a Seria Stern in the process of tormenting someone.

Back then, Seria had been the sort of villainess no one could possibly make excuses for. Spilling dark-colored juice on a lady's dress she took a dislike to was the baseline; publicly humiliating people in front of a crowd was simply an extra.

Unable to stand by and watch her strike the girl across the face, Kallis finally stepped in and rescued the lady she'd been tormenting.

"We're from the same western territory, and you'd insult me all the same?"

Kallis still couldn't forget how her eyes—that pale, unsettling blue—had blazed with fury that day.

Not long after, true to her reputation, Seria had taken her revenge on him. She'd poured a poison called Sengmalon onto his arm.

Sengmalon itself wasn't a particularly dangerous poison. Had it been the kind of poison that endangered a life, or caused permanent bodily harm, Seria would have found herself standing trial by now.

Even the symptoms weren't especially severe. His limbs had gone stiff for about a week, enough that he couldn't dance properly, but that had been about the extent of it.

The real problem lay in the soup he'd eaten the day before, for a lingering cold. The restorative soup his nanny, old Lady Risolt, had simmered through the night contained Langerbeu herb. It was a fine herb for restoring a weakened patient's body, but it also carried narcotic properties, which meant the imperial court had classified it as illegal.

Even so, elderly women out in the countryside still quietly used Langerbeu as a folk medicine, here and there, without much fuss.

That Langerbeu herb and Sengmalon poison formed a vicious counter-reaction wasn't widely known at all.

As a result, a terrible chemical reaction had taken hold inside Kallis's body, and as a side effect, one of his arms had slowly begun to rot.

He couldn't report Seria for it, and he couldn't even show his anger. If he did, Seria might learn about the Langerbeu herb, and—smirking—threaten to report his nanny instead. Kallis had cared for his nanny too deeply to put her through needless suffering.

So Kallis had endured it alone, hiding the pain of his rotting arm, seeing a couple of discreet doctors who could hold their tongues and taking whatever medication dulled the pain.

He'd been slowly, quietly preparing to bid farewell to that arm entirely.

"Marquess Haneton?"

Then Seria had suddenly shown up one day, dropped to her knees, and pressed her forehead to the ground. Kallis had genuinely believed, that day, that Seria had lost her mind completely. But it was hard to believe she'd really gone mad, when everything else about her still looked so... Seria. So aristocratic, through and through—

That had gone on for a full month. Coming to his residence every other day to apologize, over and over, Seria had suddenly announced she'd found a way to cure his arm and taken him to a small, secluded shrine on the outskirts of the capital.

"Wait here for a moment."

Just as the painkiller's effect was wearing off and Kallis was forced to endure his pain in silence, Seria left him there, and hours later came back looking like an absolute wreck. From a pouch tied at her waist, she pulled out several stalks of herbs with small, yellow flowers trailing from them.

"What's that?"

"An herb. This should be able to heal your arm."

With clumsy hands, Seria did her best to grind the herb, apply it to his arm, and wrap it in bandages.

"How is it? Any better?"

Kallis had been taken aback. His arm, which had ached at least a little even with the pain medication, had eased miraculously the instant the herb touched it.

Whatever lingering suspicion he'd carried dissolved entirely, right then.

"Where else can I get more of this herb?"

"That? There isn't any more to be had here, and while it does grow plentifully elsewhere, it's not mine to take—I couldn't bring it back."

"Not yours?"

"Right. It has an owner already. Someone who'll come along in about a year."

"...?"

Kallis hadn't quite understood what Seria meant, but he'd let it go regardless. What of it—her actions were just as hard to make sense of, in the end.

"Then where did you get this herb?"

"From a cliff below the shrine."

"What?"

Kallis had been genuinely stunned.

"You don't mean to tell me you climbed down that cliff yourself?"

"That's right."

The answer she'd given, blinking her pale blue eyes. Seria's eyes then had been nothing like the terrifying, cold ones that had once glared at him. It struck him again, in that moment, that she really was counted among the great beauties of the capital.

When had she started changing like this?

"Why are you doing all this for me?"

"Because I did something wrong to you. If—if it's still not enough, should I kneel again?"

"...No. Don't kneel. This is more than enough."

Not long after, Kallis had offered Seria the emerald ring passed down through generations in the House of Haneton, and proposed to her.

She'd been so flustered then—it had been lovely, watching that. The way she couldn't tear her eyes off that emerald ring...

"...Seria."

Kallis's hand tightened. He loved Seria. Even if she'd ended up, by pure accident, married to the Grand Duke of Berke—it was only temporary. Not just Kallis, but every noble in this castle assumed more or less the same thing.

That the Grand Duke of Berke had gone to such drastic lengths just to save a Stern so precious, so precious she couldn't be lost.

'Lina...'

Kallis intended to divorce Lina. She was unlike any woman he'd known before—she never hid her flaws; when something was hard, she just said it was hard, plainly, without shame. There was something quietly pitiable about how much she'd come to rely on him.

More than that, Kallis governed western Haneton. Building goodwill in advance with the Saint, who was bound to shake the capital before long, was simply sound political calculation.

But he'd never wanted to lose Seria for the sake of that kind of gain. Kallis couldn't afford to let Seria go.

"Whew."

Just yesterday, he'd been half out of his mind at the thought of Seria marrying another man, unable to act with any rationality at all. After a night's sleep, he felt a little more like himself.

Seria was still furious right now, so he needed to give her time to cool off. And then, once he apologized sincerely, all over again...

Knock, knock.

At the sound of a knock, one of Kallis's knights burst in urgently. This was the knight Kallis had stationed at Seria's annex.

"My lord!"

"What's wrong?"

"You'd better come, my lord. Her Holiness said she wanted to commission a dress from Designer Begonia, and after searching the castle high and low, she's gone all the way to Lady Seria's annex, and—"

"Lina has?"

Lina was the Saint. Pure as untouched jade. Not a good match for someone as aristocratically sharp as Seria. If Lina were to somehow set off Seria's temper—and Seria was probably already furious down to the roots of her hair—there was no telling what she might do.

"...I'd better go."

His expression grim, Kallis headed for the annex. But he had never expected to run into Lesche Berke at that very door.

Turning back the clock, a little earlier.

Linon had been grumbling, in small doses, at Lesche.

"Your Highness, no matter how you look at it, this is a woman who collapsed and fainted at her own wedding, bleeding everywhere. Was it really right to work her like a slave the moment she woke up? Isn't one servant like me not enough for you?"

His wicked liege gave no response at all, still checking over his documents. As the castle's master, he'd need to make an appearance at the ball without fail, so he too was dressed impeccably.

The Grand Duke, checking over paperwork while he waited for the timing to be right.

"Better to work. Otherwise it's nothing but idle thoughts."

Even his answer came out this flat and unbothered. Lesche kept flipping through documents that mentioned the word "sorcerers" several times, then, apparently struck by something, lifted his head.

"Odd. Why are you taking her side?"

Linon answered proudly.

"Because I happen to like people who get things done quickly!"

"I imagine so."

A perfectly clear reason.

But Linon's words were entirely sincere. Seria handled work quickly—genuinely, remarkably quickly. He hadn't had much occasion to see it during the glacier inspections, since he never accompanied her, but yesterday she'd spent the entire day repeating nothing but "quickly, quickly," reading documents on Elliot's back, receiving reports on the food selection on Elliot's back, checking the decorations for the hall on Elliot's back.

Thanks to that, the castle had been completely transformed in a single day. Red ribbons, mistletoe decorations hung here and there. The fabric had all been swapped out for damask. It looked as though the place had been touched by magic.

"I wonder what the manor's demons would say, if they saw Lady Seria."

"Who knows."

"I, for one, am very much looking forward to it."

Linon grinned.

"But Your Highness. Shouldn't you give Lady Seria some advance warning about the manor? Even if it's a temporary marriage, you are married now, so you'll have to go there together, won't you?"

"She doesn't strike me as that fragile a person."

"That's certainly true enough, but..."

Lesche glanced down at the document again.

'...Finally invited six sorcerers from the Kingdom of Nesla to the manor...'

'...I suppose I ought to, after all.'

Lesche rose from his seat. He also meant, incidentally, to go fetch Seria himself. Once the ball began in earnest, temporary wife or not, he'd need to escort Seria in.

But he had never expected to run into Kallis at Seria's annex.