MB Chapter 4

The same day she and Therio spoke about breaking the engagement, Therio did not return to House Alte. He remained at Rubiette, waiting for the Duke and Duchess and Melishi Rubiette to come home.

Watching him ask when they might return—that transparent eagerness—Goiyo could have laughed, though there was nothing warm in the impulse.

The eagerness collapsed into tension the moment Duke Rubiette and his wife arrived with their daughter. An agreement between Alte and Rubiette, after all. Breaking an engagement with a single word was no small matter. And above all, this was a request to transfer his intentions from elder sister to younger—he could hardly have expected easy acceptance.

But the Duke, rendering Therio's tension entirely beside the point, asked Goiyo a single question— Are you all right? —and gave his blessing to Therio and Melishi.

The Duke's long, quiet gaze fixed on his daughter's joy told Goiyo everything about what he felt. As for Lady Kazehl — there was nothing left to say.

The engagement ceremony for Melishi and Therio was set for after the imperial ball. Since Therio had promised to escort Goiyo to the ball, proceeding with the engagement before it would have been awkward.

Even so, the news of their broken engagement seemed to have slipped out of the estate and found its way, by degrees, through the capital. The glances following the two of them were not few.

Therio had known it would come out eventually but had not anticipated such speed. He offered a cautious apology.

"I'm sorry, Goiyo. I was too hasty, I think."

"No. I expected it."

"But—"

"Thank you for the escort." She cut off what was coming and released his hand.

The reason she had taken his escort in the first place was the absurd requirement that one could not enter the imperial ball without a partner. Now that she was inside, there was no reason to go on holding Therio Alte's hand.

The ballroom was loud and crowded. It had been some time since the last imperial ball; the people had swarmed in like bees, and the orchestra's playing filled the hall to its walls. The food arranged at every table looked sufficient to feed half the capital. Walking beneath the yellow light of the chandeliers, Goiyo made a deliberate effort to keep her expression from contracting.

After House Rubiette fell, she had almost never set foot in a ballroom. Unless it was an imperial birthday, she had confined herself to the estate — and later, had stopped attending even those. Therio had been reluctant to escort her; but Goiyo, for her part, had also preferred the alternative to being placed among people who whispered.

The whispering was the same now. She found she no longer cared about the black eyes and black tongues turned her way. There was nothing left that could seep into a heart this dry. For things like these to wound her, her heart would need to have been something other than already covered in scars.

From behind, she heard Therio call her name. She paid no attention.

Here and there, someone recognized her and approached the Lady of Rubiette with greetings and questions about her recent circumstances. Goiyo deflected them—with a curtness that bordered on rudeness—while scanning the hall.

Whether before or after the regression, Goiyo had no interest in balls. Today, however, there was a reason she needed to be here.

In truth, today was not strictly necessary. If not now, there was always the next ball—and if not then, the proposal would arrive regardless. He was someone she would have no choice but to see, whether she went looking or not. She was here now simply because she wanted to see his face once more before it happened.

Curiosity, if it was curiosity. Resolve, if it was resolve.

After a few minutes of searching, her gaze stopped on a particular point. In the center of a gathered crowd, there stood someone conspicuously tall.

Marquess Bethelgius.

Her lips had begun to move — and then, abruptly, trumpets sounded.

"The great and luminous sun of Solaris—His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and Her Imperial Majesty the Empress are arrived!"

Their eyes had seemed to meet, but in her haste to bow she hadn't had a proper look. She thought the glance had landed, but she couldn't be certain.

The fanfare continued for a full minute—as though compensating for what the Emperor's personal authority lacked.

Only after the second hand had completed its full circuit could Goiyo and the assembled company straighten.

With the trumpets faded, the young Emperor—a man in his thirties—offered his address. The official purpose of the ball was to celebrate a victory now nearly a year past, and so his words carried consolation for fallen knights, praise, tribute to the empire's might.

Fewer than ten percent of those present could have claimed to have felt Solaris at war—and yet the nobility nodded along with proud, satisfied expressions.

'The dividends of someone else's dying, how gratifying,' Goiyo thought.

"Furthermore, as this is a ball to celebrate victory, I cannot but call forward the foremost subject of merit. Marquess Bethelgius—come forward and receive my cup."

Bethelgius?

At the Emperor's words, Goiyo raised her head. The man was taking slow, unhurried steps, as though savoring the convergence of every eye upon him.

Beneath the uncommon ripple of red-gold hair, his features were sharp enough to be visible at a distance. He stood a head above most knights, and his bearing was too refined to have once belonged to a commoner. The swallow-tail of his white coat followed his steps in a flutter that was, somehow, entirely graceful.

Entzi Bethelgius. A marquess now, but originally of common birth — a sword-mage who had made his name in the war between Solaris and the Kingdom of Ubehl. Not even a knight by training; he had come from ordinary infantry, risen in a single bound to command a century, and then higher still, leading every engagement to victory.

Given the disparity in strength between the two nations, almost no one had predicted Solaris's defeat. Even so, the advantage had not been overwhelming. Significant losses had been anticipated. Bethelgius had made them nearly nothing.

Reversing what seemed impossible again and again, he had made his name—and earned the elevation that carried him from commoner to marquess in several ranks' worth of a single stride.

That his becoming a marquess had not been solely a matter of merit—Goiyo breathed this to herself, very quietly.

"Your Imperial Majesty does me great honor."

The Marquess received the Emperor's cup. Not a trace of tension anywhere in him—ease from his posture to the placement of each finger, not a hair's breadth out of form. A man who had arrived in the capital to receive his title less than a year after the war ended, and he was this.

The nobility who had been waiting to catch the newly elevated provincial in error were left reaching for their wine glasses instead. Those who had kept their distance from what they'd expected to be an ignorant warmonger found themselves among his following. The noble faction — those who sought to suppress the imperial camp and advance through the aristocracy — had accepted the Marquess without difficulty and elevated him to something near their figurehead.

Beyond capable. Monstrous, almost. In almost no time at all, the Marquess had become the central pillar of a considerable power.

The Emperor clapped him on the shoulder with a smiling face—though there was something in the way the hand fell that wanted to hesitate.

"That a talent like yours should belong to Solaris—this is the grace of the gods. If you have a wish, speak it. Ask not for the empire itself, and I shall grant what you will."

The Emperor's words set the ballroom murmuring. It had not been arranged in advance, apparently — the Empress and both Dukes had gone rigid with something between unease and affront.

A commoner receiving a marquisate was already without precedent in the empire's history; and the service in question, however extraordinary, was not more extraordinary than a marquisate already acknowledged.

The only person in the room who showed no particular disturbance at the Emperor's words was Goiyo Rubiette — who had known this was coming, and who knew the reason for it. She had not attended this ball before the regression, but the Emperor's words had been famous enough to reach her anyway.

"Your Majesty, the Marquess has already been recognized for his service through the granting of his title—how could—"

"Is what the Marquess accomplished a common thing? Were there no restriction on how high a commoner may rise in a single elevation, a dukedom would be insufficient for this man. If I end my recognition with an insufficient title, what sort of Emperor of Solaris am I!"

With the Emperor's irritation directed at Duke Rubiette, there was no one left willing to intervene.

In the stilled hall, the Emperor looked down at the Marquess once more—a smile that was slightly awkward around its edges.

The Marquess held his faint smile without any perturbation. Like someone who had anticipated exactly this.

"Now then — Duke Rubiette need not worry. Speak freely, Marquess. Is there something you wish for?"

"In that case—there is one thing I would ask."

The Marquess answered in a low voice. What would he say — every eye in the room, half curious and half apprehensive, converged on his lips.

What Marquess Bethelgius was about to say, only Goiyo Rubiette knew.

Or rather: she had known, once. She had not attended this ball before the regression, but the story had been famous enough to reach her. In the previous timeline, the Marquess had made no extraordinary demand—only asked that some count's eldest son be permitted to sit the examination for the First Knight Order, a small piece of largesse for the noble faction, apparently accepted without difficulty. She could no longer recall which count's house. It hadn't mattered to her then.

The Marquess opened his mouth.

"Grant me the first dance of the evening, Your Majesty."

But the words that came were not what Goiyo had expected.

The first dance?

Her brow contracted. She looked around, wondering if she had misheard—

But in the murmuring that rose from the hall, the word dance reached her from many directions at once.

Then was it her memory that was wrong. She had only heard this secondhand, and imperfectly—she might well have misheard, but...

The unease settled in her and she bit her lip.

The Emperor appeared equally wrong-footed; he paused, then chose his words with deliberate care.

"...Ah. The first dance. Not with me, I trust—do you have someone in mind? I wonder which lady has stolen your heart. Very well—let it be you who opens the ball."

"Your Imperial Majesty does me great honor."

The Marquess bowed and turned.

The man in the white tailcoat descended from the raised platform and moved through the crowd at a measured, unhurried pace. The swallow-tail of his coat followed his steps in a flutter that was, somehow, entirely graceful.

As he drew nearer, the face Goiyo could see grew accordingly clearer.

It was not that she had never seen him at close range—but those brief, incidental encounters had long since sunk beneath time and become unrecoverable. What had remained was only the sense that he was a rather dangerous man.

The set of his eyes was cool beneath the smile and those long lashes, merely concealed rather than absent; and the line of his nose was sharper still. Features that had been distinct even at a distance were, up close, dazzling enough to hold the eye against its will.

Looking at him, Goiyo thought of the roses she had lain among before she died. The color of them, the scent—almost oppressively vivid.

She knew this man would suit her no better than roses had.

The one she had chosen for the certainty of ruin seemed, even in outward appearance alone, to carry the symbol of an ending—and her mouth went dry of its own accord.

"Lady Goiyo Rubiette."

Goiyo, who had been staring without realizing it, startled back to herself. Marquess Bethelgius—whom she had expected to walk straight past—had stopped before her.

His meaning was unmistakable. This time, without any possible doubt, his eyes met hers.

Beneath the long lashes, in those shadowed gray eyes, her own reflection looked back at her.

The Marquess bowed with a precise elegance and extended his hand.

"Would you care to dance with me?"

And Goiyo Rubiette—rigid with sudden bewilderment—found herself pulled to the center of every watching eye.

Yet of all those eyes, the only ones she could feel belonged to Entzi Bethelgius.