RAMHM Chapter 157

A Day When Flower Petals Fall Like Rain

A month passed quickly.

There had been little to prepare for the wedding itself, yet there was no shortage of things that needed attention, and Bianca stayed in the capital to look after me throughout.

The ceremony's decorations had been left to Bianca and Empress Grace together.

Bliea and Bianca grew remarkably close over the course of my wedding preparations.

"It's strange—every time I see Bianca, my cheek just goes zing. Is that what family love feels like, or something?"

Bianca and I both looked up at her at the same moment. Bianca smiled with visible awkwardness, then announced she'd better go check on the carriage situation and promptly disappeared.

"...You're pretty, Rienne. Probably because we look exactly alike."

I smiled quietly at that.

Madame Leblais had taken the gown Rhodness had commissioned and incorporated my suggestions, producing something magnificent. In her own words, it was the finest dress ever made—"simple yet grand, classic yet modern." Whether that combination of qualities was actually achievable in a single design, I could not say.

With Madame Leblais's staff and Nora both lending their hands to the finishing touches, I looked, even by my own assessment, genuinely beautiful.

From some distance outside the tent where I was waiting, the sound of people cheering drifted to me like something far away.

"Rienne."

"Yes."

"The Crown Prince will handle his end well enough, but still..."

Bliea placed her hand gently on the crown of my head, careful not to disturb the arrangement of my hair.

Though we were born on the same day, Bliea sometimes behaved as though she were six or seven years older than me.

"If he ever makes you cry, tell me. I'll go up to him pretending to be you and knock that shiny head of his once. You know I'm strong."

The one who actually made me cry was Bliea.

When she was like this, It felt like I was finally being paid back—a little—for a childhood spent missing a mother.

The feeling was its own quiet fact. Separate from anything else.

"Yes."

I nodded without another word, and smiled.

Bwoooooo—!

The horn sounded with enough force to ring in my ears.

At last. The signal that Rhodness's Crown Prince investiture—and our wedding—had begun.

The Capital Central Plaza—where the saint's investiture and the execution had both taken place—now had a blue carpet stretching from where I stood all the way to the distant palace gates.

It was nothing like the usual imperial wedding, which would have been held in the Grand Temple.

"So is this the Crown Prince investiture, or the Crown Princess investiture? Is it even a wedding?"

"Bit of both, really."

The nobles gathered in the Central Plaza, seated in arrangements that prepared them for the procession ahead. Given the unprecedented scale of the event, there were no prepared chairs—they were seated instead in open-topped carriages, beautifully decorated.

The design of it was this: the new Crown Prince and Crown Princess would meet in the Central Plaza, ride together in an open-topped carriage through the streets, with the nobles' carriages following behind in a long train.

Which meant every noble present had just become a bridesmaid. The hundreds of thousands gathered in the plaza were the wedding guests.

"The methods they use to bring us to heel really do vary." One noblewoman murmured to her neighbor. "The Crown Prince's investiture was skipped, and then the moment his marriage to the sainted Grand Duchess was confirmed, all of this appeared overnight. Surely this grand spectacle is nothing more than showing off to the entire empire—look, he has united with a saint who received a divine oracle. What better way to erase the last lingering unease?"

"My, my. Surely that isn't sour grapes because your own daughter failed to secure the position?"

"Not at all! The Crown Prince's reputation with women has been well-established for years. He built his name as quite the libertine. I could never have placed my precious daughter in such a situation."

"Quite right. Though truly—do you think this is a political union?"

The last words of the knowing older woman were swallowed up as the assembled nobles went suddenly quiet.

The Crown Prince Rhodness had emerged from his tent.

The nobles who had been whispering stood there, mouths shut, struck briefly dumb at the sight of the Rhodness before them—more magnificently dressed than they had ever seen him.

Their new Crown Prince was something else entirely. The relentless force he'd turned on the West, driving it to utter ruin, was nowhere in evidence. What stood in its place was a perfect, beautiful thing—like something a god had made.

More arresting than anything else was the spring that had crept into his face. That face, always so arrogant.

"...Though he has been known for his way with women. Still—this is his first marriage, so one might expect him to feel something. And the Grand Duchess is a remarkable beauty. With a bride like that, of course his expression would be what it is."

The noblewoman who had been grumbling just moments before stared blankly as she muttered her own excuse. She had simply never seen this Rhodness before—the words fell out of her mouth on their own.

That was when it happened.

Three blasts of the horn rang out, and from somewhere in the distance, a wave of cheering came rolling toward them.

The bride's flower carriage was entering the plaza from the far end.

Escorted by the Imperial First Knights and the Sacred Knights, the top of a white carriage began to appear—making its way slowly down a path covered in flowers of every variety.

At last the carriage came to a stop at the beginning of the blue carpet. Crown Prince Rhodness strode toward it with quick, purposeful steps and pulled open the carriage door.

A sudden silence fell over the space, sharp as cold water.

Then, immediately, the gasps came.

"Oh—!"

"Oh—!"

The bride was preparing to step down from the grand carriage, and that sight alone drew sound from every throat present.

Grand Duchess Adrienne, once known for her fragile constitution, radiated vitality even from a distance.

"Can this really be a woman who has been married before?"

Her golden hair—brighter than gold itself—was gathered up at the back and adorned with a white chiffon ribbon that formed two charming little wings at either side when seen from the front.

The long trailing ribbons drifted in the gentle breeze, and each time they did, the impression Adrienne gave—young, almost girlish—deepened.

"A true Eastern princess," someone remarked, in an unhurried tone.

Voluminous puff sleeves curved around her shoulders like the petals of a flower, and the full skirt of white chiffon, rounded to a perfect circle, was like a white tulip.

She held a bright, multicolored bouquet, and she looked herself like the most beautiful of all the flowers in it.

"A dress worthy of bearing the Crown Princess's crown," a woman observed.

The noblewomen's eyes grew busy. Madame Leblais had made no secret of calling this new Crown Princess her muse—that gown was almost certainly hers.

"Look at the Crown Prince."

The people who had been whispering about a "political union" backed by the levirate law could no longer bring themselves to say the words.

Because the moment Adrienne's foot appeared from the carriage, Crown Prince Rhodness went utterly rigid—both hands flying up to cover his mouth.

Above the white formal collar of his ceremonial dress, his neck stretched with elegant grace, like a deer, and had gone crimson. His ears, exposed and unambiguous, were ablaze.

He was the one who should have extended his hand first to escort her.

He couldn't move. He could only stand there, overcome, staring at his bride.

The hand in the white glove—gloves reaching to the elbow—fluttered there outside the carriage door, absurdly, uselessly—a hand with nowhere to go.

After a long moment of that overwhelmed stillness, Rhodness finally collected himself enough to escort Adrienne and hand her up into the beautifully decorated open-topped carriage.

As the two white horses drew the carriage into motion and it began its slow progress through the streets, the cheering surged louder.

From the upper floors of the buildings lining the route, flower petals rained down.

The beautiful Crown Prince and Crown Princess were, quite simply, everything a divine oracle needed them to be—a matched pair splendid enough to generate patriotism in people who had never felt it before.

The Rhodness everyone had expected to sweep past the nobles with his usual arrogance, leveling them with that sharp gaze, had no eyes for anyone but his bride.

He had the look of someone who believed himself in paradise, with no one in all the world but her.

Flower petals fell. The nobles' carriages trailed behind just as he'd arranged, clapping till their hands might have flown right off—and yet, on that glorious road that stretched toward the imperial palace, where the new Crown Prince should have been holding his head high and looking ahead, Crown Prince Rhodness watched only the woman beside him waving to the crowd, drew her against his shoulder, and wore his color on his face.

No one had ever seen anything like it.

"This is... still a political union?"

"To my eye," came the dry reply, "he's simply found his match. Though I confess I arrived so certain someone was going to lose their head today—I feel rather foolish for the tension I spent on it."

"He appears thoroughly besotted."

The tightness that had held the nobles' faces stiff began to soften, dissolving gradually through the rain of falling petals—as the Crown Prince and Crown Princess finally arrived before the palace gates, and stepped up to face Grand Prelate Telrn waiting on the great ceremonial dais.

Grand Prelate Telrn began the words of blessing and moved without pause into the wedding address—and even through all of it, Rhodness could not take his eyes off his bride. Some among the nobles found themselves smiling without quite intending to.

The oracle about a saint stilling the curse of the red eyes—no one thought of it. The air felt no different from any other couple's wedding day. Peaceful.

There was even a strange feeling—creeping up on people who couldn't have explained it—that their Crown Prince, who had been an object of fear and awe, might become a better ruler than the current Emperor. He had never felt so close to human as he did at this moment.

"In the name of the Divine, I bestow blessings upon Adrienne Ronteaux, from this day forward the Crown Princess."

Grand Prelate Telrn placed the golden crown of the Crown Princess upon Adrienne's head on behalf of the imperial house.

Adrienne bent her knees to receive it. Vincento stepped forward with the Crown Prince's crown resting on a red cushion.

The watching nobles stirred again.

In an ordinary investiture, the Emperor would place the crown upon the Crown Prince's head, and the Crown Prince would place the crown upon the Crown Princess's head. This was how it was done.

"Can this be—"

"The Crown Princess is going to crown the Crown Prince herself!"

Adrienne hadn't expected this either. She studied the splendid crown before her, her expression complicated.

Then, with hands that trembled faintly, she reached up and took hold of it.

With the nobles' rising voices as the backdrop, Rhodness willingly lowered himself to one knee before Adrienne and clasped his hands together.

To every eye present, the arrangement looked exactly like what it was—Adrienne, wearing the crown bestowed upon her by the Grand Prelate, was granting Rhodness the Crown Prince's crown by the will of the Divine.

When the crown finally settled on Rhodness's head by Adrienne's hands, the sound that rose from the crowd gathered like clouds to watch was a sound those present would carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Whatever the nobles might say—to ordinary eyes, this could only be the saint chosen by their god, blessing the Crown Prince.

"Prosperity to Ronteaux! Glory to the Divine! Loyalty to the Crown Prince!"

"Prosperity to Ronteaux! Glory to the Divine! Loyalty to the Crown Prince!"

The Emperor and Empress watched from their seats above.

Adrienne looked up and met the eyes of Rhodness as he slowly rose.

Only then did the dreamlike quality recede. She pressed her lips together. And the man who had become her husband looked at those pressed lips and smiled—more compellingly than she had ever seen him smile.

"Without any prior discussion..."

"I've been wanting to kiss you since you stepped down from that carriage. I thought I might die."

The words she'd been building toward didn't come.

"In the name of the Divine, I hereby proclaim the union of Crown Prince Rhodness and Crown Princess Adrienne!"

As Grand Prelate Telrn's proclamation rang out, Rhodness pulled Adrienne by the waist.

"Rho—"

"No prior discussion again, I'm afraid. I told you."

That's the crime you've committed—being this beautiful.

The whisper, bitten out like something he was barely containing, left Adrienne momentarily stunned.

And then, without a moment's hesitation—

Hot lips found hers.

The crowd's cheering and the flowers cascading like a storm came together in a single roar.

Even the imperial family, watching with open mouths, had no choice but to clap with the rest of them—swept away by sheer force of it.

It was the most magnificent, the most sacred wedding and investiture in all of Ronteaux's history.

Because of that historic ceremony, the Empire's Daily made the unprecedented decision to print an afternoon edition as well.

The morning edition had run under the headline:

【The Historic—or Political—Union of the Saint and the Crown Prince】

The afternoon edition, released after the ceremony ended, opened with this instead:

【A Pledge of Eternal Love Between a Beautiful Crown Prince and Princess】

On the front page: a portrait of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess sharing a fervent kiss, with Grand Prelate Telrn standing before them—dabbing at a cold sweat with a flustered expression—framed in full view.