Chapter 128

Chapter 128

“All’s well and good, but isn’t this a little too public?”

Just then. A familiar voice rang out close by. I startled, whipping my head around to see the young marquis standing there, alone.

“Ah, Young Marquis!”

“It’s just Marquis now. I received my peerage.”

The young marquis — no, now the Marquis — shrugged and walked up to us. Then he wedged himself right between the Duke and me, waving both hands.

“Well, timing’s right, I suppose, but pulling this inside the Imperial Palace? By tomorrow, the rumor will’ve spread all the way to Abanbark.”

I lifted my head to glance around. Sure enough, we were in a wide-open space. Anyone could spot us easily from here, I realized. A flush of embarrassment crept through me, and I tried to step back from the Duke. But he held me firm, refusing to let go. He looked down at me and added another line.

“The rumor’s already spreading. You claimed at the tea party that you’d marry me, didn’t you? And Her Highness the Imperial Princess backed it up.”

He seemed to be subtly telling me not to leave his side. Well, when I thought about it, he had a point. I’d shouted about an engagement in front of so many people—there was no way word wouldn’t get out. In the end, I nodded as if I understood. But then another question flickered through my mind.

Wait—so Her Highness really did back me up?!

For a moment, the Imperial Princess’s smiling face flashed in my mind. It turned out that look had meant she saw right through me. Oh my god… No wonder she’d asked so many questions one after another… While I was fidgeting, terrified of being caught in a lie, she’d been playing a mischievous game with me.

“An engagement? You say you’re getting engaged?”

Right after that, the Marquis looked down at me in apparent surprise. He blinked a few times, then shifted his gaze to the Duke.

“So… you and Lady Highen?”

His voice carried a tone of bewilderment. It had the ring of someone caught off guard by an unexpected accident.

“Well, that’s how it turned out.”

The Duke’s answer was as calm as always—as placid as if he were reporting some mundane daily occurrence. But in stark contrast to his unruffled speech, the Marquis’s eyes went round.

“Laura? No, Lady Highen? Just like that, all of a sudden? So you’re really getting engaged?”

“Since it’s come up, I thought I’d go ahead with it. And… now that Her Highness the Imperial Princess has personally backed the story, I should seize the opportunity. There’s nothing else standing in the way.”

He turned to me as he said it. That was an answer to the very thing I’d been worried about. Of course, it was a grateful thing to say, but I knew he wasn’t entirely without concerns. That’s just how noble marriages were, after all. Wasn’t it standard to weigh the pros and cons before stamping your seal? And the Duke would be factoring all of that in. Still, I didn’t want to run away. More than anything else, I really wanted him.

“…”

Well now. Of all things—me, an opportunity. And he was going to seize it… ha… What do I do? I’m too happy.

I pressed my lips together firmly, unable to say a word. Instead, I gripped the Duke’s hand tightly in my own. It was a simple action, but it was also an indirect expression of my elated feelings.

And while that happened, the Marquis’s gaze followed the Duke’s and pinned itself to me. But his eyes only lingered on my face for the barest fraction of a moment before drifting back to the Duke, as if returning to its proper place. He made a show of looking us over, shrugged once, then picked up his thread of speech again.

“……In that case, congratulations. So does this mean we’ll be informing the Imperial Family as well?”

“Soon enough.”

The Duke dragged out the end of his sentence, thumb stroking across my knuckles. His words carried the residue of thought still being turned over. And it wasn’t long before that thought spilled into speech.

“……Come to think of it, I should inform my mother as well.”

Mother? The Duchess Dowager? He means Madam, doesn’t he?

My eyes flew open. That was the piece I’d missed. I’d been so focused on the Duke and myself that I’d completely forgotten.

Right. This wasn’t just about the two of us being happy! I hadn’t even thought of it. We have to tell the family, too. Hah… this is trouble. What am I going to tell my little brother?! That kid who thinks he can play my guardian is already giving me a headache!

“Ah… you mean the Dowager Duchess? The one who lingers by your side?”

While I was floundering in my own chaos, the Marquis was slowly scanning the space over the Duke’s shoulder. He seemed to be unconsciously searching for Madam. From the sound of it, he’d heard about the Duke’s mother — the story of how she hadn’t left the land of the living, staying behind as her son’s guardian spirit. And I, too, naturally found myself picturing her form of black smoke.

‘So that means… I have to get Madam’s permission, don’t I? Delivering the intention is no problem. Even though she’s just smoke, I can speak with her through the Book of Souls. But what if she doesn’t welcome me as a daughter-in-law?!’

My heart squeezed tight with nerves. But unlike my anxiety, the Duke didn’t seem particularly worried. He probably assumed Madam would naturally accept me. But this wasn’t that simple a matter.

I lifted one hand, trying to block the Duke’s advance. I needed to say that going to get Madam’s permission was still too hasty. I wanted to buy time — to prepare my heart and steady my composure first.

“Right. …Well. Being able to deliver news of an engagement to someone who’s passed on is quite a stroke of luck. It seems my eyes for seeing souls aren’t entirely a curse.”

But his next words sealed my mouth shut. The hand I’d been raising slid limply back down. Madam existed in a state where she could vanish at any moment. If she didn’t ascend soon, she would dwindle away until she was gone. And we could never know exactly when that moment would come. It wouldn’t be strange if she scattered tonight itself.

So it came down to time — and time was running short. That urgency hit me even harder because I understood why he wanted to announce the engagement. If she were still alive, I would have raced straight to my parents and shouted, ‘I’m going to get married!’

“Right. Did you say you wanted to help Mother ascend? Is there anything I can do? What’s the procedure?”

The Marquis asked the Duke in a grave voice. Given that the matter concerned his friend’s mother, he seemed quite cautious. I too looked up at the Duke with careful eyes.

“I need to send off or help the souls in Cuvershaiden ascend. Mother lingers in the Land of the Living because of them.”

The Duke muttered the answer like a man thinking aloud. It wasn’t a very specific solution. But there was no helping it. The Madam’s ascension felt impossibly remote to us; we could barely find a proper lead, let alone a clear path. Giving a detailed explanation was far from easy.

“Lingering souls? What sort of souls are still here?”

The question that followed was even more guarded. The Duke responded with a small, troubled shake of his head — a man caught between a rock and a hard place.

“A headless man and a young girl. Just those two left to send off. The problem is, the girl doesn’t remember being alive, so there’s no starting point for her ascension. And the headless man doesn’t want to ascend.”

“Is that so?”

At that brief explanation, the Marquis’s brow furrowed slightly. He stroked his chin, pondering the matter this way and that, then abruptly offered an idea.

“If ascension is difficult, couldn’t you just expel them? Like when souls latched onto my blade during the Hunt Festival. Couldn’t you seal them in an object? Then just toss that object outside Cuvershaiden?”

Sealing… That was a direction I’d never even considered. It was a fairly decent attempt, but even so, there were problems.

“I think we’d need to ask the Priest about sealing, but… a soul can only attach itself to an object it has a deep attachment to in life, yes? I imagine sealing works much the same. And if possible, I’d rather find a way for them to ascend instead. So that they can… go on to reincarnation.”

“I see. That’s true — it’s more humane than binding souls tight… though I’m not sure if that’s the right word. In any case, it’s better to find a humane solution. Hmm… Then could we perhaps move the souls somewhere else? You once left a soul that was following Lady Heyn at the marketplace, didn’t you? Remember? When Lady Heyn was briefly outside Cuvershaiden.”

“That’s the hard part. The Cuvershaiden soul is an earthbound spirit tied to the manor, and earthbound spirits can’t leave their assigned place. So odds are, it won’t be able to leave Cuvershaiden freely. Binding it to a living body to move it is an option, but honestly, that’s risky. Unless it’s a guardian spirit, if it turns into an evil spirit, we’d have real trouble.”

“This… is even more difficult than I thought…”

The Marquis trailed off, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper. I mirrored him, narrowing my own brow as I racked my brain. It was right then, as we put our heads together and wrestled with the problem, turning it over every which way—

“No, wait.”

The Duke raised one hand, cutting through our conversation like a blade. The Marquis and I both turned to look at him at the same time.

“It’s so natural that the soul is in Cuvershaiden that I never even thought to ask, but how the hell did Mother bring all those souls here in the first place?”

Ah, now that he mentioned it!

Right. Now that he mentioned it, that was the case. It was almost absurd that none of us had thought of it before. The Madam had constantly been letting souls in and out of Cuvershaiden. So the answer must lie with her.

“It seems the Madam must know how to move a soul from one place to another!”