After hearing such harsh words as a girl, Edith washed her hair daily with water boiled from medicinal herbs. 

She thought it would fade the color and make it less noticeable, but unfortunately the herbs contained ingredients that added luster and volume to hair, so Edith became known for having the finest ebony hair in all of Aberdeen.

“Have the past kings of Fenwick taken wives with black hair?”

At Edith’s question, the maid who had first spoken looked puzzled. Then she answered very carefully.

“…Do you mean Your Highness’s hair? I’ve never seen hair so black and soft before.”

So there had never been a Crown Princess with black hair in the Fenwick royal family either. Edith felt disappointed. Noticing this, the maid tried to please her.

“And Your Highness’s lilac eyes… they look just like a spring garden to me.”

Lucille had mocked Edith’s eyes, saying they looked like dull, cloudy rabbit eyes. So Edith learned for the first time that her eyes could be compared to fragrant spring flowers like lilacs.

“Does the Crown Prince have eyes and hair?”

The maid stubbornly maintained her smile. So Edith felt secretly proud, thinking she was communicating without any problems.

“The Crown Prince has… hair like a golden wheat field under blazing sunlight. His eyes are like the overcast sky that brings winter blizzards. A light that no canvas could dare capture.”

The Goddess Frieze forbade noble ladies marrying through arrangement from seeing their future husband’s face before lifting the veil at the wedding ceremony. 

Of course, most did encounter either a portrait or the real thing of their future husband before entering the goddess’s trial and made up their minds, but in Edith’s case, since the Crown Prince wasn’t even her intended match to begin with, she hadn’t had time to see the portrait sent from Fenwick.

‘The Crown Prince must be handsome.’

Then again, no one would tell a bride an hour before her ceremony, ‘Actually, your husband is an unparalleled ugly man.’ 

Even so, Edith intended not to complain. Becoming the Crown Princess of Fenwick would be better than being driven back to Aberdeen like this.

“Standing side by side at such an embarrassing level would be lamentable.”

“…Both Prince Wilfred and Your Highness will make a pair lacking nothing in each other.”

The maid replied. Feeling the maid’s consideration in earnestly praising her, Edith forced a smile.

In half an hour, she would have to hold a wedding ceremony with the Crown Prince of Fenwick.

* * *

In Aberdeen, weddings were solemn and pious ceremonies with strong religious overtones, held under the Goddess Frieze’s watchful eye. 

What followed was a boisterous banquet, when the bride and groom were finally celebrated as the true stars of the marriage. Until then, both the ceremony and the people—modesty was the virtue to maintain.

So when she saw the wedding venue set up in Osborne Palace’s main hall, she couldn’t help but be amazed.

The number of nobles and knights reaching into the hundreds was surprising, but she was overwhelmed by the scale of the magnificent hall with its ceiling that must be three stories high and whose end was barely visible. 

Aberdeen Castle certainly had a large banquet hall too. But she’d never seen a wedding held in such a splendid place.

The marble walls on all sides were covered with silk drapes woven with gold thread, silver thread, and beads, and mosaics of malachite, rhodochrosite, and moonstone, and the hall was filled everywhere with all kinds of flowers and sculptures. 

Light pouring through the high stained glass windows cast colorful patterns over everything. The sound of water endlessly flowing from wall fountains mixed with music played by the orchestra, echoing throughout the space.

And everywhere she looked, there were so many people…! 

It was packed with people. All of them dressed to the nines, showing off their lofty status. Edith wondered if the Goddess Frieze could find the bride and groom in this marketplace-like place.

Then again, Fenwick wasn’t the Goddess Frieze’s domain. The one presiding over the wedding wasn’t a priest either. 

According to the crash course education she’d received on the way to the royal palace, originally the Crown Prince’s wedding should be presided over by His Majesty, but since that was currently impossible, the highest-ranking elderly married noble would stand in for King Joffrey. It was probably the Lord of Dunsany or something like that.

“Your Highness.”

“Your Highness.”

From somewhere, four young girls in white dresses appeared. The girls wearing flower crowns each lifted one side of Edith’s long veil and dress train. 

That was the signal. Edith clutched the bouquet someone had somehow placed in her hands and began walking down the aisle carpeted in red.

Not her own two feet, but the gazes of countless people watching the foreign bride pulled her forward, further forward.

In Aberdeen, even a baron’s daughter would walk this path guided by her father, but the fact that she—one of the noblest in her homeland—was accompanied by only a single captain of the guard because she’d married into another country felt somewhat sad. 

Not because Aberdeen had mistreated her or Fenwick looked down on her. Since a king or grand duke ruling a nation couldn’t leave their post whenever a princess or grand duchess married into another country, this was tradition and custom for women in Edith’s position.

Moreover, Grand Duke Angelic had little interest in Edith anyway. Even when she left her homeland, he’d only given extremely perfunctory blessings at the last moment. 

Considering the distance between Fenwick and Aberdeen, there was absolutely no possibility the Grand Duke would cross mountains and waters to see his daughter.

‘Unless it had been Lucille who came here.’

Edith’s steps slowed. The voluminous veil nicely blocked people’s gazes, but because of it, she couldn’t see the face of the man standing ahead very well either.

The music stopped, and the wedding hymn began.

Edith concentrated, trying to understand even one more word of the lengthy benediction that followed. She knew the vocabulary, so she could roughly piece together the content. 

It was generally about how good things had happened to Fenwick with its proud history and how it would prosper even more in the future. The ‘good thing’ of course referred to this marriage.

Did the Crown Prince think the same…? 

While looking down only at her feet with her head bowed, her name was suddenly called.

“Wilfred Hartwell. Will you take Edith Jeremiah von Seymour as your wife?”

The one who asked was the Lord of Dunsany, Duke Albert Shore. Next, the Crown Prince should answer, “I will.”

However, there was no answer for quite a while from the Crown Prince standing opposite, and Edith began to think that perhaps the question just asked might have been ‘Edith Jeremiah von Seymour, will you become Wilfred Hartwell’s wife?’

“I wi—”

Just as she opened her mouth.

“Lord Dunsany.”

An extremely low and soft man’s voice. Edith blinked inside her veil.

“Yes…?”

Lord Dunsany asked back quietly. Considering that everyone gathered here was listening to the three people’s words, he naturally should have. But the Crown Prince didn’t try to lower his voice. Rather, he raised it and asked:

“But why are you speaking down to me?”

Even the Grand Duke of Aberdeen receives informal speech from the priest at weddings. This is because the priest is the Goddess Frieze’s proxy. Right now, Lord Dunsany was acting as proxy for King Joffrey. Duke Shore countered with exactly that logic.

“That is… because this is tradition…”

“When His Majesty cannot preside over the ceremony, an old married man acting as His Majesty’s proxy is tradition, but that person speaking down to the Crown Prince isn’t tradition, is it?”

Edith heard the captain of the guard standing behind her mutter very quietly, “Ah, Your Highness, please.” Judging by that tone, this wasn’t the Crown Prince’s first time doing this.

Lord Dunsany looked clearly flustered.

“However, the bride and groom at the marriage ceremony—”

“Do it again.”

Lord Dunsany cleared his voice.

“Wilfred Hartwell.”

The Crown Prince was merciless.

“Lord Dunsany. Have you already gone senile? Say my name properly.”

“…The rightful heir of Fenwick, Crown Prince Wilfred of House Hartwell.”

Edith began to worry about her turn. She didn’t have such grand modifiers. Fortunately, Lord Dunsany thought of an appropriate expression.

“Will Your Highness… take Edith Jeremiah von Seymour, daughter of Grand Duke Angelic of Aberdeen, as your wife?”

“Princess Edith.”

Before she could answer “Yes,” the Crown Prince’s hand lifted her veil. At the unexpected action, she could only look up at him in bewilderment.

And,

The moment she saw his face, Edith came to fully understand the maid’s metaphors about golden wheat fields and winter skies bringing blizzards.

She had never seen such a beautiful young man, not even in dreams. Her standards weren’t low either, having her second brother who was Aberdeen’s greatest handsome man. 

Crown Prince Wilfred was just as tall and imposing as that second brother, and his slender physique stood out even more thanks to the pure white dress uniform elegantly draped with gold epaulettes and sash. 

Ah, if only his expression weren’t so cold, Edith would have felt favorable toward him.

The Crown Prince opened his mouth.

Slowly, clearly, so she could understand.

“Before we proceed further, as Crown Prince of Fenwick, I will ask Your Highness. Please answer before the nobles of the royal palace why I should marry Princess Edith rather than Princess Lucille.”

With her veil lifted, Edith could now clearly see the faces around her. Sometimes expressions and gazes are more accurate than words. Those expressions all said the same thing:

‘Do you really have to ask that now…?’

Edith agreed. When had he been so eager to hold the ceremony immediately before she could even recover from the fatigue of ten straight days of carriage travel, and now right before the vows he asks, ‘But why is my bride you and not your sister?’ 

What was she supposed to do? 

Since she wasn’t confident she could argue coherently in Fenwick, she answered briefly.

“…I’m sorry, but it’s strenuous to explain.”

Crown Prince Wilfred raised his well-shaped eyebrow. She also sensed the atmosphere wasn’t good at all. So she quickly corrected herself.

“Diffic… ult…?”

Wilfred leaned slightly toward her.

“‘Hard.’”

He whispered. Apparently her corrected version was wrong. Somewhat grateful for his kindness, she added an explanation.

“There existed unavoidable circumstances in Aberdeen that require everyone’s broad understanding.”

“This is an occasion where the Crown Prince of Fenwick receives a princess of Aberdeen as Crown Princess. I hope Aberdeen will show corresponding trust and sincerity.”

The audience stirred.

Only then did Edith realize that news of the switch between Lucille and herself might not have been conveyed to everyone here beforehand. 

To avoid unnecessary confusion, the welcoming party would have only informed the Crown Prince and his closest confidants of the problem. And during these ten days, the Crown Prince had every opportunity to refuse this marriage.

Yet he hadn’t.

There must be a reason for doing this on the verge of marriage vows.

‘That man is testing me.’