“You said you wanted the position of my wife. Not that you wanted to become the Grand Duchess Siermaiem.”

Curtis Siermaiem knelt on one knee before Eleanor Aster and looked up at her.

The state of a woman who had been attacked in what should have been her most comfortable space, by a fiancé older than her own father, was wretched.

Her light brown hair, tangled beyond all reason, looked less like hair and more like straw. Not the kind dried clean in the sun with a crisp smell, but the kind buried under mud and rotting away.

Between that grimy brown, a face just as disheveled as the tangled hair came into view. Her face, pale as a corpse, bore red and blue bruises branded into it like the marks burned onto the faces of escaped slaves.

“You ought to be against it.”

The moment he faced the face of that devastated victim, the emotions he thought he had contained surged from somewhere deep in his gut. Straining to regard that simmering, unpleasant feeling as though it belonged to someone else, Curtis spoke.

“You should want the position of Grand Duchess Siermaiem, but not the position of my wife.”

The woman who had been scraping at his insides had finally gotten the answer she wanted, yet she remained only pale and silent. She simply looked down at him, one hand wrapped in a bandage already seeping red.

Even as he felt his stomach twist against his will at her composed manner, he once again played right into her hands.

“If Miss Eleanor would permit it….”

What he drew from the inner pocket of his jacket was a ring he had practically raided a nearby jewelry shop to obtain. It was as crude as could be, a perfect match for the sorry performance of a proposal now taking place.

But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the form, not the substance.

In that small room where blood-stained shards of glass lay scattered like the remnants of shattered stars, Curtis offered her the words he would never speak again in his life.

“I want to marry you.”

Eleanor Aster’s shabby room was so bare that even the narrow window frame had come loose. Through that gaping hole in the wall, the scent of violets crept in.

The fragrance of summer flowers, crushed underfoot by the attackers and made all the more intense for it, drifted beneath his nose. The glass shards scattered across the floor glittered noisily, seeming to cover the silence pressing in between them.

It was the moment a quiet anxiety had begun to steal into Curtis’s heart at the unexpectedly long pause.

“If I accept this proposal….”

Eleanor Aster parted her lips in a low voice.

“Even if I have only claimed the position of Grand Duchess and nothing more, not truly your wife.”

The voice he had waited so long to hear was slightly hoarse. Curtis watched her, gripped by an anxiety he couldn’t name, much the way he had been seized by an inexplicable anger just moments before.

“Will you press your lips to my forehead?”

After making every muscle in his body tense, the question Eleanor Aster put to him was laughably meaningless.

“Yes.”

Feeling deflated despite himself, Curtis answered dutifully.

“It is part of the wedding vow.”

“…….”

“If you find it truly disagreeable, we could substitute another—”

“No.”

The words he had spoken, wondering if she could really dislike it that much, were cut off cleanly by Eleanor Aster.

“I accept your proposal.”

And from him, once again, came words whose logic he could not follow even as he spoke them.

“On the condition that every part of the wedding vow is carried out faithfully.”

A woman he could not understand in the slightest. Even thinking that, Curtis lifted the pale hand before him.

“A small mercy, then.”

The hand he had pulled glass shards from and bandaged just moments ago had already soaked through with blood. Aware that his attention kept drifting to the other hand rather than the left one he now held, the man spoke.

“At least the glass went into your right hand.”

The ring slid onto fingers he found strangely slender. The clear stone glittered, mocking a proposal muddied through and through with conditions.

She’ll regret this. Curtis thought idly as he set her hand down.

But even if she beat the ground in regret, there was nothing she could do.

The ring was already on her finger. Whatever came next, this woman was now his responsibility.

***

“How long do I have?”

A summer shower always comes without warning.

“You can be honest with me.”

So does misfortune.

Life resembles the weather in its willfulness, always finding a way to soak your shoulders on the one day you forgot your umbrella.

The one small comfort, perhaps, was that she was already wearing wet clothes.

She couldn’t quite remember the last time she had worn something dry, so any warning that she was about to get drenched was simply laughable.

“Well, that is, I… approximately five years or so….”

But unlike her, carrying her heavy lot in life, the doctor across from her seemed unaware of that fact. Eleanor Aster looked calmly at the doctor, a man with a gentle face who had surely wiped away secret tears each time one of his patients turned away from life.

A mild, low-grade fever had persisted for the past month. A headache that wasn’t unbearable but nagged persistently, and a fatigue that refused to lift, had steadily pressed down on the back of her neck as well.

The physician contracted by Rodelline Boarding School, nestled in the East where wheat fields stretched endlessly, was a distinguished older gentleman.

It wasn’t as though a young student had fallen ill, and she hadn’t been running a high fever or showing any clear symptoms. Sending that white-haired elder physician across those vast wheat fields seemed like something she simply couldn’t bring herself to do.

So she had put it off and put it off until it came to this. Had it not been for this young doctor who had come out to offer medical services in a distant area, she probably would have gone another month without knowing.

“But with proper management, that timeframe could increase considerably. It is a relatively recently discovered illness, so the available medicines are not yet varied, but if you take the prescription I have prepared for you consistently, perhaps even up to ten years….”

“Mr. Barnett.”

But what difference did it make to have found it early?

“Are you aware that this is a hereditary disease?”

The ending would have been the same regardless.

“My mother received a terminal diagnosis for the same reason I did.”

“…….”

“So I would be grateful if you could tell me honestly how many years I have left.”

The face of the doctor sitting across from her twisted. Eleanor smiled, receiving the sympathy she read in that expression without letting it sting.

“If I know exactly how many days I have left, I think I can avoid meeting the same end as my mother.”

***

“It is… approximately three years. If you manage it well with the medication as I described, perhaps up to four….”

Eleanor recalled the doctor’s diagnosis, which he had murmured with a somber face, and quietly looked around her room.

The finances of Rodelline Boarding School, which many children of wealthy merchants attended, were quite comfortable.

But it was not generous enough to provide a fine room to an ordinary teacher with no ties to the board of directors, so Eleanor’s room was modest compared to the rooms the regular students used.

Still, she had been so happy when she first got a room to herself.

Eleanor looked around at the traces of the room that had sheltered her for three years, her face composed. Her amber eyes, drifting through the small, worn room where white sunlight floated, came to rest on the desk, nicked and scratched in places.

On it sat a letter she had kept putting off, only opening it that morning.

Eleanor walked over with nearly weightless steps and stood before the desk.

Dear Eleanor.

Her stepmother’s letter, opening with those words, ended as it always did.

Mr. O’Donnell sent flowers and a letter again. How thoughtful and kind of him.

Come up to the Capital when the term ends.

You are at an age where you need to start thinking about your future.

Eleanor let out a laugh, releasing something she had been holding back, and cast her gaze out the window.

Through the school grounds filled with green trees, the founder’s statue standing in the sunniest spot came into view at an angle.

Thoughtful and kind, is he.

Someone like that probably wouldn’t try to force his way into an unmarried woman’s room.

Eleanor laughed lightly once more and sat down straight in her chair. She dipped the blunt pen nib into black ink and wrote the first line on a clean sheet of letter paper.

Dear Mother.

Her opening, at least, was no different from always.

You are right.

But the last sentence did not end, as it usually did, in excuses riddled with lies.

In the room that had let her breathe for three years, Eleanor set down a period with a calm face.

When the closing ceremony is over, I will come up to the Capital.

***

The train heading to the Capital, which she hadn’t boarded in a long time, was crowded.

Where all these people had come from, she couldn’t say. The station had already assaulted her senses with noise, and even after she managed to find her ticket and board the train, the crowd did not thin.

Children who had wandered from their mothers’ laps ran back and forth through the aisle between seats cluttered with luggage. Among the young men heading to the Capital in search of well-paying work, many had not bought tickets.

Amid the conductors burning with determination to root out fare-evaders as they checked tickets, and the chatter of women loud enough to ring in her ears, Eleanor looked out at the scenery rushing past the window.

She had worried she might run into students heading to the Capital late, but it was an unfounded fear. Students from Rodelline Boarding School would never ride in general class.

She should have splurged on a first-class seat. It might have been her last chance. The thought crossed her mind briefly, but she shook her head.

The money she had was barely enough for what she had planned. There was no point in wasting it on something unnecessary.

She also needed to set aside money for the trip to the North…. Eleanor wiggled her fingers as she ran through her severance pay in her head one more time.

At the thought of the adventures she was about to set out on, her heart raced like a child on the eve of a picnic.

***

She had naturally started moving toward the carriage stand before catching herself.

She had contacted her family home before coming up. The reply, which had come back unusually quickly, was written in a hand brimming with joy, saying they would send a carriage.

“Miss!”

She headed to the waiting area feeling slightly out of place, and a familiar face, the coachman, hurried toward her.

“It has been a long time. I hope you have been well.”

It seemed they had thought to send a carriage but not a maidservant to attend her.

The elderly coachman, who must have been wandering alone like a stranger in a place full of maids waiting for their young mistresses, examined her with a face full of uncomplicated joy, not the least bit embarrassed.

“I am glad you look well.”

Eleanor looked at the familiar face, where the marks of time now stood out even more, and slowly smiled.

Thomas had worked as a coachman for the Aster family since before her mother died of the same illness she now had, and even further back than that, since before Eleanor herself was born.

“I am.”

There was no reason not to lie to one of the few remaining traces of her mother.

“It’s good to see you again in good health, Thomas.”

The elderly coachman insisted on taking the luggage from her hands and carrying it himself. He loaded it onto the back of the carriage with the strength of a sturdy mule, then quickly opened the door for her.

Eleanor accepted his wish to treat her as he once had with gratitude, took his dirt-rimmed hand, and stepped up into the carriage.

The carriage, which had clearly aged alongside the coachman, was worn. But signs of his diligent care showed through everywhere.

She wondered if it still had all the old scribbles she had made. She reached her hand down under the seat to check, when the carriage, which had been rattling along, suddenly stopped.

Puzzled, she looked out the window and saw that the carriages of other households had all stopped as well.

She wondered if something had gone wrong. She was peering past the window when Thomas, who seemed to have gone to find out what was happening, came back to the window with an excited look on his face.

“I apologize, Miss. It seems there will be a delay.”

“Was there an accident?”

“No, nothing like that. Apparently the knights of the North are coming through. The Siermaiem family’s knight order. We have to wait briefly to let them pass first.”

Only after hearing that did Eleanor understand why Thomas was wearing such an excited expression.

“It looks like waiting for the knight order to pass and then departing will add about an hour. If we turn back to the station and take a side road, we could cut about thirty minutes off that… shall we do that?”

“No.”

Eleanor shook her head. She could not disappoint the elderly coachman when he was wearing a face so full of anticipation.

“Let’s wait and then go.”

An excuse. The truth was, she wanted to see him more than Thomas did.

After Thomas returned to his seat with a pleased look, Eleanor calmly smoothed her skirt. Then she took out a hand mirror, examined her face carefully, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

The odds that he would pick her out specifically from this crowd were slim. But Eleanor wanted to stand before him looking as presentable as possible.

Even if it was nothing more than a private satisfaction, hers alone.

Eleanor removed a small speck of dust she hadn’t noticed from her hair, opened the carriage door, and stepped out. She could see that people had come out not only from her coachman’s carriage but from the carriages lined up ahead and behind as well.

That was understandable. This was the Siermaiem Knight Order, praised as the finest among the Northern army, itself called the empire’s shield and last fortress. No one wanted to miss the chance to see in person the lord of the North, who commanded more reverence than the imperial family itself.

Even nobles whose carriages gleamed with expensive ornaments were quietly lowering their windows and leaning their faces out.

Eleanor swept her gaze over the expectant faces around her and consciously relaxed the tension at the corners of her mouth. She had worried that her own face might be just as openly eager as theirs.

It was the moment she was straightening her frayed sleeve one more time.

The trembling of the earth that had been building in the distance took shape and entered her eyes.