Chapter 3 An Execution, And A Wedding
Young Delphine’s stomach twisted and rumbled wildly.
“You will behave yourself and return to the mansion at once!”
The sound of her father’s yelling cracked like a whip, jolting Delphine out of her daze.
The soap bubble that had briefly trapped her and the bleeding boy seemed to have burst.
Delphine lifted her head and looked up at her father, whose face was unfamiliar.
He had never raised his hand to her, though he had grown unusually cold to her since that day.
He had once been affectionate, calling her Delph.
The current father, who stares at her with bloodshot eyes, has the face of a stranger.
Which was the real father, then? Young Delphine was confused.
In her peripheral vision, she could see the crouching boy still glaring at her.
“I-I’m just…”
“Delphine Pembroke.”
Her father said in a low voice.
Dangerous.
Whenever her father called her by that name, there was always a harsh discipline to follow.
But something in that pool of blood immobilised the young girl.
Delphine hesitated, gripping the hem of her silk dress tighter.
“No.”
Her father’s stern words made her go white and she took an involuntary step backwards.
Once she took a step, the next was surprisingly easy.
Delphine turned on her heel and ran out of the stables.
And when she finally made it back to her room on the first floor, she gasped.
She realized that her new silk dress was still free of mud.
Why?
The fact that the hem of her dress was not soiled at all troubled the girl’s young conscience.
The proof that she had escaped from that stable so easily.
It was even worse than the fact that her father was a bad man.
She tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
And that night.
Delphine quietly left her room with the ointment she had stolen from the nanny.
Would she be in the stables? Or in the users’ quarters?
Her heart pounded in her chest as it was the first time she had ever been out alone at night.
After running around the mansion grounds, Delphine found him.
The boy was in the storeroom, gathering firewood for the winter.
On a haystack, on a raggedly covered cot, breathing heavily in the heat.
Why is he here alone?
Her mouth watered at the speculation that perhaps her father had left him here because he didn’t want the other users to know that he had flogged his slave.
Cautiously, Delphine approached the child.
The boy’s eyes, feverishly searching for his mother and the Virgin, narrowed, then moistened.
Even here, at the bottom of the world, there is plenty of moonlight.
Delphine looked down at the boy lying in the moonlight for a moment as she thought this.
The brown eyes of the boy and the green eyes of the girl looked at each other for a long moment in the moonlight.
***
After that day, Delphine visited the boy often.
She rubbed medicine on his back where his father had beaten him.
He gave the slave a surname.
“Pride. How about Pride? I think it goes well with the name Ioann, spelt like this.”
Delphine picked up a wooden stick and scribbled the letters in the dirt.
P. R. I. D. E.
“How about that? It’s only five letters, so you can memorize it, right?”
Ioan stared at the ground for a long, long time, unable to read.
Until the letters were all blown away by the wind.
…Maybe that’s where it all started, Delphine thought, after a very long time.
For it was not her cold father, or his neglectful users, who had made her so lonely in that great mansion.
It was the memory of her mother, who had called her Del, and her father, who had called her Delph.
What she didn’t know then was that a person can never be lonely if they don’t remember being loved in the first place.
Or that once you’re called by a nickname, you can never go back to the way you were before.
***
A white bridal veil was draped over her red, lustrous hair.
Delphine clutched a bouquet of lilies of the valley in her hand as she walked to the bishop who was to officiate.
‘Would that I had died with my father.’
She thought, locked in the cold dungeon, but she hadn’t had much time to think.
In fact, the last two days had been so disorientating that she barely remembered them.
Her father had died before her eyes, and her family had fallen in one fell swoop.
It would have been hard to stay awake while her life was being turned upside down.
Has it all been a dream?
Delphine walked down the carpeted hallway, still confused.
The chatter of the guests trailed behind her like a wedding dress that dragged.
“How dare you commit treason in this Empire… The Three Clans should have been destroyed. How did she survive?”
“Lord Pride told me he made a special plea to Your Majesty.”
“You mean his power is that great?”
“To say the least, she married the day after her father’s execution… Tsk tsk.”
The Red Peony of the Astrax Empire. The pride of House Pembroke.
And now she was the most pitiful woman in the Empire.
Delphine approached the dais, clutching the bouquet in her sweaty hands.
The opaque bridal veil obscured the face of the man standing before her.
But that dirty blonde hair, the silhouette… it was all too familiar.
Was he really Ioan?
Three years ago, Ioan had run away from the mansion and disappeared, and the Empire was not a forgiving place for runaway slaves.
‘I thought for sure he was dead.’
Besides, if he was Ioan, he would never do this to himself.
He had always been a faithful slave to her, like an obedient dog-nay, more than a dog.
“You are a saint to me.”
He could not meet her eyes easily, afraid lest the hem of her dress should brush against him.
He stammered, ‘I am afraid that if I stare long enough, my filth will be transferred.’
If that were the case, he would not have disappeared without a word and then suddenly reappeared and cut her father’s throat.
Blurred by the veil, she saw the man reach out a white-gloved hand.
Delphine hesitated for a moment.
But what choice did the daughter of a traitor have but to take that hand?
In the midst of all the confusion, one thing was certain.
‘Not yet, I don’t want to die…’
Delphine laid her trembling hand on the hand of a man she didn’t recognize.
***
“…Am I crazy? Or am I possessed by a fox?”
She thought it was a dog, but it was a fox.
Delphine muttered to herself under her pure white bridal veil.
Surrounded by nobles, it wasn’t hard to spot the man who stood a head above the rest.
His manners were impeccable throughout the wedding reception, as he gracefully held his champagne in one hand, the other trailing behind him.
Unlike him, who was free to roam the reception, Delphine remained modestly veiled and seated at the bridal table.
Not a single nobleman approached the bride as soon as she removed her gown.
This allowed Delphine to learn a little more about the man she had married.
The Marquis of Ioannes Pride.
Captain of the Emperor’s Guard, the center of power in this Empire.
A hero of the Empire.
… And a man who looks exactly like the boy who was a slave.
About a year ago, he crushed a rebellion near the capital’s walls and quickly rose to become the Emperor’s right-hand man.
A year ago?
She had never heard of him before.
Delphine had always been the center of social circles, it was impossible not to know that.
And yet everyone here is talking about him as if his presence is a given.
It felt like the world had gone mad.
No, that couldn’t be true. If it was, wasn’t she the one who had gone mad?
Delphine shuddered slightly and glared at the man who stood there, clutching his champagne glass lightly.
“Then where on earth did Lord Pride come out of hiding a year ago?”
The lady in the pink frilly dress asked, fluttering her eyelashes coyly.
“He’s not even from the Imperial Military Academy.”
“I’ve heard that you’re from a local clan, but you have very good manners, haha.”
The mustachioed man with one hand behind his back added.
The central aristocracy, whose mansions were located in District 1, the very center of the capital, had their own pride.
She’s saying, he’s quite the dandy for a country bumpkin. Does she think he understands that?
Delphine narrowed her eyes, gauging the man’s reaction.
“As you know, the histories of members of the Imperial Guard are classified.”
The man replied smoothly.
He stroked the imperial seal on the cold hilt of his left sword with a subtle touch.
“And the Emperor doesn’t like the details of the sword that protects him to be discussed by the gossips.”
“Hmph. Of course His Majesty does, haha.”
“And since you’ve been given a mansion in the capital for your efforts in suppressing this outbreak… You’re quite the central noble now, ho ho!”
The man smiled gracefully at the squeamish nobles.
Delphine glared at the figure as if she had seen a ghost.
“…Is this fox really dull?”
Grace? Manners? Nobility?
If Ioan had to pick something he would never have, it was those things.
He had the wildest, most ferocious temper of any servant in the mansion.
He was more like an untamed wolf than a dog.
The boy was raw and savage, like a wild beast.
He was not only fierce, but at times grotesquely cruel to those who used him, to the point that even his butler, Wilson, was reluctant to work with him.
It was only in her presence that he mellowed.
Only Delphine could handle him.
The dog of a slave.
Just then, the man with the aristocratic smile suddenly turned his head towards Delphine.
Through the veil, their gazes met.
