Stahlia, 17 Years Old, Fifth Month of 949

The next couple of months were a whirlwind. As soon as news of the “miracle” spread, my staff began to be petitioned for audiences by seemingly every count in the kingdom and half the barons. I say my staff because, truth be told, I honestly did not remember all of their names anymore. Sure, there was the core group; Sasha, Frieda, Elienor, and Lucy. The last of whom was still under house arrest, but following the public revealing of my growth, there was no longer any reason to keep a secret.

In a way, news and happenings around me had completely overshadowed Antonio. Rupert had offered for him to receive poisoned wine while he was imprisoned, and he had accepted that. As he was legally disowned, he was not entitled to the same extravagant funeral as the late second prince, Percival. It was a rather sad end to a man who had simply been manipulated.

Not that I can do anything about that, but at least it looks like he isn’t being remembered poorly. I can try and manipulate reports so he will go down in history as a tragic victim instead of a villain. I might not have known him at all, but it’s the least I can do and I’d definitely regret it if I didn’t try.

As a more immediately tangible result of my actions and reputation, the number of my attendants had ballooned seemingly overnight. It was good news for Sasha, but I couldn't be sure which ones were trustworthy. My life just had too many secrets for its own good, even with so much of it now out in the open. After all, I was still the spymaster. …There was also the whole heresy thing.

As long as I have my trusted core I’ll be able to manage. Especially with Jacqueline rejoining soon.

Although I hadn’t asked her yet, nor had I told her that there was a potential solution for her injuries. The reason for this was simple; I didn’t want to get her hopes up. That said, there was little doubt in my mind that she would seek to re-join my service. Sitri’s blood had proved to have immense restorative properties, but refining it was a massive undertaking. There was also the fact that my method was more or less a shot in the dark; there were no notes or recipes that detailed how to actually produce Goddess’ Draught.

Not helping things were the aforementioned endless petitions, leading to endless audiences leading up to the public faux wedding. Which brought me to where I was now; being used like a living doll and making the final adjustments to the dress; it was a rather billowy white thing, not unlike a western wedding dress from Earth. Even though this was my second time, my stomach was still a bit tense.

At the time, I griped about how small the ceremony was, but given the choice now, I think I would prefer something more like that.

Since this was an “official” ceremony, my original witnesses would no longer work. Instead of Edith, her father was going to be standing behind me. Sven would be replaced by Lady Lester, whom I was publicly friends with. Privately, her efforts to improve my social abilities were ongoing, though recent progress in that area had been quite impressive.

Thanks to the [Acting] Talent I acquired no doubt.

Lastly, Sasha would serve as a replacement for Jacqueline. I had my own thoughts about having the maid provided to me by the royal family serve as a witness to public marriage into said family, but her own background and qualifications were sound; as long as she swore before the gods that she was acting as a noblewoman, not as my maid, then everything would be fine.

The church was officiating the wedding, with the usual corrupt cardinal carrying out the task. Frankly, his own wellbeing was an item of curiosity for me; with his hands as dirty as they were, it was a wonder he hadn’t been smitten. If Antenora or any of the other puppeted puppet masters ever deigned to speak to lowly me again, it was something I intended to ask about. That being as it was, even if the church wasn’t going to publicly announce the miracle, the fact that they would officiate the wedding was basically the same thing.

Antenora did say that the gods didn’t really care much for the minutia of the church… Though it’s not like this wedding really means anything anyway, it’s just a political stunt to blunt the news.

The news, in this case, was Rupert’s recent proclamation that the demons had been involved with the attempted coup. He had then announced Drakas’s stance for the upcoming conflict; that of a bulwark for the lesser nations. The public wedding would serve to give the people a morale boost and would be followed with King Drakas abdicating to facilitate Rupert’s coronation.

My own coronation would follow shortly after, about a week from now; there was a minor legal hiccup involving the fact that the Queen had already passed on which required the ceremony to be done separately. Gustav had tried explaining it until I waved him off; when and where I was meant to be a set piece was of little concern to me. I would much rather work on Jacqueline’s medicine than listen to legalese that in the grand scheme of things had little actual bearing on how things would play out.

Speaking of the treatment, it should probably be ready by the end of the month.

“My lady, please turn.” The seamstress’s soft voice broke me out of my thoughts for a moment, and I robotically rotated ninety degrees for her. This would be the last part of this, then I would be on to my next task. Then I would be able to get back to my workshop.

Without any guide to work from, I had decided the best thing to do was to simply super-concentrate a healing potion using the blood as the active ingredient. To do that, I had first brewed a standard healing potion, then run it through a distillery modified with Mythril. Obviously I first tried the process with a lesser potion to make sure that the Mythril would contain the mana instead of dispersing it. It had worked so far, and if my math was correct then what I had now was something like an eighty-proof healing potion. A single drop had managed to restructure a smooshed-but-still-alive mouse, however, it had as of yet not managed to regrow any missing body parts.

The primary drawback was that I needed to be directly involved; following my theory that Goddess’ Draught required divine mana, I would feed mana into the distillery throughout the whole process and had done so for each distillation step.

Constantly increasing it, always being careful, watching out lest I do to much and spoil it, or to little and spoil it. It was mentally exhausting, time-consuming work. It was a small mercy that the potion itself was rather stable and did not seem to degrade the same way normal potions did. If it did, then there was no way I would have been able to finish this.

“My lady, that is everything finished.” The Seamstress stood and curtsied before stepping back.

Sasha stepped up and gently turned me to face a mirror, “There, I do understand that you are anxious, but try to smile?”

Smile, yea, I do need to do that.

Trusting in my talent, I pasted a pleasant-yet-bashful faint smile on my face and looked in the mirror. Only for it to fall off into a grimace.

Fuck me! Again!?

The face that looked back at me wasn’t mine. It was Sitri’s. Pale and devoid of blood. This mirage had been haunting me ever since I killed her, showing up occasionally when I was nervous or on edge. It wasn’t even that I felt particularly bad or guilty about it. Sure, at first I had been a bit upset, but of all people, I had a lot of practice in dealing with such negative emotions. It had been easy to get over. Except for the face. That still popped up whenever it was least expected; like a cheap jump scare.

Like that bitch is giving me one last ‘fuck you!’ from beyond death. Damnit, you’re dead, just go away!

Sasha nodded knowingly, “I thought you might be a bit too stressed, so I arranged assistance.”

That’s not why… But now you’ve got me curious.

For whatever reason, I hadn’t told her about the face. Several times I'd almost done so, but always stopped short. It might have been possible if it was Jacqueline, but there was just a bit of a gap between me and Sasha. As much as we got along and understood each other, something told me she would be of little help with this particular demon. We did understand each other though, or at least she understood me; the ‘help’ she had recruited happened to have two tails, six arms and legs, four regular ears, and two pointed feline ones. It also had three bodies.

The lot of them came piling in before skidding to a stop a respectful distance away, then the exclamations started,

“Woah!~”

“So pretty!”

“…You look lovely, my lady.”

It was, as Claire had recently started to call it, my “Imouto no Harem.”

Sometimes I wonder if she’s even trying anymore… Putting a phrase like that in Felicity’s head, honestly!

Not that it wasn’t accurate, as long as you looked at it platonically instead of using the weeb understanding. Regardless, Sasha was right about one thing, this was definitely going to make me smile, “Rosial, Felicity, Elienor, I wasn’t expecting to see you until later!”

The four of us enjoyed each other’s company for a few minutes, though it was saddening that we weren’t actually able to hug or in any way touch each other. If this had been a normal day and dress then perhaps, but it wasn’t and I’d just spent the better part of three hours being fussed over. There was no way I was willing to risk ruining any of the seamstress’s work. Finally, it came time for me to depart.

Before I left, I paused.

Yea, I may as well tell them now, I was going to tell them later anyway.

“Felicity, Elienor, Rosial, before I head out, I’d like to tell you all something.”

Felicity’s ears twitched, and she grimaced. Rosial’s smile dropped off, replaced with a business-like expression. Even Elienor reacted somewhat negatively, sucking in her breath sharply and briefly screwing her eyes shut.

“…You act like it’s automatically bad…” Before any of them had a chance to retort, I moved along, “Well… It sort of is; in about a month, I’ll be leaving on a trip. It will, in all likelihood, last a year or more, and,”

“And you aren’t bringing Felicity or Rosy-chan with you. It’s fine.” Felicity’s words cut a bit deep, that would be her assumption given everything that had happened.

Oof.

“No, actually. I have made arrangements for the two of you to come with.” I nodded towards Felicity and Rosial, “As Elienor is technically one of my maids, her coming along was more or less guaranteed.”

That proclamation elicited a round of surprised and excited squealing from all parties, and I departed from the dressing room. My stomach was considerably unclenched, and I overall felt a lot lighter, “Thank you, Sasha. I needed that.”

She did a sort of half curtsy as we walked then pointedly addressed the orc in the room, “Of course. Now then, shall I make the arrangements you spoke of?”

I felt my face flush red just a tiny bit, “Yes, please do so. I will handle my parents though.”

“Of course.”

★★★★★★

The doors swung open, causing me to squint slightly as the sun struck my eyes. There was no red carpet, though there was an orchestra. Instead, the doors opened directly to a raised stone section in one of the palace’s gardens. This was a rather unique architectural arrangement. On my right as I stepped out were the nobility, slightly below myself and scattered about the grounds. The king was near the back of the nobles, sitting in a raised box with my father looking rather frazzled just to the left, though at ground level.

To my left, there was a rather ornate carved stone railing overlooking a small cliff. Below that was the noble’s quarter, and for today only a part of it was filled with commoners. For the public wedding, the gates had been opened to allow the public a position to spectate the ceremony, and royal mages would use magic to ensure that the voices of all involved were carried.

And straight ahead of me stood Rupert, the cardinal, and an unfurled scroll. The scroll was a copy of our marriage contract; even if the ceremony wasn’t a sham, having the real thing publicly accessible like this was considered too big a risk. The normal process would have been to sign the contract privately immediately before or after the main ceremony where a replica was used.

From a certain point of view, we actually followed protocol in a way, just had a bit longer between the official signing and the fake one.

All this I took in as the dazzling effect of the sun faded. A moment later the orchestra kicked off, playing something that was almost like the wedding march from Earth. Maybe a bit faster? I had never really paid attention to that one. After taking a deep breath, it was time to start walking forward and a few moments later I was standing next to Rupert in front of the cardinal.

The sheer mass of people in the streets below guaranteed that the low hum of their converged voices was audible. But at this distance, their stares didn’t bother me much; it was rather easy to simply pretend they weren’t there. Somewhat more difficult to ignore were the many nobles, but the majority of these I had already dealt with privately. That, combined with the numerous functions I’d been forced to attend recently had somewhat numbed me to them, making it rather easy to trust [Acting] with my smile and simply ignore them all.

The cardinal began to speak, reading through the contract. Some parts were tweaked slightly from the actual wording or omitted entirely for privacy’s sake; even if the voice was not yet amplified, the nobles might still read his lips. Surprisingly, now that I was standing here I was more bored than anything else. We had done all of this already, and this public display wasn’t going to change any of it. One of the Royal Mages mumbled the incantation for the same sound-boosting spell that had been used at the siege then nodded to our officiant.

Now that the terms had been read there was no longer a concern about privacy, and the cardinal spoke, “Thus concludes the reading of the contract. Your Highness Rupert von Drakas, do you accept these terms, and as such seek to take Stahlia von Ris und zu Drakas as your wife?”

It was exactly the same as before. We both agreed, then signed our names.

“Please, seal the contract.” The cardinal’s voice intoned again.

This of course was done with a kiss, just like last time. To my own mild surprise, it was rather easy. There was nothing really for it, we simply kissed and concluded our portion of the ceremony. Well, my portion of the ceremony. From here it would transition to Rupert’s coronation.

At the conclusion of the coup, the king had, thankfully, announced his intention to abdicate so this was not another one of his surprises. Something told me, however, that it was not going to be quite that simple. The king stood and advanced towards us and, as decided ahead of time, I fell back slightly to give the stage to him and Rupert.

“Rupert.” His voice came out low, but as powerful as ever.

Rupert’s back straightened immediately, involuntarily, “Your Majesty.”

“You have done great things in a short amount of time. We know that we made the correct choice when naming you our successor. Now, will you accept our position and all the burdens it carries?”

Rupert bowed his head, “If that is your will, then I shall.”

“It is. Cardinal, on behalf of the church; bear witness to this, the coronation of my third son. He will lead our kingdom in the war to come, while I will personally lead our armies.”

Ah, there it is.

It was very subtle, and I probably only caught it because of where I was standing, but Rupert had winced slightly. From the witnesses in the front row, Gustav groaned softly. Even Ferdinand, whose stoic unfeeling visage generally challenged even Rupert’s lack of emotional expression, even he showed a reaction in the form of one of his eyes twitching.

It was very clear that the King had not informed anyone that his last act as monarch was going to be to take command of the army. Having said his piece, the king removed the gold circlet that served as his crown and passed it to Rupert. There would be an actual ceremony later and he would not wear it until then. But for all legal intents and purposes, those few words had handed my husband the largest country on the continent.