Royal Dot (7)

Reichardt had at some point sat up, crouching before Alicia with a desperate look.

“You must never marry me. I ought to tell you to run from me… but please don’t abandon me.”

The pleading look on Reichardt’s face twisted for an instant.

Worried he might be in pain, Alicia quickly reached out her hand.

His deeply bowed body trembled faintly.

When he lifted his head, tears were running down his face.

“Rei. Are you hurting?”

Alicia embraced the weeping man as she spoke.

Reichardt shook his head.

“I have seen the one who married the Grand Duke of Tessen and became the royal family’s sacrificial victim to the punishment. Before I loved Alicia Rain, that person was the one I respected and loved most.”

Reichardt whispered in a voice full of pain.

Alicia knew who he meant.

“I love her, but I cannot watch you become like her. Never. So you must not marry me.”

Alicia understood how dangerous this confession was.

The royals would hunt down and kill anyone who knew the truth of the Royal Dot’s punishment.

“Who is she?”

“She was the late Grand Duchess of Tessen. She is now called the Viscountess of Loire.”

Even though Alicia had expected this, the confirmation still struck hard.

“What curse fell upon her?”

“I only met her after it had. I was fourteen then, and she was only in her mid-thirties. When I came here as Grand Duke of Tessen, the first time I saw her, she had the appearance of an eighty-year-old crone.”

Reichardt spoke with the frightened face of a young boy.

“……”

Alicia was too shocked to speak.

“They say that within a month of marrying the Grand Duke she aged ten years. Within a year of the wedding, she looked like an old woman. I can only guess it was a curse of rapid aging. Alicia, so you must never marry me.”

Alicia brushed the tears from the corners of Reichardt’s eyes with her hand.

“And I’m not to leave you, either?”

“If Alicia Rain is not by my side, I cannot live. If you ask me to write a vow never to wed for the rest of my life, I will. If you ask me to vow lifelong fealty, I will. If you command me to be your servant, I will.”

Such excessive promises were unrealistic.

At any other time, she would have called this barrage of vows nonsense.

“Rei.”

“I will write anything—so long as it is not a marriage vow. A marriage vow is absolutely forbidden.”

Alicia fought not to laugh at his desperate expression.

It felt wrong to laugh at the raw confession of someone so pitiful, wounded, and dear.

He said she need not like him.

She need not love him.

And yet because he liked her and loved her, he only begged her to stay by his side—that plea was heartbreaking.

“I love you, Rei.”

At Alicia’s confession, Reichardt stopped crying.

“I love you too, Alicia.”

At his returning confession, Alicia beamed.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I’m sorry I said it so late.”

Alicia reached out and gently stroked the tear-streaked face.

Reichardt, offering up his face meekly to her touch, gathered the sweet presence who still filled the air into his arms.

Dawn slowly broke.

Watching the sunlight from Reichardt’s embrace, Alicia suddenly asked:

“What kind of person is she?”

“The one who cared for me like a son and loved me—and only me.”

Alicia had long been thinking about the Viscountess of Loire.

She was the key to Reichardt’s refusal to marry and to Alicia’s own vague questions.

With the new year, Reichardt had suffered pain irregularly.

In the first iteration, Alicia had guessed he suddenly married because the pattern of pain had changed.

Indeed, he had collapsed from pain during a palace banquet.

The royals would never let the Grand Duke of Tessen die.

If there were no candidate to be the next Grand Duke, and the current one vanished, all royals would be dragged into torment.

In that first iteration, after his first marriage, Reichardt married again and again.

Perhaps he had felt relieved to see that his brides did not suffer the aging curse like the previous grand duchess.

To an ignorant eye, the short lives of the brides would have looked like tragic accidents.

Alicia suspected that Reichardt’s irregular pain might be connected to the Viscountess of Loire.

The Viscountess had become the sacrifice for the punishment laid upon the former Grand Duke of Tessen.

Reichardt began to bear the Royal Dot’s punishment when he swore the oath to the Tessen title.

Shouldn’t the curse that had afflicted the Viscountess have ended when the former Grand Duke died?

If a new Grand Duke began to bear the penalty, shouldn’t the Viscountess’s curse have lightened?

“Where is she now?”

“When summer comes, she stays in Orie.”

Alicia reached the conclusion that once someone tasted the curse of the Royal Dot, they were never released.

And she suspected that the reason Reichardt’s torment now surged irregularly was that the portion the Viscountess had borne was shifting entirely onto him.

There might not be much time left to see the Viscountess.

She did not have long.

Even in Alicia’s memories of the first iteration, the Viscountess had briefly been rumored to have a scandal with the Grand Duke of Tessen—and then vanished without a trace.

“I want to see her.”

At Alicia’s words, Reichardt rose at once without another word.

“Shall we go?”

The road from Tessen to Orie was tranquil.

Two horses sped along the quiet streets.

The trip was sudden.

After breakfast, Reichardt sent word of their visit to Orie.

Alicia told Daisy to follow at a leisurely pace and said she would go on horseback.

Hearing she would not ride in a carriage, Daisy and Juan looked as if their world had collapsed.

Roderick readied the guard detail at once.

On the horses Henrik had brought, Alicia and Reichardt mounted without delay.

The two slipped ahead of everyone else.

When the outer wall came into view, Alicia slowed her horse.

Reichardt, riding beside her, also eased his pace.

“We’re almost there.”

Glancing at the empty space behind them, Reichardt spoke to Alicia.

She relaxed her pace even more.

“Rei, I have a confession too.”

The clopping of hooves echoed down the quiet street.

Brrr— with that low sound, Alicia and Reichardt patted their respective mounts.

“Say it.”

Reichardt answered readily.

“I came from the future.”

Alicia tried to meet those golden eyes with a steady gaze as she spoke.

Reichardt stayed silent for a long time.

Brrr.

Only the snorts of the horses continued.

“……Do you mean you have foresight—an ability to see what will happen?”

At length, when he finally spoke, his face showed discomposure.

“No. I mean it literally—I came from the future.”

Alicia stated, flat and calm, something no one could accept.

She tried to act as if it were nothing.

Reichardt stared straight at her.

His bewilderment was obvious.

His golden eyes, sparkling like honey warmed by sunlight, would not leave her.

“You don’t believe me?”

Alicia spoke with confident poise.

“I believe you.”

Reichardt answered immediately— with a face that did not believe her at all.

“I might not actually be twenty.”

“All right.”

He replied just as quickly to that, too.

Plainly, he did not believe her.

“It means my mental age might be higher than yours.”

“Yes, that’s possible.”

That face pretending belief while not believing annoyed her.

Alicia slowed her horse to nearly a walking human’s pace.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“No, I do. In the future, did I marry?”

With a faint smile, Reichardt asked.

“Yes. You married me.”

Alicia answered swiftly.

She said it to surprise him.

As expected, he glanced back at her, a little startled.

“That can’t be. I would never marry the person I love.”

“Right. Then, you didn’t love me.”

In a light tone, Alicia said staggering things.

“……”

Reichardt, by reflex, matched her slow pace and stared at her profile.

She could understand the look of disbelief on his face.

From his point of view, he was being accused of things he had not done.

“Rei, even if you marry me, I won’t end up like her. My guess is that the marriage-curse differs for each Grand Duke of Tessen. Your brides didn’t suddenly age or vanish like the late grand duchess. They died young from accidents or ill fortune.”

Alicia continued to say astonishing things lightly.

Reichardt looked relieved—then startled—then paused with a puzzled expression.

“Brides?”

He remembered the first letter Alicia had sent him.

‘Congratulations on Your Highness’s first marriage.’

That sentence had snagged in his mind.

It was why he had gone in person to see the face of the one who’d written such a barbed line.

“Yes—brides.”

Alicia’s face spread into a deep smile.

“……”

Reichardt fell silent for a moment.

Brides who had died young from accidents or ill luck.

Her earlier words returned to him.

“Your Highness married several times. I had many seniors among your brides.”

Alicia explained kindly.

Even as she spoke, she felt the act itself was unfair.

But to have the shock of the past be known only to herself— that, somehow, felt unjust.

She was even a little peevish.

Reichardt’s eyes wavered in confusion.

“Th—at…”

He wanted to say something.

His lips parted slightly, then closed firmly again.

He could not know what sort of man he had been in the time Alicia remembered.

“And—not only did I come from the future, I’ve also been to hell.”

Seizing the chance, Alicia decided to tell him everything.

Her tone remained light.

But the words were not.

Reichardt stopped speaking.

Alicia’s words moved ahead, unhurried.

“……Hell?”

When Alicia had ridden about twenty paces ahead, Reichardt spoke with a stricken face.

As if he had heard the unspeakable, his expression had emptied out.

Alicia turned her horse and drew back to him.

“Yes—hell.”

Reichardt froze and worked his lips.

“What does that even…”

“Why do royals who bear the Royal Dot suffer punishment?”

At Alicia’s question, Reichardt knit his brow.

Riding, Alicia circled him and his halted horse.

“Because the Celestial who sired the royal line failed to fulfill his charge. The monsters spilling out of East Noah in Tessen are hell’s fiends… It is impossible to defeat them single-handed.”

Now Reichardt could guess what duty the royal progenitor—the Celestial—had failed to complete.

He could also infer why the Grand Duke of Tessen possessed a special gift.

Because hell had to be sealed.

But it was an impossible duty.

Countless grand dukes before had tried to purge the horrors from Tessen and failed.

They guarded the borders, fulfilled royal obligations, were entangled in political strife, and endured the vicious torment laid upon the Grand Duke of Tessen.

As long as there was a Grand Duke, the fiends did not leave Tessen.

To the Grand Duke, the monsters had been a troublesome, difficult nuisance that appeared from time to time.

“It seems that duty has fallen to me.”

Circling at Reichardt’s side, Alicia said it calmly.

“Disciple.”

She had not forgotten the title she’d heard in East Noah.

And the reason the power of the magic stone from East Noah had been drawn into her— was likely because of that.