“Irma said to give you this if you weren’t coming over.”
“Thank you. You really do have the loveliest wife.”
“She’s a good friend, huh?”
“She really is.”
Dahlia felt a slight lump in her throat, but she swallowed it back. If she cried now, Marcello would never leave her here on her own. The last thing she wanted was to impose on anyone more than she already had today.
Irma had such good instincts. She must have known Dahlia would just want to hole up in her tower tonight and wouldn’t come out even if invited. The two of them were childhood friends. When they were young, Irma had lived near the tower, but she’d moved into the city center to train as a hairdresser. It was there that she had met Marcello, and they’d married soon after. She and Dahlia had always kept in touch, even after Dahlia had gone to college and Irma was married. Dahlia had always felt thankful to have a friend like that.
“It won’t take me long to get the place straightened out again. As soon as everything’s settled down, you have to come over for dinner with Irma, all right?”
“Sure will. Looking forward to it.”
As the carriage finally pulled away, Dahlia waved them off with the best smile she could muster.
Sitting on her bottom and moping felt too much like admitting defeat, so instead, Dahlia set about unpacking and returning every last one of her belongings to its proper home. She opened up all the boxes, putting things back in place in the first floor’s laboratory and storeroom. In her room on the third floor, she returned the contents of her closet and dresser. She felt slightly uncomfortable using the furniture again, so she opened a few packets of her favorite soap and put them inside. In a few days’ time, they would take on a pleasant, familiar smell again. There was nothing wrong with the furniture itself, and her father had treasured it, so she decided to simply forget about what had happened to it.
By the time she’d finished unpacking and putting everything away, it was already past midnight. She decided to have a late dinner in the living room on the second floor, next to the kitchen. She sank into the sofa, sipped her wine, and took a bite of the walnut bread. The aromatic bread and the wine paired very nicely. After finishing the bread, she reached into a bag of preserved food she kept for emergencies and took out some nuts and dried fruit. Then she had a little more wine.
What a day.
She’d moved into her brand-new house this morning, only for her fiancé of two years to announce that he was leaving her for someone else. After that, it was off to the Merchants’ Guild to deal with all the paperwork, then moving all over again.
It was Tobias’s unfaithfulness that had shocked her more than anything else. She’d believed he was an honest and principled sort of person, and that he would be a good husband. She’d believed they would make a good team at work. They had never exchanged any passionate declarations of love, but she’d assumed they would simply settle down into a nice, quiet life. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined him bringing another woman into their house on the day before they’d planned to marry. Whatever his excuse, some things were simply unforgivable. If nothing else, at least he’d seen to it that she’d have no regrets about leaving him.
“It’s funny; the tears just won’t come.”
In theory, she ought to have been heartbroken, yet she felt no particular urge to cry. She took a hearty gulp of wine and a bite of dried fruit. As she drank, she ran her memories of Tobias through her mind. She remembered their conversations about magical tools, the two of them crafting together and discussing deliveries and pricing, but...that was all she remembered.
Now she understood. She hadn’t been in love with him.
As she drank up the last of her wine, a few tears finally slid down her cheeks, but they had nothing to do with Tobias. She was thinking of her father. If only Carlo had been here, they could have shared everything—at first anger, then too much wine, and in the end, a good deal of laughter. Dahlia was quick to blame her moment of weakness on the wine. She’d had a little too much, that was all.
The next day, Dahlia had the worst awakening of her life.
Her front doorbell—not the one at the gates—was being rung incessantly. There were only a select few people who could open the gates. The only likely candidate was her friend Irma. But as Dahlia rubbed her sleepy eyes and opened the door, it was Tobias she saw standing there.
She’d been unpacking and tidying until late at night, then drinking wine into the early hours of the morning. Her face was puffy, her hair wild. At first she wanted to ask what on earth he was doing here so early, but then she noticed that the sun was already high in the sky.
“Uh... Look, sorry about this, but I need to have your engagement bracelet back.”
She’d been in a foul enough mood already. Now, somehow, her ex-fiancé had managed to make it ten times worse.
My engagement bracelet?
In this kingdom, it was customary for a man to give his fiancée a bracelet when they became engaged, or for the two of them to exchange bracelets. In the terms of her previous world, it was like an engagement ring and wedding ring rolled into one. There were some subtle differences, however. In cases where the man gifted the bracelet to the woman, the woman would then send him something equal to the value of at least two months’ living expenses. This way, if anything were to go wrong, they could simply sell the items and not be left at a loss. It acted as a kind of insurance. If the engagement were to be broken off, the recipient of the bracelet tended to keep it.
Dahlia remembered when Tobias had given her hers. He’d cautioned her to be careful not to damage it, so she’d put it away in her jewelry box and only worn it when they went out together. In preparation for the move yesterday, she’d packed it away carefully so it wouldn’t be damaged and, in truth, forgotten all about its existence until now.
“I’ve never heard of anyone demanding their bracelet back before.”
“I’m sorry. I was going to make Emilia a new one, but it’s just, you know, I need it quickly and I don’t have much time on my hands.”