“That’s not true,” Yulisse flatly denied.
“No need to be so humble, now. That’s more of the Star Maiden right there!”
“N-No, I’m serious. I…”
Yulisse’s cheeks grew hot. She lived on praise like that during her year at the Academy and prayed daily to that strange sphere of manacite that she would be queen. When nobles far outstripping her paltry rank tried to court her, she was convinced she was the luckiest girl in the world. Then, at the last possible moment, everything collapsed, and she was branded a traitor against the crown. She wound up in a cell in House Marshall’s basement, where she cried and lamented her fate for days on end. The entire time, Raphael sat just outside her cell with a cheerful smile on his lips. He was a true sadist.
“Hahaha, no need to get so bashful now!” Paula guffawed. “I’ve got your back, promise. You heard how some baron’s daughter in Orion’s marrying their crown prince, haven’t you? There’s no wall love can’t scale.” She paused to circle about Yulisse, studying her carefully before nodding firmly. “We can’t have the young master’s bride staying so wet, can we? Go get changed; your room’s on the third floor. I’ll show you around when you’re done. Make sure you tell the pageboys where you want your things left… Oh, and since you’ll be going to do mana canvassing, I’d better tell you where we’re keeping your gear, too.”
“Mana what?”
“Be careful out there. We don’t want you getting hurt—though with the young master at your side, I doubt you’ll have anything to worry about.”
Seriously, what am I supposed to be doing?
She’d heard of mana before but nothing about canvassing it. All she knew about the trip was what Raphael told her—that he had somewhere to go and that she’d be going with him. She had no idea what they’d be doing, and since getting hurt was apparently a genuine concern, she was starting to become genuinely frightened. For all her goosebumps, however, she had no right to refuse her master’s will.
“Please do,” she finally managed to say, bowing her head in resignation.
Yulisse arrived to find she had an entire private room to herself. A nice one by servant standards. As she unpacked, she recalled Paula’s ominous words.
“Raphael’s future wife?”
Impossible. Marry him? Never.
He’d proposed to her jokingly many times, even when she was chasing after the crown prince. That was just one of the things he’d proposed to her, as he’d also asked if she’d be a guinea pig for his latest spell, if she’d cry for him, or even simply that he’d hunt her for the rest of her life. It was the stuff of nightmares. She’d learned to avoid him like the plague leading up to the coming-of-age ball, but when her ambitions came to light, so, too, did his true nature.
Raphael had enjoyed toying with her and her emotions long before he could’ve possibly known of her guilt. He had countless schemes in store for her, a hundred ways of crushing her dreams. There was no way a marquis’ son could marry a criminal, after all—it was even more impossible than a peasant shopkeep’s daughter marrying the crown prince.
Despite that, however, he kept up the same saccharine lies. She couldn’t understand him for the life of her. All of House Marshall was an enigma, really, and she still struggled to understand them after two full years of living under their roof. Raphael seemed to be the only child, and she’d seen neither hide nor hair of the marquis’ wife. Some doors she’d never seen open, beyond which she could occasionally hear screams or mournful wails. The marquis himself treated Yulisse with all the care and tenderness of a festering boil and kept contact with her to an awkward minimum. That was the most reasonable part of it all—no father would be pleased to welcome a traitor to the throne as a daughter-in-law.
“It’s not your fault, Yulie,” Raphael had told her before. “I must be the cause of his shock. He finally learned I’ve been putting on an act in front of him for years, after all~!”
She’d simply shaken her head back then. He would shower her with empty praise—that he loved her, that she was beautiful, any lie that would feed her fears. In a way, he was like a stray cat that refused to leave her alone.
Maybe I should try trusting him?
Yulisse closed her eyes and imagined the smug wizard’s grin—the same look, she realized, he’d shown her when he gleefully locked her in that basement cell for the first time, chuckling that she was “his forever.”
Ew! No, no way, I can’t trust him! It all has to be a trick somehow!
She hurriedly shook her head, dispersing those ugly thoughts. Sure, he’d saved her life, as she would’ve been stripped of her title and banished or imprisoned for life. However, that didn’t mean she could trust his twisted smile, as she’d learned the hard way. Should she buy into his lies, he’d cackle and reveal that he’d deceived her again. That’d end her life with House Marshall, and she’d lose everything again. She couldn’t afford to be greedy.
This is how things should be… That’s right, I don’t need anything more, she told herself for the thousandth time.
She quickly changed into dry clothes and put her things away. Just as she finished, a knock came at the door.
“Yulie?” came Paula’s warm voice. “Are you ready?”
“I’ll be right there!” she called back.
With that, she put aside the worries haunting her and got to business.