The next day, Fie was out on a walk when she noticed Captain Yore entering the reference room and decided to hurry after him. Fie had taken to strolling in order to pass the time so frequently that she had been nicknamed the Strolling Second Wife. A retinue of maidservants typically accompanied her, but today she was allowed to walk around on her own, provided she stayed on the top floors. Up until very recently, Fie had been able to go anywhere whenever she wanted to as a squire, so she found this arrangement kind of obnoxious. Whenever she wanted to go downstairs, she first needed to return to her rooms and tell the maids. By way of comparison, Captain Yore was always stalking about the place going whenever and wherever he pleased. Fie didn’t think this was very fair, but the captain was also incredibly strong and competent, so she did get it. Besides, unlike Fie, he was actually working.
Today’s work required Yore to fetch his own documents, which Fie found impressive. Maybe he needed help, she thought. If so, she was just the girl for the job. She slid open the door and walked in, whereupon Roy immediately noticed her and turned to look.
“Heath...?” he said. “No, I mean, Fie?”
“That’s me!” Even though she had been silent, he still guessed it was her immediately. That, Fie thought, only went to show how cool he was. Even assassins could do nothing against him, much less Fie.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, but can I help you with anything?”
Roy was apologetic in the face of Fie’s unbridled kindness. “No.” He paused. “I don’t need any help. I just wanted to find the population demographics for the Pol region. Sorry.”
Fie waved away his apology and then broached another topic of discussion. “Actually, I was wondering if I could ask you about one more thing.”
A request from Fie was enough to excite Roy. “Of course. Ask away.”
“It’s about our marriage. See, I heard that you’re only pretending to be married to Fielle, so I was wondering if we’re not really married either.”
“Uh?!” Roy jolted forward slightly, as if he had been struck.
In the dim light of the reference room, Fie scarcely noticed. She clasped both hands together and held them to her chest, her eyes shining with perfect trust in her captain. “Knowing you, I figure that our marriage is fake, but I wanted to double-check just to be sure.”
“Gah!” Her full faith in him brought him to his knees. He looked like he was in extreme pain.
Fie rushed to his side. “What’s wrong, Captain?” she cried.
Roy crouched on the ground with his face between his knees and finally, after a long pause, muttered, “I’m sorry.”
“Huh?” What was he apologizing for all of a sudden?
Sweat poured down Roy’s face, but he knew that he couldn’t run away. “I’m sorry...” he finally croaked out. “My marriage with Princess Fielle is fake, but yours...is not...”
True, the fake marriage had only been concocted to solve Fielle’s problem, but how in the world had it come to this? The reason was simple, and even now he clearly remembered his state of mind at the time. Back then, his thoughts on Fie first boiled down to, “Eh, whatever,” and later, “How obnoxious.”
Roy had hunted high and low to find a member of the clergy with the power to marry royalty, the willingness to cooperate in faking a marriage, and the lips tight enough to keep it a secret. Meanwhile, every priest in the church clamored to have the honor of wedding the king of Orstoll to the Priestess of Healing, forcing Roy to go through double the effort in coming up plausible explanations to turn them all down as he maneuvered around all the other possible obstacles. The hardest part of protecting Princess Fielle was quite probably orchestrating the fake wedding. Considering all the hassle it took to do this for her, Roy didn’t feel the need to do the same thing for Fie—the unwanted nuisance, to his eye—if he could avoid it. The fewer people involved in fake marriages, the better. Therefore, the king and queen of Daeman readily accepted his suggestion to hold her marriage ceremony without her presence due to the delay in her departure. Her wedding was thus dealt with in a perfectly bureaucratic manner which, Roy thought, was all that was necessary. Or rather, at the time, the extra expenses incurred by protecting Fielle and the gratitude she should have felt for him shouldering all this marriage nonsense preoccupied his thoughts.
However, having learned Heath’s true identity and her whole situation, Roy looked back on that now and thought, “Oh no, I made an awful mistake.” If anything, it was only one item in a whole long list of awful circumstances. Fie’s parents pushed her into the marriage for money, but not once did he or anyone else ask her about her own opinions on the subject; furthermore, once they were actually married, he completely ignored her and locked her away in her chambers to boot! That was no way to treat a young lady. And later, Roy knew, she ran into more trouble caused by her own actions.
How had this happened? The answer was as plain as the nose on his face—this was, perhaps, the first time Roy had ever reflected on his own life. He had always been so intently focused on looking ahead for the sake of his kingdom and charging forward that he had never once considered his own actions. Roy now deeply regretted this. He had treated Fie rudely because his prejudice against women had clouded his eyes. Granted, this flaw had been pointed out to him multiple times before, but Roy had let it wash over him and simply cast the thought aside until finally it truly came to light. Now he felt horribly guilty and equally remorseful.
Maybe Roy’s life had been too calm up until now. Yes, there had been difficult times. Yes, there had been struggles. However, he had always thought that for the sake of his kingdom, his friends, and his subjects, that he’d be just fine, so long as he kept going down the same path as always: learning from past mistakes, studying to make up for shortcomings, and working hard to overcome obstacles. Yet this was Roy’s first time encountering a situation he could not resolve. This young girl had been injured by his own prejudice and pride, and no amount of learning, studying, or working hard would undo that.
This girl, the girl he did not know how to face, stood before him and looked slightly downcast as she murmured, “I see...”
Then, she added, “Well, no use crying over spilled milk. Besides, you worked very hard for Fielle, so don’t let it bother you too much. Okay, Captain Yore?”
Roy’s guilt was obvious in his sweating and somewhat troubled smile, so she tried to encourage him instead. Something about her own smile suggested that she was already used to getting the short end of the stick, and that only drove the blade farther into Roy’s heart, the invisible sword of guilt digging deeper into Roy’s back these days with every step he took.