Chapter 54 - Volume 2 (2/2)

「Ah, that’s right, you had no way of knowing. Me and Sir Celves are engaged, as decided by my father. He’s not a Lord, but we’ve known each other for very long.」

「……!」

This time for sure, I widen my eyes. Lunamerie and Celves are… Engaged? I’m dumbfounded at these random points connected together. Lunamerie looks at me with an innocent expression.

The Valentine family and the Ronein family are both one of the grand aristocrats that represent our country. If pushed to say which one ranked higher, anyone would say it’s the Valentine family. But there’s not so much difference in their social status that there would be an issue if they were going to get married.

But, so what? I really just can’t understand, I’m at the height of confusion. Or perhaps, it’s not that I can’t understand, but I don’t want to – that might be a more correct way to put it. I mean, isn’t that right? From the way she was speaking earlier, it’s just like——

「Hey, Lady Filmina. I have a request for you.」

「……A request?」

「Yes.」

That lovely voice interrupts my confused thoughts. I raise my head from the stone floor once again to look at Lunamerie, only to see her sweetly smiling.

「Please give me Sir Edi.」

Just like an innocent child, demanding candy or some toys. With her slender hands in front of her chest, fingers entwined, Lunamerie looks even more like she’s dreaming of something as she says it.

——What is this girl saying?

Astonished, I do nothing but just look at Lunamerie. Whether she realizes my internal state or not, or perhaps she doesn’t care about it in the first place, she just earnestly, sweetly smiles, continuing. With that smile that would make anyone want to do as she says.

「I pretended that time we met in Sir Edi’s garden was the first time I met you, but the truth is, I’d known about you for much longer.」

「About… me?」

「Yes. Well, it wasn’t like I wanted to get to know you or something. I had my ‘shadows’ investigate a little about Sir Edi, that’s when I found out about you. To be honest, I was really sad. Just as I thought I’d found a suitable match for me, he’d already gotten married!」

A complete change from her smile until now, Lunamerie casts her big eyes downward, dropping her shoulders, incredibly sadly. ‘I can’t do anything about that even if you ask me,’ is what I really think.

The ‘shadows’ she speaks of are an army in charge of the so-called underworld, mainly gathering secret information or carrying out assassinations. It’s said that not just the grand aristocrats have them, powerful aristocrats and wealthy merchants also ‘keep’ them. I thought they were nothing more than fake rumors, but now I see, so they really do exist. But this isn’t how I wanted to find that out.

Looking down at my protesting face, Lunamerie sighs again.

「Have you seen the color of Sir Celves’s hair? It’s just like an old beggar’s! To think that someone with that filthy, half-colored hair could be my fiance, Lady Filmina, you understand how I feel, don’t you? It’s a great difference from Sir Edi’s pure, jet black hair.」

It’s a really cruel way of speaking, even though it’s her own fiance. From those words, I can tell that it would be a huge overstatement to say Lunamerie and Celves’s relationship is a favorable one by any standards.

I remember Celves’s hair. Certainly it’s just like Lunamerie said, with half-white and half-ash mixed in. But I think those blue eyes of his on his well-arranged face would be charming enough to girls her age.

Comparing him to that man is the problem in the first place. That beauty of his, always attracting people regardless of gender, could more easily be called devil-like, not-human. But it seems that’s not how the girl in front of me sees it.

「Being engaged to him is so embarrassing I can’t bear it. That’s why I had to request my father, have him wait until the last minute to announce it publicly. But even that was the limit too. It was then that the demon king came back.」

The sweet smile returns to her face, like a violet. Different from the princess’s lily-like beauty, it’s a smile so lovely it should be loved by everyone. It almost makes me forget the strange situation we’re in, but the pain of my wounds somehow manages to keep me in reality. It’s rather ironic.

「The Hero is also lovely, but there’s far too much difference in our social statuses. He may be one of the saviors of the world, but it’s unthinkable for me to bring in a country person’s blood in this family. The leader of the knights is the same too. To marry a commoner, it’s not even a joke.」

‘And,’ Lunamerie cut herself off for a minute, both her purple eyes narrowing absentmindedly, her white cheeks dyed a light red.

「Sir Edi is a splendid gentleman. It’s certainly scary that he’s a Black-Hair, but his hair is such a pure black, I think it actually has a charm you can’t find anywhere else. Don’t you think he’s a suitable match for me, that beautiful gentleman with that black hair that no one else has? Don’t you think I’m the only one suitable to stand beside him?」

There isn’t a single bit of doubt in those words. She declares it like it’s so natural and expected, so full of self-confidence it’s arrogant.

「So, I made a request to Sir Celves. To put a deadly curse on you, 『Sir Edi’s wife』.」