Chapter 3
Isel looked at the Emperor with steady eyes, then lowered his gaze.
“…Your Majesty, do you truly believe that?”
There was a faint bitterness in his voice.
“Before you are the Emperor, you are also my uncle. As your nephew, I ask you.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed a few times, and a shadow fell across his face.
Seeing his nephew’s darkened expression, the Emperor pressed his fingers to his temple and quietly waited for him to continue.
“Isn’t marriage something you do when you are able to take responsibility for the other person?”
At Isel’s question, the Emperor let out a long sigh and ran a hand through his hair.
He tried to find a counterargument but failed, his lips twisting instead.
“I do not wish to become a husband or a father who could die at any moment.”
When Isel finally forced out those honest words, the air in the room grew heavy.
The Emperor understood exactly what he meant.
Ten years ago, monsters had suddenly overrun Salamincha. The Grand Duke and his wife had been killed by those very monsters.
Isel had barely finished his parents’ funeral in the capital before returning to Salamincha, where he fought a long and brutal battle to drive out the monsters.
After much struggle, he succeeded in pushing them back to the Hazelwig Mountain Range outside the residential areas.
But his efforts were only a temporary solution. From time to time, monsters still invaded the villages.
Because of that, Isel and the Salamincha Knights constantly risked their lives.
Knowing the threat of death that hung over his nephew’s neck, the Emperor could no longer force the issue of marriage.
All he could do was wave his hand with a sorrowful expression and dismiss him.
As Isel left the palace and headed toward the carriage waiting along the main road, he noticed a group of people dressed in black passing by.
“Jacksy. Was there a funeral in the capital today?”
He asked his green-haired aide.
“Your Grace, you didn’t know? I clearly wrote it in today’s schedule!”
“Did you?”
“Ah, what’s the point of talking? Only my heart gets frustrated.”
At Isel’s indifferent response, Jacksy muttered under his breath.
“The only daughter of the Marquess of Livia has passed away.”
The Livia family’s daughter. At the name, a memory surfaced in Isel’s mind.
Ten years ago, he had met her once.
At his parents’ funeral, a girl with watery blue hair had collapsed in tears, crying even more bitterly than he, the chief mourner. While comforting her, he had learned of her illness.
“To be honest, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that one day I won’t be able to move at all. I can feel my legs slowly stiffening.”
He had felt sorry for her circumstances, but as time passed, he had forgotten her.
He remembered her again a year ago, when a marriage proposal from her arrived.
Isel was not particularly popular in the marriage market.
Was it because of his fearsome nickname, “Slayer of Demonic Beasts”? Or because his vast territory was poor? Perhaps both.
Even so, proposals occasionally came. Out of respect for those who sent them, Isel personally wrote polite letters of refusal to each one.
But he had hesitated to send a rejection to the Livia daughter. Instead, he left her proposal tucked away in a corner of his study.
“…Even if you don’t want to go, you must. They are one of the few families who supply daily necessities to our difficult territory.”
Mistaking Isel’s silence for reluctance, Jacksy spoke urgently.
“Let’s go.”
“…Pardon? I must have misheard?”
Instead of answering, Isel simply began walking.
“Your Grace, that’s not the direction.”
Jacksy shook his head and pulled him by the shoulder.
A short while later, the Grand Duke arrived at the entrance of the Livia estate, where the funeral was being held. Since he was dressed in plain black without ornaments, he entered without difficulty.
He first offered brief greetings to the marquess and marchioness.
“Grand Duke of Lindenberg. Thank you for coming.”
They exchanged a few formal words of condolence.
For a moment, Isel felt pity at the sight of the marquess’s daughter’s thin face in the coffin.
Then he overheard murmurs that her funeral would be conducted as a cremation.
Isel found it somewhat unusual. Among Herteon nobles, cremation was rare.
‘Well, that’s not my concern.’
He had shown his face as required. He decided it was time to leave. As he turned toward the estate’s front gate—
A woman hurried through the entrance.
She was an elderly lady wearing a black paleolus, a beret-like hat worn by high-ranking priests.
With the purple stole around her neck, she appeared to be a High Priest.
Given the Livia family’s status, it made sense that a high-ranking priest would conduct the funeral rites.
And then something flashed in Isel’s mind.
‘Wait. The Church of the Main God has a system for spirit weddings.’
His mother had been a devout believer.
As a child, he had often accompanied her to the village chapel. He remembered a priest once explaining spirit weddings.
Two hundred years ago, during the reign of Emperor Olivia, she had gone south to restore flood damage. There, she fell in love with a young nobleman of humble status and became pregnant.
After returning to the palace, she searched for him to marry him, only to learn he had died in a plague that swept through his village.
The empire was thrown into chaos at the news of the Emperor’s pregnancy before marriage.
At the time, the Church did not recognize children born outside a lawful marriage as members of the imperial line.
But the Emperor declared that if her unborn child were not accepted, there would be no more imperial heirs.
So the ministers and bishops devised a solution: a spirit wedding, taking a deceased person as a spouse.
‘A spirit wedding…’
Isel still had no desire to marry. Yet the pressure would continue. And he still possessed the Livia daughter’s proposal.
He reviewed his situation.
He wanted to marry for love. But before love, there were realistic obstacles.
His territory, Salamincha, remained dangerous due to unpredictable monster attacks. Its barren environment had also destroyed its economy.
Was there any woman who could peacefully love a man constantly risking his life hunting monsters? And could he endure it if the woman he loved were harmed because of him?
But if the marriage partner were already dead, those threats would no longer apply.
For a brief moment, guilt crossed his mind. Would he be using the dead?
Yet the Livia daughter had clearly expressed her wish to marry him.
Perhaps this would be fulfilling her wish.
‘I should ask the marquess.’
Having made up his mind, Isel turned back toward the marquess and marchioness.
Schniela adapted to her new life as a ghost surprisingly quickly. Perhaps that was why she had long forgotten the storm-like visit of the Grand Duke.
Her death did not feel tragic or shocking.
When heavy rain follows dark clouds, people simply accept it.
After ten years of illness, she had already prepared herself for death.
In fact, she felt excited by the freedom her ghostly body gave her.
[Can I go there too? Like in the books?]
She stared at the wall of the estate and swallowed nervously. Taking a breath, she pushed herself toward it—and slid right through.
[Waaah!]
Flying through the kitchen, the wide garden, the maids’ quarters, and her parents’ room, she thought,
[Yes. I’ve spent ten years lying in bed. That’s enough.]
Being a ghost was not so bad.
At the very least, it was better than her old, sick body that she could barely move.
