Chapter 182: Drumming Up a Marriage
Lucian led the column into the Dragon Kingdom's border city, and the sentries on the walls spotted them from a long way out.
The news took to the air and moved — from the watchtower to the city gate to every back alley in between — and in the space of a few minutes, the whole city was alive.
By the time Lucian's horse touched the road before the gate, both sides were packed with people. Women holding children, elderly men leaning on staffs, kids being lifted above the crowd by their parents and waving their small hands furiously — and even a few leather-armored city guards who had given up any pretense of standing at attention and were craning their necks along with everyone else.
The cheering came from far off first, rolling in like a wave from a long way out, sweeping over the gate, and finally breaking open in front of him into a wall of noise.
"Lord Aindra is back!"
"The beastmen lost! Lord Aindra defeated them!"
"Look at that banner! That's the Aindra family banner!"
Lucian rode through the middle of it.
Sebas was at his side — the old butler sitting perfectly straight in the saddle, his gaze moving calmly across the crowd, though even that lined face had found a quiet, warm smile somewhere.
Behind them came the Aindra cavalry, their electroplated mithril armor catching the sunlight into a river of silver-white. The edges of the plates still carried the marks of the campaign — a scratch here, a dark stain there — which somehow only made the armor look heavier and more earned.
The newer recruits clearly had no idea what to do with themselves. When flowers and ribbons came sailing at them from both sides of the road, their faces went red and they looked at each other helplessly.
The veterans were better about it. They squared their shoulders. Lifted their chins. One of them, passing a small child who was waving at him with both hands, managed a grin — the rough kind, like something chiseled out of stone rather than grown.
Lucian himself felt a lightness he hadn't felt in a long time. His mouth curved on its own. His eyes moved from face to face in the crowd, and he raised a hand to wave now and then, easy and unhurried. The bone-deep fatigue of days on the road seemed, in this moment, to dissolve into the noise around him.
That was — if he could overlook the person currently shoving his way through the crowd toward him.
"Lucian Aindra!"
Cerabrate's voice carried clearly through the cheering, sharp enough to cut through the wave of it. He squeezed through a gap in the crowd, sword at his hip, and came charging up to Lucian's horse with the energy of a man arriving to settle a score. He tilted his head back, and that famous cowlick stood straight up in the wind.
"I — haven't lost yet!"
Louder than usual. Like he was competing with the cheering around him for airspace.
His face was entirely serious, with a note of urgency underneath it — as though he needed to establish this fact before the moment passed and something became permanent without his consent.
Lucian looked down at the Crystal Tear captain standing in the road in front of his horse.
The cheering around them was still going, but a few of the nearby citizens had already noticed and were murmuring to each other, a few recognizing Cerabrate and nudging their neighbors.
Lucian looked at that "I'm here to make a formal declaration" expression, let out a quiet internal sigh, and put on a mild smile.
"I know."
He patted the horse's neck. The horse stepped forward and around the spot where Cerabrate was standing.
Cerabrate stood there. It took a moment. He turned, and shouted at the retreating back: "Hey —!"
Lucian didn't look back. He just raised a hand and gave a loose wave — the gesture of someone sending off a neighborhood kid who'd come looking for trouble.
Cerabrate's cowlick managed to stand even higher. He didn't give chase.
The cheering went on. The welcoming crowd had grown even larger, stretching now from the gate all the way down the main street into the city.
Several days earlier.
Dragon Kingdom scouts had come across the aftermath of the beastman rout and reported back to the capital at speed — excited accounts of beastman bodies across a wide stretch of ground, the signs of an army that had collapsed and fled in disorder. The scale of it pointed clearly to one conclusion: the beastman nation's military had been dealt a blow it would not be recovering from quickly.
Draudillon Oriculus received the news from her throne.
She was wearing a pale pink dress, her legs hanging loose over the edge of the seat, the report spread open on the table in front of her. She read it through twice. Then a third time, just to be certain she wasn't misreading something.
"This is... actually real?" Her voice had a faint, uncertain tremor. She looked up at Prime Minister Bergmann, who was standing below the dais.
Bergmann inclined his head slightly, and something in his expression was marginally more relaxed than usual. "The scout's reliability and eyesight are both well-established, and the battlefield location was close enough to the front lines for follow-up reconnaissance. The subsequent reports confirmed the same picture."
Draudillon's eyes lit up. She pushed herself off the throne, crossed to the table, and read through the report one more time.
"So that means..." Those large eyes were bright with something that hadn't quite decided what it was yet. "We don't have to be afraid anymore?"
Bergmann didn't answer directly.
Draudillon looked at the map, at the marked positions of the remnant beastman army, at the border towns still marked as occupied. Her pink lips pressed together.
"Bergmann." Her voice had an energy to it she wasn't entirely containing. "Can we take the opportunity to strike? The beastman nation has lost this many soldiers — if we launch a counteroffensive now, we might be able to drive them out entirely. We could get the lost territory back."
As she said it, her tone had already taken on a note of happy anticipation, as though she could already picture the Dragon Kingdom's people coming home.
Then she stopped herself.
She remembered what Aindra had told her before he left — repeated it, actually, more than once. Absolutely do not make any proactive moves. Hold the defensive line and nothing else.
The brightness in those large eyes dimmed a fraction. A hesitant uncertainty settled in instead.
"Bergmann, what are you thinking?" she asked. "Are you also considering whether we should send troops?"
The prime minister was standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back, gaze resting on the shaft of afternoon light cutting through the air in front of him. A pause.
"No, Your Majesty," he said, unhurried. "I'm thinking about something else."
"What?"
"How to organize a wedding ceremony for Your Majesty and Lord Aindra."
Draudillon froze.
She held the tilted-head position. Her eyes blinked. The sentence she had just received required additional processing time.
Then the color came in — starting at the tips of her ears, spreading across her cheeks, working its way down until even her neck had taken on a faint pink.
"Wh — what wedding!" Her voice jumped several registers. She shot to her feet. "What are you talking about!"
Bergmann turned to face her. His expression had not changed even slightly — the manner of someone discussing something self-evident.
"Your Majesty, the specifics of how Lord Aindra managed it remain unclear, but the beastman nation's military capability has been effectively destroyed. Setting aside the question of Lord Aindra's combat ability entirely — the simple fact that he has resolved the beastman threat on the Dragon Kingdom's behalf makes offering one's hand in return a perfectly reasonable consideration."
He continued, evenly.
"Lord Aindra's background, appearance, and ability are all entirely fitting for Your Majesty's standing. And his commitment to the Dragon Kingdom is something Your Majesty knows well — leading a cavalry campaign here every year is not a small thing."
Draudillon opened her mouth. She ran through the points he had just made, looking for something she could directly argue with.
She couldn't find anything.
She closed her mouth. She walked back to the throne and dropped into it, crossed her arms, and turned her head firmly away from Bergmann. A silent protest.
Bergmann let a moment pass.
"Your Majesty. When Lord Aindra returns in triumph, I do hope you'll be a little more forthcoming. After all —" a slight pause — "speaking purely in terms of appearances, this would be something of an older-woman, younger-man situation."
A teacup came sailing from the direction of the throne. Fast, and not in the least elegant.
Bergmann raised one hand and caught it, smooth as turning a page.
"Since Your Majesty is thirsty," he said, expression unchanged, "I'll go pour some water. Red tea, perhaps? If I recall correctly, Lord Aindra is particularly fond of red tea. Your Majesty may want to develop a taste for it in advance."
He turned and walked to the door.
The door closed softly behind him.
Draudillon sat alone in the empty hall. She held the same position for a long moment. Then, slowly, she curled in on herself — knees drawn up, chin resting on them, both arms wrapped around her legs, like a small animal folding itself into the smallest possible shape in the corner of an oversized chair.
And then her shape changed.
The slight, girlish silhouette was gone. In its place sat a different figure entirely — tall and composed, with the same long black hair falling across her shoulders. The same refined features, but the softness had left them; in its place was the fullness of a woman fully grown. A balanced, upright frame. And when she sat in that wide throne now, her feet rested flat and steady on the floor.
She looked down at herself. Hesitated for a moment. Reached down and gave a small, experimental pinch.
"What's wrong with being larger," she said, her voice carrying something that was barely there — a muted grievance directed mostly at herself.
The loli thing... does he really like them that much...
She muttered it, and then stayed exactly as she was. She didn't change back.
As though she wasn't quite sure, herself, what she was actually thinking.
Bergmann's footsteps had faded down the corridor.
He hadn't actually gone to pour tea.
He had stopped at the corner of the hallway, where a young secretary was waiting with a stack of parchment. The young man bowed quickly when he saw Bergmann approach.
"Sir — as you instructed..."
Bergmann took the parchment and scanned it quickly. A small nod. "The word has gone out?"
"Yes, sir. As you ordered — every town has it by now. Lord Aindra's defeat of the beastman army. Taverns, markets, every place it needed to reach."
Bergmann passed the parchment back. He turned his gaze to the window at the far end of the corridor, where a strip of clear blue sky was visible through the glass.
Lifting public morale was only part of it.
The more important thing was to make sure everyone understood: it was the young lord of the Aindra family who had removed the beastman threat. At a moment like this, reputation was the best foundation one could lay — and it would smooth the path considerably when the question of a marriage between Lord Aindra and the Dragon Queen eventually became a matter of public discussion.
He turned and walked off down the other end of the corridor.
Afternoon. The column had finally made its way through the city's main street and settled into the garrison area to the west. The cavalry came off their horses in sequence, began stripping saddles, then turned to the flat-bed carts still covered in dark canvas.
Lucian handed the reins to the adjutant who came jogging up.
He turned to head toward the garrison — and stopped.
At the edge of the crowd, where the cheering had settled and people were beginning to drift away, among the dispersing figures, he saw someone he hadn't expected to see.
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