Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter I

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Hold on, what's the rush, what's the rush?

We're not done, are we?

Cause I don't need to change this atmosphere we've made if

You can stay one more hour, can you stay one more hour?

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find a way

[Year 1120, Imperial Palace]

“Lady Neuschwanstein, are you alright?”

An azure gaze, peering down at her in concern through a pale, opera mask. And a kind voice to match it, echoing not too far from her still ringing ears. Vision swimming under the strain of exhaustion, it’s a small wonder that she has recognized him by these two things alone.

She twists around with the intention of addressing Duke Nuremberg properly, yet only manages a weak nod of acknowledgement.

“… Lady Neuschwanstein?” the dark-haired man calls out again. He sidles closer with his hands poised to reach for her, approaching as one would a small, startled animal-  

It only causes Shuri to retreat further into her shell. He is no threat to her, of course, to merit such reticence, but her head throbs all the same as she tries to fight off that primal urge to shy away from his attention, and focus on his half-concealed visage, instead.

Eyes itching at the corners, the image of his face turns out bleary.     

In all the years that Shuri has been acquainted with the man hovering at her elbow, she could never quite grasp why someone of Duke Nuremberg’s station would care to show such heartfelt sentiments towards her; a woman who, for all intents and purposes, has done nothing to earn them.

On the contrary, with the way in which she has trampled over her late husband’s memory, one would naturally assume she should have incurred the very opposite of them. After all, it has been Albrecht von Nuremberg who has strived the hardest to protect Johannes’s legacy after his demise-

Even while she, the wife of the marquess herself, appeared to have done anything else but that in the eyes of High Society.   

‘You reap what you sow’, logic berates where bitterness snarls, and Shuri knows she must bend to the former. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, to say the least, yet despite the scorn they have shown her, the noble ladies who accosted her earlier simply serve as a reminder of that.

It’s hard to pin it down to an exact moment in time, but at some point, it became common knowledge among the peerage that the Iron Widow rarely deigns to visit the ‘women’s corner’ during gatherings.

Most, gentlemen and ladies alike, chalked up her cold behavior to arrogance, sneering at the audacity of a gold-digging wench to act as if she were better than her peers – women who were, in fact, superior to her by birth, and thus had every right to deride her.

On Shuri’s part, the issue was another. Realizing later on in the game that she was no match against the ladies of High Society, she settled for the only non-confrontational solution she could think of: avoidance. Which didn’t get her far in the long run, but still.

She made an exception this time, due to desperation, and it only ended up proving her judgement correct.

(She has no place amidst these people.)       

“My, Lady Neuschwanstein, what a luxurious little feast you have prepared for His Highness, Prince Letran,” a blonde noble woman, not much older than Shuri herself, hums.

This one is bold. She walked up to the Marchioness of Neuschwanstein as soon as she was seated at an empty table, and did not hesitate to sink down in the opposite chair of hers.

Her hair, her voice – Shuri cannot recognize her by either as she performs a quick examination of her features.    

“I do, however, wonder whether it will be enough to satisfy Her Majesty. She looks rather displeased, does she not?” the unknown lady continues, mockingly, while another joins the table.

Two against one. And what’s worse, unlike her friend, this one’s identity she can place without any sort of difficulty: Count Penceler von Neuschwanstein’s wife.   

Shuri tilts her head as she toys with her wine chalice, unfeeling to the taunting, yet strangely prepared to file away any alleged fault that these women would like to bring to her attention. In any other circumstances, it would embarrass her to hear it.

Right now, though, she is just past that point where the exhaustion has dulled her sensibilities, overruling emotions-

It’s the countess who speaks up next, “Now, now… anyone would be able to tell the difference between a faithful subject to the Crown, who wants to serve for the sake of serving, and one who scrapes like a dog for forgiveness and favors.”

Except, apparently, for anger. The hand holding her drink goes still. Taunts, she can easily withstand. Insults, on the other hand, are unacceptable.

“Best be going, then, my ladies. There are no favors and no forgiveness you can curry from me, either.”  

“Lady Neuschwanstein-”

“I’m perfectly fine, Your Grace. Please, do not concern yourself with such things,” Shuri demurs, praying that the duke will read into the verbal cue and leave her be.

Albrecht von Nuremberg never gave her any reason to doubt his good will, and by no fault of his own does she want to be rid of perhaps her one and only “ally”, but what she feels in her heart of hearts is not something she can control.

He showed up at her side barely a few minutes after the end of the horrendous encounter, and that could only mean one thing: he overheard the whole affair, as many others within earshot must have, then rushed to her aid.

Part of her is grateful. Another, however, finds him downright cruel for it. Because the truth is, just by standing in the presence of the revered Duke of Steel, the Head of a prestigious family not unlike her own, drives the knife of humiliation deeper.

Would these women have been so bold so as to address the duke the way they had addressed her? Shuri doubts it; at present, this man might very well be the most respected noble in High Society, whereas she-

“—a dog scraping for—”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go get some air.”  

Once the implications of what she gave as an excuse reach her, Shuri realizes that this is exactly what she needs. Fresh air, from outside. Away from this infernal room and its suffocating, perfume-sprinkled atmosphere that seems to wind around her neck like a noose by the minute.

The duke, meanwhile, flinches at her abrupt dismissal. His hands fall away, long arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. Then, as if their owner remembered himself, they come to lock together behind him, stretching his sturdy frame into that dignified position which Shuri is most familiar with.  

He holds himself akin to a knight before her. Although she never dared ask, privately, she has always wondered about the reason.   

“… Of course, my lady,” His Grace sighs, withdrawing obediently, and allowing her the much-needed space to escape.   

Under the lights that bath the ballroom in shimmering gold, the young woman flees him without a single glance backwards. Her steps sure and purposeful as she circles around the dancefloor, up until the realization that she lacks a definite stopping place throws a stutter in her stride.

Shuri pauses, forcing her tired eyes to search about for an adequate refuge. And during that time, not a second passes where she is not aware of the gazes honed in on her.

The one coming from the high platform reserved for the royals stands out in particular, but Shuri waves it off as what she’s been seeking stumbles into her view. She starts moving again, towards one of the balconies that line up the building’s façade, seeing little sense in acknowledging the Empress’s glower.       

She can’t help but ponder, though, as she nears her destination.

As far as their acquaintance goes, Her Majesty disapproved of her upon sight – a prospect by which Shuri could be hardly shocked. The news of Johannes’s hand-picked successor following his approaching death produced one singular reaction within the Empire, after all, and it’s safe to say that the royals were no exception to it.

A sixteen-year-old girl entrusted with one third of the power that keeps the nation afloat? Preposterous, the Empress must have scoffed.

From disapproval to outright loathing, however, is a slightly bigger step, and Shuri can only narrow down the turning point to that incident between Elias and the Empress’s blood son. Or, as irony would have it, the incident for which Shuri happens to be repenting right at the moment.

Why else would she be holding Prince Letran’s coming-of-age party if not to “scrape for forgiveness”, as the Countess of Neuschwanstein so eloquently put it?         

Elias von Neuschwanstein, a son of a highly-ranked noble house, her stepson, assaulted the Second Prince of the Empire in the full view of the public – that’s a crime punishable by execution, at worst, or loss of limb, at best.

To make matters worse, the incident also took place on the eve of the National Festivities, which was as close as they could get to a nationwide political catastrophe.

In that case, one would suppose, the Neuschwansteins were lucky enough that some begging and money were all that the Imperial Family demanded in return-

Then again. The incident in itself turned out to be a ruse.

Elias hardly touched His Highness during the “attack”; he merely pushed the boy away by the shoulders. Such a thing wouldn’t call for a child’s hand to be cut off, yet the Empress initially asked for no less as retribution.

However, when the demand has been shot down by her husband, what Her Majesty proposed next was compensation of another kind – the kind only an extremely rich household could afford – and something clicked inside Shuri’s brain, then and there, while she was still pleading down her knees before the Imperial Couple.

All along, the Empress had been after her family’s assets.

Thankfully, the young marchioness was quick enough to thwart her plans. If the Empress wanted to play it as though the compensation was all about saving face and proving their loyalty, Shuri decided to put forward a more appropriate offer for the occasion.

Since the Second Prince was the victim in question, Shuri argued, it would only be right for the Neuschwansteins to make it up to him personally.

And in view of that, this is what was ultimately agreed upon by both parties involved: that for the next three years following the affair, the Golden Lion shall fund and arrange Prince Letran’s birthday festivities on the behalf of the Imperial Family.      

Shuri tried to uphold her end of the deal to the best of her abilities. Time, dedication, gold – she spared no resources, pouring everything she had into the prince’s parties, all to erase Elias’s name from the Empress’s black books.

Did her efforts pay off? 

The Empress, the nobles, Prince Letran himself – no one seemed to blame Elias for his past transgression. It’s as if the incident never happened to him to begin with. Which was more than what she prayed for-         

Saving Elias has been the end goal. I succeeded. That’s all that matters.

Or so Shuri would like to think of the situation, to keep herself from lamenting over who had to trade places with Elias so he wouldn’t have to suffer for a childish mistake.

When she makes Nora von Nuremberg’s acquaintance, it’s with a mask on her face – for once just a regular one, not the social one – and all of her defenses embarrassingly lowered.

(Years down the road, Shuri wishes she can claim that this was the memorable part about their meeting. But it’s actually everything leading up to them talking that what will weigh on her, rather.)

No sooner do her feet pass the threshold of the balcony than Shuri whirls on her heel to snap shut its door. She misses him, if he even made a noise back then, and the tell-tale locking sound, lost as she is to the crisp air whooshing past her uncovered ears.

The breeze unwinds her body like a musician would his harp’s strings, and as her head dips forward, she lets her forehead fall against the glass surface of the door with a relieved sigh.    

She turns then, daintily twirling around before she knows it, facing the open landscape with a swish of heavy-layered skirt and the beginning of a grin yanking at her mouth. Thoughts of peace and quiet and finally alone warbling along her mind for all the few moments of it that she is allowed to savor-

Until pitiless reality intervenes, issuing her a most inopportune wake-up call.

There is a man standing in front of her, casually propped up against the stone railing. Tall and broad-shouldered, you’d have to be blind not to notice him. Yet Shuri’s only excuse is sloppiness, born out of a bone-deep weariness.

The pink-haired woman is rooted into place, halted mid-step, when she registers the sound of her own voice stuttering out, “I- my apologies, I had no idea that...”

Shuri trails off, for she is dealt a second blow as soon as she processes what is presented to her. Dark clothes. Dark hair. Dark everything – except for his eyes. They are impossibly, shockingly bright.

The contrast they make against the obsidian mask he’s wearing is nothing short of staggering.

“… that the balcony was taken,” Shuri finishes her sentence, at length. One mortifying pause later, she wishes she has never spoken to begin with.

The man – surprisingly young, she notes, for one who commands such an intimidating presence – appears unfazed by the loss of self-possession on her part. Paradoxically, his lack of reaction unnerves her as much as it comforts her.   

Incapable of tearing her gaze away from his visage, to Shuri’s utter amazement, she finds that she cannot read him at all – and to appease her own sense of failure, she blames it on the dim lights and half-hidden features.   

“It isn’t,” the young man says, belatedly.   

Then, to her morphing horror, she fails to derive something indicative of his thoughts from his voice as well.

Wonderful, Shuri bemoans inside her head as she awkwardly clears her throat.

“I was just searching for a quiet place to gather my thoughts. I needed some reprieve, you see. Apologizes for the sudden intrusion, though... In my haste, it didn’t cross my mind that any of the guests would find themselves in a similar situation.”

There. Less inarticulate. Perfectly coherent.

Nothing happened that she couldn’t repair – yet the self-encouragement quickly gives way to trickling doubts as the young man falls quiet once more.

Shuri frowns, mentally juggling with the possible causes behind such behavior. Surely, he can’t have been that offended by the intrusion. After all, she has just apologized for it, and provided the adequate explanations. His keen, scrutinizing gaze hasn’t escaped her either, so that rules out the prospect of him ignoring her on the basis of an inflated ego.

Might it be… her Iron Widow façade, then? It is the last option she can think of.

Despite the mask she is currently wearing, black-and-purple to match her dress, it has become second nature for Shuri to promptly don her other disguise when in the company of a noble. Perhaps, all along she has been unknowingly channeling that self and flustered him without meaning to?

Shuri inwardly winces at that particular supposition, because it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the so-called Witch of Neuschwanstein Castle sent men around her age practically leaping across the room once she got into the act.

So, having reached little conclusive impressions about him, Shuri resolves to not lose any more time on overthinking. She walks into the stranger’s remote direction, coming to a stop before the railing, then lays her hands upon it. The stone is cold to the touch, but she refuses to react to its biting chill.

All the while, the man’s eyes – vivid, eerily familiar blue – track her every move.

She is standing now just a few paces away from him, and against her better judgement, the marchioness tries to draw him into conversation again. For what reason, exactly, she has yet to decipher.

“Is the party perhaps not to your liking, my lord?”

Technically, this is a banquet she has organized. That would make him her guest, right? In that case, Shuri reasons that it would be remiss of her duty as a host to not inquire about his issue with it.  

Surprisingly, this time he doesn’t hesitate to answer, “I’m no good with crowds, I suppose.”

His frankness momentarily disarms her. Maybe that’s why her next comment is as blunt as his.

“Ah, of course… Neither am I, to be honest,” she mutters in return, matching his sincerity, and decides to leave it at that for a longer while.

Afterwards, for fear of prolonging her gawking at him, Shuri turns to the landscape. Musing over the dusky sky and distant buildings she can glimpse from this height, she concludes that, far from being intimidated by her, this man is simply not one for small talk-  

“Should I leave?”

Her head whips back towards him with a snap that reverberates within her skull as loudly as his question.

Leave?  

But she cannot indulge into another round of self-doubting as the sight of the stranger already pushing himself off the railing, seemingly prepared to march inside the castle at her command, sends her scrambling for purchase.

“I- No, I believe that would be unnecessary, my lord.”

He squints, as though trying to gauge her honesty. It occurs to her then, as she takes in his grave expression, that he is not jesting. This is not some scheme to get her to warm up to him. He is deadly serious about leaving the balcony to her if that’s what she wants.  

“I mean it,” Shuri insists, for good measure.

Deeming her true, the young man nods before obediently falling back into his initial position. As she watches him duck his face in the opposite direction of hers, granting her a semblance of privacy, Shuri feels her mind rendered blank by what just happened. She wouldn’t call the experience shocking, but-

A surprise – and a pleasant one at that. That hasn’t happened in a while for the notorious widow, and although a part of her finds this unknown person’s act of consideration suspicious, the need for repose far outweighs her misgivings.

So, Shuri ultimately decides to make the most of her peculiar situation. 

Contrary to her fears, she doesn’t come to regret this leap of faith. The stranger keeps to himself for the rest of her impromptu stay. Like a shadow made flesh, he lingers ever-so-quietly at the edges of her vision without truly disturbing, and time passes in comfortable silence while she watches the twilight melt into a star-spotted black sky.     

Nightfall arrives to them with winds harsher than the earlier evening breeze, however, and for which Shuri is not dressed well enough to greet.

“Well,” the marchioness sighs, taking the change of weather as her cue to bid her farewells, “I imagine people are expecting me. I cannot simply run away from them, as tempting as the notion might sound.”

It catches up to her a heartbeat too late, just as her hands fall away from the railing and as she spins around, heading off to the balcony’s entrance-

How odd she must have sounded to this young man, with her mournful words and dejected tone. The lights glinting off through the transparent door glass beckon her closer, and Shuri has to swallow a bitter smile as she dutifully makes her way towards it.

“I- Surely, you must know who I am, but I am curious as to whom you might be, if you don’t mind my asking.”            

She has already stopped by the door to ask this of him. Pivoted on her heel so as to properly see his countenance when the request lands on him.

Facing him once more, Shuri no longer feels bothered by his attire. His dark hues suit the night quite well, and for some reason, it strikes her as natural that he should continue to remain here, on this lonely balcony, all by himself, long after she has returned to the party.

From the distance she put between them, his features are even harder to make out than before. Not his eyes, though. The one true spot of color on him, and they seem to be looking everywhere but directly at her.     

She doesn’t know how long she waits for his answer.

“No one of importance, my lady…”

Shuri blinks – and then snorts out a small giggle, in spite of herself. Honestly, how can she take offence to this young man’s rejection, when he delivers it on such a- such a grumpy, solemn voice? Why, he sounds positively sulky that he had to turn her down! 

“Ah, but of course, my lord,” the marchioness informs as she points a finger at her mask, “this is a masquerade ball, after all.”

It is the stranger’s turn to gape at her now, clearly not anticipating the jesting attitude, however mild and subtle. And while Shuri cannot prevent the smile of vindication from tugging at her lips, at least she is quick enough to turn away before the young man can get the chance to glimpse it.

“Well, I shall be taking my leave now, my lord. I have troubled you enough for the night, I think. But please, do make sure to enjoy the rest of the festivities! After all, what is a party without the guests’ attendance?”

Then, she is back inside; back to eye-throbbing lights, mindless chatter and an obnoxious, suffocating number of people milling about. The change of surroundings is so abrupt, so overwhelming, that the moment Shuri steps foot in the ballroom, her vision swims.

It takes the pink-haired woman a good minute to recover – and once she does, the next thing Shuri sets to do is scan the great room in search of any golden or red mop of hair.

Caught up in her responsibilities as host, and other side issues, throughout the main events of the party, she ended up leaving the lion cubs to their own devices for longer than usual. Now that she has calmed down a bit, worry has rushed in to replace her weariness.  

“Ah, Lady Neuschwanstein!” a man appears before her just as she prepares to stride over to one of her children, whom she spotted near the dancefloor.

Alas, one problem at a time. Her little, wayward Leon will have to wait.

The marchioness lets out a sigh as she deigns to look at the newcomer, instead. “Viscount Solingen,” Shuri greets stonily.

Of Seil, she adds mentally, grimacing at the memory of the nobleman who accosted her years ago, before her first official Parliament meeting, with an invitation to dine with him. To discuss business which he allegedly conducted with Johannes prior to his death, he claimed, yet she recoiled from him then, discomfited by his attention, and eschewed him ever since.

“Have you heard of me? Oh, since it hasn’t been long since you got married, perhaps you haven’t? I used to help your husband quite a bit while he was still alive… What am I doing?! Let’s not do this here! After the Parliament session, why don’t you come over for dinner?”

Short, portly and balding, the middle-aged viscount hasn’t changed much over the years. Shuri assumes that the same can be said about his intentions – whatever these may truly be.

“Now, my lady, it’s been such a long time since we’ve last seen each other! Why, I almost feel hurt, but then, I assume you’ve been busy. Ruling a family such as yours would naturally entail less time for socializing.”

His voice, his eyes – they’re as oily and unpleasant as they have been that day, but it’s his dig at her infamous past time that causes Shuri to set her jaw.

“Socializing”. The way he twisted the word inside his mouth warns her that the man has most likely kept tabs on her. Or, either way, he bothered to lend an ear to the rumors concerning her activities.

Nevertheless, she catches the unspoken, the spider-widow who has wasted so much time toying with her lovers could have easily spared me a few hours.  

“But such is life sometimes! I’m sure that the lady can more than make it up to me,” the viscount announces merrily, waddling into her personal space. “Say, why don’t we continue this on the dancefloor? I’ve heard that Your Ladyship is quite the dancer!”

Absolutely not. Disturbed by his sudden proximity to her, as well as by his offer, Shuri jerks away on instinct.

“I- I’m afraid I cannot do this right now, my lord-”

“Oh, come now! Don’t be like that,” the man grumbles, matching her step for step as she starts backtracking unthinkingly.

Yet wearing a restrictive outfit like Shuri’s – puffy, heavy dress that trails across the ground – would hinder any real attempt of running off, lest she should want to risk a tripping incident then and there.  

Besides, he won’t allow her to escape him. Shuri spies it in the flicker of annoyance that furrows his eyebrows together, in the resentful scowl that pulls at the corners of his lips.

For how long has he been lurking in wait to corner her here? In one of the secluded spots of the ballroom that doesn’t teem with guests and to which no one would pay attention, not while the main entertainment is taking place elsewhere-

“Move.”

The command – a low whisper that cleaves the air from somewhere behind and above her head – freezes Shuri in her tracks in immediate recognition of who spoke it. The very same voice which she tried to coax out of its tight-lipped owner a few minutes ago, on their shared refuge from outside.

Shuri hasn’t really expected him to listen when she urged him to entertain himself at her party, though.

Has he... followed her back inside?

But she chases off the ridiculous notions as soon as she detects their unwelcome burrow at the forefront of her mind, refocusing on what is ahead of herself, instead; the marchioness can tell from her privileged position that the viscount has been stunned into a similar state of silence as she has been – although, she suspects, for vaguely different reasons.

After all, it is not Shuri to whom the menacing order has been addressed.

As if on cue, the stranger who towers at her back rumbles another warning, “Are you deaf? I said, move.”

But this time, Shuri cannot stave off the urge to retrace the string of words back to their source. She tilts her head over her right shoulder, where she deduces that he is the closest to her – and there he stands, all right.

Her stranger dressed in black. Up close and into proper lighting, he is even more impressive, and Shuri doesn’t know on which part of him she should zoom in first.

Chance ultimately makes the decision for her, and this is how she winds up fastening her attention on his hand, which is curled up around the handle of what seems to be a weapon-

“You’re a knight,” the marchioness blurts out as she unashamedly proceeds to goggle at his waist.

More precisely, at the sword hanging proudly from it, which Shuri has somehow overlooked when they’ve met. A man allowed to carry weapons at a royal event? Only a knight would have the right to do such a thing.

Ah, but of course.

The stoic mien. The reserved manner of speaking. The deferential attitude that did not quite border on subservience. Maybe living with the willful heir of Neuschwanstein, who also carries the title, has indirectly altered her perception on knights in general, for Shuri cannot understand how she couldn’t recognize one upon sight.      

Meanwhile, her stranger – the knight – ceases his glowering at the viscount in favor of blinking down at her, his expression gobsmacked and incomprehensive, as if he cannot believe what he is hearing. 

Fearing that she has been mistaken, Shuri can only brace herself as he opens his mouth to reply-  

“I-I had no idea that Her Ladyship already had a partner for the night! My deepest apologies, I will make myself scarce, then-”

A cowardly opportunist through and through, Viscount Solingen doesn’t hesitate to make his get-away once he’s sure that he no longer represents an interest for either of the two, the lady or her alleged knight. He slips away almost undetected during the confusion.

At the same time, somebody else emerges from a nearby crowd to take his place.

“Lady Neuschwanstein, there you were!”

Despite the respectable distance thrown between them, Shuri feels the stranger going still behind her as the Duke of Nuremberg draws nearer to them with a loud greeting. Her own spine straightens in response to the unexpected appearance while etiquette forces a beam onto her features, which doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Twice this man has showed up to witness Shuri at her lowest point, and both times in the span of a single day. The coincidence is simply too jarring to explain.    

“My lady, I apologize for the interruption, but it would seem your eldest son is desperately searching for you, and…” His Grace fires away – only to stop mid-sentence and do a double take as his gaze lands on her companion.

“Nora?!”

Peridot-green eyes widen incredulously as the name shoots off through her ears, nestles inside Shuri’s brain for the barest of moments, and then spills out from her mouth in a voiceless mutter, “… Nora?”

She stares at the tanned visage hovering at her right shoulder, at the blue eyes and dark hair of her stranger. Then, she looks back at Albrecht von Nuremberg and thinks, the same – about not only their physical appearance, but their mannerism as well.

Fate truly works in mysterious ways if it decided to throw the duke’s son, and Jeremy’s loathed rival, into her path.

“Just what, exactly, is going on in here?” His Grace promptly interrogates, out of a sudden.  

Shuri flinches at the severe tone, but can’t very well jump in to answer him, since the demand is not directed at her.

Yet a side glance from her visual periphery reassures her that Nora von Nuremberg is even less willing to interact than her.

So, Shuri finds herself helplessly trapped, watching as the son snorts in the face of his father, and instead of being put off by the behavior, she cannot help but be distracted by the uncanny similarity that seems to run down to their matching glares.

Her staring doesn’t go unnoticed for long, though, for the duke’s son casually meets her eyes as he offers a nod – a parting one, she recognizes at once.

“Lady Neuschwanstein,” he says curtly, preparing to take off without ever acknowledging his father’s existence.

She blinks, caught off guard by his readiness to acknowledge her instead, but thankfully gathers her wits about her just in time to give a reply.

“Ah, yes, of course! I wish you a good night, my lord... And you have my gratitude for what you’ve done earlier, Lord Nuremberg.”

The young man shakes his head a little, as if to dismiss her thanks as unnecessary – and then he’s gone, vanishing from sight as he slips through a crowd of gentlemen.

“That boy…” the Duke of Nuremberg mumbles beside her.

It effectively snaps Shuri out of the temporary trance in which his son’s departure has left her – not that she thinks she can be blamed, given everything that happened up until now.

The day has given her quite a lot to stew over once she retired for the night, including the acquaintance of one Nora von Nuremberg, and she hasn’t even had the chance to check up on the kids yet.

With that in mind, Shuri bows to the duke with a reassurance, “He saved me some trouble for tonight, something for which I could never be more grateful.”

And then, swiftly changes the subject, “Now, Your Grace, wherever may I find my eldest son? All of my lions are currently missing, and I might as well start with Jeremy… that is, if Your Grace would be kind enough to lead me to him?”

“Ah, of course, my lady! This way, he said he’d be waiting for you in the Great Hall-”

[Shuri's study, two weeks after Letran’s party]

The desk needs to be fixed.

It’s a concern that sears itself into her thoughts akin to a branding iron in the aftermath of her mother’s visit. As Shuri traces the wooden surface to check for any imperfection, she marvels over why such a small and insignificant detail would randomly begin to aggravate her.

Right now, furniture should be the least of her worries.  

“Your birthday is approaching, is it not? You’ve had your fun with your lovers, girl, but now you must make haste! How many times must I remind you? You need to secure your future while you’re young!”

It must be the creaking noise it let when the Viscountess Ighöffer slammed her hands down onto it to drive her point across. Shuri remembers its echo ricocheting off the walls of her office. Strangely enough, it did not so much startle her as it irked her.     

“Repay the Neuschwanstein family, you said? Repay them for what?! Foolish child, I thought I told you to cease with this nonsense already! You owe these people nothing!”

The dim lighting provided by the wax candles reveals no flaw, however. Her imagination, then? Quite possibly. What does Shuri even know about such things?

“Just what is wrong with you? Your brother came to me a month ago, ranting off about how all this wealth has turned his sister into a cold, selfish person who doesn’t care about her family anymore – but I refused to listen, mind you! How could I, when I know the girl who I raised? But now that I’ve seen you with my own eyes, I suppose I was wrong to dismiss him so quickly…”

It would be probably best to see to it in the morning. Just add this to the ever-growing list of issues that she somehow has to fix, and pray that the morning dawn will arrive with a solution for once instead of more problems.

“Shuri, sweetheart, look at me. I’m your mother – I love you! So, you have to listen to me, all right? When has your mother ever led you astray? All I want is to make sure that my daughter is safe, and that she will have a happy, comfortable life.”

It’s what everyone advised.

“Please, forget about your mother, and get some sleep, my lady,” Gwen entreated when she showed up at Shuri’s office to deliver dinner, a few hours after her mother’s dramatic exit.

Roberto incidentally extended a similar supplication, as he dropped by later on to pick up the leftovers. “My lady, it’s close to midnight… You haven’t rested much lately.”   

And yet here Shuri is, up at two in the morning, against the sound counsel of her closest confidants. Unable to sleep for grief and anger over what she did – over what her mother ultimately forced her to do.

“Fine, don’t listen, and throw me out of the estate if that’s what you want, but do you really think you can get rid of me – of us – so easily? I’ll leave for now, but rest assured, your brother won’t. He’s lodging in the capital at the moment, and mark my words when I tell you that I’ll make sure he keeps an eye on you while I’m away.”

Shuri leans back into the chair with a miserable scoff as the memory of the afternoon washes over her in waves that once upon a time would have crashed inside her chest and gnawed at her heart as if it were a sea rock.

Yet the dry wasteland she feels now beneath her breastbone speaks volumes; this is the result of a slow erosion, not a single instance of heartbreak. Although Shuri can count on a single hand the number of interactions she’s had with her mother since she left home, each time they talked nonetheless wore away at her heart-

Rocks breaking into smaller rocks, a gradual process that spanned over years, until one last meeting had Shuri grabbing fistfuls of sand as she officially banned Stella von Ighöffer from the Neuschwanstein property.      

So, this is how familial relationships end in some people’s cases: burning bridges, followed by ultimatums and threats, and having one’s mother literally kicked out of their life.

Now, if only Shuri had the time to make peace with the emotional repercussions of it, so as to move on quicker – but that’s not a luxury she can afford when there’s plenty other causes of distress lining up outside her study, knocking at her doors one a day.

And upon remembering that, Shuri gives herself a little shake, leaning forward into her seat in order to reach for the papers strewn over her desk.

No point in wallowing in the dark while there’s business waiting right in front of her to be taken care of. If she must waste another night of sleep, she might as well make it worth it.

Because the truth is, trouble has hounded Shuri ceaselessly for the past few weeks, and today has been no exception.

The smaller issues, such as politics and household affairs, while a perpetual work in progress, are manageable. Not completely solvable – never that, since the reason many of them exist in the first place is related to the fact that Shuri is the Head of Neuschwanstein – but improvement is possible.

(She hasn’t reached that point of despair yet, where she can’t recognize a small mercy when she sees one.) 

The most pressing ones, on the other hand, are a nightmare from which there seems to be no escape. Coincidentally, they also seem to overlap, and after today’s incident, Shuri has managed to pin them down to the common grievance of some individuals regarding her romantic status out of all things.

In any other circumstances, the marchioness would laugh at this ridiculous conclusion.

Shuri doesn’t feel much like laughing, though, as she recalls the events of the previous week, which had at their center the very same subject her mother came today to talk about.

[Imperial Palace, a week after Letran’s party]

The garden, Shuri has decided, must definitely be the jewel of the Imperial Palace. The throne room is impressive, of course, as are the inner chapel and the Great Hall, but in her humble opinion they don’t hold a candle to the safe haven that is the flowery patch of land supervised by the Empress. 

Her Majesty would probably be displeased to discover that the Marchioness of Neuschwanstein, out of all people, has made a habit out of stopping by to admire it on her way out of the palace after each Parliament session. But thankfully, not many seem to have caught up on it yet, so she sees no problem in allowing herself this one guilty pleasure-        

“Done with your meetings for today, Lady Neuschwanstein?”

Shuri’s walk, which was already slowing for a better viewing experience, ends with an abrupt lurch as she registers the voice coming from behind her. She would recognize it anywhere.

She must have tempted fate by counting her blessings so soon. That would be the only reasonable explanation accounting for Lucrecia von Sebastian’s presence here, in the Imperial Palace no less.

“Come now, my lady. Stop behaving so childishly and face me. We have important things to discuss-”

“We,” Shuri interrupts as she half-twists around, “have nothing to discuss together, Countess Sebastian. I thought I made myself clear at the funeral: you are not to approach me or my children.”

With her rich golden tresses and emerald eyes, Countess Lucrecia von Sebastian – née Neuschwanstein – still looks as beautiful and matronly as she appeared to Shuri when their paths last crossed.

Everything about this woman, from her outward appearance to her soft speech, reminds her of a honey trap, and save for her own mother, Shuri has never met someone so eerily apt at lulling people into complacency.   

The marchioness remains, however, every bit the Iron Widow she is rumored to be as she dismisses her, pure venom pouring out of her mouth despite the nervousness that clogs up her throat.  

After all, Johannes had more or less ordered her to keep away from his siblings, the reason being that they were greedy people who wouldn’t hesitate to overtake his family in order to gain access to its fortune.

Shuri did as he bid, forbidding them all from visiting the estate in the wake of his demise, although she secretly gave them the benefit of the doubt at the time. Then, barely a week after Johannes’s funeral, while the newly-instated marchioness was at her weakest and her most desperate, they started making contact.

Out of the five Neuschwanstein siblings, it had been Countess Lucrecia and Count Mueller who reached out by cornering her at public functions, and though for the most part they managed to conceal any hostility towards her, their intentions had been plenty obvious-

Bluntly put, they wanted her to remarry. To someone of their choosing.

Someone who, in their own words, “would protect her, and help her carry out her duties properly – for the sake of the children if nothing else”.      

Needless to say, Shuri had been horrified by their plot once she put two and two together. Become their puppet-lady through a “husband” they could control? Strangely enough, she had heard of this tactic during the lessons she had on the history of nobles and politics, but never once had she imagined that she would one day be subjected to it.

It was one thing to hear of it happening to some families lost in the mists of time, quite another for Shuri herself to live that reality. It was even more disturbing than her mother’s plan of getting her remarried to some old man just to ensure she would be rich and comfortable for the rest of her life.

Granted, the attempts stopped after she got herself a contracted lover. For some reason, it made them back off in a similar way it did her mother.

But Shuri’s first contract had long since ended, as Joseph managed to obtain his lord title within two years after they began their “relationship”. The blonde man, a wealthy land owner who wanted the recognition of nobility, agreed to the partnership for that purpose alone, and once he got what he wanted, he had no reason to carry on with the ruse.

Or, at least, that’s what he claimed before officially asking for her hand in marriage.

The marchioness declined the proposal, of course, and instead sought another contracted lover – a paid mercenary – who she couldn’t hold on to for more than a year for personal reasons: the man fell in love with a woman, and wanted to do right by her.

Shuri hasn’t exactly despaired over the loss, nor did she take another “lover” afterwards, since she already had Jeremy and Ohara engaged by that time.

She figured that there would be no more urgency for people to try to get rid of her – or try to use her – once they were reassured that the heir of the house would soon marry, assume his rightful role as marquess, and that the Iron Widow would be gone.

But Shuri was wrong, apparently, and she was a fool for dropping her guard, especially when she herself realized that Jeremy was delaying the marriage.

She should have expected this, really. That people would find a way to blame it on her – even though Shuri was and still is completely in the unknown about Jeremy’s plans concerning the future.

“Be reasonable, Lady Neuschwanstein. My sister and I haven’t come here for a fight,” Count Mueller, Lucrecia’s brother, proclaims.

But of course, the count didn’t fail to tag along this time either. He’s been hanging back, leaving it up to his sister to deal with the introductions – and up until the moment he spotted the opportunity to attack. Had he not walked out of the shadows and intervened, Shuri wouldn’t have even noticed that he was there with them.

She is not surprised; Johannes’s siblings, while not a close-knitted bunch, tend to ambush in groups.

“We are here today because we are concerned about the state of the Neuschwanstein House. Despite the way you spurned us for years, we cannot simply forget about Johannes’s children and the main estate-”

The marchioness sends him a quelling look, unimpressed with his prattling and letting him know as much right off the bat.

”You may get to the point, count. I don’t have all day for this. The children and the house are fine, so what are you trying to say?”

“Fine, you say,” the count scoffs, disbelieving. “I had Johannes’s old business partners sending me all sorts of letters recently, and all about you. Why, some even claimed you want to cut ties with them! I don’t know what Johannes taught you about business, but turning your back on the people who worked with our family for decades is not the way to go about it, my lady!”

Lucrecia von Sebastian, while milder in tone and disposition than her brother, doesn’t hesitate to pinch in with her fair share of reproaches.

“Your Ladyship’s lacking business skills aside, it’s your reputation which made society cast doubt on the entire Neuschwanstein Household. Do you have any idea what people whisper about you – about Jeremy and the children – behind your backs in High Society?”

“No,” Shuri finally cuts in, to defend herself against the onslaught of accusations. “And if I’m not worried about this, I don’t see why any of you should be in my place. If I needed or wanted your help, rest assured, I would have asked for it-”

But Count Mueller waves off these protests at once, drowning her out with a sneer.

“You insist on being difficult even now, when it’s clear to everyone that you can no longer manage the estate and the children on your own? Are you seriously planning on letting that pride of yours be the downfall of the Neuschwanstein House?!”

“Lower your voice,” the marchioness hisses then, tone sufficiently cold to douse his fiery attitude.

It hasn’t escaped her notice that they are currently making a scene within the boundaries of the Imperial Palace, in a spot easily accessible to anyone who might want to explore the gardens and stroll by where they are standing to do so. But Shuri supposes that they chose the location of ambush having this in mind, too.

The anxiety she felt at the base of her throat upon seeing Lucrecia, the one she feared that it would hinder her speech, now threatens to make her choke. 

“My lady,” it is Countess Sebastian’s turn now to speak, “I can recognize that, perhaps, we scared you when we came forward with such radical suggestions so soon after Johannes’s death. But surely, by now, you have grown to understand a little why we proposed remarriage right away?”

As a matter of fact, Shuri has; she just doesn’t have any interest in becoming anyone’s mindless toy.

Head made a mess with everything they have said to her, she’s already turning on her heel to flee at the sound of that cursed word – remarriage.

“A woman,” Count Mueller carries on with a sigh, “cannot do anything in this world on her own. The nobles would have sooner had Jeremy as marquess when he had been fourteen than seeing you rule one of their oldest and most prestigious families. This is just how our world works – so, please, don’t take it to heart and cooperate with us.”

[Shuri’s study, back to present]

“I couldn’t care less about what the nobles – or you – wanted.”

Shuri recalls proclaiming in a haughty manner, having hoped to cover up her true feelings with sheer audacity.    

“This is my last warning to both of you, Lucrecia von Sebastian and Mueller von Neuschwanstein: stop trying to involve yourselves with the affairs of my family and stay away from me.”  

All that bravado in her words, and for what? She fled with her tail between her legs right afterwards. And even if she succeeded in convincing them that their warnings meant nothing to her, that she was in absolute control, would it even matter?

It’s what got her in this state, after all – sacrificing sleep to deal with the reality that neither the Neuschwanstein relatives, nor her mother, will cease with this remarriage nonsense unless she takes matters into her own hands.

Ultimately, she has to prepare the adequate measures to force them to let it go, by choosing to walk down the same path she once did as a freshly-widowed, desperate girl.

The problem is, she has less options now than before, and the precious few she painstakingly endeavored to put together are still staring up at her, from within the papers laid on her desk. Still waiting for her to make a decision.

“God, this is such a mess,” Shuri laments out loud.

It has been embarrassing enough to send Gwen away to collect information about the only two candidates Shuri could think of on such short notice, but dragging out the process of elimination feels worse than mere awkwardness.    

It’s shame that makes her waver, simple as that, because her chosen ones also happen to be the sons of perhaps the only nobles in High Society who haven’t shunned her yet.

The marchioness briefly wonders whether she will be able to look Countess Bayern or Duke Nuremberg in the eye ever again if she can actually pull this off, and winces at what the likeliest scenario for that future would entail.

Logic valiantly surges forth to ward off the grim visions – with little success, however.   

From a political standpoint, she is aware that losing one of them, or even both, wouldn’t affect her much in the long run. She isn’t dependent on either on that front, and even calling them “allies” sounds a bit like a stretch, since they have never gotten quite close over the years to form such a relationship.

Still, the prospect of giving up their favor in such a disgraceful manner when they have showed her nothing but genuine benevolence fills Shuri up with apprehension, as if she’s secretly plotting some kind of treason against them-   

Alas, the marchioness draws in a fortifying breath as she proceeds to examine each potential suitor’s file, beginning with Countess Bayern’s adopted son.   

Benjamin von Bayern has appealed to her mainly because his position in High Society is far from stable, and because she is confident that she can help with that.

Plucked up from the countryside’s ranks of nobility to fill in the vacant heir position of the Bayern House, he’s had a hard time adjusting to the life of central aristocracy, and while Shuri wouldn’t call him an outcast, the Capital’s upper classes haven’t welcomed him with open arms either.

As a result, in the next two years following his adoption, he ended up being excluded from a lot of select circles which would have eased anyone else’s path into their midst.

Being the Head of Neuschwanstein, Shuri does technically have access to all of these circles.

No matter how much the nobles might hate her, social etiquette dictates that they must send her invitations to their gatherings. To scorn the marchioness at these parties is something excusable, even expected – Shuri barely has any noble lineage to speak of, so no one would fault them for looking down on her in this respect.

But at the end of the day, her position far outranks theirs. There are limits to their acts of ostracization when one holds the titles Shuri does.

In any case, she has attended several of these gathering over the years, especially during the early stages of her headship, and is fairly sure that she can pave the road for Benjamin von Bayern to connect with the other nobles.

In short, an arrangement with him would be a mutually beneficial one, and therefore perfectly appropriate for Shuri’s purposes – that is, if one were willing to turn a blind eye to the major deterrent against having him as a contracted lover: his alleged unsavory character.

Gwen had been unusually cagy when Shuri called her up in her study to discuss his suitability. Refusing to disclose much of her findings, she only mentioned a scandalous affair here and there before staunchly declaring him unfit for Shuri’s use.

Shuri grasped from that conversation alone that she had better cross him off the list. Still, she once signed a contract with a mercenary, who was surrounded by plenty of questionable rumors as well, and he turned out to be a decent man. In light of that, she opted to keep Benjamin a little longer on the list.  

As for the other candidate-

To be perfectly honest, she doesn’t even know where to begin to make head or tail of Nora von Nuremberg, despite having sufficient information at hand to draft the man’s biography.

If anything, the background check Gwen did on him ended up shrouding him in an even bigger mystery than the one by which he seemed to be surrounded when they met at Prince Letran’s ball.

Back then, he struck her as a transparent, uncomplicated sort of individual – a quiet, duty-driven knight with very few concerns about the aristocratic world.

But as it were, there’s more to Nora von Nuremberg than meets the eye.

Relying on memory alone, she can trace him as far back as the Swordsmanship Competition that took place two years ago. Who could forget the seventeen-year-old boy who stepped into an arena filled with renowned swordsmen gathered from across nations with nothing on his name except for his origins?

The enigmatic heir of the Nuremberg Duchy who few heard of, and on whom even less laid eyes. He had no reputation to speak of at the time, good or bad, so the expectations for him were quite low-

And in less than a day, Nora von Nuremberg walked out of there as a legendary knight prodigy whose final match would remain in the history of Kaiserreich for decades to come, probably.

Shortly after that, however, he went back into hiding, avoiding public functions and High Society on the whole as if they were the plague, only to resurface again a year later and make another wave – joining the notorious Streife behind his family’s back.

The scandal inevitably reached Shuri’s ears, and although her opinion of him was almost nonexistent at that point, she too had been skeptical about the whole affair. It wasn’t his nerve that bewildered her so; just the fact that he got away with it.

What Nora von Nuremberg did – openly defying his father, the Head of his household, and going against the will of his entire family – can easily pass off as grounds for disinheritance. Many other noble sons have been disowned for far less, yet this boy marched away from the incident virtually unscathed in terms of punishment.

Then again, his father being Albrecht von Nuremberg, Shuri would have probably been more shocked to hear that a man like him had actually forsaken his own child, no matter how grave the sin.

Regardless of that, from then onwards, Nora von Nuremberg made quite a name for himself.

The whispers about the “Black Wolf of the Empire” began circulating as people became more absorbed into their fascination with the mysterious Streife knighthood, to which very few nobles had access to – with the exception, now, of the most important heir of Kaiserreich aristocracy.

“Selfish and unreliable”, the gentlemen would call him behind his and the Nurembergs’ backs, only to pause and flinch as soon as his qualifications were brought up – and with good reason.

It’s rather simple: in joining Streife, which is mostly made up of low-profiled individuals, the Nuremberg heir became part of a special unit which works directly under the Emperor. A position so close to the ruler renders one untouchable in the eyes of others, and while the Secret Police Force may not be revered as the Order of the Imperial Knights, no one is foolish enough to speak ill of the Emperor’s private army in public.

High Society has learnt to fear the black-clad Streife officers, “who walk amongst shadows and corpses”, and implicitly Nora von Nuremberg himself.

In this case, Shuri isn’t blind to how ridiculously advantageous a relationship with him would be for one in her situation. Right now, seeing how pushy her mother and the Neuschwanstein relatives have become, she doesn’t think that any man would do, like last time.

But someone of Nora von Nuremberg’s reputation?

She’d wager that just the mere rumor of being involved with him would send them running in the opposite direction.

And yet, before Shuri can get her hopes too high, the following questions come to her mind: what can she offer him in return? How can Shuri convince this man, who lacks for nothing, to help her?

For Nora von Nuremberg would be the most ideal “lover” for her, indeed. Saved for that one family scandal, his reputation is spotless: womanizing, drinking, conducting shady business – there’s not so much as one dirty rumor going around about him in High Society.

(What Gwen discovered about him oddly reminded her of Jeremy: engrossed into one’s personal affairs and work to the point of neglecting everything else, and never letting the world in. It would seem that both of them managed to avoid giving people something “sensational” to talk about in this way.)

So, on top of being the sole heir of a great family and a Streife, he possesses no known weaknesses that nobles can use against him – but should he become her lover, well, that would surely put a stain on his reputation that he won’t be able to wash off anytime soon in the foreseeable future.       

The more Shuri thinks of it from his perspective, the more disheartened she becomes. He would only have to lose from a partnership with her. No one in his place would be foolish enough to agree to such a thing.

“Should I leave?”

That moment on the balcony, where he deigned to show her a bit of consideration, was nothing more but courtesy in the end, and reading too much into it would lead her to premature judgements. Him coming to her rescue later on also doesn’t indicate much about his true nature, in her opinion; it could have been an act he put on, the mask he wears in society, for all she knows.

In the same vein, just because Gwen couldn’t find anything which suggests that he’s a bad man doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s a good man, either.

For God’s sake, he’s a Streife officer! Keeping a low profile and sweeping dirt under the rug are basically his life’s occupation. That alone should be understood as a warning sign to keep her distance from him-

The point is, Nora von Nuremberg is a bigger gamble than even Benjamin von Bayern – with the mention that in the latter’s case, Shuri at least has the power to set the rules of the game.

And just like this, she’s back to square one with both, trapped in a circle that spins on and on.

The marchioness puts down her papers as she comes to this mentally exhausting standstill. Then, while rising up from the chair to stand on her numb legs, Shuri finally decides to call it a night and return to her chambers.

It’ll sort itself out. She just has to believe that the answer will come to her naturally.

In the meantime, Shuri should probably just sleep on it – in the literal sense, more than anything.

She almost forgot that she scheduled a meeting with some of Johannes’s old contacts in the early morning, and two others afterwards with the dressmaker and the jeweler from the shopping district. Yes, Countess Bayern’s party is approaching-

And as she lies in her bed, Shuri wonders about how this esteemed old lady, with whom she coincidentally shares the same birth day, will be celebrated.

(The young woman is mercifully asleep before she can ask herself when was the last time that she has celebrated that day.)      

[Bayern Mansion, a few days later]

“I had Johannes’s old business partners sending me all sorts of letters recently, and all about you.”

Was it a threat, then? A warning for what was to come?

When Count Mueller brought up the former marquess’s associates during the fight, Shuri immediately wrote it off as a bluff. The things he told her certainly didn’t make any sense, since she’s been working for the longest time with them through messengers and letters, none of which gave her the impression that they were dissatisfied with her.

She hadn’t talked to them face-to-face in a while, though, which is why she tried to set up meetings with some of these associates at the Neuschwanstein estate.  

And they shot her down.

The audacity to stand her up on the very day of the meetings left the marchioness reeling. The people she was supposed to see were not just any workers for the Neuschwanstein family, after all, they were the contractual overseers of the Goslar mines.

Thus, for them to do such a thing sent one grave message across: they wanted to cut ties with the Neuschwansteins.

Shuri could have easily granted them that, and have them replaced right away, yet she stubbornly held out until they offered a proper reason. She felt that she was owed an explanation for the insult.

And the marchioness got what she asked for the following day, in the form of a short, sloppily-written letter, which boiled down to this: they refused to carry out business with “a woman who has little knowledge of how their world works”.    

It was preposterous, really. She has checked and rechecked several times the papers relating to the Goslar mines business; no misstep has been made on her part, and she hasn’t wronged anyone.

These people worked with her for years, and now, out of a sudden, they decided that they no longer wanted to be affiliated with their biggest source of income – because of her gender, of which they had been aware since the start of their partnership?

Her frustration aside, Shuri is sufficiently lucid to look past the flimsy excuse and spot the incongruencies. For some business collaborators to act difficult is not that surprising in general, but this borders on something else entirely.

She suspects foul play, and the ones behind it have more or less confessed to the crime before it even happened, apparently. Yet so many things about this incident rubs her off the wrong way.

How could Mueller and Lucrecia pull off something of this magnitude?

Did they somehow manage to buy off Johannes’s old partners? If so, then how, when neither have the resources? Their wealth is comparable to a fruit fly next to Shuri’s.

“This is how our world works.”

And how many unknown factors are at play in this?

Countless of possibilities run amok at full gallop inside Shuri’s head as she wanders aimlessly through the Great Hall of the Bayern Mansion. Her body meanders through the crowds on its own, passing by nobles she wouldn’t be bothered to acknowledge even at her most alert, let alone in such a state.

Besides, it doesn’t matter if she’s not paying attention. With Countess Bayern’s party being a more intimate and smaller affair than Prince Letran’s banquet, the Neuschwanstein children were not required to attend, which means that Shuri has no one to worry about here except for herself.

“Mingle, my dear, and enjoy yourself,” the host – Lady Bayern – urges with a hearty smile when Shuri shows up to present her gifts.

The marchioness murmurs an empty promise in response, for the sake of appearances and because she truly doesn’t want to become a cause of concern for this kind woman on such an occasion.

Then, she turns to the brown-haired, dull-eyed man at the countess’s side, allowing him to place a customary kiss on the back of her hand-

Shuri rubs at that very hand now as the memory of the uncomfortable encounter flashes through her, leaving behind a shudder to crawl up her spine.

She noted that Benjamin von Bayern went out of his way to prolong the contact as much as possible, and that his gaze bored into hers with a sort of intensity which was hard to misread when his lips touched the thin fabric of her glove.

Gwen was right.

Desperate as she might be, this is not the type of man Shuri would want to associate with.

Should I rejoice at having one problem crossed off the list, then?

She can’t think of an answer as the sardonic question skids across the edges of her forehead, pulsating alongside the incessant throbbing of her temples. It’s nothing to worry about, though – just the painful reminder of the frail state to which Shuri has been reduced in the span of a month.

The young widow has stretched her herself thinner with each passing day while trying to work out so many things at once. And on top of the administrative issues, delicate noble politics and insidious power plays she’s been forced to juggle with lately, Shuri has also had to navigate through the usual maze of misunderstandings inside her home.

She’s mostly angry with herself, to be honest, for allowing such an insignificant thing like what happened this morning to affect her.

Because Shuri knows that she can’t fully blame Captain Abington for the aversion he feels towards her unorthodox methods of keeping the estate safe.

She knows that, by refusing to explain their purpose from the start, she painted herself in the worst light, a portrait tilted askew which would be impossible to right after so much time – and expect it to miraculously change his opinion of her.

She knows that she is partially responsible for all of this, but-

Would it kill the man to show just a bit of compassion? To put himself in her shoes, for once?

Before leaving the estate today, she had to meet Captain Abington in her office for their weekly debriefing session. She sat there, half-dozing in her old chair, as the head knight dutifully gave his report, yet even in her drowsiness she couldn’t help notice the tension he brought along with him in the room.

Shuri had no time for subtleties, however, so she point-blank demanded that he told her whatever was on his mind.

“Nothing, my lady,” Alberon Abington murmurs, his perfunctory bow at odds with the insolent, defying glint in his eyes.

“I was just thinking about what happened a few days ago… After all, Master Johannes never fought with his business partners before. Your Ladyship haven’t told us much, either, but we assume that this won’t bode well for the Neuschwanstein House. Even the young master is worried…” 

Shuri squares her shoulders, miffed not so much with the words as with his disapproving tone. His judgement is put on display like one of his precious knightly decorations, and as always, this is what gets to her in the end.

The fact that he would immediately and unfailingly think her the root of the problem every time something went wrong.

“Is that so?” the marchioness quips, lifting a mocking eyebrow. “I didn’t know my knights had such ample interest in business practices. Had I known, I would have prepared you an instructor, captain, so you could help me out.”

A sharp intake of breath. A twitch of muscle near his jaw.

Alberon Abington’s bow dips lower as he admits defeat through gritted teeth. “It was not my place to question.”

It’s not quite an apology, but then, it’s probably the closest thing to one she can get from a man who would sooner swear off knighthood altogether than serve her truly.   

No matter. It’s not like he has ever pledged to be her knight.

(He was Jeremy’s, and he will never let her forget that – that she is the usurper who stole his young master’s place.)

“No, it was not. You may leave, captain. We are done for today.”

Her vision flickers in and out in the aftermath of the flashback, yet its contents are quickly forgotten as Shuri feels her head ready to split open and let leak out every ounce of wretchedness she has bottled up there until now.    

In hindsight, pulling so many all-nighters in a row – and before a ball, no less – without proper repose to make up for it could only lead Shuri to one end. Eventually, her sleep-deprived body had to find some way to alert her of her failing health.

Shuri can’t claim that she hasn’t anticipated the time of reckoning to arrive at some point, but she regardless kept postponing rest, confident that she wouldn’t collapse so soon.   

I just need to sit down for a few minutes. I’m just a little dizzy, I’ll be fine.

She’s grasping at strews, though, and her traitorous legs let her know as much – for without warning, they buckle right from underneath her.

Panic inevitably sets in, absolute and devastating in its immediacy, weaving dark cobwebs across her eyes and snuffing out any chance of moving in time to a safe place for the imminent fall-   

And then, all motion around her halts as Shuri is reared back by the waist into something sturdy and hot, and so incredibly foreign that it knocks the air straight out of her lungs. 

She blinks a few times, vision clearing up just enough for her to be able to recognize what is currently preventing her from getting intimately acquainted with the floors of the Bayern Mansion.  

There’s an open palm splayed over her abdomen, as strong and warm as the man’s body of which she is now cognizant of standing behind her.  

“… Lady Neuschwanstein!” the exclamation is curiously contained, barely audible – yet the voice is unmistakable.

Flabbergasted, Shuri simply continues to gawk down at the white-gloved hand and the forearm to which it’s attached as her lips move on their own accord to form a reply.

“Lord Nuremberg,” hers is an absentminded acknowledgement.

Luckily, within the short interval in which she is being held still, the vertigo sensation gradually dissipates, and it turns out that she has been correct about her self-given diagnose; this isn’t anything too serious that would require medical attention, just some dizziness due to lack of sleep, which will pass in a matter of minutes with some rest-     

Something which should be done in a place specifically arranged for that purpose, like one of the nearby tables, not in somebody’s arms.

Before long, Shuri becomes acutely aware of her compromising position – and so, in her haste to save face, she casually tries to walk off her near fainting accident.

“Careful-”

A gentle resistance meets her efforts to escape; the palm spread out over her midriff doesn’t budge, its heat seeping through her dress as steadily as that of a midsummer’s afternoon.   

“I’m fine!” the marchioness squeaks out, unnecessarily flustered.

A fraught pause, followed by a sigh that skims the shell of her ear in quiet acquiescence. Shuri trembles a little at the sensation, but doesn’t linger much on it as the relief of being set free finally washes over her.

As soon as the man withdraws from her, Shuri carefully spins around to talk to him properly.

“Once again coming to my rescue, my lord,” she points out nonchalantly, as though commenting on the weather.  

For someone who has been on the verge of flailing like a dying fish just a few moments prior, the marchioness privately marvels at her ease to play it off. She’s acting so composed now that she can’t help but wonder: how did she get a hold on herself so fast?

But it must be the sight of his maskless face that shoved the incident at the back of her head, surprise overwriting embarrassment so she could offer this twist of events her full attention.

“Lady Neuschwanstein,” he rasps while Shuri takes him in. “Are you alright?”

Standing before her in a plain attire that would sooner fit a butler, Nora von Nuremberg looks so much younger than she anticipated – something which she completely failed to notice during their last encounter.  

Small visage, high cheekbones, a sharp jaw – one would almost be tempted to describe him as delicate were it not for his impressive, broad-shouldered build.

(Unobstructed, his eyes are even more stunning.)

“Ah, that. I must have stumbled a little,” behind Shuri’s placid smile, the lie rolls off her tongue as naturally as breathing. “I do tend to get distracted by my thoughts. It’s a bad habit of mine, I’m afraid.”

Just then, an undecipherable emotion flickers in those blue depths of his, putting a prompt end to her examination. Her gaze drops to the collar of his shirt, so as to avert his own.

He doesn’t believe her, and that’s a realization that makes her nervous, because she has a feeling that Nora von Nuremberg isn’t the type of man who takes kindly to being lied to. 

“You should sit down, then. In my experience, pacing doesn’t get you the answer to what you’re thinking about quicker.”

He’s playing along?

And just like that, her eyes flit back up to his. “Oh, yes, I should…”

The Nuremberg heir raises an eyebrow at her uncertain response, but before Shuri can rush to elaborate, he offers a tentative, “Shall we?”, and a nod to their left, gesturing towards a recently-deserted corner where some vacant tables and chairs can be seen cluttered together.

Having no reason to decline, she takes him up on his offer, and without further ado they stride over to the decided place.

However, no sooner does the young man have her seated than he marches off to an unknown destination, leaving her behind with only a curt promise, “Wait here, please. I’ll be back soon.”

Everything unfolds too rapidly for Shuri to keep up with him, so she has no other choice but to comply and stay put until he returns.

Truthfully, the marchioness doesn’t mind it. She might as well use his absence as an opportunity to get a grip on her rampant emotions and pull herself together.

First, she focuses on regulating her breathing, the speed of her heartbeat. Then, she pinches the skin of her arm, to chase away the remnants of her dizziness. And she checks her appearance afterwards, to the best of her ability without a mirror at hand, to make sure she is still presentable.

Finally, she closes her eyes, drowning out the sound, willing the headache to subside-

A glass of water is presented to her when she opens them again.       

“Oh!” the pink-haired widow says, ever-so-eloquent, as she looks back and forth between the glass and the one who brought it before her.

They ultimately settle on the latter, though, at which point Shuri realizes that gaping is not exactly the polite thing one should do when being offered something.

“Thank you,” she blurts out, belatedly, while accepting the water with an embarrassed flush.

But Nora von Nuremberg just continues to stare at her, expectant. Towering on his feet akin to some tall, mighty tree as he waits for something Shuri can’t even begin to guess. Too tired to proceed with an interrogation, she shrugs it off, ignoring him in favor of focusing on her drink.

She gulps down a few mouthfuls of water, and then, without any sort of preamble-

“I do apologize for all of this, Lord Nuremberg. I really didn’t mean to cause a scene.”

The young man eventually lowers himself into the chair across from hers – but only after Shuri’s half-empty glass is placed atop the table.

“Actually,” she starts fumbling when he remains silent, “I should best be going right now, as I have troubled you-”  

The marchioness is swiftly cut off before she can finish her sentence, however. “Do that, my lady, and you will keep me ‘troubled’ for the rest of the night – just with worry of what might happen to you, instead.”

Not sure how to interpret his words, the pink-haired woman turns her attention to her glass, fiddling it in a nervous gesture. “I’ve disturbed you enough,” she insists, and means it.

Shuri’s displeasure at her own conduct aside, what bothers her the most is that she somehow managed to drag the same person into her messes twice.

Yet the man from across her seems to view the matter in another light. “What ‘disturbs’ me, my lady,” he corrects on a careful tone, “is the fact that I found you on the verge of passing out with no one around to help you.”

Shuri’s mouth falls open at his revelation, and no amount of social training can keep at bay the shock that flashes across her features.

How could he tell so easily? Was it some random guess – or is her state truly that obvious to others?

“I know that it’s not my place to get involved,” the dark-haired man carries on, hesitance now bleeding through his voice, “and that I might be forgetting myself when I say this, but I must insist on this…”

In the meantime, he has crossed his arms at his chest defensively, as if seeking to protect himself against her, his grip so tense that Shuri fears he might snap a muscle by accident.

Seeing him like this only adds to her confusion. What, in the name of God, would a Streife member and reputed knight find so intimidating about her?

“If you find yourself in need of urgent assistance, you should tell somebody – you can tell me.”

A crossroads, then.

Finding herself curiously unsurprised with the supplication, Shuri actually considers it instead of shutting him out right away, as she normally would any other person who might come forth with such a daring proposal.

(It makes sense when she thinks about it.)

Years spent navigating a treacherous society like the one into which Shuri has been forced to live inevitably, and irreparably, crippled her ability to trust in people. As a result, she’s developed a self-defense mechanism over time, meant to push others away the instant it senses them encroaching too close for comfort, and this is how she survived so far.

Yet faced with this man’s unapologetically blunt manner of being, it can’t help but stutter, unused to dealing with a noble who seems to speak his mind so openly just by virtue of having a personality of this kind.      

And then, there is the matter of his earnestness – this is what brings Shuri up short, in the end, and that which makes her waver.  

Features devoid of any shadow of doubt, Nora von Nuremberg’s expression looks as clear and pure as the next mountain river a shepherd might stumble upon while taking his sheep out for grazing. She can’t detect anything sinister across his surface, and there’s not one hint of hidden intent in his words, either.  

She is certain, though, that his reasons for doing all of this must be laying somewhere at the bottom of its waters, concealed by unknown depths which refuse to allow Shuri a glimpse inside.     

Should she try to cross the river, regardless?

Or rather, can she afford not taking this precious chance, and remain stranded, instead, on one side of the riverbank for who-knows-how-long until another opportunity presents itself?

But it’s not real desperation that fuels the marchioness’s overthinking now; it’s marvel, pure and simple, over an incredible stroke of luck which she hasn’t encountered in a while, and which is therefore bound to trigger some alarm.

It hasn’t been that long since Shuri has locked herself up in her office, wasting away half a night to rack her brains about the Nuremberg heir and her hopeless circumstances – and now here he stands, advising that she should ask for his aid. Offering himself up to her on a silver platter.  

What do I have to lose?

A bolt of determination suddenly strikes her, and Shuri grabs onto that empowering feeling for all she's worth before it can slip her by.

That’s right, Shuri truly has nothing to lose here. The worst that can happen is that he will turn her down, and even in that case, she imagines that rejection will upset her far less than regret over a squandered opportunity will.

“To tell the truth, there is something that I might need your help with, my lord… but I’m afraid it will scare you off.”

Shuri’s voice doesn’t come across as coy, or bashful, when she says this; she’s as firm as the ruthless marchioness she has always pretended to be – and she stays that way even as Nora von Nuremberg, noble heir and notorious powerful man, tilts his head to the side to regard her dubiously.

“I’m Streife, Lady Neuschwanstein. I’m fairly sure that I have fared against scarier things, no matter what is it that you’re going to ask for.” 

They’re looking each other directly in the eyes now, gazes alike in strength and intensity in spite of the two different clashing hues.

Neither folding before the other, they almost feel evenly matched to Shuri, and this only urges her onwards, doubling her resolve as she boldly suggests, “Alright, then. In that case, would you mind dropping by my estate tomorrow? There’s something I must discuss with you at your earliest convenience, my lord.”

And as though a silent, mutual understanding has already been established between them, the Nuremberg heir doesn’t stop to think twice before nodding his assent.

“Give me the hour, and I will be there.”

Chapter Text

Chapter II

x

You know I'm gonna find a way
To let you have your way with me.

x

find a way

[Year 1120, Neuschwanstein estate]

“Honestly, there’s no need to be this nervous…”

And if Gwen or Roberto were here with her, inside her study, they would surely advice the same, just as they have done once already before they left to fetch her guest. On their way out, she couldn’t help but notice that they were brimming with a sort of confidence she could not quite grasp, their expressions carefree and their gait light.

Earlier, they caught her hunched over her desk as she is now, shoulders squared and hands so tightly interwoven that her bones threaten to ache, and tried to soothe her, but all that their efforts managed to accomplish was confusing her further.  

Then again, with all the fretting she’s been doing since this morning, it hasn’t occurred to her to simply ask them why only she appears to be worried about the prospect of having Nora von Nuremberg on their premises.

Shuri deeply regrets her lack of foresight now, yet at the same time is able to make an educated guess on her own.

Currently, save for her, not one person carrying the last name of Neuschwanstein may be found around the estate. The children have all gone out to see about their business. Shuri has checked, then double-checked (and triple-checked just in case), memorizing their plans for today by heart and by approximate hours.

Roberto and Gwen, who helped her with the information, are also aware of it.

Be that as it may, in her experience, her golden lions have always had a knack for being unpredictable at the most inopportune times, so if one should decide to return home earlier by chance, Shuri wouldn’t be surprised at all. In fact, given her luck, she might as well start praying that it just wouldn’t be Jeremy, because that would honestly be the worst thing to happen to her.

“Or, well, I suppose it would be the worst if they all came back at the same time…” Shuri mutters unconsciously while picking at the creases of her wooden desk with her nails.

The picture that her mind’s eye instantly conjures in response is so powerful that it makes her temples throb, and like an oracle struck by an overwhelming vision, Shuri screws her eyes shut in order to chase off the disconcerting scenario.

Before she can attempt to rub away the pain with her fingers, though, a loud noise from outside the study freezes her hands in place. Two knocks ring out hollowly in the silence, in quick succession.

“Marchioness Neuschwanstein, may I enter?”

The unmistakable male voice immediately summons the person to whom it belongs behind her eyelids. Shuri opens her eyes then, a quiet exhale escaping her as she finally answers, “You may enter, Lord Nuremberg. I’ve been expecting you.” 

Twice Shuri has laid her gaze on Nora von Nuremberg during these past few weeks, yet in spite of that, this third encounter with him oddly feels like the first time all over again – arresting and intimidating. Which makes sense, to a certain extent.

The man in front of her is supposed to be arresting and intimidating – physically speaking, even more so in broad daylight. Akin to a patch of blackness seemingly ripped from the night sky itself, he darkens the bright interior of her office with his presence alone, the Streife uniform he wears standing out like a sore thumb.   

But thankfully, as it also was the case with their previous meetings, that unapproachable air about him evaporates a little as soon as he starts speaking.

“Are you feeling better now?”

Shuri blinks at the question he flings at her once he’s seated and their eyes lock over the desk. For a few seconds, she is not even sure about what he could be possibly talking about – before the cogwheels of her memory begin to turn, bringing forth the recollection of yesterday’s events.

They cut through the haze of confusion like a blade, and the embarrassment bleeding through is nearly enough to make her wince.

“Oh, that,” Shuri says, feigning nonchalance. “I’m perfectly fine now, thank you. I also hope you’re in good health, my lord.”

The Streife member nods at her – then proceeds to stare at her mutely, waiting for something which isn’t too difficult to figure out, considering the circumstances.

Although not necessarily impatient, clearly, he must be curious as to the reason for why he’s been called to the Neuschwanstein estate on such short notice. Shuri can’t blame him for that. Frankly, she still has trouble believing her own eyes that he actually came in the first place.

Regardless of that, though, decorum must be respected. With that in mind, Shuri clears her throat and tries to get down to business with a minimal display of courtesy. “Then, before we start, how about some tea?”

The Nuremberg heir looks like he’s about to offer another nod of assent, only to hold back in the last moment. Shuri glimpses the barest sign of hesitation on his face as he politely inquires, “… May I have some coffee instead?” 

Oh.

Nora von Nuremberg prefers coffee over tea.

Shuri doesn’t know why, but she has the strangest impulse to grab this innocuous piece of information and carefully file it away for later, as if she’s just been entrusted with a clue deemed vital to the solving of some great mystery.

“Oh, of course!”

It takes a while for the knights who are posted outside her doors to go to the kitchens and relay her orders, but all things considered, Roberto and Gwen make it back to her in record time. As they enter her study, she notices that they are both still all pleasant smiles, not a hint of apprehension about them while they serve the young nobleman his coffee.

The particular way in which her guest scans them also doesn’t escape her notice, how he takes in every movement and gesture with a single, inconspicuous once-over. It happens so fast that it has Shuri questioning her vision at first. Then, as soon as it’s over, understanding dawns on her.

There’s nothing wrong with a person paying attention to their surroundings, but somehow the marchioness hasn’t expected him to be so… detached about it. So clinically guarded. In the few measly seconds he deigned to allot them, he assessed her aides as though they were something less than people, and at the same time something more than mere workers carrying out their tasks.

All the while, he’s been conversing with Roberto and Gwen with due politeness, thanking them for their services. The contrast was jarring, to say the least, and it’s clear to Shuri that her most trusted servants haven’t felt a thing throughout his inspection.

Streife, the reminder echoes within her head. A warning.

I can handle it, Shuri shoots back, seeking to nip her doubts in the bud.

And to prove herself a point, she cuts straight to the heart of the matter the minute Roberto and Gwen are out of the room.

Shuri hasn’t come up with that grand of a speech to convince Nora von Nuremberg to help her.

She hasn’t exactly had the time to devise one, since she opted to rest after Lady Bayern’s party. And when she woke up this morning, at the crack of dawn, to mull over the issue, she came to the conclusion that there would be no point in making one either.

The man for whom she’s had to prepare her arguments certainly didn’t appear the type to appreciate such a thing. Perhaps too hastily, she has decided to present her case according to what Nora might like to hear from her, not any other common nobleman, based on the limited knowledge she’s gathered about his personality.

Short and to the point. Excuses, fibs or lies are out of the question. Her gamble is on the bare truth, although she is loath to share all the sordid details about her situation, such as those related to her mother’s visit, for instance.

Which shouldn’t matter much, since Shuri hardly thinks that such sensitive information will have to be sacrificed for the occasion. She just has to give enough to sell her desperation to him, that’s all. And that should be easy enough to accomplish.  

Without a preamble, she tells him about her past. Tells him, on the whole, what her scheme had entailed before with her former two ‘lovers’. Tells him about the contracts while providing him with the proof, the old papers bearing the men’s signatures.

And contrary to her fears, Nora von Nuremberg listens, his expression becoming more and more intrigued with each word. From utter disgust to outright indifference, Shuri has braced herself for everything in between them. That she would end up piquing his interest instead, this she hasn’t even dared hope.

Taking it as a good sign, she finally musters the courage to deliver the last part of her story: what, exactly, has pushed her to this point – and it’s right here when she gets the impression that she has lost her hold on him.

Shuri fancies that she can read it in his eyes, which narrow and shutter at the words 'my mother'. In the scowl that suddenly drags the corner of his mouth downwards when she alludes to her strained relationship with the Neuschwanstein relatives.  

Upon sensing this change in him, the marchioness can’t help but make a last-ditch effort in order to defend her actions, “I know that it was not exactly a… morally acceptable thing to do, but it was the only thing I could think of at the time. I’m sure that both my mother and the extended family had no intention to harm me with their plans for personal reasons, but-”

“That’s not,” the duke’s son smoothly intervenes, “what bothers me, my lady. Rest assured, as far as I’m concerned, you did what you had to do. I would have probably done far more dishonorable things to protect myself if I had been in your shoes.”

“… I see,” Shuri answers him stiffly.

And it’s probably the first true lie that she tells him throughout this meeting, because he is displeased, and she can’t understand what else could have dampened his mood if not her having made enemies out of her own family, biological and non-biological alike.

“My apologies, you just seemed… disappointed,” she probes, as diplomatically as she can. “I thought that perhaps it made you uncomfortable to know that I had issues of such nature.”

“Of course, that I’m uncomfortable,” the Nuremberg heir agrees straight away. “You’ve just confessed to me that the most important adults in your life have all tried to prey on you in some way or another since you were sixteen, for their own selfish purposes. ‘Uncomfortable’ does not quite begin to cover how I feel about this.”

“Oh, uhm… that’s...”

While Shuri scrambles to gather her wits about her, which have all but fled her following his remark, her tongue struggles uselessly inside her mouth to articulate an adequate response.

He probably hasn’t meant to, but unbeknownst to the Streife agent seated across her, his words have completely thrown her off. Aside from the fact that they hit too close to home for comfort, Shuri is not used to having someone approve of her methods or sympathize with her in such an open and direct manner.

Prey on me?

No one, as far as she can recall, has ever referred to her situation using such terms. 

However, if by some miracle she manages to get this man on her side, she might as well endeavor to get accustomed to his bluntness – and perhaps to match him step for step as well in the process.

“I’m not trying to portray myself as some suffering saint by telling you this, my lord,” Shuri replies, equally candid. “I’m simply doing what needs to be done, which is why someone of your reputation would be of great help to someone in my situation.”       

“I understand. You need a lover in a position of power to scare everyone away,” Nora von Nuremberg summarizes. Then, pausing to tilt his head to the side and capture her gaze with his own–

“And you want me.”

It’s a type of phrasing that admittedly flusters Shuri more than it should, even though the serious, intense look in his eyes reassures her that he is only questioning her resolve. Accidental innuendo aside, he appears rather skeptical, and it takes everything in her not to read too much into it.

However, if he is doubting her ability to follow through with her own plan because he fears that she can’t handle him, or something along these lines, she might as well settle the matter here and now.

“Yes,” Shuri declares firmly. “My only problem regarding this arrangement is that I don’t think that there’s anything that I can give you in return. Money, titles… you don’t lack for these. So, in the end, I’m afraid that this may turn into the kind of favor which I will not be able to repay.”

“That’s not true,” the duke’s son surprises her once more, as he crosses his arms protectively over his chest. “As it were, I’ve been dealing with a similar sort of pressure. The elders in my family keep badgering me about marriage despite making myself clear that I have no interest in such things. So, you see, we’ll be helping each other if you want to pursue this with me.”

The unexpected confession sends an overwhelming rush of relief right through her, and for a moment, Shuri completely forgets herself. Forgets that she should not allow her eyes to fill up with shining hope, nor her lips to tug up in such carefree, innocent gratitude.

Without a care about the appearance that she has worked so hard to maintain in front of her guest since the beginning of their acquaintanceship, the Iron Widow vanishes into thin air.   

The young marchioness can’t help it; after all, the one hurdle which has troubled her the most whilst considering this man’s suitability has turned out not to be an issue in the least.

Having nothing tangible to negotiate with, her greatest fear has been to make a fool of herself. But if what he says is true, and he does have something to benefit from a deal with her, that means she stands a real chance at pulling this off!

In her joy, she makes to lean forward, towards him – only to belatedly become conscious, mid-motion, of her improper conduct.     

Slowly, silently, Shuri adjusts her position in her chair, then clears her throat.

“Well, I must say, I’m relieved to hear this,” she doesn’t dare so much as peek at Nora von Nuremberg’s visage as she says this. Her sense of awkwardness simply wouldn’t let her.

Desperate to steer the attention away from her, however, she ends up blurting out, “Then I take it that it has become a common thing among you, young men, these days? My stepson, too, has intimated a similar view on marriage. Perhaps, that’s why he is not in any hurry to marry. He hasn’t been very pleased with being engaged so early, either…”

She trails off, mood inevitably soured at the thought of Jeremy, and getting only worse from there when she realizes that she’s made another mistake by shoving him into her conversation with the Nuremberg heir.

To her utter shock, though, her guest – Jeremy’s rival, she must not forget – doesn’t react in any hostile way.

On the contrary, he sounds as though he’s empathizing as he explains himself in a vaguely tentative tone, “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how Jeremy von Neuschwanstein views the issue. But speaking for myself and from my own personal experience, I can tell you that I never enjoyed being forced into doing anything against my will, even if it was supposed to be for the sake of my family. An arranged marriage against my will is significantly worse for me since it’s binding in a way that cannot be easily undone.”

Once again, the young man before her delivers his opinion with an unflinching kind of honesty.

Yet unfortunately for Shuri, this time it doesn’t inspire anything remotely close to the realm of pleasant surprise. In fact, it feels more like a blow to the gut than anything else, one that accidentally strikes something deep within her, causing her to zero in on the perceived damage with unrelenting focus.

It’s something which has been sitting there for a while, she recognizes. Quietly hidden away in the dark recesses of her soul, a Pandora box-shaped piece of knowledge begging to be pried open.

Unable to resist, Shuri gives into temptation. And it’s all that’s needed, really, for the unleashed guilt to come rushing forth, threatening to drag her under while she reflects on what Nora von Nuremberg has said.  

Because his depiction of marriage isn’t exactly that off the mark, is it? It’s another way to put it, she supposes, and a decidedly pessimistic one at that, but it’s far from an unrealistic view on it.

‘Binding in a way that cannot be easily undone.’

He has called marriage a prison in all but name. Or a shackle of some sort. For better or for worse, she can easily imagine Jeremy sharing the sentiment. After all, she has witnessed first-hand his reaction to being engaged to Ohara ‘behind his back’, to quote his accusation word-for-word, and it would be a lie to claim that the memory of it doesn’t haunt her still.    

About two years ago, she noticed that Jeremy had started to thaw a little around her. Not that there was a significant change by any stretch of imagination, but he did stop acting as icily cold to her following his coming-of-age party, for some reason he never cared to reveal to her.

They even fell into the habit of greeting each other properly after his seventeenth birthday, around the time when Shuri began to spend more time alone with him in order to prepare him for his duties as future marquess. To teach him things about his role that his other teachers couldn’t.

But then, during the same summer in which she drew up the marriage contract with Duke Heinrich, their relationship abruptly took a turn for the worst. After finding out about his engagement, he went back to giving her the cold shoulder, frostier than ever. He knew it was coming. Everyone knew it was coming.

All the same, when it actually happened, Jeremy recoiled from it – and from Shuri, who did nothing more than fulfill the command of his late father. 

The incident had severed something between them, that much was clear right away even to her.

Yet even though Shuri could ascertain, in theory, the cause at the time, it never occurred to her to put herself in Jeremy’s shoes and try to see things from his angle. Too eager and stressed to get his marriage over with, she never once attempted to understand why it upset him so much, writing it off as a matter of pride or whim.

‘… An arranged marriage against my will…’

The situation certainly sounds familiar to Shuri, though. Like an old song she’s already heard once playing before in her life. Recognizing it now, it immediately poses a question that leaves room for one single, devastating answer.

How could she have done this to Jeremy without consulting him first, against his will?

She, of all people, forcing on another what was forced once upon herself.

Because the truth is, all Shuri would have had to do back then, for Jeremy’s sake as much as hers, was to ask herself first: How did I feel when my mother and father forced me to marry Johannes?

“… Marchioness Neuschwanstein, are you alright? You’ve turned a bit pale – I apologize if I said something to upset you, that wasn’t my intention at all.”

Ruinous train of thought abruptly halted, Shuri is anchored to the present by the very same voice that unwittingly sent it into motion in the first place. She starts, as though suddenly yanked back into consciousness from the cold grip of a terrible nightmare.

When she tries to refocus on the source of it, though, what she finds flusters her even more – for right before her sits an oddly concerned Nora von Nuremberg, who’s hunching forward into his chair akin to a soldier prepared for an attack.

Or, more likely, prepared for another dramatic motion on her part that would require him to spring into action. She did, after all, nearly fainted on him the last time they saw each other.

Pushing down her jumbled emotions with a swallow, Shuri favors him with a tight smile.

“It’s alright, my lord! You needn’t worry so much. My strange behavior today has likely more to do with my poor night’s sleep rather than what you said. It appears that I have not quite recovered fully, as I previously thought.”  

She is well aware that she’s at fault here. Shuri should have known better than letting her thoughts wander in the presence of such an important guest – and during a private, one-on-one meeting, no less.

But then, she hasn’t entertained the possibility of her own mind turning against her like this. And now that Jeremy has been brought up, her traitorous heart all but drags the idea of him at the surface, toying with musings about his reaction to all of this.

Their other conflicts and arguments aside, there’s no doubt that achieving her current objective might very well be the final nail to the coffin of their relationship. The blonde knight barely tolerates her as is it; she can’t even envision how worse off they’ll be after she shows up on the arm of his rival in public.

He’ll never forgive her for it.

Shuri gulps again, realization sliding down her throat like a handful of glass shards.

Words of reassurance bleed out of her mouth as she nonetheless carries on with the negotiations, “In any case, the blame lies with me. It would seem that I have forgotten myself by asking such personal questions of you out of nowhere. I have overstepped, and for that I must apologize… Now, I think we had best return to the matter at hand, yes?”

To her relief, the Streife member acquiesces at once, taking initiative with unexpected swiftness, “Of course, Lady Neuschwanstein. Then, since we are in agreement, shall we proceed with the contract? Would my signature suffice? Or would you prefer a vow as well?”  

A signed contract – and a vow? Lips slightly parted in disbelief, Shuri gapes as Duke Nuremberg’s son slowly pushes himself up to stand, his gloved hand unhesitatingly reaching for the hilt of the sword sheathed at his waist.

“No, that’s not- there’s no need to…”, the marchioness begins to sputter, only to trail off upon seeing his puzzled expression.

It probably mirrors her own as she flounders before him with no explanation whatsoever. That this is just a gesture of good will on his part catches up with her only a few heartbeats later, and the possibility that this is not part of some scheme to make her feel compelled to repay him leaves her at a loss of what to do next.

“… What I mean is, I think I can trust in you, Lord Nuremberg. Your word is more than enough for me, for now, since we haven’t even discussed your terms yet.”

The reply was meant to be one made for the sake of prudence, yet Shuri is struck by how much she means it. For some reason, she genuinely wants him to be the kind of honorable man that wouldn’t need to be bound by a piece of paper to do right by her, as an ally. She has already learnt her lesson when it comes to blind trust, though.

I’ll have his signature soon enough, Shuri promises herself. There’s just no need to rush into things.

Still standing up, and looking even more confused than before, the young man echoes incredulously, “… My terms?”

“Surely, you must have some conditions of your own?” Shuri clarifies.

No sooner does he open his mouth, presumably to protest, than he closes it back just as quickly, apparently changing his mind.

“You’re right,” he concedes, after a minute of utter silence. “I do have some conditions. It’s not something you would probably expect, but whatever this relationship will entail, whatever you want from me…”

He cuts himself off, as though he’s struggling to search for the proper words.

In the meantime, the pink-haired woman unconsciously braces herself, leaning forward over her desk while hanging on to his every communication attempt in anticipation of what he’ll require of her.

“My first condition is that you will not, under no circumstance, put yourself in a situation where you can be harmed or slandered. Especially in the cases where it might have something to do with me. I hardly think that our relationship will be welcomed by anyone in High Society, and I, like yourself, am not very much… liked.”

There’s a small, skeptical pause puncturing his speech towards the end, when he compares himself to her, but that’s not quite what causes Shuri to slightly reel back in her seat.

The Nuremberg heir must have easily read the bewilderment littering her face, though, for he doesn’t hesitate to expound on it.

“If you are to be my lover, I will not stand for it. I will not sit idly by when someone is trying to hurt you, physically or verbally. So please, don’t try to stop me if I fight back against it. I know you can handle yourself – and them – just fine. You’ve managed so far on your own, after all. But I’m afraid I will not be able to follow according to your strategies in this matter.”

And for the first time since they’ve been thrown together, the duke’s son shakes off, at last, that reticent, if not outright meek façade, which he’s always made sure to maintain in her presence until now. She has noticed his constant efforts to treat her as carefully as possible in their previous encounters, as if she was made of breakable glass, yet failed to decipher the incentive behind them.

If she had to guess, it could be because he doesn’t want to scare her. However, that in itself would complicate her perception of him beyond manageable proportions, and at the moment Shuri doesn’t know what to do with another puzzle piece within the ever-growing enigma that Nora von Nuremberg has become to her.

“It’s not an unreasonable condition,” the marchioness admits, trying to pay heed more to the request itself and less to the mystifying man who has issued it. “However, I’m not certain that I can promise you anything. I can only promise you that I’ll endeavor to fulfill it to the best of my abilities when – if – we find ourselves in a situation like the one you’ve presented to me… But apart from this, is there anything else you’d like to add, Lord Nuremberg?”

“… Nora.”

To the curt, softly-spoken reply, Shuri cannot give any outward reaction. A thin veil of quietness falls between them as she stares ahead, at him, incomprehensively.

For a second there, she thinks she has misheard him – when the Streife member deigns to repeat himself. “Nora,” he says with a casual shrug. “I’d rather you just called me Nora, my lady. Or Nuremberg if you’re more comfortable with that.”

Nuremberg, Shuri dares address him in the privacy of her mind, only to wince inwardly at the inappropriateness of it.

She remembers hearing some people calling him that in the past, usually on a dismissive or hostile tone. People like Jeremy, who would be discourteous on purpose while talking about him, to better get across their personal dislike of him. But to Shuri it feels simply wrong to use his family name alone, as though he hasn’t proved himself to be so much more beyond that.

‘Sir Nuremberg’ would be the more adequate option, she reckons, but then, she distinctly recalls his uncomfortable reaction to her referring to him as a knight during Prince Letran’s birthday party.

Besides…

“Alright, then… Nora. I think I can do that much for you, at the very least.”

As she lets it fall from her lips with stunning ease, Shuri discovers that she simply cannot deny the lyrical beauty of his given name.  

When (not quite) all is said and done, she manages to schedule their next rendezvous before he’s out her doors.

She proposes a small, relatively unknown coffeehouse for the place of their ‘first date’, as opposed to the popular teahouses where she used to bring her previous ‘lovers’.

That is in part because now she knows that Nora likes coffee – a detail which she’s become inexplicably fixated on –, but also because she suspects they will need time to familiarize themselves with one another a little before they make their appearance as a couple at more official events.

And she’s right on her money with her suspicions. Shuri concludes as much throughout the progression of their next appointment, which takes place a few days later after his visit at the Neuschwanstein estate.

It’s not that they can’t get on with one another, or that they lack things to bond over.

No, oddly enough, incompatibility with him is not the issue at all. On the contrary, as she watches Nora drink his (sweetened!) coffee over the tiny table that they share, it strikes her right then and there that she could probably talk with him for hours and still not run out of topics to discuss together.

He unknowingly brings out of her a refreshing kind of curiosity and wonder, something which decidedly wasn’t the case with the other two men she’s contracted before.

While the young, rich upstart, Joseph, and the older mercenary she’s hired, Gunther, were both people with whom she generally got along, their private meetings had clear business purposes, revolving strictly around means of planning, payment and dates.

There wasn’t any emotional preparation needed beforehand with them, mostly because they had more dating experience than her, and showed no reservation regarding how to act with a woman on their arms – unlike Nora von Nuremberg, who freezes in place as soon as her fingers graze the fabric of his jacket in her innocent attempt to grab his attention.

A small bird has just flown inside the coffeeshop, through one of the opened windows behind him, and in a sudden bout of childish excitement, Shuri intended to show it to him before it disappeared from view. But such flimsy intentions flee her mind faster than even the bird speeds off, when her date suddenly whips his head towards her, allowing her a glimpse of his startled eyes.

Needless to say, never in her life could she have foreseen that this man – young, rich and exceptional all around – hasn’t had a lick of experience in matters concerning the heart. Even though Gwen mentioned at one point that she couldn’t find anything indicating that he’s been involved in a romantic entanglement, the marchioness assumed that meant he was just more careful than most.

(That perhaps he’s had some relationships of the unofficial kind.)

Apparently, she has been grossly mistaken. He has never pursued anyone, in any manner, and the blank expression which greets her when she tentatively asks him about it nearly sends her over the edge of hysterics, for she has encountered a similar reaction to such a question somewhere else before, although she unfortunately cannot let him know that.

(She can’t help but privately wonder, though, about how it is that he and Jeremy have ended up becoming enemies instead of friends when they’re so disturbingly alike in some ways.)

The duke’s son is quick to reassure her, however, that this won’t pose a problem for their arrangement, claiming that she’s only caught him off-guard. He didn’t want to presume about what he was allowed to do, in physical terms, certainly not without her explicit, verbal permission – a blunt response which, in turn, takes her by surprise.

Joseph has been something of a slick ladies’ man; not the dangerous kind, yet frequently toying the line of property, in her opinion, with his penchant for teasing and impertinent remarks. He needed to be constantly reminded of her boundaries, the emotional ones more so than the physical ones. But what truly irked her about him was the fact that he obviously didn’t take her seriously.

“While stalling for time like this, I’ll make sure to secure my place in this household.”

“If you want to do that, you’d have to give up that gentle nature of yours.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Gunther, on the other hand, has been troubled by the idea of playing the role of the lover with someone not only very young, from his perspective, but who also apparently reminded him of his little brother. The only reason he accepted the job was due to desperation; he needed money, no matter how queasy the means to get it made him feel.

At the very least, though, unlike Joseph, he’s been upfront from the start about the fact that he viewed her as someone more naïve than him, as a child who needed guidance, hence why she didn’t fault him half as much for steering clear from physical contact, or for treating her akin to a younger sibling rather than a woman during their dealings.

Thankfully, they’ve managed to spin that problem around, using his reserved conduct with her to paint him as a more mildly-mannered gentleman. It’s not like anyone suspected him to be a mercenary, anyways. Dressed in more expensive clothes, he could pass off as an older, vaguely wealthy nobleman – the perfect prey for the notorious Iron Widow.

The Streife agent who sits parallel to her now, with his arm still willingly caught under her hand, isn’t quite like either of these two. There’s nothing patronizing about him as he patiently waits for her orders, and he’s already proved to Shuri that he can put his foot down anytime he feels like it’s necessary for him to do so.

He acknowledges that they’re supposed to be on an equal standing in this – actual partners – and acts like it. But there are still power dynamics at play between them to consider, even though she’d very much prefer to pretend that they don’t matter.

“You are not comfortable with this,” she tells him, gesturing at the place where they’re joined.

It’s a statement disguised as a question. A test. Of boundaries, of trust.

Or so she believes, up until the point where Nora von Nuremberg slowly tips closer over his empty coffee cup, and counters her with a delicate, “Are you comfortable with this?”

He pointedly looks down at the hand she has laid on him, inviting her to do the same. If he hadn’t done it, Shuri wouldn’t have noticed that her fingers have started trembling, clutching at his jacket ever-so-slightly.

Strange.

She’s not afraid of him. She knows she’s not. But maybe – just maybe – he is not the one who is not ready for this, and he’s figured out that truth long before she did.

If that’s the case, there’s no point in attempting to lie to him, nor to herself, about what they both need.

“I think,” the marchioness declares, as she finally removes her appendage off him, “that we should take this a little more slowly, if it’s alright with you. Would you care to go with me on another date soon? Preferably somewhere less… stifling?”

She lifts her chin, green eyes seeking his blue ones, and is not disappointed to find them already settled on her. They’re less indecipherable than they were a moment ago, softened at the corners by something closely resembling sympathy as Nora nods in understanding.

“I know a place.”

To her mild surprise, the location that Nora has in mind turns out to be the outskirts of the shopping district.

Which – she must give credit where credit is due – does feel less stifling than some enclosed café or teahouse, in spite of the throngs of people milling about on the sunny Saturday they decide to go there. A festivity of some kind is being held on the same day, with nothing too grand to showcase, yet enjoyable all the same in its simplicity.

However, as Nora expertly escorts her through the crowds akin to some official guide, singling out the attractions with ease and showing them to her, she can’t help but notice his evident familiarity with their surroundings.

“You’ve been here before,” the marchioness comments on it with feigned nonchalance, after they decide on which entertainment to pursue first.

They halt side by side in front of a deceptively shabby-looking building with an open entrance and some paintings propped up against its dull-colored walls. By the looks of it, it’s supposed to be an arthouse, one that has instantly caught Nora’s attention in spite of its less-than-impressive décor.

Although he still hasn’t provided any reason for it, once Shuri has noted his interest in it, she has impulsively proposed a tour of the place, curious as to why this one would intrigue him more than what they have seen until then in their passing.

“Many times,” he admits quietly.

Shuri turns to him then, amazement making her speak up without filtering her thoughts first, “But why?”

In hindsight, the prompt question sounds terribly rude, and she winces the moment she becomes aware of hurling it at him in her unseemly eagerness. Harmless in nature though it may have been, that could have been better worded.

Luckily, Nora doesn’t appear much ruffled by it as he waves off the faux-pas without faltering. “I’ve always liked open spaces better. And the shopping district of the lower classes is certainly bigger than the one preferred by nobles. I’ve also found plenty of things here that I couldn’t find there.”

A perfectly acceptable answer, Shuri reckons – that is, if it weren’t for the marked vagueness about it that simply begs her to ask for more. Under the circumstances, though, she retains the sense not to force the issue. By her own account, as it is, she has already come on a little too strong.

She wordlessly heads inside the arthouse, instead, with Nora flanking her equally silent.

As far as first impressions go, they are both enthralled by the gallery presented to them as soon as they pass the threshold. The arthouse contains a single room for exposition – but one large enough to keep potential customers preoccupied for quite some time. The number of exhibited goods exceeds their expectations, yet neither can complain about it.

Shuri does feel a little overwhelmed if she’s being honest, however.

She can count the art galleries she has visited in the last years on one hand alone, as art has never been the focus of her training as marchioness. And while she does enjoy forms of art whenever she comes upon them, she does so with the untrained eye of a person who lacks both the proper knowledge and the skill to appreciate it fully.

Unbidden, the reminder of her shortcoming now makes her shift on her feet in slight discomfort as she peruses some sketches displayed in her direct line of vision.

Chancing a peek over her shoulder, she notes that this isn’t the case for the man standing next to her. She is somehow not at all taken aback by the engrossed way in which Nora scrutinizes another portrait nearby. There’s a telltale concentrated air about him that betrays a certain attunement with the artistic piece placed in front of him – with art in general.  

Suddenly, the reason why he wanted to be here is all too clear to Shuri.

“You like paintings, don’t you?”

When Nora merely raises an inquisitive eyebrow, she feels compelled to add, “You look quite taken by them.”

“Do I? I didn’t realize.”

She believes him; after all, he appears hardly cognizant of the way he’s currently struggling to keep his eyes off the portrait – and failing – while he is conversing with her.

Completely unbothered by it, Nora’s behavior instead relieves her of some of the nervousness that has unsettled her stomach earlier, replacing it with something lighter and infinitely more comfortable.

Contentment melts away the rest of her tension as Shuri carries on, more relaxed than ever, “Do you paint?”

An arrow shot in the dark; this is what it’s like to verbalize her hunch. Based on virtually no proof, for she knows next to nothing about this young man’s personal life, the marchioness tells herself that all great detectives must trust in their instincts in order to crack particularly difficult cases.

Nora just happens to be hers – her own self-given mystery to solve.

“Yes,” he blurts out, only to correct himself a heartbeat later. “Well, I did when I was younger.”

Puzzled by that, Shuri can’t help but enquire further, “Then, does that mean you don’t draw now?”

Nora is so close to her that their shoulders nearly touch. She has no idea when it happened, nor why she hasn’t felt anything off about their rather improper proximity to one another, but this is how she knows precisely when the question lands on him.

Without warning, he goes still as a statue at her side.

“… The adults in my family were against it,” he discloses, at length.

Involuntarily, Shuri grimaces at the flatness of his delivery. His family, she mentally files away the information, must be an off-limits subject. Sensing that she has accidentally touched a sensible chord with her line of questioning, the marchioness deftly maneuvers the conversation away from his past.

“That’s too bad,” she hums, smoothing over the previous exchange with an easy-going smile. “You seem to possess a delicate side to you, and if I may be so bold… I think you would be good at it.”

I’d like to see your artwork, is what she wants to add, the desire startling as it sneaks up on her out of nowhere. 

And as Nora ceases his examination of the portrait to offer her his full, undivided attention, she is almost tempted to think that it has slipped her out loud.

“… I doubt my works are good enough to show anyone,” he demurs, crossing his arms at his chest in the same tense gesture she’s witnessed him do on other occasions. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of talent either.”

He doesn’t sound half as cagey as before, though, and Shuri is grateful that at the very least she has succeeded in clearing the air. She would have been saddened if he had just closed off and pushed her out after his family had been unwittingly brought up.

(Perhaps too naively, she thinks Nora would have been sad, too, if that had happened.)

Glad that their conversation hasn’t abruptly ended there, Shuri launches her next comment in the form of playful chiding, “Talent isn’t required for hobbies.”

“Do you have a hobby?”

The marchioness merely blinks at the comeback, although she is not sure why it should feel strange for him to ask. Considering that he’s basically had to put up with a full interrogation session, it seems only fair for Nora to return the favor.

Besides, sharing information as a way to get better acquainted with each other requires both parties to actually share. 

“Hobbies, hmm…” she stalls without meaning to, not because she’s planning on lying, but because she genuinely has to rack her brains in order to identify what her hobbies are, exactly – or rather, if she has any to speak of.

Depressingly, she draws a blank.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had time for one. When I was a child, my mother and I would always do the sewing in the house. I didn’t fancy it much, but I did enjoy embroidering, at least,” Shuri confesses, before gazing down thoughtfully at her gloved hands. “I wonder if I could pick it up again in the future…”

“You should do it.”

Instead of dispelling her doubts, the sheer, uncompromising conviction ringing in his voice has her shaking her head in denial. “I couldn’t afford it, really. I have no time to spare, unfortunately.”

Truthfully, there are not many days in which Shuri doesn’t feel utterly overwhelmed by the endless duties and problems she has to solve as the Marchioness of Neuschwanstein, and she can barely keep up with her job as it is. There have even been instances in the past, shortly after Johannes passed away, where she couldn’t find the time to sleep or eat properly, on account of the absurd workload she’s had to deal with.

These harsh times have taught Shuri her limitations the hard way – and while a very enticing idea in itself, tacking on a pastime to her ever-busy schedule sounds not only fanciful, but also like a careless thing to do.  

“You should try to do things you like once in a while, you know. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all yourself. It might accomplish the opposite, actually.”

The tenderness that Nora’s tone suddenly adopts – so different from the inflexion that he’s employed earlier, yet familiar in its own way – causes her eyes to dart back up at him.

She finds the lulling gentleness of his voice completely at odds with the conflicting emotions warring on the handsome planes of his visage.

“If it’s time you need, you can always dump some paperwork on that useless- on your stepson,” he proposes, glazing over the verbal stumble without so much as a twitch of the mouth. “After all, he’s the next marquess. It’ll serve as good training for him, and at the same time, it will provide you with some time to relax.”

His clear bias against Jeremy aside, Shuri can’t exactly refute the logic of his argument. For all intents and purposes, it is as sound a suggestion as any, and she is loath to dismiss it on the spot, if only as a courtesy to the fact that he appears to have considered it carefully.

“I will take it under advisement,” she quips, edging on playful once more, in an attempt to cushion some of the weight of the topic. “If you’ll consider picking up drawing again.”

It has the effect she has secretly wished it would have on him – turning the tables, having him stumped for once – because Nora balks almost comically faced with her boldness.

“… But I… Well, that is not… I don’t really-”

It takes every bit of self-restraint not to burst into a fit of giggles at the flustered sight he makes, yet the amused grin that stretches her lips is humanly impossible to stave off at this point.

“Let me make an educated guess: you don’t have the time for it either, is that it? Well, you could always ‘dump’ your paperwork on your unsuspecting colleagues, lord- Nora. All in the good spirit of camaraderie and teamwork, of course.”

Against her will, a chuckle finally breaks free then, sending her hand into motion, up to her face, in order to keep it at bay.

However, she fails spectacularly at holding it back when Nora throws her a wry reply – “Well played, marchioness.” – as one of the corners of his own lips vaguely quirks up in amusement, unknowingly causing something pleasantly warm to unfurl inside her chest.

(It is the closest to smiling that Shuri has seen Nora von Nuremberg do in her presence, and she hopes this will not be the only occasion when it happens.)

The hours fly by seemingly in a blink of an eye, but they manage to cover nearly the entirety of the shopping district together by the time that the sun threatens to set. It is towards the very end of their roaming that they opt to take a break before they are to bid their goodbyes and go their own separate ways.

Shuri is sitting on a bench, alone, yet completely at ease in spite of the glaring lack of guards flanking her, for Nora is merely a few feet away from her. Even with his back turned to her and dressed casually as he is now, he remains the ever-alert Streife agent.

The whole afternoon that they have spent together has proved Nora’s word true, that she would need no other protection during their date as long as he was there.

“You can bring your knights with you if you feel more comfortable that way”, the duke’s son informed her as they walked out of the coffeeshop a few days prior. “But I can assure you, I am more than enough. You’ll be perfectly safe with me.”

Unused to going anywhere without at least one Neuschwanstein knight, though, it was no wonder that Shuri’s first instinct was to reject the offer – which she didn’t. In the end, she stewed over the proposition during the following days, and at the last minute ordered Anton and Wolfgang to wait for her with her carriage somewhere close by.

They must still be waiting for the Nuremberg heir to return her to them anytime now, yet her guards are the last thing on Shuri’s mind as she watches Nora pay for the treats that he has insisted on buying before leaving the festival.

Once he successfully located a resting place for her, he stalked off with purpose towards a stall that sells sweets only, and this is how another one of her conjectures about him turned out to be right: Nora von Nuremberg has a sweet tooth, something which she has become highly suspicious of after witnessing the amount of sugar he kept adding to his beverage during their meeting at the café.

It has been as confounding a sight as it has been... endearing, odd though it may sound.

Shuri relives the same concoction of bubbling emotions while Nora takes his time to select between the sweets laid on display. Truthfully, she feels childishly regretful that she is unable to study his face, for the image alone of it that her mind’s eye produces makes her lips twitch humorously.

Her grin, however, doesn’t last long as two fast-moving, slight figures cut through her field of vision without a warning. Startled out of her daydreaming, Shuri blinks, then squints in order to focus better on what is going on in front of her.

By the time she has centered herself once more, she finds that the two figures have skidded to a halt right next to her towering, distracted date.

They are just children; a boy and a girl, the first taller than the latter. Probably related too, judging by the identical brown shade of hair, yet seemingly without anyone to supervise them. Shuri performs a quick examination of the area, anticipating an adult – a parent or a relative, at any rate – to stand out from the small crowds of people gathered nearby.

When it becomes clear that there’s no one else watching them except for her, Shuri shifts her gaze back at them with a frown. Judging by the state of their clothing, they don’t appear to be orphans, and although obviously dressed as commoners, they are relatively clean and healthy-looking.

Perhaps, she’s just being excessively paranoid; just because the poverty rates have grown disturbingly high recently within the Empire doesn’t mean that she should expect every commoner child who crosses her path to be suffering from hunger. The commoners’ uprising that happened a few years ago has simply affected her, as a temporarily important noble, harder than the rest.

As the boy confidently fishes some coins out of the pocket of his pants, Shuri’s fears begin to abate gradually. The more she observes them, the more she is convinced that she has been worrying for nothing about them – that is, until she catches the little girl’s shoulders slumping in defeat while the boy pays for a single piece of chocolate, which he immediately passes to her.

The action seems to cause a disagreement between the two, because the girl instantly attempts to shove the candy back into the boy’s palms. He protests, pushing her hand away gently, and although Shuri is too far from the scene to understand what they’re saying, it sounds an awful lot like he is soothing her.

Unfortunately, the girl is not easily persuaded; if anything, his kindness only serves to encourage her to try harder. 

The fight then meets an unexpected end when a tanned, lean forearm reaches down, breaking them apart by dangling another chocolate between them. Shocked by the intervention, the two children freeze in place while the strong, distinctly male hand drops the sweet confection into the girl’s open palm.

From her place on the bench, Shuri gawks at Nora along with the two commoner children.

The boy is the first one to snap out of his trance, sputtering as soon as the duke’s son starts walking away from the stall, “But, sir, we can’t accept it!”

Without pausing, Nora raises a hand up, waving a casual dismissal.

“Just make sure to clean your teeth properly afterwards.”

The girl yells after him, as well – but with opposite intentions.

“Thank you!” she chirrups happily.

By the time Nora returns to her side, the children have already scurried away. Shuri’s stare lingers on their departing, tiny silhouettes until they vanish completely from sight before she turns to the duke’s son, who continues to patiently wait on his feet without a complaint – for her to pick up her own gift from him, it dawns on her at last.

She accepts the chocolate with a grateful smile. “Did you know them?”

Nora’s shoulders lift in a shrug as he plops down across her on the bench, more preoccupied with the sweet treat in his possession than with the question. “I don’t think so.”

Shuri can’t help but openly, shamelessly, take him in, then.

Jeremy’s foe and rival, the Starving Wolf of Nuremberg.

The Emperor’s nephew, Streife. The Black Wolf of the Empire.

Notorious troublemaker and selfish, unreliable heir.

He has so many names, epithets and titles. Almost enough to put hers to shame. And yet none remotely adequate to describe him as he bares himself to her now – gingerly munching on a piece of chocolate while gazing vaguely downwards. Allowing her to stare at him as much as she pleases, as though she’s always been welcome to do just that.

To look at him and see him. 

In the lowlights of the rapidly disappearing sun, his lowered eyelashes are so long that the shadows they cast trail down his cheekbones akin to inky tears, and his subdued expression is achingly familiar in its solemnity. She has seen this – seen him sad somewhere else before. Not recently, though. A lifetime ago, perhaps.

Shuri can almost taste the bittersweet memory at the back of her throat, but just as she is about to grasp it, it slips right through her metaphorical fingers, prompting her to give up on the endeavor with a sigh. She shuts her eyes, resigned, though not quite defeated yet.

A hand greets her when she opens them again; as silent as a wraith, Nora has already abandoned the bench, gliding in front of her with a stealthiness which no one would think to associate with such a tall, imposing man.  

“Are you ready to go?”

He looked so lonely earlier, even with another person by his side.

Still, he is not alone. Certainly not in what is to come.

For better or for worse, he has her now, and they are in this together.

“Yes, I think I am ready now.”