40 Act

Finley Cai Aies Hall: April 18th, 20XX

"Please look this way, your highness."

I tried my best to cooperate with the workers as they put me in ostentatious clothing and put up my hair into luxurious curls. It was curly to start with, but they had straightened it out and then set it into a different curl pattern. I didn't know exactly what had changed, but I'd admit that it looked better than usual.

It came as a pleasant surprise that the hair was flexible enough to be styled like this, but then again. The rampant amounts of magic that flew around the room showed me it wasn't a simple process.

They finished with my hair and moved on to my body, but I stopped paying attention to them and tried to temper my ever-growing panic.

Cambridge and Corin had mentioned it in passing before, but they had only broken the news after I'd surrounded my transporter to them.

A marriage proposal.

The visitors should have been here yesterday, but there was a delay, and their ETA had shifted to today. I'd promised Corin and Cambridge a week and wasn't planning on staying here any longer than that, but I wondered if that would be enough time.

Cambridge had made it out to sound like I would just have to sit there and look pretty as Esmeralda and the visitor caught up, but I wondered if I could get away with doing that little.

I desperately tried to remember the Ruan family's details as the workers finished up the last touches on my appearance. They smeared something on my eyes and my cheeks, but I'd already wholly resigned my appearance to their experienced judgement.

Esmeralda had mentioned that 'the prince' would have to get married, but I hadn't expected it to come so fast.

The letter I'd seen had quoted a General Ruan, but I didn't know her first name, how old she was or even what she looked like.

An image of a rugged female soldier sprung up in my mind, with a burly stature, shortcut hair and a mean expression on her face. I belatedly tacked bright, sparkly wings onto the image, but it didn't seem to suit.

Well, whatever she looked like, it wasn't like it would affect me much. Esmeralda had already told me to prepare to be ignored as the general took over the kingdom's reins and possibly after. She'd also made a few digs at my personality and the fact that I'd been stranded in the human world for so long, but that was nothing new.

All I had to do was act like an airhead and make sure she liked me enough to marry into the family. After that, she could take over all the work and leave me alone. Esmeralda hadn't said I should act any differently than myself, but the further away from my real personality I could get, the less burdensome this would feel. Thankfully, acting like that wouldn't make me stand out from any other high-ranking male fairies.

Out of the four dukedoms, Esmeralda had emphasized how the Ruan was the best option. They only had a few members to their name but wielded a leading role among the upper society because of their previous closeness to my mother.

Well, there was also something about war achievements and others, but Esmeralda had spent most of it telling me about their infamous reclusiveness and how little time they spent in social circles, despite being so desirable.

I tried to shake off my thoughts, but one worker put two hands on each side of my head and gave a pained smile in response to the confused expression on my face.

Well, they had done so much work on me; it would be ungrateful of me to let it all go to waste.

"Are you ready, your highness?"

After practicing my smile in the mirror for a few more seconds and pulling up an overall dazed expression, I nodded and waved at them to open the doors and let Cambridge in.

She had dressed in full regalia today and looked even more imposing than usual, despite being so much shorter than me. Corin strode in behind her with a crossbow clipped to her belt and a quiver on her back.

The weaponry, combined with the stiff-looking uniforms and blank expressions on their faces, made me remember they weren't just my nannies after all.

There was something to be said about how quickly I'd accepted having two nannies at seventeen, but I could deal with that later.

"Ca- Your highness."

Corin tried to call me by my name but quickly caught herself and switched to speaking formally. While I hadn't known her for long, it was annoying to hear her talk to me like that. I accepted she needed to speak like that to keep up appearances, but it still put me in a slightly worse mood.

"Corin, Cambridge. Are they here?"

Cambridge nodded in response and fluttered a few inches backwards, leaving space for Corin to fly behind me and try to pick me up.

While I was okay with being treated like a kid sometimes, this was going too far. It wasn't like I was a toddler with no bodily coordination or a delicate princess from the middle ages… Or wait, would that be equivalent to what I currently was?

Still, I couldn't do that. I could smile like an idiot for a complete stranger, and I could let myself get dressed up like a pin-up doll. But I felt like I would lose something important if I went around being carried like that.

"Ah. I'll just fly on my own. Lead the way."

Like a professional guard detail, the two traded loaded looks before taking positions in front and behind me. I still felt overprotected, but I could tell that this was the most they would give in.

The workers that had worked so hard to make me ready arranged themselves into two rows behind me and kept pace with us, creating the rest of my entourage.

I slowly felt my expression go slack-jawed as we walked through the castle, and I witnessed the grandeur of it for the first time. Because of the guests, the workers had decorated everything to extravagance.

They had decked the long hallways out in walls of gold and gem flowers and ornaments. Crystal glass ceilings that showed the beautiful skies up above.

Cambridge, who had taken the lead of the spectacle we had become, scanned around us a few times before pushing the large doors open and revealing a remarkable space.

"His highness has arrived!"

It looked like a concert hall, with an open roof and a curved wall structure, designed to echo sound.

In its center was a huge and uncomfortable-looking throne that sparkled in the direct sunlight. For a moment, I wondered who was going to sit on it, but then I remembered the golden circlet they had braided into my hair just moments before.

A sharp shiver ran down my spine as Cambridge took me by the hand and led me to take a seat on the throne. This all still felt like a hyper-realistic dream, slightly pleasant but overall unnerving. A single, powerful stream of sunlight highlighted the golden seat and made sitting in it all the more burdensome. This all felt more real than I was comfortable with.

Someone at some point had slipped a cushion onto the hard surface of the seat, so thankfully, it wasn't as uncomfortable as I'd feared, but the pressure still raged on.

I finally gathered the courage to look to the room's sides and saw the visitors for the first time.