The Reason for Marriage - Chapter 3.1 - Sweet Escape

Four years had slipped through the fingers of Father Time since Iveca had first joined the Bureau of Investigation – and she remembered none of it. When she had come to her senses after the mind wipe it had transpired that the Third Prince Daniel, who she thought was as far from the throne as it was possible to be, had not only taken the crown but played a heavy part in the Empire’s civil war escalating from stone-throwing and heated arguments to something profoundly more serious. In addition, magic power had been severely reduced to an almost unrecognizable extent, with the focus on the new Bureau of Technology and its dabbling in electrics and machinery seemingly the new darling.

Iveca, in her mentally cleared state, had been forced to take all of this in stride. Though as much as she wanted to just let the past be the past, the thought kept niggling at the back of her mind, getting a little louder every day. Why did I move to the Judicial Affair Bureau, and even chose to have my memory erased if I was doing fine in the Bureau of Investigation? What happened?

The Judicial Affair Bureau was a slapdash sort of organization with very little actual structure. It had been assigned as a special subsidiary and was only ever made up of a small number of staff. The members of the Intelligence Bureau were usually chosen by the staff of the Bureau of Investigation, who subsequently got their memory erased – if that was the option they chose, of course. The more she thought about it, the less it made sense to her.

Just why did she move to the Judicial Affair Bureau if that was the price she had to pay?

The Bureau of Investigation had always held sway with her heart, so it made her quite sad that she had no memories of joining them. Time and time again the idea of the past played on her mind, but with no memory of it to speak of, it simply ran off and away like raindrops from a domed roof. And now, of course, she had even more to think about with Daniel’s proposal and the idea of dismissing Iak’s. The whole thing left her feeling dazed.

You have barely got a handle on another half of your life you don’t remember; how are you supposed to be a Queen? With the King that you saw for the first time today?

But she was hardly in a position to refuse, was she? Besides, there was no reason to resist, especially with the condition that she could continue working at the Judicial Affairs Bureau. Her fiancée (or at least one of her fiancées) Iak, told her that she had to quit the Bureau due to the offer of engagement. This was the biggest point on a long list of reasons she was not falling over to marry the man. She hated his insistence that she was his property and she didn’t like the man’s intentions of using her, but she hadn’t said anything when he had proposed. She had all but given up marrying in the name of true love anyway.

As Daniel had said, if you were not in love, what did it matter that she was not going to marry Iak now?

And maybe… maybe the Esselburn family would finally accept her. Iveca sighed, unable to do anything with optimistic hopes that brutally swayed her feelings. Her father might have thought that she was fortunate to live as an Esselburn, thus she needed to pay the price for not being discarded. Maybe being a Queen would finally be enough for them to sit up and take notice.

Then there was Anriq. In her mind, Iveca could sense little pieces of the past with him. Not memories, but feelings, closer to nostalgia than seeing events as they happened. She wished desperately to know exactly what had happened, but all she was left with were the smallest snippets – snippets she wouldn’t have had if the power of magic had not been reducing all this time. At least some good came of it, she supposed.

“Anriq, I like you.”

If I were to become a Queen, Iveca thought, I would see Daniel’s personal escort in the Palace every day.

“You… you like me, too, right?”

Flashes came back to her in seemingly random order, but enough to piece together some things that she knew deep down were already true. Anriq had always been there. On her mind and in her heart. Her only friend and her first love, they had grown up and grown together. Giving up on him and accepting the wedding were two different matters.

“You are the Lady of Esselburn, and of course you have to marry the man that your family have decided on.”

During the lost four years, she did not know what happened between the two of them.

“Please don’t turn me into a person who doesn’t know how to be grateful.”

Any answer she could muster up about the why of where she was now was just so much cold space in her soul. However, her memories up to her 18th birthday, before she lost the next four years, were so clear that she couldn’t help but be bothered about it. She closed her eyes and sighed. Thinking about it all would only make it harder to remember.

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