Having personally experienced the overwhelming, resonant reality of the "welcome party" the previous night, Laila was left feeling deeply upset, thoroughly flustered, and profoundly conflicted.
Her original plan was simple: the moment His Majesty the King delivered the official royal decree confirming Shion's commercial appointment, she would pack their bags and depart the Capital immediately.
Shion, however, clearly no longer shared that sentiment.
Ever since she had personally felt the mark's resonant warmth, her resolve to follow Regulus had only solidified. She had even eagerly joined the other women of the household late into the night, discussing the specific, intricate details of an upcoming wedding.
'She really can't wait to marry herself off to him, can she?' Laila thought, letting out a long, helpless sigh.
Regarding her friend's romantic choices, Laila no longer tried to stop her as she usually did. Knowing Shion's true feelings at this point, continuing to interfere felt neither appropriate nor effective.
The image of the white-haired man suddenly surfaced in her mind.
'That insufferable, hateful fellow!' Laila muttered under her breath, a faint, hot blush involuntarily dusting her cheeks.
Just then, her pointed elven ears twitched. Accompanied by the soft, cheerful humming of a girl and approaching footsteps in the hallway, Shion appeared at the doorway.
"You're back," Laila noted.
"Mm! Look, look, see what I brought back with me!" Shion beamed, holding out a pair of lavish, white silk garments cradled in her arms.
Laila's eyebrows instantly furrowed into a deep knot.
Wedding dresses. They were already tailored?
However, what truly caused her brow to furrow wasn't the existence of a wedding dress itself—after all, she had already mentally prepared herself for Shion's decision.
"Why are there two?" Laila asked sharply.
"Well... the second one is yours!" Shion offered with a bright smile.
"Mine?!" Laila's eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
Shion nodded earnestly.
"Who asked you to bring that over?" Laila demanded, her tone hardening. "Was it Regulus? Or someone else?"
"Sphinx decided it," Shion explained gently. "She finished tailoring your wedding dress and asked me to hand it to you directly."
"Sphinx...?" Laila stared at her friend, her instincts telling her that Shion was inadvertently covering for someone.
The logic simply didn't add up. Although she didn't know the petite half-elf particularly well, Sphinx was hardly the type of person to meddle in someone else's personal affairs—especially when their relationship was entirely ordinary. There was zero reason for Sphinx to initiate such a gesture on her own.
It had to be Regulus who pushed Shion to deliver it.
'Hmph~ What a pathetic coward,' Laila sneered internally.
'If he actually harbored genuine feelings for me, even if he knew he would be flatly rejected, he should have had the guts to bring it to my face himself! Hiding behind a girl to deliver a proposal dress is utterly disgraceful.'
Watching Shion stand there awkwardly with the white silk in her arms, Laila stepped forward and took the second dress into her hands. In this awkward situation, she couldn't bring herself to force Shion to carry it back; doing so would only make her soft-hearted friend feel terribly embarrassed.
"I'll hold onto the fabric," Laila stated coldly, holding the dress. "But there is absolutely no chance I will ever wear something like this, nor will I ever fulfill that man's shameless wishes."
"As for the wedding ceremony, it's officially scheduled for tomorrow," Shion added softly.
"Huh?! You're saying the wedding is tomorrow?!"
"Mm! Everyone in the mansion is preparing to hold a single, grand wedding so everyone can participate together."
"..." Laila stared silently at Shion.
Why was she being informed of this detail? Her absolute refusal should have been crystal clear from the start.
Furthermore, was a mass wedding really acceptable to these women? A wedding was supposed to be a sacred, exclusive milestone between two people. Planning a single, massive ceremony to clear every girl's promise all at once felt absurdly convenient. Did that insufferable man truly intend to push through such a lazy arrangement?
"Don't you have any objections to this at all, Shion?"
"Objections?" Shion blinked innocently.
"To sharing a wedding with a hundred other women!"
"No, not at all! It's actually wonderful, and it was the consensus we reached after last night's discussion."
"A consensus...?" Laila felt her confusion deepening. How could any self-respecting woman willingly agree to such a proposal?
Seeing her friend's bewilderment, Shion sighed inwardly.
From an outsider's perspective, a unified wedding sounded completely unreasonable. But practical logic dictated otherwise. If they held individual weddings for every single woman in the estate, starting from Sphinx down the line, the schedule would be endless. Factor in individual honeymoons—even if each bride only took a single week—and the process would stretch across years. During that massive timeframe, everyone else would be left waiting alone in empty rooms.
No one wanted that.
Thus, a collective wedding followed by a massive, multi-month expedition across the continent was the ideal compromise. They had even finalized the exact itinerary: setting off together on a diplomatic journey to visit all the major demi-human tribes across Lugnica.
That specific destination was what made Shion happiest. She had originally worried that her new official duties as trade coordinator would force her to skip a honeymoon entirely. Now, her work and the trip were perfectly integrated.
"I'm going to my room," Laila turned away, refusing to hear any more details about Regulus's domestic plans.
Stepping into the courtyard, she spotted a familiar white-haired figure leaning against a stone pillar just down the hall. Her purple eyes narrowed into sharp slits.
'It really was his doing,' Laila confirmed internally.
This time, rather than taking a long detour to avoid him as she normally would, Laila marched straight toward him. The moment she reached Regulus, she forcefully tossed the folded white wedding dress directly at his chest.
Regulus casually raised a hand, catching the soft silk in mid-air. He watched as Laila immediately turned on her heel to walk away without the slightest hesitation.
Her fiery refusal was entirely genuine. Yet, compared to her initial hostility, her reaction was already a vast improvement. In the past, she wouldn't have thrown the dress to him—she would have thrown it into the garbage bin right in front of his face.
"Are you entirely sure you don't want it?" Regulus called out casually behind her, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. "If you pass on this opportunity now, I won't hand it back to you so easily next time."
"Tch~ Who cares about your stupid dress," Laila scoffed dismissively, not even bothering to turn her head as she vanished around the corridor.
Watching her retreating back, Regulus let out a quiet chuckle. The subliminal mark was doing its work—her defenses were eroding significantly faster than expected.
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Give me powerstones.
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