The building is grand and spacious, the colours bright and vivid, the red walls recently painted; truly, a testament to the Blackstone bloodline and its expensive reputation.
Even as she sits in the changing room, the extravagance is clear to the eye—the best, really, for the younger brother of one of the most powerful and influential men in the nation .
Rumours around town say this shrine has been built just for this marriage ceremony.
Her mother, dressed in her finest garments, lays her delicate hands on Alicia's covered shoulders from behind her sitting form. There's a large mirror directly in front of her seated form; the magnitude of it as grandiose as the rest of the celebratory event.
"Licia, honey," her mother chimes in, and she blinks several times to rid herself of any last-minute uncertain thoughts. Glancing at her mother through the reflection of the mirror, she acknowledges her with a soft smile, though the weigh over her shoulders seems to crush the sentiment by the second.
"Are you ready?"
She nods, not because she's in any way saying the truth, but because she's been taught to smile and agree nearly from birth.
Her green eyes move from her mother's gentle gaze to her own, the white, powdery makeup over her skin making her appear paler than she already is. Dark, graceful strokes line her eyelids, making her features seem more feline than human. Her lips bleed a scarlet red. It's all an act, and she's been trained for it all of her life.
For a moment, as her mother places long, golden earrings through each of her ears, she stares at a stranger's reflection.
The moment is short, however, for she's been raised to appreciate the elegance of a marriage ceremony and the requirements and expectations of a bride, especially a bride who rises in status to such high accounts.
The image staring back at her, though unrecognisable, is the reflection of who she's always meant to become. Soon, to the joy of her mother.
She lifts her eyes once more to her mother's across the mirror when the distant sound of people reaches her ears, which can only mean the guests are arriving, and the ceremony will soon start. Her mother is more preoccupied with the many layers of her kurobiki furisode to pay much attention to the outside of the small room—a dark-patterned kimono exclusively worn by the female nobility.
"You look marvelous," her mother whispers, letting a maid of the Black stone clan reach behind her to tie up Alicia's hair in the intricate high-up she's to don. "You'll do well when pleasing the warlord. He will favour you plenty, I am sure."
Alicia thinks she doesn't compare to one of the two most powerful warlords of the country, no matter her manners and education. Regardless of being borne in the respectable Reign clan, she is seventeen, after all, and experience is most revered above all else within the noble clans—especially the Blackstone.
She also wants to tell her she's only had to meet her future husband once to know he doesn't particularly like her. And that it had taken five minutes to find there is nothing they share in common.
Alicia looks at herself one last time, and the image staring back at her through the mirror mocks her.
"Thank you, mother."
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The walk toward her future is quick and simple, and she doesn't feel nervous at all.
Everyone in attendance at the shrine is looking at her, as expected; at her long, complex and expensive garment, her dull and determined eyes, and her sure, confident step.
She pays no mind because she doesn't have to. The walk is short and well-paced, and she reaches the end of the Shinto shrine in less than a minute. She stops, curtly, and spares a brief glance at the elder man in front of her before her eyes focus on a single point over one of the many columns that line the circular space; the priest doesn't meet her eyes, and neither does the man next to her.
Santiago doesn't look at her throughout the entire ceremony. He barely even moves. The only thing she can do is harden her gaze and purse her lips into a straight line like she's been taught to, because, even though he doesn't really acknowledge her existence at the moment, he's probably been taught to do so too,or not to, in this case.
So she vows to never leave him, to stay with him through everything, and he says the same words back to the priest. They're cool and devoid of any definitive emotion, but then so are hers. Soon enough, one ring is around her finger, a light caress of nothingness against her hand, and there's a simpler one around his. Simple rings for a simple procedure of complex reasons.
In the back of her mind, while holding on to his arm and walking away from the aisle, she thinks she hears the happy murmurs of the people in the building. Blackstone Santiago's father never cared for people cheering at weddings; since his death, a few years back, nobody cheers anymore at these important events.
Alicia peeks at her husband from her peripheral vision, only seeing the tips of his spiky hair for a split second, and wonders if he prefers the murmurs or the cheers—he doesn't really have a choice in any case. But it's not hard to imagine at all. He barely communicates verbally to begin with.
They get out of the establishment quietly.
On the way back, in a little white carriage, they share the trek to their castle in just as much silence.
She wants to see his face, his hair, and especially his eyes—see if they're as haunting as she vaguely remembers. But she hasn't looked at him since that fateful day—far, far back, a few weeks before the actual wedding, when she first met him—so she tries to refrain herself. And by look she means really look at him, take him in, engrave all his features in her memory. For she is his wife and she's going to have to look at him for eternity. But then again he does not share the same level of interest, it seems.
But still,Alicia thinks, Santiago Blackstone doesn't have to know she's going to look at him. Just a quick look into his eyes, into his soul, and he won't ever know a thing.
She lifts her eyes slowly from looking at the passing flower fields, after bruising her covered thigh with her white-knuckled fists.
She looks at him for the first time in the entirety of their big day, not really concerned whether it's right or wrong anymore, or if it's the right moment.
He looks back without thinking twice, and it's only the harshness in his impenetrable gaze that makes her look away immediately.
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While Alicia's expectations are as high as they can get, her mouth still opens in awe at the sight of their new home. The beige, brown, and white castle is at least five stories tall, and it stands on a stone structure several meters high, overlooking the village from the very center.
They enter the thick, tall stone gates, and Alicia admires the view of the green leaves from the trees and grass and the numerous colours from the different flowers, which lead up the intricate path to the front porch of the medieval-like castle, framed with familiar medieval architecture.
A man dressed in commoner clothes opens the door for her and she steps down onto a stone path, right in front of the wooden front porch. Her husband follows.
Their room is on the third floor; Alicia can't think of anything else, she can't gaze at anything else in the castle because he walks in front of her at a much more hurried step, as if he doesn't really want to look at the magnificent structure, even though he has never seen it before. As if he wants to get things done as fast as possible. This castle is new for both of them, it was acquired with their marriage; for themselves and themselves only. But Santiago walks through the halls and the stairs as if he's lived here for decades already.
As soon as they enter their marital bedroom, her husband blows fire into a few candles hanging from the walls. She understands what's about to happen, and because of the rigorous classes she's taken for years and years under her mother's request, she knows exactly what to do.
Alicia kneels down on one side of the comfortable futon that's laid in the center of the dimly-lit room. Santiago kneels a second later on the other side so that the only thing separating them is the mattress, and then they bow their heads, not looking at each other and only following an old tradition passed down from generations.
With one hand, he motions to the futon, and she lies down gracefully, legs straight down and eyes focused on the dark ceiling.
She doesn't mind it when he takes off her layers of Kimono slowly until she's left bare to his empty eyes, his hands firm and confident, but slow and prudent on the silk—at least, she ponders, he's not completely inconsiderate.
She doesn't mind it when he takes his own clothes off, layer by layer, first the haori jacket and then the hakama pants, faster than he did hers, and parts her legs when he moves between them.
After all, it's in her duty to let him. And only because it's in her duty does she let him enter her pure walls with quick thrusts, her eyes closing—in an attempt to focus on the darkness behind her eyelids, and not the laboured breathing between her legs or the gasps from her own persona—and her body tense with discomfort.
She wonders, as she opens her eyes and stares at the fading ceiling above her, how eleven years between them have allowed the man enough time to have three other wives in the past.
The prospect of multiple women gone before her marriage to him gives her chills—some say they died, some say they escaped, and some say they never really left, but Alicia has no way to know for sure. They are all rumours, after all.
The man above her pauses for a second, then gives a few slow thrusts that almost make her believe he cares. Then, as she begins to feel something other than discomfort, he increases his pace again. When it hurts and she can't demand him to slow down, she reduces herself into a series of whimpers under his laboured breathing before everything suddenly becomes still.
He stands and leaves the room, not before blowing the candles into a penumbra. Her eyes feel watery, and for the first time in years, she lets herself cry.
It's not what she's been taught to do, but, in utter darkness and secrecy, it's the only thing she can do.
She never cries herself to sleep again. She doesn't let herself fall so low after that.
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He's twenty-six when he becomes the head of Fire's military government. After the untimely death of his older brother, (the previous Shogun), there is no question that he has to take his brother's place in order to represent the Blackstone Shogunate.
There is nothing else Alicia wants to do but to hold her husband and console him in his every dark nightmare, from that day on in the late days of Summer.
She comforts him during the day by being near him, then at night by caressing his hair and wrapping her arms around him through his nightmares, even after he pushes her away and tells her to leave him alone. She tries to rid him of his perturbed thoughts of vengeance for his adored older brother. But the words go to deaf ears and disinterested looks and she stops talking altogether one winter day.
The snow had started to fall a few weeks back, but she still adores the way the snowflakes fall on the thick mantle of snow under the castle, like love falls on hungry humans—cold and fast.
Her husband is away most of the time since his ascension to power; he's called to fight and lead armies to defend Fire from its enemies. From what she's heard, he trains Samurai here and there—the pride of Fire Country in crucial times. Sometimes he's gone for days, sometimes for weeks.
She takes the time off to paint on canvases, read medicinal books from the private library of the castle where she spends most of the time, and knit gloves for no one in mind. Trivial things that, when he's home, she can't do.
And every time he has to go for military purposes, he makes sure to not let her see him leave.
She has learnt to not mind.
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Her husband has been successful in every facet of the nation because he's different from every other leader that has come before him.
She has observed him enough to know that this is the reason everyone in the nation trusts him to keep a civil war from issuing—to bring peace, instead, to the entire nation that stands on its tip toes. Not to say that his brother wasn't good at leading people, but he was, at times, too passively peaceful, and with the country on the brink of war he was, therefore, inefficient.
She has seen the way her husband thinks, the way he handles tasks under pressure, how he doesn't bat an eye under the watchful gaze of the Emperor, and even the way he trains under the dying sun in their backyard, like a flowing feather kisses the wind.
In the first year she has been married to him, she has seen enough to know her husband is a quiet negotiator; quiet but lethal.
There has been just one attack inside their village, by another small village that rests next to theirs. Santiago had talked to the village's clan heads, making a deal in less than two minutes. Alicia had heard the bombing stop immediately in Boson—the capital of Fire—from where she sat in the castle next to a window, and she had heard from another party that her husband had stopped the attack with just a few, curt words.
Santiago is nothing but a good leader to his people, especially to his impressive, loyal army of Samurai.
Samurai aren't taught anything else but the basics to know how to fight. They're taught horsemanship, etiquette, and how to handle weapons, essential things to know in order to fight, but her husband surpasses all teachings.
Santiago has been taught to really think about the strategies; he has been shown knowledge from different sciences, maths, and tongues.
He knows how to fool the enemy and how to lure him in.
He's the complete package of wisdom, much like herself, and this is how their marriage flows in silence.
It's quiet, always. Ever since that fateful Summer day a few months back, they seldom speak to each other.
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A new year comes out of the warm horizon, with hues of orange, yellow, and red. The soft light caresses her unusual blonde hair, speckled with a rose hue that makes it seem pale pink altogether, and creates a softer image of colours to the eye, just like the sunrise.
Santiago stares.
It's the first morning he's had the privilege to sleep past seven since he became Shogun.
His small wife lies on her stomach, the small robe riding down her back and letting him see the expanse of her smooth skin under the messy covers.
Her long, straight hair falls on the pillow like a waterfall, cascading down and melting with the early colours of the sunlight seeping in through the open window. It's of a light silver, soft and ethereal and something he has never seen before.
He lets his tired eyes trail over her silhouette, from the slender contours of her covered legs to the small of her exposed back, unmarred and frail, much different to his own.
It's something he has never done, and as he notices the slight hints of blonde on the tips of her hair, he feels a sense of sympathy for this woman—girl, he thinks, would be more appropriate—who hasn't asked for anything out of him in the two years they have been married.
From the great space between them, he gazes upon the ethereal image of his fourth wife, feeling exhausted all of a sudden.
It's been two years and they're still strangers to each other, and he can't help but think that his previous wives were strangers to him as well. The prospect of marrying again, were Alicia to leave him, would be a very troublesome thing. He knows that he's always forced to marry because of money or treaties, but it doesn't make it any less tiring.
He has armies and people to lead, after all, and can't be bothered to care for any romantic displays of affection every time the time calls for it.
But as he watches his wife shift in her sleep, humble and patient as he has seen her be, he decides he does not want any other wife.
She shifts again and lies on her side, facing him, and his eyes soften imperceptibly.
He wishes he could have more time to spare to get to know her better, but he doesn't. He starts dressing up for yet another long day.
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Alicia's nineteen when she gets asked to attend an important meeting with one of the most notorious warlords in the nation of Fire, as Santiago's wife.
She's asked to attend a meeting in which she will have no say, and she doesn't know why she's asked at all. After all, her husband has always gone to meetings with his advisors, but never with her. Women aren't really invited to such things.
Nevertheless, her personal assistants dress her with intricate and fine silks, a kimono which looks elegant and poised, a soft silver to complement her hair.
Her husband waits for her in a room of the castle, where the warlord would arrive in a few minutes, and she enters with a kind of practiced grace that hides her confusion.
She still doesn't know the reason for her presence, but she walks with confidence until she sits next to him on the floor, legs tucked under her and hands on her lap.
When the tall and slender warlord enters the spacious and brightly lit room, they both stand and bow, as he also does, before they all sit down again—the couple together, and the warlord in front of them, separated by a small table.
"Santiago Black stone, I am very pleased to finally meet the brother of one of the few men I've trusted with my life," the warlord says, a man two decades older than her husband. His yellow eyes shift to hers, and she feels a tremor run down her spine. "I see you have brought your lovely wife, too."
"Yes, my brother spoke highly of you many times before," the voice of her husband reaches her ears and she wants to look at him, for it's the first time she hears him speak of his deceased brother since his fatal demise, but his next words still her desire. "And, if needed be, my wife can leave this room at my command."
She doesn't feel hurt at his cold words, but it still ignites a small flame of anger inside of her. It's not her place to feel angry, though, so she barely appears disturbed.
"Oh, no need, young Santiago ," the man says. "Such beauty shouldn't pose as a problem. Will you?"
He stills for a second beside her, but he relaxes so quickly that she doesn't know if he tensed at all.
She shows her pearly teeth when she smiles and bows respectfully to the man in front of her, faking the pleasure of his disgusting words.
The man chuckles a bit and runs his snake-like eyes all over her covered frame. He then looks at her husband with hidden contempt.
"If I do say so myself, lady Blackstone has yet to produce any heir to the Shogun, and I hope he knows he can try other methods for the trouble," the sole sentence makes Alicia's hair stand and her throat feel like it's closing up. At Santiago's silence, the warlord smirks softly at her confused and anxious expression.
"Concubines, very cheap and very efficient," he clears up, as if confirming her suspicions makes her any less afraid. Shoguns, Daimyō, emperors, and warlords all are very known for taking up more than one wife in order to ensure heirs to the position.
The fact that her husband had only touched her during their wedding day and had not shown any inclinations of having more relations echoes in her head for the first time. She hadn't thought of that before, and it gives her some sense of anxiety.
However, she can't help but also think that, if he does have more wives, she could be able to detach herself completely from his grasp and hold much more freedom. As it is, she holds the sole attention from every person in the world as the country's military leader's only wife.
"I have no desire to, just as you have no right to insinuate such things," the smooth voice of her husband reaches her ears, and she feels herself relax next to him imperceptibly.
Santiago clears his throat.
"Let us begin, Marcello"
Marcello looks at Santiago , then, and it's almost as if he's doing the same to him. His eyes trail over his body and then he smiles.
"Yes, of course."
They sign an accord twenty minutes later, when the meeting ends, and she can't help the sigh of relief that escapes her lips as soon as the snake man leaves the room. Santiago feigns not noticing.
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Santiago is brushing his favourite horse when she approaches him from the private gardens they own. And for the first time since they married, she doesn't feel it's not in her place to bother him. She feels enraged, betrayed, stepped-on, and she's not going to stand idly aside when she knows what has been done is not alright.
So she approaches him, and enters the royal stables, standing right out one of the cubicles where he's brushing his dark horse's mane.
She feels angry, but she masks it well enough so that she can speak coherently and calmly in front of his apathetic stare.
She only speaks when he directs his gaze at her form, though, and he stills the brush in his hand for a second too long, clearly baffled by her otherwise-ghostly presence.
"Alicia," he states, so infuriatingly perfect with his unruly locks and symmetrical features and toned body that she has the urge to turn away in frustration. But she doesn't.
"Santiago" she responds. She's dressed inappropriately for this kind of setting, with a blue kimono that only has two layers, while he stands with black pants and a black shirt, all simple and ordinary. She does not smile when she talks. "I bring to you a matter that troubles me greatly."
She knows she has captured his attention when he puts down the brush and walks toward the entrance of the cubicle—toward her.
"Which is?"
"I fear your horse has ruined my garden, the flowers specifically," her voice is even and she never takes her eyes away from his own penetrating gaze, but she feels shaky inside. She has never stood up to her husband before—ever.
However, her husband is seldom at their castle, and, added to the fact that she can't go out of the castle and into the village on his strict orders, she gets bored. She's picked up hobbies like painting, reading, knitting, and taking care of her garden. Her beautiful garden that has been taken care of for three arduous years. Her flowers were about to come to life again after the cold and harsh winter, and she woke up that morning to see all of her work run over. Her flowers were on the ground, smashed, and there were prints on the soil. Hooves.
He raises an eyebrow at her, standing less than two feet away from her.
"How are you so sure?
"There were hoove prints on the soil," she says, looking past him and glaring at the horse, who stares at her with the same amount of hatred.
Santiago blocks her view of the horse when he steps in her line of vision, staring down at her like the dangerous man he is and acting as a shield for the shared hatred at his stables.
"Yami hasn't been out today, so there's no way she could have ruined your garden," he says, and she has the urge to laugh because his horse's name is literal darkness, and it couldn't be more fitting for the man, but she feels her eyes watering instead.
She turns this time, frustrated that she can't do anything about anything because she's only his wife and she doesn't even know him and he probably wouldn't care if someone infiltrated their castle and killed her tomorrow and she walks out of the stables with tears in her eyes—but she holds them in, she holds them in because she's not going to cry like she did on her wedding night, pathetic and frail. Never again.
Santiago's steps grow louder as he steps out of the stables and calls out for her. She turns to him against her wishes, only because she's been taught to follow his every order since she could understand words, and sees his face has changed. It not stoic, apathetic, serious.
She can tell he's conflicted when he looks around for the words to say, grasping at air instead.
"I... I'll get you new flowers, just tell Akane."
Akane, the only maid who can go out to buy things in the village.
"Really? Just like the ones I had?" She asks, hopeful and childish and almost jumping from joy.
He turns his face and eyes away from her beaming eyes, but she still hears him loud and clear in the space between them when he speaks.
"Whichever you wish for."
It's not the best answer he could have given her. But as she watches him disappear in the stables again, she feels a small, true smile creeping up her lips, lifting the corners for the first time in a while.
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Sakura's barely twenty and she's young and she has very rare and striking features—light silver hair that reaches her small waist and green eyes.
When she married Santiago , nobody opposed. Everyone thought she was going to be his final wife, and that they were going to fall in love deeply, innately, at first sight. Her closest friends wrote to her for several weeks after the wedding—as they were not allowed to go inside the castle for visits—expressing their enthusiasm for her. They almost could have been described as jealous of her. Even his brother had approved.
The truth couldn't be further from that. After three years of being there for him—but not really, for she had stopped supporting him closely ever since the Winter of their first year—they are still complete strangers.
It's not that she has not tried; it's that he has not tried with her.
But Alicia is young and she has no wrinkles, she's very flexible, she's fluent in the same languages he is, she knows how to solve problems strategically and mathematically, and she knows the art of seduction from her hair to her toes.
So she does not comprehend why she's in this predicament: stuck in a palace she has not been able to get out of in three years, stuck and not being able to interact with anyone other than her family through monthly letters. She does not possibly understand how her husband does not desire her, not even to hold her through the night like she has been told he would.
She has been taught to seduce and be seduced, to rid of her garments slowly, to touch and be touched in exactly the right places, but none of it matters when her husband shows no interest in her whatsoever.
She doesn't mind that part that much; doesn't delve into it a lot. But it still makes her question her duties as a wife more than once—especially after the snake man's visit.
And one day she comes to the conclusion, dropping a brush she had been using to create grass in one of her newer paintings, that he's so incredibly busy that he has no time to think about these domestic issues with her.
She comes to the conclusion that she's there to serve as a symbol of resilience and stability in Santiago's life and the country's gossips, and nothing more.
She comes to the conclusion that it's not her fault, but by the way he had been drastically thrown into the sole position of Shogun only a few months into their marriage, it's probably not his either.
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It's been a month since the flowerbed incident and her garden is almost blooming already with different colours and exotic plants that probably cost more than the common villager can afford.
She hasn't really thanked him yet, but she plans to as a way of showing initiative toward their broken marriage.
A sunny day two days after he returns from a diplomatic meeting at another village, she finds him sitting on her favourite single-person sofa in the study room. He's reading a book, thick and old and most likely confidential, yet she approaches him all the same.
He raises his eyes from the parchment to look into her own a second after her steps are audible, and closes the book almost too quickly for her to not notice.
She brushes it aside, though, and focuses on her next words as she extends her covered, slim arms toward him. She offers him his favourite dish in a bento, carefully crafted by her own hands for one hour, but he does not even look inside to see its contents.
"It's- I wanted to thank you for my new garden. It's more beautiful than before, now," she says, bowing to him while offering him her handcrafted bento patiently.
He seems to consider her offer for a second longer than expected, and then he curtly nods and looks away.
"Have sara take it to our room later."
Alicia stands straight again after processing those words, and she feels her cheeks redden in embarrassment and her eyebrows lift in incredulity at his statement a moment later. She can't help but to speak up in her astonishment, hands clasping the bento box a little tighter.
"Forgive me, but I do not see the meaning of this. Does my husband think I could poison him" Santiago looks back at her with some hints of surprise himself, clearly not expecting her to keep on talking to him so freely. He recomposes himself faster than she can blink.
"As with any other person aside my own, I reserve no differences in treatment. I am merely taking precautions," he responds, drilling holes in her skull and making her realise something she hadn't seen with such clarity as in the moment. It would explain why he refrains from touching her, having a child, sharing his life and secrets with her, and so many of the things they have been lacking over the course of three years.
It certainly makes perfect sense in her mind as she bows and leaves the study room, looking for sara , one of the cooks in the castle.
Santiago doesn't even see her as his wife.