Time quickly passed as Marcus and Mrazivý finished off preparations for their wedding.
Their days were spent confirming things such as flower arrangements, the main dishes that would be served, what types of tapestries would be hung, and other such minor details that they both found fairly tedious.
Thankfully after around two and a half weeks they were nearly done, and just in time for Lilia and Alaric's graduation ceremony.
It was an overall standard event, but Marcus still felt extremely proud when Lilia graduated within the top one percent of her class despite all the time off she had taken for dungeon delving.
Apparently, she even received numerous requests to join knight orders from the royal capital to the farthest-reaching baronies.
And while she was not nearly as adept at magic as she was in close combat, she received an invitation to join the Guldur Spire since her force magic was incredibly rare and she already had the level and skills to be considered an archmage.
However, despite plenty of impressive propositions, Lilia turned them all down.
She already had a plan for what she was going to do now that she had graduated from school.
On the other hand, Alaric did accept the offer he received to join the Guldur Spire and come the next month would become an apprentice mage. Though Aria planned on promoting him to archmage as quickly as possible since he was already far above what any normal mage was capable of.
Naturally, after the ceremony Marcus and Lilia, along with Alaric and his family went out to celebrate.
For this they went to dinner at the Sublime Fantasia, which Marcus had been to a couple of times and was considered the finest restaurant int eh royal capital.
Overall, it was an enjoyable meal, but there was one topic that Marcus did not wish to talk about that was brought up.
"Now that they have both graduated from the royal academy, I believe it is time that we went public with their engagement and plan on a date for the wedding." Bianca said in between sips of her wine.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtIt had already been several years since Marcus had agreed to allow Lilia and Alaric to be engaged and it was clear that they were in it for the long haul after all they had been through together.
Still, Marcus had already had enough talk about weddings with his own and could feel a headache coming on from the discussion of his little sister's
In the end it was decided that Lilia and Alaric would have their engagement party where they formally announced their relationship the next year and that two years after that they would get married.
"Are you doing well Marcus? You are rubbing your face a lot and you seem to be distressed." Lilia asked with a look of concern on her face.
"I am doing fine, just a bit of mental fatigue. I have been tirelessly getting ready for my own wedding and talks of yours in the future has just given me one more thing to think about." Marcus said while putting on a smile for his little sister to make her not worry.
Soon enough their carriage returned to Marcus' estate and to their surprise a commotion was going on outside the gate.
Far more guards than normal were stationed around, and Marcus could see that six of the maids including Clara his head maid.
Along with them Marcus spotted that a patrol of the city watch led by a knight had set up around the two people that were at the center of what was going on.
Yet they were simply standing around and making a permitter. Not trying to arrest the two people that were leaning against the wall around Marcus' estate.
"What are they doing here? And why are they just loitering outside my estate?" Marcus said with an exasperated sigh when he stuck his head out eh window to see what was going on.
Quickly he ordered Violet, who was acting as their driver, to pull up and got out with Lilia to address the situation.
"There you are Irene. We have been waiting for you to get back. We told your guards that we knew you, but they did not let us in, which is understandable. Even if we do have a letter with your seal on it. But when we decided to wait around, they brought the police to try and get rid of us. Would you mind clearing this up?"
Looking at who had just spoken to him Marcus could feel his mental fatigue turning into a full-blown migraine.
Surrounded by numerous city guardsmen and a knight whose armor had a noticeable dent in it was Jaela and Ardea.
Marcus had not been expecting to see either of them today and was unsure why they were here.
Tensions were running high among his guards and maids, and the knight leading the city guard seemed ready to scream and run away.
'I can already guess that he tried to apprehend them, and it seems that one of them knocked him away. Of course, the only one in the entire kingdom that could even hope to restrain them is Boreas.' Marcus thought as he analyzed the situation.
A part of him just wanted to ignore what was going on since he was already a bit tired, but he knew that was not going to fly.
"Clara, would you mind preparing the house for guests. I do indeed know both of them and consider them friends." Marcus said, surprising his head maid who figured that Jaela and Ardea were scam artists.
He then turned to the knight leading the city watch patrol and apologized for the disturbance and told them that their help was not needed.
The knight did not want to let it go though since Ardea had apparently assaulted him when he tried to arrest them and said that they would need to at least pay a fine.
"Here, take this and leave it at that. If you try to push it, I am not sure the city will stay standing." Marcus said as she handed over a dozen gold coins to the knight.
He made sure to add a layer of intimation as well to make sure the message got across and the knight quickly left with his men.
"You know that you two could have sent word that you were coming and none of this would have happened." Marcus said as he turned to Ardea and Jaela.
"Hey, this is not our fault. We have the crest you gave me, but your guards and maids refused to believe it was real." Jaela said.
"This is why we should have done as I suggested and just snuck in and waited without alerting anyone to our presence. It would have saved us a whole lot of trouble." Ardea said, causing Marcus' guards and maids to frown deeply and glare at her.
Still, despite them having shown up unannounced Marcus told his staff to treat them well, as they were his friends.
"Now would you tell me what you both are doing here?" Marcus asked once they were situated in his parlor.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm"Sure, we are here for your wedding. Boreas contacted me a couple days ago out of the blue and told me about it and I figured we should drop by." Jaela said with a exited look on her face.
It seemed that she was really looking forward to attending Marcus' wedding.
"As for me I already planned on coming by some time in the next couple months to see Lilia and assess her progress and confirm she still wants to be my apprentice. So, I figured I could come by a bit early to attend your wedding as well." Ardea said.
Hearing this, Marcus could imagine the smirk on Boreas' face when he invited both of them and did not mention anything to him or Mrazivý.
"Fine, I understand. I will make sure that you both can attend the wedding. Though the officials planning the thing are not going to be happy about last minute additions after all the work we went through hammering out the guest list."
After what had happened at his and Mrazivý's engagement party, security for the wedding was several times more intense, and everyone who would be attending had to be carefully vetted.
Nevertheless, there was no way he could turn away either Ardea or Jaela. And while it might be a bit of a pain having them added to the list, their presences would be comforting security wise.
If anything happened at their wedding like what occurred during the engagement party the two of them would make for impeccable allies.
"Now I am glad to see both of you again, but please at least contact me personally the next time you want to visit my estate. I have had attempted break-ins in the past and even some of my maids were kidnapped at one point, so people they do not know showing up and trying to get inside can put them on edge."
Both of them agreed to do so should they come to Borealia in the future and apologized for the trouble they had caused.
"Anyway, since we have some time, I believe you promised to discuss a certain topic with me the next time we met." Jaela said to Marcus expectantly.
At this he grimaced, since the last thing he wanted to do was spending his free time talking about a video game from his past life.
However, he had made that promise, and told Jaela that they could talk about it all day tomorrow.
Ardea on the other hand became quite serious and looked towards Lilia, who had been quietly sitting next to Marcus.
"While they are doing that, I believe tomorrow will be as good a time as any for me to give you your final assessment. That is, if you still wish to be my apprentice?"