It was one of the proudest days of Gunther's life as he stood behind his daughter Tuuli, dressed in her fancy robes, with his beautiful wife by his side as they walked out in front of soon to be married couples for the star festival, or the Starbind Ceremony, as the fancy nobles called it.
Both he and Effa were so fancily dressed, with him in shiny armor and with his hair slicked back and her dressed as a noble's attendant, that he doubted many of their old friends from the lower city could even recognize them. It made him marvel how fast a man's life could change.
One day they were just barely making ends meet while his daughter was on the verge of dying, the next they were living in a mansion right next to the Archduke's castle, being trained to act as their eldest daughter's attendant and guard knight.
The day would have been perfect, if it weren't for the giant former Knight's Commander who was currently carrying his youngest daughter towards the stand usually reserved for the Archbishop, a look of absolute happiness on his face.
A jealousy burned within Gunther's heart, and an annoyance at how this man had apparently deluded himself into believing that he was Myne's grandfather. As if Shirou claiming Myne as his biological daughter wasn't bad enough. At least Shirou was doing it for benevolent reasons and was more than willing to admit behind closed doors that Gunther is her father and let them spend all the time they wanted together.
Ever since Shirou had been summoned away, Bonifatius had been around and Gunther was not permitted to hold his youngest daughter because of it.
Gunther tried to shake the seething resentment he felt and look out over the gathered crowd of people.
Ehrenfest was a pretty big city, and all the weddings were held on that one day, meaning that there were about a hundred couples lined up to hear the sermon so that they would officially be married in the eyes of their community. There were also the families and friends of the people getting married who were gathered, and some people ready to take part in the after party standing around with carts full of fruit at the ready.
All together, there must have been four thousand people watching the ceremony. Twenty times as many people as they were told to expect at the noble's that night, since the commoner's ceremony was held separately and in the morning.
Each person getting married was dressed in the seasonal color of their birth, to the best of their abilities, and excitement was in the air. They were all muttering when rather than the Archbishop and High Priest, Gunther's two beautiful and precious little girls took the stage, but a chime of a magic tool brought their voices down to a whisper and amplified Tuuli's voice so that she could be heard by all.
Tuuli was taking the part of High Priest, telling the story of the marriage between the God of Darkness and Goddess of Light. Her performance was flawless and her voice was so cute that Gunther wanted to scoop his daughter up and celebrate right then and there, but he restrained himself, even if he couldn't keep the stupid smile off of his face.
But as Tuuli's part came to an end, Myne stepped forward to finish the job, fulfilling the role usually performed by the Archbishop, giving the final prayer.
"O mighty King and Queen of the endless skies, O God of Darkness and Goddess of Light, hear my prayers. May you grant your blessings to the birth of new unions. May they who offer their prayers and gratitude to thee be blessed with thy divine protection."
A large flash of white and black light erupted from Myne, a blessing so massive as to leave her temporarily shrouded in the lights, before it moved out in order to touch each and every person who had come to view the ceremony.
The commoners were shocked as none of them had ever experienced a real blessing before, as the old Archbishop had never had enough mana to do such a thing. They felt the sacred power touching them and not a single heart wasn't moved.
The commoners couldn't believe that they had been given such a blessing, and they didn't even know the half of it.
Even Bonifatius, who was said to have the second highest amount of magic power in the entire Duchy, right after Ferdinand, was rendered speechless by the size of Lady Rozemyne's blessing, knowing that he wouldn't have been able to bless a quarter that many people, even if he had given it his all.
But that shock didn't last long as a laugh charged with magic power broke the quieting spell that had been placed over the audience, returning everything to normal value as Bonifatius scooped up a shocked Myne and dangled her in front of the crowd.
"Behold Rozemyne! The Saint of Ehrenfest!" Bonifatius shouted to the commoners, using the nickname that Myne had been given by some of the Gray Robes at the temple.
"Hey! Put her down! Be careful!" Gunther shouted, jumping in to rescue his daughter as Bonifatius's shaking was causing her undue stress.
Luckily, he was brought under control and they managed to bow out with some grace remaining… before Myne promptly passed out from being too roughly handled.
"Well, we were going to send her to bed anyways I suppose." Tuuli said with a sigh after she had performed some healing spells to stabilize Myne's condition. She watched her little sister's adorable sleeping face with half exasperation, knowing that this was nowhere even close to the last time she was going to scare them like that.
Bonifatius was apologetic for the trouble he had caused, but was still getting a lecture from Effa and Gunther, who didn't give a single shit that he was the uncle of the Archduke. Seeing the old Knight on his knees a pitiful look on his face as they yelled at him was comical indeed.
The massive blessing that Myne had given had been meant to tire her out a bit so that she could take a long nap in the middle of the day so that she would be more awake that night for the Noble's Starbind Ceremony, since it was way past her normal bedtime.
"I hope she is feeling well enough for tonight. I'd hate to have to do the ceremony by myself." Freida said.
She and Tuuli had had an agreement that Tuuli would handle the High Priest's part of the ceremony for the lower city while Freida would do it for the Nobles, since they still made Tuuli nervous, even if she was getting better with it.
It wasn't that Freida couldn't do the entire thing by herself, it was just that, as a known adopted commoner, she wouldn't be as well received as Myne would be, no matter how good her manners.
"I'm sure she will be up in time." Tuuli said, reassuring Freida. "In the meantime, I'm going to make sure everything is okay with the orphanage. They went to pick taue fruits during the ceremony and were going to toss them at each other in the back of the Temple grounds."
Such a thing was common for the commoner's Star Festival, where jealous unmarried men and kids would toss the water filled fruits at the married couples, but since the orphans were never allowed to leave the Temple grounds before, they had never been able to join in. So, the girls figured they would allow the children to have fun with it in the back of the Temple.
It would probably anger the Blue Robes that they were causing a lot of noise, but none of them would do anything about it.
The orphans were under the girls' protection, and they were under Shirou's protection, and Shirou was the Archduke's appointed 'Inquisitor' for the Temple. And one does not casually invite the wrath of an Inquisitor.
The girls had quickly realized this and basically did whatever they wanted at the Temple, treating it as their own playground.
They might have felt bad about causing problems for other Blue Robes, if it weren't for how mean spirited most of them were. Their father assured them that they were all just a bunch of spoiled brats with not a single dignified bone in their bodies, and to not pay their feelings any mind.
Some of them were just genuinely evil, having been kicked from their families because of the dishonor they caused, while the rest had inferiority complexes because of their pitiful amount of magic power. This led to most of them treating the Gray Priests and Priestesses as playthings when they could.
Something that Shirou had cracked down on once the Archbishop was out of the picture.
Was he a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist after arranging his enemies' downfall? Yes. But it was difficult to find fault with him for it.
"I wonder what father is doing right now?" Tuuli said as she looked out the window into the clear blue sky. "Whatever is going on, I hope he is safe and happy."
Shirou was not at all happy.
After showing up and handing off the Feystones he had prepared to a group of very grateful scholars, as the stones contained enough Earth attributed magic power to protect twenty towns during the coming storm, he was left waiting in Klassenberg (the city, not the Duchy) in order to meet with the stupid Archduke.
Meeting times had been arranged for their formal greeting, and it was scheduled to happen three days after his arrival.
He knew perfectly well WHY they were asked to come so early, and it wasn't for their claimed reason of the magic circles taking time to set up, and that the more monsters they hunt before the arrival of the Lord of Autumn, the weaker it would be.
The Aub Klassenberg wanted skilled Knights and Scholars around during the Starbind Ceremony in order to try to lure Knights to their own territory. But Shirou wasn't even going to participate. Especially since the reason that Klassenberg got the King to pressure Shirou into participating was likely to try to introduce him to his niece/adopted-sister and try to get Shirou to marry into his family and leave Ehrenfest.
At least, that is what he and Justus had determined from their own investigations. No one else has the kind of mana capacity to be able to bear Shirou's child who isn't already married.
The fact that he now has a biological daughter and two adopted children would probably cause an uproar, even if all of them were girls. And it would conflict with the desires of the girl's grandfather/adopted father, who wants for her to return to the royal family.
'For fucks sake! Do you know how much work I could get done in three days!' Shirou's inner Rin screamed in rage at having been treated with such disregard, while his inner Sakura attempted to calm it down, saying that it couldn't be helped. Ehrenfest was currently the 13th ranked Duchy out of 21, and most agreed that its rank was higher than it deserved.
Shirou understood that this was just how Nobles were. They scheduled things days in advance and never did anything sudden. At least, most of them didn't.
"Lord Ferdinand, you have received an invitation for a meeting for lunch." Justus said, causing Shirou to perk up.
"From Aub Klassenberg?" He asked, hoping that his meeting with the man had been moved up so that he could actually get to work.
"No. From Aub Dunkelfelger."
…Shirou let out an audible groan.
Well. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.