The Nightingale

Chapter 23: Reasons

Winter — February / Year x492

There were reasons why Soujun Kuchiki, Rukia's father, did not want Rukia to grow up in the Royal Court, as was the custom for the future wives of the Second Prince; it wasn't a very long list of reasons, but they were all important.

The first reason was that Rukia was his only daughter.

Soujun became the Peace Councilor when his father, Ginrei Kuchiki, died in an accident in Maranni; that summer Ginrei had gone to the Great House, the whole family had gone to the river, and a snake bit him. It was a regrettable and too surprising death.

At that time Soujun was already married, and Byakuya had already been born, but he had to leave Maranni in charge of his younger brother and travel to the Capital to present his services to the king. Although Soujun knew what the position of the Peace Councilor represented, he had a hard time adapting his life in Maranni to his life in the Capital; that was the reason why Rukia and Byakuya had such a big age difference.

The second reason was The Accords of the Fall.

Soujun knew that as soon as Rukia reached the established age, she must travel to the Capital to be presented to the queen. Rukia would be a little girl, but she would be under the protection of the queen who would teach her what she had to know to be the People's Princess; the title given to the wife of the Second Prince, but he didn't want to do it. He didn't want to introduce his daughter to the Royal Court because he knew that she would have to marry an illegitimate son.

King Isshin had legitimized his bastard. The king would appoint his bastard as the Second Prince and marry Rukia. For Soujun that was too great an insult, during the more than 100 years that had passed since the fall, they had not been insulted in that way; the promise was a pure-blooded prince, not an illegitimate born of an affair.

That wedding was simply unacceptable. He was not going to allow his daughter, who was descended from oldest and most powerful kings than the kings of Avanta, to marry an illegitimate son.

The third reason had a first and last name: Emiko Kuchiki.

Emiko was Soujun's younger sister. She had been born with the pressure of being the wife of the Second Prince, and she fulfilled her role in wonderful ways. She was very smart and charming, she managed to understand that her destiny was written from before her birth and, although she was afraid, she did not resist fulfilling her duty. Emiko arrived in the Capital when she was 10 years old to take her place as the Queen's Favorite.

The queen raised Emiko and when it was time to make Emiko's engagement to Ganju, who was the Second Prince and Isshin's younger brother official, the two were good friends. They were both young and it was clear to them that they could not marry until Isshin did; but that did not happen as it should have.

— My brother loves Miss Emiko, I can't deny that they look happy. If they want to get married, who am I to say no? — Isshin had told the king for the wedding to be accepted. Isshin had already been declared the heir to the kingdom, and with that declaration of brotherly love, it seemed that he did not fear for his throne.

Everyone had to have suspected Isshin. Soujun should have suspected Isshin, even his father, who was still alive at the time, should have suspected the viper that Isshin was; but no one did, and the wedding took place.

Emiko knew the rules by which her marriage was governed; she knew that she shouldn't have a child, because of her despite being married, the descent of the Second Prince was ruled by the descent of the heir to the crown.

Stupid rules, old rules, but they were rules that had prevented the bloodshed of the cherished sons of queens past.

Everything was fine, everything seemed fine, until Soujun received a letter from his sister with a single sentence:

Hide us.

Soujun didn't know why his sister would ask for such a thing, as if she were a criminal, and he didn't understand why she was using the plural. Us? What had happened in the castle for her sister to send that letter? Whatever it was, Soujun loved his sister and if he had to hide her, he would.

However, Emiko did not arrive at the Great House, but a retinue directly from the castle led by a messenger, which brought a message that Soujun would never have wanted to read: Emiko was dead, and the Second Prince had died with her.

Soujun did not hesitate for a moment to take his horse and go immediately to the Capital. The trip from Maranni to the Capital of the kingdom lasts 6 days; but Soujun's desperation to reach the Capital made him whip the horse until the animal could no longer. He arrived in the Capital in fewer days than usual and, when he was there, he started asking questions, he needed to know what had happened and why his sister was dead.

The "official version", as Soujun had called the events his father had told him, was that Emiko and the Second Prince were heading to Maranni to visit the family, then they were ambushed by bandits on the way; the bandits had killed Emiko and Ganju when they resisted the robbery.

Those thieves had to be very good at fighting to have reduced the prince's guard like that. Soujun couldn't accept it, he couldn't accept it because his sister had sent him that note with the phrase "hide us"; so he looked for the maid who was in charge of taking care of his sister and, after swearing to the maid that he would not hurt her if she spoke the truth to him, he found out that Emiko was pregnant.

— Who else knows about this? — Soujun was upset. The maiden, who was on the verge of tears, swore that only she knew.

Apparently someone else, apart from the maiden and Emiko, knew about the pregnancy; Soujun was sure that someone else knew and that Emiko feared for her life, her son's and her husband's. Emiko was a good person and she was kind, but someone betrayed her, someone told the wrong person about that pregnancy and that is why they had killed her in a way that seemed like an accident. Soujun could only think of one person responsible for the death of his sister: Isshin.

The rules of inheritance were clear, the first to be born was the heir and that only left one way for Isshin's line of inheritance not to be affected, to ensure that his children are the first to be born; that is why the queens made sure that the princes did not have a child before their time.

No mother wanted to see her children die, and no queen would allow her son to be accused of treason just because her son had a child prematurely.

Treason for having had a child before the heir; betrayal for wanting to divide the kingdom was something no king was going to tolerate, no matter whose heads he had to cut off.

But Soujun had nothing to prove that Isshin was responsible and he did not want to cause more pain to his family by revealing that Emiko was pregnant; He did not want to tell them that she had possibly been murdered by her pregnancy and not by a robbery, as the Royal Family said.

If Soujun hadn't known about Emiko's pregnancy, then he wouldn't have noticed that the things that happened in the Castle were too convenient for Isshin; One by one the last two Isshin's brothers died, in ways so common that they would not be strange, yet Soujun suspected that Isshin was making use of the Ancient Traditions of the kingdom to be the total heir to everything.

With it in mind, Soujun was more and more certain that he did not want to have a daughter. He did not want to have a daughter who was not free to have her own life choices; so one day he simply left Maranni and headed south to Jetaiya to search for the old allies.

Maranni and Jetaiya were allies when Maranni was still a kingdom, many times there were marriages between their heirs in order to cement the alliances with blood; however, on the Night of the Fall, Jetaiya had not helped them. At that time Jetaiya was in conflict with Kuvar for possession of the Broken Lands, and Avanta had made his move so that Maranni would be without the help of his allies.

When Soujun arrived in Jetaiya, he found that a new king had been crowned, a king just as young as he, with a newborn daughter, just like Byakuya. Convincing the new king was not difficult, the king of Jetaiya felt that there was an ancestral debt with the Lords of Maranni that had to be paid, and that is how they signed an agreement to help Maranni to become a free and sovereign kingdom again; which would become effective when Jetaiya had an army as large as Avanta's to be able to battle them under the same conditions.

Everything Rukia knew about her brother's "great love story" was a lie. Soujun hadn't told Rukia anything because he knew that she would eventually go to the castle, whether he wanted to or not, and if she said something inappropriate everyone would be in danger; for that reason he had supported his daughter so that she was neither Ichigo's lover nor wife, because Jetaiya already had everything ready for the attack and they were just waiting for the right moment.

However, when Soujun saw Rukia get out of the carriage with the Crown of Roses and Sugar on her head, holding Prince Ichigo's hand, he knew that if he didn't do something about it to get Rukia out of the castle, she could get hurt when the war would start, but at the same time, seeing her so happy made him wish he could find a way to stop Jetaiya from wanting to attack Avanta.