"I shall play your wife."
With those words of Kicho's, our strange life together began.
We made a contract. In front of others, we'd play a loving—no, a fearsome Demon King and his wife. When we were alone, we wouldn't pry into each other's affairs; we'd simply join hands to survive. No demands for children. No demands for hearts. Only one thing asked: to survive together. A contract, to deceive the world.
It worked better than I'd expected. Kicho was frighteningly good at acting.
The moment she appears before the retainers, the woman becomes someone else. Back straight, chin raised, she surveys them all with an icy gaze. The dignified bearing of her ladyship, worthy of the name of the Viper's daughter. Not one of them suspects that behind it hides "the true face of a woman who dislikes men."
Thanks to her, I was saved.
At banquets, when I'm frozen with fear and can't get out a single word, Kicho steps right in, takes over, and smooths things along. When a retainer gets too close, she casually puts herself between us. She never lets anyone sense my shaking.
And when we're alone, Kicho heaves a deep sigh and says something like this:
"My lord. Soaked in sweat again, are we? A banquet of that sort—what on earth are you so frightened of?"
"...Well, I can't tell what those men are thinking. I couldn't stop watching the hands carrying the trays."
"There is no poison in the food. I eat from the same dish first, you know."
At that, I'm relieved down to my bones.
In front of this woman alone, it's all right to shake. No need to play the fool, no need to bluff. For the first time in my life, I'd found someone I could tell that what scared me scared me.
But the people of the household had no way of knowing the truth about us.
They talked among themselves about what they saw, however they liked.
"Her ladyship is truly a woman of iron. Beside a lord like the Demon King himself, she does not so much as twitch an eyebrow."
"She is the Viper's daughter indeed. Even when our lord glares in silence, she yields not one step. There is a lady worthy of the Oda."
"When our lord and her ladyship gaze at each other without a word... truly, it is unfathomable. What are those two scheming?"
No.
Kicho doesn't yield a step because of fortitude. It's acting.
When we're gazing at each other without a word, it usually goes like this.
I'm pleading with my eyes, "I want to run, I want to get out of this banquet," and Kicho is scolding me with hers: "Bear it a little longer, idiot." That's all it is.
There's no unfathomable scheme anywhere. All there is is a little conspiracy between a scaredy-cat husband and the wife who shelters him.
Even so, rumors like this began to spread through the household.
"There is a princess of iron, who married the Demon King and yields not one step."
Every time I hear that rumor, I secretly think:
The world really does get things wrong, all the time.
And that wrongness truly saves me.