A seductive rose scent wafted from her cheek.

Certainly, Giselle was a beautiful and charming woman. Objectively speaking.

But Sched found her long eyelashes and soft breaths annoying.

He turned his head indifferently, avoiding her as she drew closer.

At that, she paused her approach and narrowed her eyes.

“Fulfill your duty, that’s what I’m saying.”

Fingers with neatly manicured nails gripped his sturdy jaw, turning him to face her.

Sched’s brow furrowed, and Giselle, heedless, pressed her lips to his.

The lips meeting his were so terribly bitter that Sched pushed her away, breaking the kiss.

“Grand Priestess Giselle Marlhein.”

Sched coldly called her name.

His fiancée’s expression was unbelievably stubborn for a woman who had just kissed him.

Like him, she was also staring at him with cold eyes.

Sched recalled the time when he decided to get engaged to this remarkable woman.

His adoptive father, Duke Joseph Lester, had strongly approved and pushed for the marriage to Giselle.

It was because Sched, who came from Lupus, needed a background to be created for him.

Certainly, Giselle Marlhein was an excellent match without question.

Sched thought it didn’t matter either way.

Louise Ideana was dead, time in the world passed futilely, and his breath somehow clung well to him.

Sched thought.

Living alone for life because of one dead woman would be unsightly too.

He mocked himself.

That perhaps this engagement could also be a revenge for her.

With nothing particularly to hope for or dislike, he signed the engagement certificate. As if writing someone’s eulogy.

Perhaps if the name next to the engagement certificate had been someone else’s, he would have gladly done so too.

It didn’t matter whether the other party’s name was Giselle or Dietrich.

He wasn’t even curious why Giselle Marlhein had chosen him among countless potential husbands.

But now, the fiancée before his eyes irritates him.

“Can’t you stop with that stiff form of address?”

Giselle glared irritably at the man who stubbornly kept calling her Grand Priestess.

A fiancé who always maintained that rigid title even in private was suffocatingly frustrating.

“Take your pick. Giselle, or my beloved fiancée. Which do you prefer?”

It was a kind of battle of wills.

The proud and great Giselle Marlhein’s struggle to manipulate Sched Lester.

Sched couldn’t understand why she was so obsessed with him.

“Answer.”

Giselle stared at him directly, her golden eyes glinting.

“…Grand Priestess Giselle Marlhein, you’d better leave now. You must be tired from the long journey.”

He pronounced her name dryly and stubbornly.

His perfectly refined and precise pronunciation lacked respect, and his firm tongue tip showed a warning that he would no longer tolerate Giselle’s frivolity.

“Sched Lester.”

“Go.”

Sched turned his back on Giselle, who was glaring at him as if to pierce him.

Then, a haughty voice stabbed at his back.

“I came to get married.”

At those words, Sched’s steps halted again.

“That’s the second reason I came all the way here.”

As Sched turned back, Giselle was staring at him intently, lifting her long eyelashes.

“We’ve been engaged for too long, haven’t we? Considering our age too. It’s time to get married.”

Both families were hoping for the fruition of this long engagement.

“It’s been delayed because you keep going out to fight at every chance, right?”

Sched’s brow furrowed at the word “fight,” but Giselle paid no heed.

For years after their engagement, Sched constantly went to the battlefield.

When the war ended, he went out to hunt monsters, and sometimes to deal with thieves and pirates.

He plunged into all the places others feared as dangerous.

It was natural for him to be away from the castle for months at a time once he left.

Giselle was displeased with Sched’s such behavior.

It had been years of anxiously wondering if news of her fiancé’s death would arrive, trying to gauge when he might return.

Even if they didn’t love each other, a fiancé was still a fiancé.

The two were already bound as one destiny through their vows.

“I don’t want to drag out this ambiguous relationship any longer.”

“…”

“So when would be a good time for the wedding? The sooner the better for me. Though it would be a bit much to hold the ceremony in this remote corner…”

“Giselle Marlhein.”

At last, the title “Grand Priestess” dropped from Sched’s lips.

Only then did Giselle smile with satisfaction, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, my fiancé?”

“This doesn’t seem like a conversation to have right after arriving. Rest and we’ll talk later.”

Sched strode away, as if refusing to listen any further.

Then Giselle quickly walked over to block his path and held out her hand gloved in white.

As Sched narrowed his eyes, her eyebrows furrowed fiercely once more.

“Aren’t you going to escort me?”

At her question, Sched’s brow also furrowed.

He pressed his throbbing temple once.

He didn’t want to waste time. To that end, it was better to go along with what she wanted.

He sighed briefly and took her hand.

Following the noble etiquette his adoptive father had once thoroughly taught him, he guided her with her hand on his arm.

It was an excruciatingly annoying task.

“Slowly.”

Giselle pulled at his arm at his hasty pace.

He frowned, feeling like a dog being trained by its owner, but Giselle paid no mind.

Only after finally matching his stride to hers did she move with satisfaction.

As the two were going downstairs, Sched saw Eclas and Riana in the central hall.

His boring steps suddenly came to a halt.

“Duke Lester?”

Giselle looked at Sched who had suddenly stopped, and at the same time, Riana and Eclas’s gazes in the hall turned to the two.

In the middle of the long empty space, Sched and Riana’s eyes met.

“Has the Grand Priestess gone up to her room?”

Riana asked Eclas, who was waiting in the hall.

“She went up with Duke Lester. They probably have a lot to talk about. Meeting her fiancé after months of him being on the battlefield.”

Eclas answered, glancing at the long staircase leading to the second floor.

‘Fiancé…’

Riana nodded calmly.

Yes, Sched had a fiancée.

The Grand Priestess known to everyone in the empire, Giselle Marlhein.

A woman beautiful, capable, with an excellent family and background, considered by all to be the top bride candidate.

Riana recalled the girl from the Marlhein family she had seen in her childhood.

When Louise was about ten years old, people from the Marlhein family visited to celebrate Count Felix Ideana’s birthday.

That day, Giselle, who was about Louise’s age, also visited here.

Already determined to enter the monastery due to her innate holy power, she was healthy, lively, and had an affectionate personality.

Giselle was someone with a lovable, energetic spirit.

Even the maids who cared for the sickly and weak Louise every day smiled as they watched Giselle run around the garden, bursting into laughter.

To Louise, who couldn’t even go out properly and sat listlessly in bed, Giselle was an object of envy.

Playing in the dirt and picking flowers, or catching beetles and letting them fly in the room seemed fun.

“Come visit Marlhein later too!”

Giselle said to Louise, who was sitting on a bench.

Of course, Louise never took a single step outside the Ideana domain until her death, but she nodded.

Louise thought her sky-blue hair was very pretty.

In front of her, even her own blonde hair felt like limp cobwebs.

Somehow, it felt like she would gain strength just by being next to Giselle.

She was a child who brought a pleasant breeze wherever she went.

That girl, who had not a single flaw.

Now she was his fiancée.

Riana smiled bitterly, looking at herself in a maid’s uniform.

‘It was just because of the heat cycle.’

She felt her past self, swept up in emotions, as ugly and dirty.

Then Eclas’s voice woke her from her reverie.

“Now that Grand Priestess Giselle Marlhein has arrived, catching the heretic should be just a matter of time. In terms of holy power alone, no one can surpass Grand Priestess Giselle, so she’ll be a strong asset for Ideana.”

“Ah, that’s fortunate…”

As Riana was nodding, footsteps interrupted between the two.

They both raised their heads at the same time.

A pair of man and woman coming down the stairs came into view.

Riana took in the well-matched couple, as if joined by divine providence.

Giselle Marlhein was far more beautiful and elegant than she remembered, arm in arm with Sched.

The white Grand Priestess robe with few decorations looked just like a wedding dress.

Riana quietly took in the sight.

She thought her heart would ache a lot seeing them together.

But strangely enough, her heart faced the two quite calmly.

The past week. After deciding to accept Eclas’s help, she organized her emotions neatly as if preparing to leave this place.

The fiancée and the heat cycle clearly showed her the reality, completely waking her from the mirage-like delusion.

Riana gradually came to calmly face her situation.

The pounding heart and the throbbing chest were now faint and distant, like the sound of a bell tower heard from afar.

Was it the fruit of her efforts to empty herself again and again?

It seemed a scab had formed on the wound now.

“Miss Riana. Go inside.”

Seeing the two coming down, Eclas quietly gestured to her.

Riana nodded, realizing this was not a place for her to belong.

It might look like she was running away from Sched, but it was actually Giselle who was uncomfortable.

It would be troublesome if she somehow noticed her black magic.

Riana quietly retreated to avoid the place.

But.

“Where are you going?”

A cold voice echoed in the hall.