For Kaella, Lyusenford was a place where her life, filled with endless depression and tears, finally collapsed and ended in agony.

As soon as she arrived here, she only thought of death. So when the opportunity arose for the Lyusenford nobles to be wiped out, she reluctantly ate the Ferenko she had avoided so much.

In a place where the food was terrible, the weather cold and gloomy, and the people cruel, laughter did not exist. She had to strain her memory to recall when she last laughed.

“If there was anything uncomfortable, or something that made you think ‘this isn’t right’, you must tell me. I’m slow, so I won’t know unless you tell me.”

Kaella, holding her hands together, watched Peon’s expression as he said this.

It was pitiful how intently she was watching him, and at the same time, it was lovely how she fidgeted with her hands and looked up at him.

A slight blush was visible on her cheeks, and her slender fingers fidgeting were pale white. Though it was cute how her hands peeked out from being tightly wrapped in fur, they must have already been frozen.

“It wasn’t, uncomfortable.”

Peon nodded sincerely with a smile at the hesitant, halting response.

“I see.”

“And there wasn’t anything that made me think ‘this isn’t right’.”

“Is that so? What else?”

He asked gently, stretching out his gloved hand to hold her fidgeting hands. In an instant, her blue eyes, which had grown much larger, looked up at him.

He wished those piercingly clear blue eyes, without a trace of dark outline, would remain fixed on him like this. No, that’s a filthy greed.

Once, these eyes had consistently held and followed him, but he himself kicked away that golden opportunity. A foolish man can only beat his dull and stupid chest and tuck her small hands into the fur.

“It’s cold.”

She stays still obediently as he tucks them in. It was so much like when Kaella was young that Peon couldn’t help but smile.

“Let’s go. Keep telling me as we walk.”

He took a step very slowly. Kaella was already wearing a heavy velvet dress and tightly wrapped, and she was short with a narrow stride. So he often intentionally, or unintentionally, distanced himself from Kaella. He always distanced himself.

Elder brother, let’s go together!

There were times when he found the small footsteps and the whimpering voice clinging to the back of his head really annoying, and times when he mischievously found it enjoyable. Either way, Peon, who was a young boy then, didn’t know what was truly precious to him.

“There’s not much… to tell you…”

Kaella, who had been thinking hard while slowly walking, furrowed her brow and looked up.

“Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”

“How could nothing have happened with so many people there? Who greeted you first?”

This man wasn’t originally someone who warmly asked about every little detail and observed so closely. Kaella looked up at him with an expression that didn’t hide her puzzlement. Even with such a look, he only returned a gaze that was still waiting.

Could there be some political calculation he needs to make? Ah, that must be it.

“The gatekeeper’s wife stepped forward and greeted me first.”

Though her calm and composed tone held no emotion, Peon didn’t neglect a single word.

“So you didn’t order her to greet you.”

“No.”

“What else did she do after stepping forward?”

His tone held a strong conviction that the gatekeeper’s wife must have done more than just greet. Well, Peon must have experienced the wife of someone in such an important position as a gatekeeper a few times.

“Please tell me exactly as it happened.”

He seems to have guessed already. Kaella hesitated a little, then just spoke honestly.

After all, what benefit would there be in hiding it from her? And even if something bad happened to her for not hiding it and speaking honestly, that would just be what was meant to happen anyway.

There was nothing new about it, so it would be better to just speak honestly and at least feel some relief.

“The other ladies could have introduced themselves directly as well, but she tried to take on the role of introducing them to me. So I stopped her and had everyone introduce themselves in order, one by one.”

That wasn’t a wife sweetly telling her husband about this and that, about what happened today, but more like a report to a superior. The stiff tone, ill-fitting for her delicate voice, made it feel even more like a report.

“So they introduced themselves one by one, and I greeted them. We had refreshments… I said thank you for coming.”

She wasn’t particularly thankful, but it was the Duchess’s role to at least roughly say the things that were conventionally said. In fact, even that was annoying, but she just did it.

After greeting everyone one by one, she thought she should break the silence that followed herself. She didn’t want to give the floor again to rude people like Yolnes Pare who liked to speak up.

“Is that so?”

But Peon smiled more deeply, as if the mere fact that she had said something was important. The corners of his mouth that had been slightly raised went up further, and his beautiful violet eyes were filled with laughter. Why is he smiling? Is what I’m saying funny?

In Lyusenford, where any word she said was met with deflating sounds and they laughed among themselves with mocking words like “Ah, so that’s what Her Highness thinks,” Kaella gradually lost her words.

Every word she said was an object of ridicule. Not knowing why they were laughing, she didn’t know what to do. Sometimes she had the terrible thought of wanting to stab a pen into their laughing faces, then would be startled by her own thoughts.

So Kaella was afraid of people who laughed when she spoke, even when it wasn’t something to laugh about. So she deliberately spoke more stiffly, but now Peon was smiling.

“Yes.”

Kaella answered in a sunken, cracked voice and closed her mouth again. Here, neither food nor speaking was free.

When she didn’t say anything more, only silence flowed between the two. Kaella was already used to that silence, whatever it was, so she just walked quietly. She could feel Peon’s gaze on her, but she didn’t want to speak.

“What else did you say?”

But he finally made her speak. She couldn’t dare not answer a question from the Grand Duke.

Now that she thought about it, was he determined to keep making her speak to make fun of her? It would be better to just ignore her; being mocked and ignored was hard for an Ostein princess’s pride to bear.

“Your Highness?”

Kaella, who had been biting her lips, opened her mouth again.

“It was just formal talk. I don’t understand why you’re curious about it.”

Though there was no emotion in her voice, which had become even stiffer, a perfect shield was put up, mercilessly deflecting Peon.

The noble Ostein princess was very radiant even with just a slight smile, but when she closed her mouth, she exuded an atmosphere that was difficult to approach carelessly.

She was so precious that she seemed too elegant to even speak to unless one was of a fairly high status. People who didn’t know her said she was cold. In fact, it was just narrow-minded people who disparaged her for not smiling.

Peon knew well how warm-hearted and kind a person she was.

Throughout her married life, she never got angry even when her husband ignored her, always maintained her manners towards him, and forced herself to smile. It was something impossible without tremendous courage.

“It would be unfair if other women heard what you said, but I, your husband, couldn’t hear it.”

She must think I’m going to act as a spy for Kline because I’m the Emperor’s nephew.

Then why not just confirm with others instead of asking directly? Kaella’s brain, which had been walking while biting the inside of her lip in upset, belatedly processed and interpreted what Peon was saying.

“…Pardon?”

Kaella’s brain firmly told her ears, ‘You heard wrong.’

In fact, a few knights and maids with brains that made similar judgments looked at the Grand Duke with bewildered expressions and slowly started to escape from reality. We heard wrong, right? Right?

“Do you dislike telling me?”

Is he making fun of me? Kaella examined Peon’s face as he asked seriously. There was no hint of joking on his handsome face, which was still as good-looking as ever, unfairly so considering how pale and lifeless she was.

His voice and gaze were consistently serious as always. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find any intention or expectation of ‘I’m very excited to hear what you have to say, and I’ll laugh at you as soon as you speak.’

‘Come to think of it, he wasn’t someone who laughed at what I said.’

He was the only one who didn’t laugh when Kaella spoke. The problem was that he didn’t listen much either, but still. So there was no one in Lyusenford that Kaella could properly talk to.

So, Kaella was shocked and suspicious of the first request she heard to ‘tell me more because I’m curious,’ and forgot to answer.

Her eyes, wide open in surprise, stared blankly at him. Peon looked down at Kaella, who was looking up at him with her head tilted back, and nodded.

“I see. I understand. I’ll try harder.”

“Pardon?”

“I said I’ll try harder to become a husband closer than other women.”

His attitude of trying harder was very much like that of a sincere knight. But is that something to try hard at? Meanwhile, somehow the term ‘other women’ didn’t sound very nice.

“They’re not other women, but the noble ladies of Lyusenford, Your Highness. There were also wives of knights who serve you.”

“To me, all women except you are other women.”

At that point, Cecil, the oldest maid serving the Duchess, and Sir Renard, the most perceptive knight accompanying the Duke, simultaneously began to push away the people around them.

‘Step back. Quickly.’

‘Why?’

Sir Renard once again realized why Sir Wilberk, who was staring blankly at him, didn’t have a lover.

Unless Sir Renard was the person involved, realizing such things didn’t feel clear or satisfying at all, but rather annoying. What a frustrating and stubborn human.

Fortunately, Sir Wilberk was more intimidated by the new maid Cecil than his friend Renard, so he slowly slowed his steps at her gaze. Now the ducal couple and their attendants were more than three steps apart.

“I think the marital relationship should be closer than with them. What do you think, Your Highness?”

If Kaella said no, Peon was prepared to change his mind immediately. The beliefs and will he had tried to protect at the risk of his life were nothing but the stubbornness of a petty and foolish person.

So he no longer had any beliefs or will. Only his standards would change according to what Kaella, whom he couldn’t help but admire every time he saw her, said.

How could you have such unwavering courage to the end? No matter how much he thought about it, it was difficult for him, who was petty and shameless, to understand.

Kaella was a heavenly creature that the base Peon, crawling on the ground, always had to look up at. A being that he couldn’t take his eyes off, constantly following with his gaze, finally feeling the urge to reach out and snatch her.

As the Emperor said, like a true ‘mongrel’, he chose to do all sorts of wicked things and recognized the beautiful, precious, and kind being the latest.

“That… is true. We should be, closer than others.”

Although Kaella wondered why Peon was saying such things, she nodded because it was correct. It’s right. After all, this marriage was a political one, so the two were political partners.

Moreover, with the Ostein duchy backing Kaella, the union of the two territories had to be solid. It felt like many things were changing now that her father was alive, but Kaella didn’t put much meaning into each of these words.

She heard it in one ear and let it out the other, already evaporating from her mind.

No words remained in her heart. There wasn’t even a place in her heart to cherish and hold any words dear. Her tired and indifferent eyes looked down diagonally.

‘He’ll stop soon enough.’

Anyway, the days she met Peon would become as rare as they were before she died. She already knew enough about married life in general.

Peon is not Kaella’s husband, but Beatrice’s man. Honestly, wouldn’t Kaella be included among the so-called ‘other women’? As she was walking quietly, thinking about this and that, Peon called out to stop her.

“Your Highness? Where are you going?”

When she raised her head, she found that Peon had stopped after turning his body in the opposite direction from her.

“To my room.”

She wondered why he was asking something so obvious. Of course, shouldn’t she be stuck in the Duchess’s bedroom?

But Peon looked at her for a moment as if examining her. His complexion seemed to darken slightly. He spoke to Kaella, who didn’t understand, after a slight pause.

“Of course, that’s the direction of your bedroom, but aren’t you using my bedroom now?”

To be precise, Kaella had never slept in the Duchess’s bedroom. As soon as she arrived in Lyusenford, she collapsed and the Duke personally carried her and laid her in his bedroom. From then until now, the Duke’s bedroom had been where Kaella stayed all along.

“You’re not well enough yet to return to that room already.”

Peon’s voice became slightly unsteady. He spoke almost pleadingly to Kaella, who had unknowingly already taken five or six steps towards the Duchess’s bedroom, a room she hadn’t used and wasn’t familiar with, while she stood stiff as a stone.

“Moreover, it’s a room that a criminal decorated. It won’t be sufficiently prepared, and it will be very cold for you to stay in since it hasn’t been used for a while.”

He couldn’t put that woman, who seemed so fragile she might scatter into the air, in the Duchess’s room decorated by the banished head maid Doris Windgood in a style that was, kindly put, modest, and unkindly put, miserly.

Though the fashion was about 20 years out of date, Kaella would suffocate and disappear in a room decorated by a stubborn person who firmly believed it was the latest trend.

No, that was an excuse. A dirty excuse. The conqueror of the North, the ruler of winter who was said to fearlessly face evil dragons, desperately ignored the anxiety that approached even colder than Lyusenford’s chill.

This, well this was just concern that Kaella might harm her health if she went to that room. That’s why he was stopping her. Yes. That’s it, it absolutely wasn’t because she seemed to know that room.

“Come here.”

He reached out his hand. He extended his hand for his wife, who had never once refused his hand, to quickly grasp it.

“Hurry.”

Then Peon realized a contradiction he had been ignoring.

Kaella had never refused his hand.

Before the regression.