The Grand Duke strode into the mud.

Without a care for his expensive silk shirt getting soiled, he lightly picked up a lump covered in lime and mud.

The blonde hair of the mud-covered figure hung down limply.

“Your Highness…”

Shavell buried his small face in Frost’s broad chest and sobbed.

“Shavell is so tired. Please hold me tightly until I’m crushed.”

Frost let out a shallow sigh and carried Shavell out of the mud with heavy steps.

The commander Leo trailing behind the Grand Duke could see how his lord’s neck was flushed red with embarrassment, and how his worried gaze kept drifting towards Yuriella.

Yuriella, who had barely managed to stand up from the mud, unconsciously placed a hand on her chest as she watched the Grand Duke’s back receding while holding Shavell, without even a glance back.

Ouch.

Her chest ached as if pricked by a sharp needle tip, making Yuriella frown.

‘What’s this? Did I eat too much whole roasted pig at the banquet…?’

Rosalinne, who had followed Frost, alternated between looking at Yuriella rubbing her chest with a grimace and the back of the Grand Duke carrying Shavell. With a furrowed brow, she strode over to Yuriella.

“Miss.”

Seeing the frighteningly cracked face of the head maid, Yuriella flinched. Like a thief caught red-handed, she quickly apologized first.

“I’m sorry. The dress I was supposed to wear to the banquet is ruined. I should have changed before coming here, but it slipped my mind…”

She should have realized when Shavell suddenly barged into the reception room, fuming and stomping.

With her love of three sweet years getting married to another woman, her mind must have been quite twisted.

When she chose this training ground instead of the perfectly fine reception room as the place to talk, Yuriella should have swiftly caught on.

Only after getting her hair grabbed and face planted into the mud by Shavell’s sudden attack did she realize that what the woman wanted was a ‘physical conversation’.

From Shavell’s perspective, her ‘enemy’ had dared to enter her territory and try on the trophy dress and jewelry, so of course she had to launch a counterattack in this desperate situation.

Overlooking that and following her here unguarded was clearly Yuriella’s mistake.

Yuriella gently brushed the mud off the dress, but the more she did, the more it smeared, leaving her at a loss. She glanced at the head maid.

The head maid’s eyes reddened as she took out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

Yuriella felt even more apologetic.

“What should I do? The lace gloves that belonged to the previous Grand Duchess are torn too. I’m even more sorry about this…”

Rosalinne couldn’t hold back and shouted.

“Who cares about the dress! Or the previous Grand Duchess’s heirloom!”

The workers loitering around took the cue and quietly slipped away.

“But… this dress costs an eye-popping amount, and these lace gloves are priceless heirlooms that can’t be bought for any price. Actually, the pretty gems attached to the glove ends fell off too…”

Yuriella fiddled with the torn lace gloves, watching the head maid’s reaction.

Rosalinne grabbed Yuriella’s arms tightly and shook her, gnashing her teeth.

“Miss Yuriella. You must never lose to Miss Shavell!”

“Huh?”

“They say even if you get mauled by an ice dragon, as long as you keep your wits about you, you can survive! Do you understand?”

“Oh? Ah, yes…”

Rosalinne took out a handkerchief and wiped the tears welling up in her eyes, lamenting.

“Is it because I served poorly? He never showed any interest in women before. Even got mistaken for being gay. But how did he get bewitched by that vixen…”

“Not a vixen, but a jackal, I heard?”

“A jackal?”

Rosalinne tilted her head as if hearing it for the first time.

“It looks like a dog but has a pointy snout and big ears like this. In the North they also call it a coyote?”

While rolling in the mud entangled with Shavell, Yuriella had drastically revised her opinion of the Grand Duke’s beautiful fiancée.

The dazzling golden-haired beauty was not only gorgeous in appearance but also possessed an exceptionally outstanding physique in function!

Her slender white arms accurately sought out and targeted Yuriella’s openings.

Under the voluminous dress, her lithe legs were well-muscled and agile. The force of her kicks was no ordinary noblewoman’s.

Especially the long and short heads of her posterior thigh muscles and the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles of her calves – they were undoubtedly built through high-intensity daily training.

So at some point, it felt less like fighting the Grand Duke’s lover and more like sparring with Imperial Knight subordinates in hand-to-hand combat drills. Enough to make her want to place a spear and sword in those pretty hands and have a proper match.

If only Yuriella hadn’t been so preoccupied with blocking and enduring in this body.

“Head maid. Would His Grace keep just anyone by his side?”

“Miss…!”

“He lost his parents at a young age and led the North on his own strength. Every step of the way must have been weighted with the lives of the Northern people, so when he took someone by his side, there must have been a proper reason and meaning.”

“But you must be having such a hard time, Miss…”

Yuriella clasped Rosalinne’s hands that were busy dabbing at her tears and implored.

“I have no reason to win or lose against Shavell. Because I will not fight Shavell. The ones I must fight are the devil’s poison tormenting His Grace and the bastards after his life. And I will definitely win. That’s all I care about.”

“Miss…”

“I may be uneducated and simple-minded, unsuited to be the lady of such an eminent noble house. But help me not for my sake, but for His Grace’s sake. I beg you.”

The head maid’s gaze, which had only been looking at the future lady pitifully, gradually warmed with admiration and respect.

It was a clear and upright gaze she had never encountered before.

Rosalinne deeply reflected on her own rash eyes that had hastily judged based only on the shell of an illegitimate child from a wandering apothecary troupe. She engraved the vow deep in her heart to serve the Grand Duchess, who was so deep and steadfast, with utmost loyalty until her bones wore out.

*

At that moment, Frost was in the bathroom attached to his bedchamber, his lips pressed into a straight line as he removed the mud-caked dress from Shavell and untied the ivory corset strings with firm tugs.

His hands were quite rough in removing the corset.

“Take it off gently. If you pull the strings that hard, it hurts me-. Ugh!”

Shavell groaned, wrinkling his mud-covered face.

“Oh dear. Does it hurt?”

A murderous glare pierced Shavell’s back.

“Is something bothering you? Why have you been sulking since earlier-. Ouch, my hair!”

With a blank face, Frost threw the clump of mud he had ripped out of Shavell’s matted hair onto the floor with a thud.

“Something bothering me, you ask.”

“Brother. Wasn’t my jealous fiancée act superb? On par with an actor, right?”

Shavell turned to Frost with sparkling violet eyes like a puppy bringing back a bone its owner had thrown.

“Yes. Well.”

“Brother. Being taciturn is nice, but at times like this, you should just say I did really well, praise me, and give me pats and rubs.”

Shavell grabbed Frost’s large hand, pulled it over, and made him pat and stroke his own head while grinning.

“Yes. You did very well.”

A voice uncomfortably suppressing emotion escaped, scraping his throat. It sounded like he might be gritting his teeth, but Shavell must have misheard. He just shrugged.

“Ugh, so stiff.”

Shavell stripped completely naked and leaped into the marble bathtub Frost had prepared at the perfect temperature with a splash.

“Ahh. So refreshing. Brother, what are you doing? Come in and scrub my back.”

When Frost just stood there with his arms crossed, Shavell leaped out of the bathtub with a splash. He grabbed Frost’s arm, sharply bent it, and pulled him in a carry-like position with a heave.

The Grand Duke looked down at his cousin trying to drag him to the bathtub while grunting. He swiftly picked him up, slung him over his shoulder, and tossed him into the bathtub with a splash.

Shavell, who had been dunked underwater, emerged with a sputter and complained in a shrill voice.

“Your Grace! How could you do this to Shavell?”

“…”

They say Imperial Academy guard dogs can recite the Imperial Law Book after 3 years of training.

Looks like 3 years of crossdressing and playing the fiancée role has made him a pro at it.

Splash splash. Scrub scrub.

Shavell poured perfumed water over his body, washing off the mud, and sniffed his arm.

“The new rose perfume really soaks into the skin. Bees will probably come mistaking me for a flower and sting me. Haha.”

Shavell stuck his straight legs, cleansed of mud, out of the water and examined them.

“I should refrain from exercising for a while. The muscles have become unattractively lumpy like a man’s.”

To think this was the genius prince who was expected to surpass the founding emperor, memorizing the Imperial Law Book at 3 and military strategy books at 5.

11 years ago, Shavell’s mother Empress Gelsomina died in a fire set by the emperor’s faction at the Empress Palace.

The 9-year-old genius prince Lewis, whom the emperor never let off his lap, was also found charred. The shock caused the emperor’s chronic illness to flare up and he collapsed.

They say the emperor clutched a small golden locket containing his young son’s ashes in his hand until his dying moment. Utterly unaware that the ashes of his son in that locket actually belonged to the prince’s playmate.

The prince’s nanny, mother of that playmate, had secretly spirited the prince away and passed him off as her own son, hiding in her hometown in the West.

3 years ago, when the Western frontier was devastated by a demonic beast horde’s attack, she protected her master to her last breath. Her dying words were to seek shelter with Grand Duke Ielheim.

Shavell, puzzled by Frost’s prolonged silence, scooped up handfuls of soap suds and playfully flung them at Frost with a small laugh.

The water splashed along with the suds, running down Frost’s neck and soaking his shirt.

“…The water is getting cold. Hurry and wash up so you don’t catch a cold.”

As Frost turned to leave, two arms stretched out from the bathtub and grabbed his thighs.

“Hmph. I can’t wash alone. Sticky lime and mud are stuck in every nook and cranny. Look, there’s even mud in my ears, and I can’t reach this part of my back.”

When Frost lowly growled that he could stretch Shavell’s arms to make washing easier, Shavell flinched back and sat meekly in the bathtub.

“I was just trying to lift your mood since you looked so unwell. …It’s because you’re worried about His Majesty’s visit, right?”

“No.”

It’s not because of Justin Della Ponti. Preparations to receive the emperor are thorough.

What currently filled Frost’s mind was the rose-blonde woman left alone in the mud behind the annex.

Leaving Yuriella and fishing Shavell out of the mud was the proper course of action.

The prince he had chosen as his future sovereign and Yuriella, a pawn to be discarded once her usefulness ended, were not even worth putting on a scale to compare.

“But, brother. What could His Majesty be scheming?”

“…Are you hurt?”

The concern that had been weighing on his mind inadvertently slipped out as words.

No matter how much Shavell wore dresses and pretended to be a woman, he was undeniably a man.

Although he had a willowy build for a man, the Grand Duke had been secretly putting him through physical training in his private training grounds every day, so Shavell was capable of at least a junior knight’s level of combat.

“Is His Majesty hurt?”

“…Pardon?”

“You just asked, ‘Are you hurt?'”

“…”

Frost firmly sealed the thoughts that slipped through the cracks of his heart the moment he let his guard down.

“Avoid the emperor as much as possible when he comes. If you do encounter him, act as you have been.”

Despite the gentle tone, Frost’s gaze on Shavell was cold.

The sight of him mercilessly grabbing Yuriella’s hair and slamming her face into the mud was still too vivid.

“Don’t worry. His Majesty hardly knows my face anyway. And how could he even imagine? That the treasure of the imperial family, expected to surpass the founding emperor, would become like this – the Grand Duke’s beautiful and wanton fiancée. Haha.”

The prince naturally and airily playing the role of a wanton fiancée while concealing his deep intentions did not seem particularly admirable today. Far from pitiable, he looked frivolous.

“Rather than worrying about me, take good care of our sister-in-law.”

Shavell mentioning Yuriella brought a hint of doubt to Frost’s cool, furrowed brow.

“She’s an eye-catching woman.”

Shavell recalled the woman he had tumbled with in the mud, resting his cheek on the marble sculpture decorating the bathtub edge.

“Soft and delicate like cotton candy that collapses when embraced.”

Shavell made a circular embracing motion with his arms, recalling the sensation of subduing Yuriella.

The Grand Duke’s gaze following those arms sharpened with a blue glint.

“But fierce. You should have seen how fiercely she struggled as we rolled in the mud. Even though I receive special training from you every day, she made me break a sweat. Her small hands aiming only for vital points were so spicy.”

Frost clenched his molars tightly.

“And those eyes. Seeing those eyes blazing red like flames… Whoa. I thought my heart would stop. I thought the color looked familiar.”

Shavell’s eyes took on a faraway look as he recalled that color.

“3 years ago. Remember how my village was thrown into total chaos by a demonic beast horde’s attack? The flames that saved me then were the exact same color as Miss Yuriella’s eyes.”

The scorching and intense red aura emitted by the Flame Sword Flamma incinerating the rock-like hides of the demonic beasts was still vivid in Shavell’s mind.

“So, brother. It’s a color His Majesty would go crazy for, you know. That pure and innocent red that looks like it could burn your very soul…”