Sitting down, Kasalyn couldn’t hide her excitement at the enticing aromas. Fish with saffron sauce and pumpkin, mussels, veal, crab meat, and seasonal vegetables – a feast so vast, it seemed easier to list what wasn’t there.
“Eat up. I told them to prepare a variety, not knowing what you like.”
“Thank you, but I might not be able to walk back if I eat all this.”
“Better plump and healthy than skinny as you are now. You’ll even grow taller.”
“What did you say?”
His comments, though affectionate, treated her like a child.
Kasalyn delicately tasted the fish with vegetables, finding the flavor so exceptional that even she, raised in luxury, couldn’t help but moan in delight.
“Wow…”
As she sparkled with admiration, Parnes across the table let out a soft chuckle. He leaned back, watching her eat rather than touching the feast before him.
“Tasty?”
Her simple enjoyment seemed to please him greatly.
“I feel like applauding the palace chefs. But why aren’t you eating, Your Majesty?”
“I’m fine.”
Parnes closed his eyes briefly, sipping only a little white wine.
Kasalyn watched him for a moment, then, apologizing for the intrusion, she picked up his fork and knife to cut a piece of meat and offered it to him.
Parnes slightly grimaced at the strong scent of the sauce.
“What’s this?”
“I know it’s presumptuous, but it’s just so delicious. Please, just try a bite.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Really? It’s delicious.”
Stop meddling and focus on your meal.
His usual blunt words almost escaped, but he managed to stay silent, possibly due to her earnestness, her small fists holding the fork, or maybe because of ‘that man’ glaring from afar in the garden.
Parnes glanced at him, then gently took Kasalyn’s wrist and accepted the food she offered.
Kasalyn was momentarily startled when Parnes provocatively took the food with his mouth from her hand. Soon, her lips bloomed into a beautiful smile, like a fully opened summer rose.
“How is it? Delicious, right?”
“Yeah.”
Such a simple joy over small things.
After swallowing the meat, Parnes cleansed his palate with the remaining wine and stood up.
Kasalyn’s eyes naturally followed him.
“I’ll be back soon. Keep eating.”
“Okay. Be safe.”
Thinking he meant a restroom break, Kasalyn focused on her drink. Parnes walked away, stopping in front of a man.
It was Shallen.
“What do you want?”
Parnes, usually so gentle around Kasalyn, now coldly addressed Shallen, startling him.
Did Kasalyn know?
Did she know about Parnes’s true nature, turning into a cold-hearted tyrant away from prying ears?
“Even in private, you could be a bit more polite.”
“Why pretend in a private setting where no one else knows?”
Parnes replied chillingly.
“Kasalyn would faint if she knew. The emperor she trusts so much, strangling a palace gatekeeper to death.”
“Well, a fool who opens the palace gates to a suspicious intruder at dawn deserves to die, doesn’t he?”
Their conversation, incomprehensible to others, continued in hushed tones.
After a tense silence, Shallen spoke, “As royalty who values etiquette, I kindly ask you to stop paying unnecessary attention to her.”
How could I not feel apologetic?
Parnes smirked faintly.
“No need to apologize. I was merely ensuring the health of the chief maid for the comfort of the esteemed King and Queen of Khan during the festival.”
“Kasalyn doesn’t need anyone’s care.”
“You, who sneaked into her room to steal the ring and manipulated the situation to make it look like her fault, shouldn’t be saying that.”
Shallen’s eyes twitched slightly.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t know. The King of Khan would hardly stoop to such levels. To push that frail and tender-hearted woman into the cold rain and make her search for something not even lost, it suggests a rather lowly mindset. But our chivalrous King of Khan would certainly not do such a thing.”
Shallen was flabbergasted that Parnes was not just calm but leisurely oscillating between mockery and criticism.
And to call Kasalyn frail and tender-hearted.
Having been coddled and praised from a young age, and always trying to outdo men, she needed a stern lesson, a fact unknown to Parnes.
“What I mean to say is, Kasalyn ultimately belongs to me. It’s merely part of her maid training, so I’d appreciate it if you refrained from further interference.”
“And if one day she decides she no longer wants to be your person?”
Shallen, about to turn away, stopped abruptly as if caught in a snare.
He replied with an easy smile, “I assure you, Kasalyn will never leave me. Not now, not ever.”
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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