Young Delphine’s stomach twisted and churned violently.

“Return to the castle at once, behave yourself!”

As her father’s thunderous voice struck like a whip, Delphine suddenly awoke from her strange mood.

It was as if the bubble that had briefly enclosed her and that bleeding boy had burst with a pop.

Delphine looked up at her father, who wore an unfamiliar expression.

Though he had become particularly cold towards her lately, he had never once raised a hand against her.

Long ago, he used to affectionately call her Delph.

The father glaring at her now with bloodshot eyes looked like a stranger.

So which was the real father? Young Delphine was simply confused.

She could sense in her peripheral vision that the crouched boy was still staring intently at her.

“I, I just…”

“Delphine Pembrook.”

Her father spoke in a lowered voice.

Dangerous.

Whenever her father called her name like that, harsh discipline always followed.

But something in that pool of blood prevented the young girl from moving.

Delphine hesitated, clutching her silk dress even tighter.

“This won’t do.”

At her father’s stern words, she unconsciously stepped back, her face turning pale.

Once she took that first step, the next was surprisingly easy.

Delphine turned and fled from the stable.

And finally, when she returned to her room on the first floor, gasping for breath.

She realized there was still not a speck of mud on her new silk dress.

Why?

The fact that the hem of her dress was not dirty at all troubled the girl’s young conscience.

That proof of how easily she had escaped from that stable.

It was even more painful than the fact that her father was a bad person.

Could I be a bad person like Father? The girl tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

And so that night.

Delphine quietly left her room with the ointment she had secretly stolen from her nanny.

Would that boy be in the stable? Or in the servants’ quarters?

Her heart pounded as it was her first time going out alone at night.

Only after running around the mansion grounds did Delphine manage to find him.

The boy was in the shed where firewood for winter was stored.

On a makeshift bed of straw with cloth haphazardly thrown over it, breathing heavily with fever.

Why is he alone here?

Her mouth turned sour at the thought that her father had likely put him here to hide from the other servants that he had whipped a slave.

Delphine carefully approached the boy lying there.

The boy’s eyes, which had been calling for his mother and the Holy Mother in his fever, widened then quickly grew moist.

Even in such a place, seemingly the lowest of the world, moonlight enters generously.

Delphine thought this as she looked down at the boy lying under that moonlight.

For a long time, the boy’s brown eyes and the girl’s green eyes gazed at each other across the moonlight.

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After that day, Delphine often visited the boy.

She applied medicine to his back, which had been beaten by her father.

She gave a surname to the slave.

“Pryde. How about Pryde? I think it goes well with the name Ioan. This is how you write it.”

Delphine picked up a wooden stick and scribbled letters in the dirt.

P. R. Y. D. E.

“What do you think? It’s only five letters, so you can memorize it too.”

Not knowing how to read, Ioan stared at the ground for a long, long time.

Until the wind blew all the letters away.

…Perhaps all of this stemmed from that moment, Delphine thought much later.

For what had made her so lonely in that enormous mansion was not her cruel father or the servants who ignored him.

What made her lonely was the memory of her mother who called her Del, and her father who called her Delph.

At that time, she didn’t know that if one had never been loved, one would never feel lonely.

And that once you’ve been called by a nickname, you can never go back.

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A white bridal veil was placed over red, luscious hair.

Delphine walked towards the bishop officiating the wedding, holding a bouquet of lilies of the valley.

‘Would it have been better to die with Father?’

She had thought while imprisoned in the cold underground cell, but she wasn’t even given proper time to consider.

In fact, she barely remembered the past two days, having been in a daze.

Her father died before her eyes, and her family fell in an instant.

If she had held onto her senses during the process of her life being completely shaken, it might have been harder to endure.

Could all of this perhaps be a dream?

Delphine walked down the carpeted hallway, still feeling utterly confused.

Like the trailing wedding dress, whispers of the guests followed behind her.

“To dare commit treason in this empire… Originally, three generations should be executed. How did that woman survive?”

“I heard Lord Pryde specially pleaded with His Majesty.”

“Is his influence that great?”

“Even so, to marry the day after her father’s execution… tsk tsk.”

The red peony of the Astrax Empire. The pride of House Pembrook.

She who had been that had now become the most pitiful woman in the empire.

Delphine reached the altar, gripping her bouquet with sweaty hands.

Obscured by the opaque bridal veil, she couldn’t clearly see the face of the man standing before her.

But that dirty blonde hair, that silhouette… everything was so familiar.

Was it really Ioan?

Three years ago, Ioan had run away from the mansion and disappeared, and the empire was not kind to runaway slaves.

‘I thought for sure he had died.’

Moreover, if it was Ioan, he would never do this to her.

He was always like an obedient dog, no, even more faithful to her than a dog.

“Miss is a saint to me.”

Trembling lest even the hem of her dress touch him, he couldn’t even meet her eyes easily.

He had stammered that he feared his filth would transfer if he looked at her for too long.

Someone like that wouldn’t have disappeared without a word and suddenly reappeared to cut off her father’s head.

Through the blurry view of the veil, she saw the man extend a hand clad in a white glove.

Delphine hesitated for a moment.

But did the daughter of a traitor have any choice other than to take that hand?

Amidst all the confusion, only one thing was certain.

‘I don’t want to die yet…’

Delphine placed her trembling hand on top of the unknown man’s hand.

[This is the timeline separator]

“…Am I going mad? Or have I been bewitched by a fox?”

I thought he was a dog, but was he a fox?

Delphine muttered self-deprecatingly under her pure white bridal veil.

It wasn’t difficult to find the man who stood a head taller than others among the nobles.

Holding a champagne glass elegantly in one hand and the other behind his back, he displayed impeccable manners throughout the wedding reception.

Unlike him, who freely roamed the reception, Delphine sat quietly at the bride’s seat, wearing her veil.

Not a single noble approached the bride who had donned a wedding dress right after taking off her mourning clothes.

Thanks to that, Delphine was able to better grasp the identity of the man she had married.

Viscount Ioan Pryde.

The captain of the Emperor’s Guard, at the center of power in this empire.

The empire’s hero.

…And a man who looked exactly like the boy who had been a slave.

They say he suddenly rose to become the Emperor’s right-hand man about a year ago, after suppressing a rebellion near the capital’s walls.

Since a year ago?

It was the first time she had heard of this.

Delphine had always been at the center of high society. There was no way she wouldn’t have known about it.

Yet everyone gathered here was talking as if his existence was a given.

It felt like the whole world had gone mad.

No, that couldn’t be. Then perhaps it was she who had gone mad?

Delphine glared at the man standing lightly holding a champagne glass, her body trembling slightly.

“So where exactly was Lord Pryde hiding until a year ago?”

A lady in a pink frilled dress asked, subtly batting her eyelashes.

“You’re not even from the Imperial Military Academy.”

“I heard he’s from a local noble family. But your manners are quite excellent. Haha.”

A mustachioed man who had one hand behind his back added.

The central nobles who lived in mansions in the 1st District, at the very heart of the capital, had their own pride.

They meant, “For a country bumpkin, you’re quite stylish.” Would he understand that?

Delphine narrowed her eyes and observed the man’s reaction.

“As you know, the backgrounds of the Emperor’s Guards are confidential.”

The man answered smoothly.

As he spoke, he subtly caressed the imperial seal stamped on the hilt of the sword at his left side.

“His Majesty also dislikes having information about the swords that protect him circulating among gossipmongers.”

“A-ahem. Of course His Majesty would feel that way. Haha.”

“You’ve even acquired a mansion in the capital for your merits in this suppression… You’re now a proper central noble! Hoho!”

The man gave an elegant smile to the nobles who were flattering him.

Delphine glared at that sight as if she had seen a ghost.

“…Has a real fox transformed?”

Elegance? Manners? Nobility?

If one were to list things Ioan could never possess, it would be those.

Among the servants residing in the mansion, he had an exceptionally rough and fierce temperament.

He was closer to an untamed wolf than a dog.

A boy who was raw and barbaric like a wild beast.

Not only was he fierce, but he was sometimes so cruel to the servants that it was chilling, to the point where even Wilson the butler came to avoid him at some point.

The only time he became docile was in front of her.

Only Delphine could handle him.

That dog-like slave.

At that moment, the man who had been wearing a noble smile suddenly turned his head towards Delphine.

Through the veil, their eyes met.