“Aren’t you going to open your mouth?”
Caiyan’s eyebrows slanted in confusion.
Upon seeing that, Clodel immediately opened her mouth, saying ‘Ah,’ but the piece of meat he offered was too large.
He then withdrew the meat and cut it smaller with his knife.
“Here.”
The piece of meat he offered again was still too big for her.
“It needs to be smaller than this…”
“Troublesome.”
With a click of his tongue, Caiyan cut the meat again. Finally, he presented her a piece of meat of the right size with his fork, and Clodel ate it without a word.
The meat was faultless.
Even the meat cut by her enemy melted in her mouth, releasing its juices, making Clodel happy.
“Do you usually eat so little?”
“……Pardon?”
Right after she swallowed the meat, Caiyan scooped some fruit pudding and offered it to her.
Clodel quickly ate it before he frowned again.
‘Eat so little?’
He saw her clean plate and still said that?
Was he mocking her for eating too much?
Clodel was confused.
“I was asking because you were nibbling on small bites.”
Small bites?
She blinked in surprise.
‘Could it be that in Temnes, women eat more than this?’
The empty plate now had more food than she would eat when she was healthy in Belmonte.
She hadn’t seen other Temnes women dining, so Clodel wondered if that was the case.
“The doctor said you need to eat a lot to fully recover.”
“I’ve already improved a lot.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Caiyan then fed her the potato dish she had inadvertently praised earlier.
Obediently eating it, Clodel thought he must enjoy feeding her.
Caiyan was almost overwhelmed with the piled-up duties of a lord.
The sudden wedding due to the king’s command, the back and forth to Belmonte, and the grand wedding feast held in Rowen Castle.
The feast, which lasted only three days, had been prepared for a month since the wedding was decided, grinding the butler and residents of the castle.
Rowen, with its abundant food, made this possible. In other territories, just transporting the necessary alcohol and ingredients for the feast would take at least three months.
Then, with Clodel contracting Hertzel, time was spent finding medicine and hunting for buffalo, leading to a backlog of work.
The autumn festival was only a month away.
Rowen, with no winter and a mild climate year-round, didn’t have the same meaning for the harvest festival as the central regions of the Oberon Kingdom.
But as the capital’s customs became fashionable and enviable, regardless of season, ‘autumn’ festivals started happening across the Oberon Kingdom.
“Belmonte’s autumn festival is held on ice.”
Suddenly, Clodel wondered what the festival looked like in Belmonte.
Belmonte, frozen for more than half the year, began to freeze around the kingdom’s autumn.
“Even though she’s the daughter of my enemy, it feels different now that she’s my wife.”
Back then, when Caiyan thought of Belmonte, it was only in terms of how to govern the land after its conquest and where to place the occupying forces when they first entered Belmonte’s territory.
Even amidst his busyness, Caiyan found time to visit Clodel and took care of her.
When Clodel collapsed.
Naturally expecting her to die, seeing her resigned to not surviving, Caiyan indulged in self-deprecating introspection.
He was not unaware that if he ignored and treated Clodel coldly, she would either die young or lead a similar life. The truth was, Belmonte didn’t even deserve a single piece of land within its territory.
This incident made Caiyan realize that he considered Clodel not just as the daughter of his enemy but as his wife.
The reason was not entirely clear.
Initially, just seeing Belmonte’s distinctive red hair before their wedding night filled him with disgust, but when dealing with Clodel, the discomfort and unpleasantness quickly disappeared.
Even on reflection, it was hard for him to understand why he felt so compelled to save her.
Though it was by royal command, he could have sent the corpse of a dead woman back to Duke Belmonte in a carriage and then confronted Belmonte, accusing them of sending a sick woman, and started a war.
Caiyan had been preparing for a war to annihilate Belmonte for four years.
He had stopped the export of food to the north from the moment he received the report of Belmonte’s famine on the battlefield.
There was even an incident where the person who mediated food exports from Rowen to Belmonte committed suicide due to the pressure of Belmonte’s constant demands and Temnes’ refusal to permit exports.
It was amazing that such thoroughly and fiercely planned actions could be so easily rendered null for the sake of a single woman dying.
“Well, it’s not like I’ll marry twice. I’ve already welcomed her as my bride, it’s not something I can just pretend didn’t happen.”
The most convincing reason for Caiyan lay in his realistic and rational judgment.
Since Clodel had become his wife, she was now of Temnes, not Belmonte.
After Being Cheated On, She Picked Up a Treasure (Female-dominant)
One-line summary: The husband I married on a whim had been secretly in love with me for a long time.
On the day when Jun Shao finally obtained the imperial decree for her marriage, Lan Qu, the person she had admired for six years, defied the decree and ran away.
Her gentleness and devotion, her promise of a lifetime together, were all disregarded by him. Instead, he dreamed of entering the palace to serve the Emperor’s sister as a sixth-rank attendant.
News of this incident spread throughout the capital, and the alleys in front of and behind the Lan mansion were crowded with people who came to watch the commotion.
Jun Shao should have been embarrassed and angry.
But someone stepped in to protect her dignity.
The figure was in a miserable state, yet still possessed an undeniable elegance and handsomeness.
The young lord struggled to climb the wall of the Lan mansion and shouted to her, “If he won’t marry you, I will!”
So, Jun Shao took advantage of the situation and married the person.
She thought the young lord did it to save the Lan family from the crime of defying the imperial decree, but never imagined that from beginning to end, what he coveted was her.
*
After the wedding, Jun Shao felt like she was living in a dream.
Her Wife-master was as beautiful as a fairy in a painting, skilled in the six arts, well-versed in poetry and literature, capable of being gentle and attentive, and also grand and dignified. Most importantly, she was the only one in his heart and eyes.
Jun Shao didn’t know how Lan Shiwu, as a illegitimate son without a father and blessed with beauty, had managed to preserve his purity, recklessly escape, and use his last ounce of strength to ruin his own reputation, all because of his love for her, just to stand before her.
She could only see him gazing at her with eyes full of love, and when she bestowed a name upon him, his eyes shone like stars.
“You have come to me like a weary bird perching on a branch. I shall call you A Qi.”
