“Marriage to ‘Vermonte’! It’s a disgrace to our ‘Temnes’!”

A voice reeking of alcohol resounded loudly inside the banquet hall where the wedding celebration was in full swing.

Then, people all around slammed down their glasses with a bang and rose from their seats, rushing towards the head table.

“How can this be? We are Temnes!”

“We’ve become a laughingstock because of a few words from that scarecrow King Oberon.”

“Lord! Lord, please say something!”

The man looking down at the drunken rabble from the head table, Kaian, the Lord of Rowen, tilted his glass instead of saying the words they wanted to hear.

His cold face showed no emotion, as straight as a carved stone statue.

Under his well-groomed black hair, his red eyes shone brightly as he looked down at the clamoring Temnes bloodline.

Despite his handsome appearance, his imposing presence from being a head taller than other men and his broad shoulders would normally make it difficult for anyone to even open their mouth in front of Kaian, the head of the Temnes family.

However, in the wretched banquet hall where empty barrels rolled about, having been drained dry while ignoring mountains of delicacies from land, sea, and air, there were many drunken dogs who crowded around their master, barking loudly.

“To think that the blood of those dirty and cunning people would mix with our family! I absolutely cannot accept this!”

Clang.

As Kaian put down his glass, the noisy banquet hall suddenly fell silent.

“Shut up.”

At his single word, even the men who had been causing a ruckus closed their mouths tightly.

“Are you trying to teach me now that Vermonte is the enemy of Temnes?”

The coldness emanating from Kaian seemed about to freeze the air already heavy with moisture from the drizzling rain outside.

“Ha! Of course, the Duke wouldn’t treat that lowly Vermonte as a proper wife!”

Someone who interpreted his words favorably tried to change the atmosphere by raising their glass in the air and shouting. Soon, others who had forgotten what had just happened began to noisily use Vermonte as a drinking topic and started smashing wine barrels again.

“Um, My Lord.”

At that moment, the castle’s steward, Baron Colon, approached with a troubled face.

“Due to the heavy rain, the bride’s carriage is stuck at the drawbridge and cannot cross over.”

“Bride?”

Seeing Kaian sarcastically chew on that word, the steward bowed his head, pretending not to notice.

“What should we do?”

Kaian rose from his seat and headed for the terrace.

Under the pouring rain, he saw five carriages lined up in a row, unable to move forward or backward, struggling in the middle of the drawbridge.

Among them, only two plain ones belonged to the North.

One carriage, slightly larger than the others, seemed to have its wheel caught in a gap of the drawbridge as it sat askew.

Kaian sneered.

“A bride unwelcomed by Temnes. She should know her place and walk in on her own feet.”

Hearing his words, some vassals who had come out to the terrace to watch became excited when they saw what was happening in front of the castle gate and started chattering.

“Even the lord’s castle refuses to let Vermonte set foot inside!”

“Hahaha!”

Leaving the noisy bunch behind, Kaian brushed off the raindrops that had fallen on his shoulders and turned around.

It was a terrible downpour.

The carriage that had been traveling nonstop for two weeks from the North was exhausted, both horses and people.

Of all places, in the middle of the rain-soaked drawbridge, the carriage wheel, worn out from the long journey, got stuck and spun uselessly before breaking.

“Have these people gone mad! How dare they treat our young lady so carelessly and expect to keep their lives!”

Moreover, the problem was that the carriage roof, saturated with water, had long since stopped functioning properly and was dropping thick streams of water inside.

Inside sat Claudel, a rain-soaked bride.

Half a day’s journey from the gateway city, she had changed clothes at an inn, put on a flower crown, and donned a white veil before boarding the carriage.

But the rain had wilted the flowers unattractively, and the thin white veil had long since clung to her red hair and neck, soaked through.

Under her round forehead where rainwater trickled down, her downcast eyes revealed amber-colored golden irises.

Despite her appearance marked by vivid colors as if painted on her body, the slender bride with pale skin looked strangely precarious on what should have been her most beautiful day.

Seeing this, her maid Hannah, burning with frustration, had been raising her voice for two hours as if ready to fight the guards and footmen standing in front of the castle gate.

When the steward who had said he would report to the lord reappeared, Hannah brightened.

“Well? What did the Duke say?”

However, the answer that came back disappointed her.

“Ahem. Well, um. The lord said to get out of the carriage and walk in.”

“What did you say?”

As Hannah jumped up in anger, the steward avoided her eyes.

“Are you sure you conveyed the message correctly? Is this how Temnes welcomes its new mistress!”

“I, I asked properly.”

“And that’s what he said?”

The steward felt sweat running down his back, already damp from the rain.

‘A bride unwelcomed by Temnes. She should know her place and walk in on her own feet.’

Unable to relay Kaian’s words as they were, he had tried to soften them, but it was not enough to quell the fierce maid’s anger.

“Hannah. That’s enough.”

“Young lady.”

“The clothes are cumbersome. I’ll get down, so please give me your hand.”

“No, young lady. That’s not—”

Before Hannah could finish speaking, Claudel stepped out of the carriage into the pouring rain.

“Let’s go. Please lead the way.”

At Claudel’s words, the steward quickly cleared the way and guided her.

Splash. Splash.

The thin silk dress, soaked through, clung to her legs and ankles. The ceremonial shoes decorated with pearl beads had lost their function of protecting her feet and were drenched in rainwater.

Someone once said that a bride should walk on a flower path wearing beautiful shoes.

Kaian, her husband-to-be, had come to her family’s castle in Valmond two weeks ago, held the wedding ceremony, and then returned to Rowen alone, saying he had urgent business.

It was customary for the groom to escort the bride together, but Claudel thought this revealed Kaian’s true feelings of not accepting her as his bride.

She had spent the last three days of the two-week journey from Valmond to Rowen in a carriage with raindrops falling inside, so why should the rain soaking her now feel strange?

But as her wet dress clung heavily to her legs, hindering each step, and as she struggled to lift the sodden hem with her hands to move closer to Rowen’s lord’s castle step by step, she felt afraid, as if she were stepping into a swamp of mud.

The cold treatment towards her continued even after she was guided into the castle.

“Bring hot bath water for the Duchess. She’s been outside for a long time, so light the fireplace too, her body must be cold.”

However, the servants and maids in the castle all seemed to pretend they couldn’t hear Hannah’s words.

“Isn’t Valmond an ice castle?”

“A wench from the frozen land claims to be cold after a bit of rain.”

As the servants snickered and mocked loudly enough to be heard, Hannah began to rage.

“You lot! Do you have no sense of hierarchy?”

“Hierarchy? Who’s this pebble rolling in here spouting nonsense?”

“A rolling pebble?”

“You country bumpkin. Do you even know where you are, putting on airs? Coming from a declining territory.”

“Hey! Are you done talking?”

Just as Hannah was about to grab the castle maid’s hair in a fit of rage—

“Hannah. Please prepare some clothes for me to change into.”

Claudel’s quiet voice floated out to those arguing in the hallway with the bedroom door left open.

“You lot. Consider yourselves lucky. We’ll settle this later.”

Hannah crossed her arms and growled at the maids who still showed no intention of filling the bath, then returned to the room.

Meanwhile, Claudel had found a towel herself and was wiping off the moisture from her wet clothes.

However, the bride’s headdress and veil were awkwardly soaked through and remained as they were.

“Ah… What should we do about this?”

Hannah sighed deeply, looking disheartened at the sight.

“The Duke needs to see the bride…”

“He’ll only be displeased if he sees me in such a ruined state. I think it’s better to just take it off.”

In the end, Hannah removed the headdress and lifted the white veil with deep sighs.

“No man dislikes a beautiful woman. You looked truly beautiful earlier.”

“It’s alright, Hannah. I’m fine.”

Claudel shook her head at the loyal maid’s kind words.

Finally, after the castle workers continued to ignore them, Hannah bravely chased them down to the kitchen and badgered them until a bathtub was filled with steaming hot water.

After washing up at last, warmth finally returned to her body, which had lost so much heat.

Claudel looked at herself in the bathroom mirror as she came out.

Pale skin with no trace of flesh on her skinny body.

Add to that tangled red hair and yellow eyes.

Hannah’s words were merely flattery born of pity for her.

Isn’t a woman’s charm supposed to include vitality and fullness?

Her complexion was so pale it was almost white, her lips a light pink with no trace of red.

In short, she looked like a patient.

Kaian, whom she had seen briefly at the wedding ceremony, hadn’t even glanced at her.

No matter how much she adorned herself with precious items from the family vault, Claudel, dry as a husk, would not catch his eye.

That man was at the pinnacle of power in the kingdom.

The Duke, who had achieved the greatest prosperity among all Temnes dukes in history and lacked for nothing, was too successful and became subject to the king’s checks.

That’s why he was forced to marry her.

The brief experiences she had at Rowen Castle today felt like a preview of what would happen during her stay here.

A heavy feeling of despair weighed on her chest.

Claudel couldn’t even sigh properly, overwhelmed.

Kaian was quite drunk.

Tonight was the wedding night.

A meaningful night when two families became one.

However, just thinking of the red-haired bride made him feel nauseous.

If there was anyone in the entire Temnes ducal family, which had grown even more powerful in his generation, who hated Vermonte the most, it would undoubtedly be Kaian himself.

‘If you meet Vermonte, don’t leave a single one alive.’

That was the most important tenet in the succession education of the Temnes ducal family for generations.

A saying that even if you spare enemy soldiers, never spare Vermonte.

Kaian had fought at the forefront on battlefields long ago, so he had never had the chance to take the head of a Vermonte.

But now, for the first time, he was properly facing Vermontes as his father-in-law and wife. It was maddening.

He was in an uncharacteristically drunken state, as he didn’t think he could go through with the wedding night in his right mind.

“You should give her clothes to wear!”

A sharp woman’s voice rang out from the bedroom.

“You people are truly inhuman.”

The maid, who had been sobbing in frustration, stopped abruptly when she saw him enter the room.

The bride who had been caught in the rain was wearing only thin undergarments.

Given how bad the carriage’s condition was in the downpour, it seemed the clothes they had brought were wet, so she had asked for something to change into.

However, there would be no clothes in this castle to give to a Vermonte.

Kaian raised the corner of his mouth in a crooked smile.

“There’s no need to go find clothes for her to wear when she’ll be taking them off anyway.”

At his words, the maid gaped in shock, and Kaian snapped at her.

“Get out.”

The flustered maid hurriedly left the room and closed the door.

In the flickering candlelight, the woman who was to be his bride was illuminated. She rose slowly from where she had been perched on the bed.

She was small and thin.

Kaian, who had been very displeased with this marriage, had returned straight to his territory after just holding the wedding ceremony, so he had never exchanged even a single word with her until now.

Suddenly, what should he say?

To a wife with whom he would be joining bodies before even exchanging words.

At that moment, she spoke first.

“Shall I undress?”