“……May I?”

The hot gaze of the man touched beneath her cool nape, where the night air had swept past.

‘Even when showing something good, he’s sentimental.’

Cutting off the latter part, Kaian was trying to show her something good anyway.

The first night spent enduring the pouring insults against Vermonte.

And the second night that followed.

Claudel had no choice.

Kaian paid the bride price to Duke Vermonte.

There was no option for her to refuse him. The authority of the head of family was that absolute.

The right to decide Claudel’s well-being had merely shifted from Duke Vermonte to Duke Kaian Temnes.

Yet he asks such a thing.

An impulsive question burst from her lips.

“If I say no, will you not do it?”

Kaian did not answer and remained silent.

‘See. My thoughts don’t matter anyway.’

As Claudel was feeling bitter,

“Alright. If you don’t want to, I won’t force you.”

Claudel’s eyes widened at the unexpected response.

“However, the more I hold back, the more you’ll have to bear later.”

The momentary feeling of being touched, thinking he was being considerate, faded away.

“That’s a threat.”

“You’re misinterpreting my honesty.”

Kaian’s lips touched the fingers still clutching her nightgown.

“Vermontes never listen the first time, do they.”

The man’s moist breath dotted her collarbone, neck, and behind her ear.

Vermonte.

The name settled sadly in her ears as she lay in the arms of her enemy. Claudel relaxed her shoulders and hands that had been resisting like a last fortress.

But she couldn’t tell if her aching, throbbing heart was due to the disease eating away at her insides or her hurt feelings.

Kaian laid her on the bed, pinning Claudel’s hands still gripping her nightgown to either side.

As she was laid down as if she had spread open her own clothes, he slowly lowered his body over her.

Claudel startled as hot lips touched her bare skin cooled by the night air.

In an unfamiliar bedroom.

Kaian was the only one she could cling to, being somewhat familiar.

The capital of the Oberon Kingdom was an optimal environment for governance.

Located in the center of the entire kingdom, an endless fertile and vast granary plain stretched to the south of the capital.

The royal palace was situated on gradually rising ground with sheer cliffs behind it, making it a natural fortress.

The Shen River flowing widely below was the kingdom’s lifeline.

As if boasting of its overflowing national wealth, the palace built of white stone with golden-plated roofs shone brilliantly at night as if the sun had descended to earth.

King Valkyther of Oberon, the young king ruling the kingdom, was also a figure as if the palace itself had transformed into a person.

Nobles and princesses from neighboring countries praised King Oberon’s beauty, saying they couldn’t breathe even if they just made eye contact. The marriage proposals that followed were a bonus.

With abundant light lemon-colored blonde hair and fair skin, deep blue eyes were set on either side of a high, straight nose bridge.

Though his hair and skin made it seem his pigmentation might be light, the man’s lips had a pleasing healthy color.

His shirt, left partially unbuttoned, revealed a thoroughly trained chest and abs unlike his soft and beautiful appearance.

As Valkyther lay diagonally on the bed, reading piles of letters that had flown in from abroad,

The door to his bedroom burst open without warning.

“Valkyther!”

The woman who leapt into the room, rudely calling the king’s name, looked just like him.

With abundant lemon-colored blonde hair messily hanging down her back and blue eyes, she rushed at him as if to strike him.

“How could you do this!”

Seeing Valkyther’s attitude of not even turning his head despite her barging in, she stamped her foot, seeming even more upset.

“I told you I wanted to marry Kaian!”

“Bianca.”

Though she had come running with a face about to burst into tears, she flinched and shrank back at just her name being called once.

“You’re being rude.”

“Elder brother.”

Bianca was Valkyther’s two-year younger sister.

In her eyes as the king’s sister and the kingdom’s only precious princess, the only suitable groom in the entire kingdom was her first cousin Kaian, Duke of Temnes.

“Didn’t you say you’d betroth me when you returned from your trip? Kaian got married? By royal decree? You deceived me, didn’t you? You never intended to make me a duchess from the start?”

“Did I say I would betroth you to Kaian?”

“That’s……”

Bianca bit her lower lip resentfully.

He had never said he would betroth her to ‘Kaian’.

Bianca had constantly pestered Valkyther to let her marry Kaian.

Naturally, when Valkyther said he would arrange a betrothal after returning from this trip, she assumed the missing subject was obviously Kaian.

“Then who were you planning to betroth me to?”

Trembling with a sense of betrayal, Bianca shouted.

“Who else in the kingdom is there for me to marry? Even if I wanted to choose, I can’t! They’re all dead!”

The death of their mother, Queen Silvia who ruled the kingdom, was sudden.

Valkyther, who succeeded to the throne as the new ruler, was only eighteen years old.

A country ruled by a young, almost childish king was not a place to cooperate and accompany, but a gold nugget fallen from the sky.

Before the mourning period was properly over, wars broke out in all four directions.

Kaian, who lost his parents at the same time, went to the battlefield himself and returned alive, but other families’ circumstances were different.

In families with brothers, the younger brother went to war in place of the head of the family’s duty.

However, in families without a man to go in their stead, the head went directly.

In cases where the heir was still unmarried, they hastily married without time to consider if the family traditions and status matched. It was to take a wife and have a child before going to war, in case the lineage was cut off.

After enduring such wars for 5 years, Valkyther’s rule and the country had stabilized, but there was a severe shortage of marriageable noble men.

The worries of noble ladies who couldn’t find marriage partners deepened day by day.

Those who quickly turned their eyes elsewhere married foreign nobles.

But as the wartime marriage market situation in the kingdom became known abroad, they began to carefully consider family prestige and assets again in the era of returned peace.

Daughters who had been looking for young and attractive noble grooms even from abroad gradually came to marry older and widowed men.

Then this time, they began to take in wealthy and well-established commoner men who ran trading companies or worked in palace administrative positions as adopted sons-in-law, even if they weren’t nobles.

This provoked a backlash from upper-class commoners who had been living with considerable wealth though not noble. They lost their top groom candidates to the nobles due to status.

On the men’s side, of course, they tried to marry based on careful calculation since obtaining noble status would make their children nobles too, and as planned commoner marriages fell through, matchmakers could often be seen pulling each other’s hair in the streets.

“I said I didn’t want to marry abroad!”

Even if she turned her eyes abroad, Bianca detested old and aged husbands.

Queen Silvia had two children, Valkyther and Bianca.

Her twin sister Elise married into the Temnes ducal family and gave birth to Kaian.

Their mothers had identical beautiful appearances befitting identical twins, but their styles of adornment and auras were different so there was no confusion between the two.

However, since the sons born took strongly after their fathers, both Valkyther and Kaian were exceptionally handsome. There were quite a few opinions that the two looked alike, perhaps because their mothers were twins.

Anyway, since Bianca had only seen Valkyther and Kaian up close as men of her age since childhood, she was disgusted by the gentlemen of a wide age range that she could potentially marry, calling them gross.

And that was on the day of her debutante ball.

On the night she returned from her debutante ball, Bianca vowed while scrubbing her hand that countless middle-aged gentlemen’s lips had touched, even through gloves.

That she would never marry unless it was to Kaian.

One might think she was overreacting since their lips didn’t directly touch her skin through the gloves, but that’s how shocking the kingdom’s marriage market situation was to Bianca.

“Your groom.”

Valkyther opened his mouth.

“I plan to start looking for one from now on.”

“What did you say?”

Tears finally welled up in Bianca’s eyes.

“You gave away the kingdom’s best groom to Vermonte who’s worse than trash. Are you crazy? You say you’ll start looking now.”

Her mother’s only sister was the Duchess of Temnes.

Since Duchess Elise, who was her aunt, was also a significant presence to her, Bianca hated Vermonte like Temnes did despite being the kingdom’s princess.

“Princess Bianca.”

Valkyther called her in a low, stern voice.

“Do you think that behavior befits a princess’s dignity?”

When he used her official title with her rank instead of her name, it meant not to think of climbing up.

“I hope you didn’t suspect that I would send my only younger sister as an old noble’s second wife. You may withdraw now.”

“……I will obey the king’s will.”

Gritting her teeth and forcibly bowing her head, Bianca headed out of his bedroom.

However, as the fair lady’s pure heart was shattered, she ended up bursting out in a resentful voice.

“A marriage ordered by royal decree can be canceled by royal decree! If it’s not Kaian, I’ll die!”

The servants opening the door in the hallway were startled by Bianca’s voice and froze like statues, only watching the king’s reaction.

“Without even the courage to die.”

Muttering cynically, Valkyther put down what he was reading and stared into space.

“It’s been about a month now? Since he entered the grave of marriage.”

Even now after pushing his same-age cousin into the cliff of marriage, Valkyther was still unmarried.

There had never been a case of not taking a queen at this age.

It was customary for the crown prince to be engaged even at five or six years old.

There was a separate reason why he had not married at this age.

It was because he wanted to take a wife who was better than Kaian’s in everyone’s eyes.

Unexpectedly obtuse Kaian might not know, but Valkyther had disliked him since he was very young.

He hated being tied to the Duke’s heir and having twin princesses as mothers just because he was the prince, and he detested being constantly compared to see who was better at everything.

Nevertheless, Kaian was a useful long-term piece.

Since the Temnes family was basically prolific, there were many collateral relatives.

Kaian thought that rather than him marrying, the line could continue from a collateral branch if something happened to him in that crisis.

On the other hand, he must have been confident he would return alive, and Valkyther found such arrogance in Kaian dreadful.

He hated the confidence that he could achieve everything according to his will.

That’s why he ordered him to marry Vermonte.

He intended to give him the most terrible marriage he could.

Valkyther smiled beautifully, narrowing his eyes as he imagined a blood-red north wind blowing on Temnes.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to see a good show next month. I hope it will be entertaining.”