“Alright. Let’s. Get engaged, Your Highness.”

As if she had made a big decision, each word came out haltingly. Floyd smiled gently and interlaced his fingers with hers. Rubbing her hand softly with his thumb, he said:

“Then you should call me something other than ‘Your Highness.'”

“But even if we marry, when addressing the monarch of a country……”

“I don’t want that, Roxy. This Torkan doesn’t want that. Call me by my name.”

“……But.”

“Why does my fiancée have so many ‘buts’?”

“I don’t like Floyd.”

Floyd tilted his head to the side.

“I don’t want to call you by that name.”

She had said that Floyd was the name used by the Pelur royal family with contempt. Though Floyd now used that name to pressure the Pelur royals, Roxiana did not want to call him by such a name.

Realizing what she meant, Floyd nodded and said, “Ah.”

“Then call me Carl.”

“Carl?”

“Carlot. My middle name was given by my mother. No one calls me that anymore.”

“……Alright, I understand.”

“Try saying it.”

He whispered in Roxiana’s ear as she lowered her eyes.

“My name.”

“Carlot……”

“Call me Carl.”

His hot breath tickled her ear. Roxiana swallowed hard before speaking.

“Carl.”

His eyes narrowed. As if savoring his name on her lips, he was silent for a while before saying:

“I like it, Princess. Then for our……”

“Me too, Carl.”

“Pardon?”

“Call me by my name too. Don’t call me Princess anymore.”

“Ah. Right. Understood, Roxy.”

Roxiana looked up at him with moist eyes. She gazed in wonder at his lips, which had just uttered the nickname only her family used to call her.

“Me too. Now you’re the only one who calls me Roxy.”

“There you go with ‘Your Highness’ again.”

“I can’t just call you ‘you’.”

“‘You’ is fine too.”

Though they hadn’t exchanged particularly amusing words, they pressed their foreheads together and giggled for a moment. Roxiana found it amazing that she could laugh genuinely even at times like this.

After a tender moment passed, Roxiana asked:

“But what do you mean that our engagement is the best solution?”

“Ah, that. We will hold a grand engagement ceremony. If we hurry with preparations, we could hold it by the end of next week. I will send invitations to various places, and though the time is short, everyone will rush here in a panic. They’ll want to get on my good side, hoping to receive even scraps of monster byproducts.”

He was confident, and Roxiana believed his words.

“Elise Hailis, ah, is it Elise Pelur now? That woman had to marry in secret without even a wedding ceremony, but you’re different. It will be very grand. It will be so lavish that it will be the talk of the town for a while.”

“Elise will be sleepless with jealousy.”

“She might be writhing in agony.”

He took Roxiana’s hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.

“And then we’ll visit Gania together. To report our engagement to my beloved family, and to congratulate Lucas and Elise on their marriage.”

“My goodness. Your beloved family will be overjoyed and congratulate us.”

“Of course they will. I want to engrave the sight of their joyful faces firmly in my eyes. In your eyes too, of course.”

He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear as he spoke.

“Lucas will realize what he’s lost. He’ll go mad with rage seeing you hand in hand with me. It will be quite painful for him.”

“I don’t know about that……”

“He will, for certain. You’ll see.”

+++

“I’m telling you two first.”

Head butler Jenail and head maid Eledrun swallowed hard as they stared at Floyd.

“I’m going to get engaged.”

Jenail, who knew Floyd’s past, doubted his own ears, but Eledrun secretly clenched her fists thinking, ‘Finally!’

The emotional exchange between Floyd and Roxiana had gone beyond subtlety, and recently they looked like ‘lovers in passionate love’ to anyone who saw them. Everyone in the Grand Duke’s palace and all who came and went regarded them naturally as ‘lovers’.

So of course they should get engaged. Very grandly. With nothing to envy. In a way that makes others envious.

“Engaged?”

Finally recovering from the shock, Jenail asked cautiously. Floyd nodded.

“Yes, I’m going to get engaged. In case you’re wondering, the other party is Roxiana Franche.”

Of course it would be. Who could be unaware of that?

Jenail blinked.

It was only recently that Floyd had been going on about love, about being reminded of Queen Christine. For that Floyd to suddenly say he was getting engaged was surprising.

As the initial surprise faded, it was replaced by emotion. Jenail’s eyes reddened.

“You mean you’re getting married?”

“No, that’s going too far.”

“Isn’t an engagement a promise of marriage? Isn’t that right?”

“It is, but.”

“Such… such a joyous occasion……”

“Don’t cry.”

“To think something so delightful…… Your Highness, when did you grow up so much to consider marriage……”

“I grew up a long time ago.”

“Marriage…… to think our Prince is getting married……”

“I said engagement……”

Jenail’s emotion spread to Eledrun, and she too began to sniffle. As the head butler and head maid started sobbing, Floyd was at a loss for what to do, floundering about before slumping into a chair to wait for the two to calm down.

After a while, Jenail stopped crying and asked:

“When do you plan to hold the wedding?”

“It’s not a wedding, it’s an engagement, Jenail. Come on, say it. Engagement.”

“Yes, engagement. Shall we hurry?”

“We must hurry. I’d like to hold it before next week ends.”

“That’s too soon……”

“Hurry and see to it. It must be as grand as possible. So grand that no one can match it, unprecedented.”

“Of course it should be.”

“The same goes for adorning the Princess. How much do dresses cost these days?”

“Usually about 2 gold, party dresses about 5 gold.”

At Eledrun’s words, Floyd said:

“Spend 1,000 gold just on adorning the Princess. From the dress to shoes to accessories, it should be eye-poppingly expensive.”

1,000 gold.

At the amount close to a ducal family’s annual living expenses, Eledrun held her breath for a moment before exhaling and nodding.

“Yes, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Send invitations by telegraph to every country.”

Telegrams using magic stones consumed one stone per transmission, so it was a rarely used means of communication. Telegraph machines were also expensive, only affordable to royal families or nobles wealthy enough to count on one hand, and even they hesitated to use telegrams to send news due to the extravagance.

“Light up the entire Grand Duke’s palace with magic stones and lay magic stones on the garden floor where the engagement party will be held to make it glow. For the rest, well, you know better than I do.”

In short, it meant to hold an engagement ceremony so grand and luxurious that no one could match it. It meant to create a ceremony that would be talked about for ages.

Though they wondered if all this was necessary for an engagement rather than a wedding, the loyal head butler and head maid did not question it and replied:

“Yes, Your Highness. We’ll keep it in mind.”

+++

Lucas snorted as he looked at the telegram from Torkan.

“Engagement?”

Floyd K. Ratean.

Roxiana E. Franche.

The names written below the invitation were etched vividly in his eyes, but he ignored them.

“Isn’t it ridiculous? Getting engaged to a woman I discarded.”

But the expressions of Joseph V and Queen Christine were not so pleasant. They lamented that their son, Lucas, who would one day be king of this country, failed to read such an obvious matter and focused only on the fact that it was ‘a woman he had discarded’.

The king and queen were anxious.

What could be the reason for the engagement between Floyd, who had been driven out of Gania with nowhere to go, and Roxiana, who had suffered much at the hands of Gania? What were these two trying to gain through this engagement?

For Roxiana, all she could do was speak out about the evil deeds of the Pelur royal family, but Floyd was different. He was not an opponent to be ignored.

He had been quiet until now, but if he were to use what happened to Roxiana as an excuse to attack Gania. Now that he was engaged to Roxiana, if he were to raise his sword against Gania with the reason of ‘for my fiancée’.

Could Gania really stop Torkan?

It might have been possible a few months ago. The Empire and the Temple, who had received much from Gania, would not have stood by idly.

But now the situation was different.

The tragedy of the Franche royal family had been revealed, and the story of Lucas’s involvement in that terrible tragedy was still burning like an unquenchable flame in each country.

There was no way the Empire and the Temple would help Gania, whose reputation had hit rock bottom and was receiving only criticism.

‘And yet this fool……’

Joseph V swallowed a sigh as he watched Lucas waving the invitation around.

‘To focus only on the fact that it’s a woman he discarded……’

He thought that perhaps it was fortunate that Elise had become Lucas’s wife. At least Elise, that child, seemed intelligent. She seemed to have enough sense not to focus on the thought of ‘a woman Lucas discarded’ in a situation like this.

Due to Christine’s pressure, there was no one in this palace who could side with Elise. Yet Joseph V knew that Elise was not just despairing, but was going around trying to make allies for herself.

‘Yes, if you’re going to sit in the Crown Princess’s seat despite your vulgar bloodline, you need that kind of grit.’