“Noel, are you hurt anywhere?”
Noel shook his head without speaking, his gray hair tickling Diana’s cheek.
He hugged Diana’s neck tightly and buried his head in her embrace. Diana patted the child’s small back as they walked.
Noel had been acting strangely since they found Felice. He hadn’t even explained why his body had shrunk.
When asked if he had magic to clean clothes, he replied he couldn’t use magic for a while.
Diana hadn’t been hoping for his magic. In a world where magic exists, as long as he was healthy, she wouldn’t question his reduced size.
But Noel’s mood remained low. When taken aside and asked what was wrong, he burst into tears, pleading, “Don’t leave me!”
It wasn’t hard to understand. He was an illegitimate child, and with them about to return home, his future was uncertain.
“You’re my brother. We’ll go home together,” she consoled him, and only then did his crying stop.
Noel clung to her with teary eyes and wouldn’t leave her side thereafter.
Now, Diana had another person with separation anxiety, following Roderick.
“Future sister-in-law.”
Felice, with his soft sky-blue hair, appeared suddenly, smiling brightly like sunshine, his lost earring dangling.
“Shall I hold him?”
“No, it’s okay.”
With that, Noel clung even tighter. Felice, still smiling, followed her without leaving her side.
“Is he a late younger brother? You two seem close.”
“Felice also seems close with Roderick.”
“Haha, right? It’s a one-sided love, though. I love my brother more.”
Roderick’s body stiffened at Felice’s words.
Knights with keen senses shivered at Felice’s words; one even pretended to gag.
“The child will be so cute. Should I ask my father to have one?”
Was he serious?
The duchess had passed away when the Schwartz brothers were young. So, a stepmother or a child from outside would be needed, which the family would unlikely allow.
Plus, didn’t he say his father was scary?
“No! Future sister-in-law should have the baby! Right, sister-in-law?”
Hey, secondary male lead. I haven’t even proposed to your brother yet. Isn’t it too early to think about children?
“Ahaha. Sure.”
Diana had to play along with Felice’s rhythm as she couldn’t share her inner thoughts.
“Wow, a child born to a fairy will be the most beautiful in the continent!”
Felice Schwartz, once a missing person, had been found. The search team was returning from their successful mission.
“I’d rather hear about you, young master, than such distant future talk.”
The forest was deep, making their exit challenging.
“Why did you come here, young master?”
The path was rough, and monsters frequently hindered their progress.
“So, you drifted in the water because of paralysis poison?”
“Yes! I thought I was dying. If I had submerged my face a bit longer, I would’ve run out of air and gone to the afterlife.”
Once Felice started, he incessantly shared his adventures with Diana.
“Did I interrupt a special moment with my brother when I met you?”
“Not at all.”
Diana masked her expression with a smile, gathering her thoughts.
To summarize the story so far, the secondary male lead, Felice, ran away from home to break his brother’s curse. He insists it was not a runaway but just an outing.
He ventured into the Black Forest, also known as the Monster Forest, impulsively after seeing characters related to a curse in an ancient book at home.
Noel said this forest is toxic to those who are cursed, but Felice seems unaware of this, judging by his carefree expression.
“So, did you find anything useful?”
“Of course! In this bag, I found magic stones and ancient stone tablets with characters on them. I plan to research them once we get home. I brought a lot from the labyrinth. I’ll find a way to break my brother’s curse with these.”
Felice proudly held up a bag imbued with a lightweight magic spell.
Diana’s brows furrowed at the sight of the bag.
An ominous aura. Red magic power was swirling around it. Why did she only notice it now?
It looked dangerous. It seemed like something that should be disposed of immediately.
“Uncle.”
“Huh? Me?”
Noel, who had been burying his face in Diana’s neck, suddenly looked up. His red eyes eerily shimmered.
“Uncle.”
Felice froze in his tracks, surprised by the title he had never heard before.
“Why am I ‘uncle’ when Diana is ‘sister-in-law’?”
“Because you’re the brother of ‘uncle’,” Noel crisply dismissed Felice’s words and pointed his chubby little fingers at the bag.
“That…”
“Sudden attack!”
It was an unexpected assault. Burning meteorites fell, scattering the knights.
Diana tried to move away with Noel in her arms, but Felice was quicker.
He scooped up Noel and Diana in his arms and leaped high, landing atop a tree. Despite their considerable combined weight, Felice stood effortlessly.
He was stronger than expected, defying the knights’ teasing about his frailty.
Was this the prowess of a secondary male lead? The future Duke was as fierce in battle as his brother.
Feeling her gaze, Felice looked down from his survey of the situation and flashed a grin.
“Are you okay?”
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.”
