Adeline tightly shut her eyes.

In a situation where she could neither do this nor that, there was nothing she could do but look away.

It was then, as she anticipated death.

“Ugh…”

The cold sensation aimed at her throat disappeared, and a single groan wrapped around her ears.

Adeline felt the man’s hot body temperature spread from her waist to her neckline.

At the end of the suffocating moment, the grip that had been fiercely binding Adeline also loosened.

It was the moment Adeline tried to turn her body to escape from the restraints.

With a dull thud, the man blocking her back suddenly collapsed while embracing Adeline.

Adeline was immobilized, crushed under the robust physique.

After several attempts to reach for the shelf, Adeline eventually lit a candle.

In the dim candlelight, shapes began to appear clearly.

The man who had held a knife to her throat was lying fallen, covered in blood.

Adeline swallowed hard at the sight of the crimson blood seeping into the snow-white carpet.

“Hey. Are you alright? Are… are you dead?”

She cautiously approached to examine the man. He was still gasping for breath, so he didn’t seem to be dead.

Seeing that he was unconscious, he didn’t seem likely to threaten her as before.

‘If I leave him like this, will he die?’

Adeline was confused.

After all, Duke Torpeo was Adeline’s hope and last lifeline.

However, seeing the man who pointed a knife at Adeline’s throat as soon as they met, she was filled with doubt.

‘Why on earth did that reader call this man the male lead?’

Could she really escape her short-lived fate if she saved this man?

As her worries deepened, Adeline was shocked to see the Duke coughing up blood.

“Hey, wake up.”

Adeline bent her knees to examine the Duke.

If left like this, he would surely die from excessive blood loss. For a brief moment, looking at the Duke who had held a knife to her, she wondered if it might be better to run away.

If he really was Duke Torpeo, couldn’t she beg him to save her in exchange for saving his life?

It would be the same whether she was caught by the Crown Prince’s hands or died by the Duke’s hands if she left this place.

If so, it would be better to take a chance with the Duke, who might give her a slightly better probability of survival.

Swallowing dryly, Adeline decided to do her best to save this man.

* * *

In the bedroom, Adeline, who had finally caught her breath, turned her gaze to the tattered clothes placed on the bedside table.

Seeing the seal engraved with the Duke’s family crest placed on top of the pile of clothes, it seemed he was indeed Duke Torpeo.

Adeline lowered her gaze.

Despite the hot body temperature radiating heat, the man’s skin was pale and bloodless.

He was a man on the brink of death.

Cold sweat dripped from his hair, soaked with sweat, flowing down the man’s thick neckline.

This man who had held a blade to her just moments ago.

‘If I find this appearance sexy, am I crazy?’

Last night.

After moving the unconscious Duke to the bed, Adeline immediately brought a doctor.

“Is this person alright?”

“It seems he lost consciousness after being hit by a poisoned arrow, but I can’t identify the type of poison. Other than that, they’re all bruises.”

The doctor responded nonchalantly to Adeline’s question.

“There’s nothing more I can do. Since I don’t know the poison, there’s no antidote, so we’ll have to leave it to fate. I’ll give you a general antidote, so feed him this. Ahem. Well then, I’ll be going.”

Silence fell in the place where the doctor had left.

As she had felt when she was bound, this man’s physique was really large.

Adeline raised the large, unconscious body every 4 hours to administer the medicine, letting it trickle into his mouth.

It was no easy task to support the man with her slender frame.

“Hey, you. I mean, Your Grace.”

Although there was no way he could hear, Adeline continued to speak to the man.

“I’m saving your life even though you tried to kill me. Don’t forget this, alright?”

After struggling to give him the medicine, Adeline quietly gazed at the Duke.

‘By the way, who did this to Duke Torpeo?’

The empire’s only duke dying alone in a villa.

It was exactly as that reader had said in the comments.

Adeline found it hard to believe even though she saw it with her own eyes.

The Torpeo ducal family had been deeply connected to the imperial family for generations. Although the current Empress Dowager was an exception, even the previous Empress had come from the Torpeo ducal family.

The current imperial family did not treat the ducal family carelessly.

If there was someone in this Soltarius Empire who could threaten this man, the head of the empire’s only ducal family, it would undoubtedly be someone of high status.

Almost as high as the Emperor.

‘…Could it be the imperial family?’

She herself was living a life pursued by the Crown Prince. It seemed that whoever was after the Duke must be someone as high-ranking as the Crown Prince.

Adeline felt anxiety creeping up from her toes.

Clutching her pounding, tumultuous heart, Adeline hoped.

Please, she wished that the man before her would become her trump card.

* * *

On a hot summer day, contrary to the cold winter.

For some reason, Crown Prince Trashi of the Soltarius Empire proposed a hunt to Duke Torpeo.

The Soltarius Empire, with its distinct four seasons, held an official hunting competition once a year under the imperial family’s leadership when the cold winter days came.

It was a meaningful event where the imperial hunting grounds were opened, and the meat from the hunted game was distributed to the people of the empire.

“Duke, the weather is so hot and stuffy. Let’s go hunting at your ducal estate to stretch our bodies. How about Sahalan?”

The imperial family did not go on private hunts other than the official imperial hunt.

Moreover, Sahalan, which was on the outskirts of the capital, not the imperial hunting grounds?

The Duke felt strange but didn’t think much of it, given that it was a proposal from the usually capricious Crown Prince.

“Is there a need to widely announce the Crown Prince’s leisure? Let’s enjoy it with minimal personnel.”

Because it was a hunt that departed like that, the entourage was small for the Crown Prince and Duke’s outing.

After traveling for a full day, they arrived at the hunting grounds in Sahalan. Just as the party was about to hurriedly set up temporary tents,

The Crown Prince, as if there was no need to rest from the journey’s fatigue, immediately proposed to start hunting.

“Father is unwell, and as the Crown Prince, I can’t be away from the palace for too long.”

As if urging, the Crown Prince poured wine from the bottle on the platform into the Duke’s cup.

“This is a specially prepared drink. Let’s have a glass and depart right away.”

The Duke drained the wine glass in one go.

He didn’t suspect anything since the Crown Prince had always enjoyed drinking with the Duke.

About two hours after the hunt began, the Duke’s vision began to blur.

Sensing something wrong with his body, the Duke dismounted to take a rest.

As he was about to tie the horse’s reins to a tree, at the sound of something cutting through the wind from somewhere, the Duke quickly dodged.

But perhaps due to his increasingly foggy mind.

The cold metal that he couldn’t quite avoid quickly grazed the Duke’s right shoulder. It was an arrowhead.

“There he is!”

Men wearing masks, presumably the culprits who shot the arrow, rushed towards the Duke.

Before he could fully grasp the situation, the Duke painfully mounted his horse again and began to gallop.

With one hand gripping the horse’s reins and the other tearing off the sleeve where he had been grazed.

“Urgh. Poison?”

The shoulder where the arrow had grazed had turned bluish.

Just as his vision was about to turn white from the poison, the Duke stopped his horse. At his feet lay a cliff.

When it seemed there was nowhere left to escape.

“The game of tag is over. Give up now.”

The masked men who had been chasing had already surrounded the Duke.

“Game of tag? Do you know who I am to say such things?”

“Of course we do. Casius Mile Torpeo.”

Watching the masked men closing in, the Duke drew his sword as if he had no choice.

“That’s the name of you bastards who will soon die here.”

A sneer crossed the Duke’s lips at the insolent words of the man.

Whoever was targeting the empire’s only duke wouldn’t have sent mere riffraff.

Clang clang, swords clashed incessantly.

It shouldn’t have been difficult to deal with the Duke whose movements had slowed, but they were persistently aiming for his face.

The moment a blade grazed the Duke’s cheek, his hair, tied in a single knot, was cut off.

And the endlessly pushed back Duke fell off the cliff.

‘Was this a hunt to hunt me?’

Had they discovered the secret he had kept hidden from everyone all this time?

He couldn’t understand why the Crown Prince was so recklessly targeting him.

The Duke who fell off the cliff sank into the upper reaches of the river, and lost consciousness as he was caught in the current.

When he opened his eyes, he was on the beach of Horn, the end-of-the-empire village.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the place where he opened his eyes was quite familiar to the Duke.

Horn, the end-of-the-empire village where he had stayed as a child.

And so, the Duke, dragging his exhausted body into the villa, came face to face with Adeline.

* * *

On the 12th day of nursing the fallen Duke, the weather was exceptionally clear.

The white curtains fluttered in the cool breeze coming through the open window.

The Duke’s eyelashes trembled at the soft rustling sound of the curtains.

“Mmm…”

Adeline, who had been dozing beside him, stirred at the low groan.

Nursing him day and night, Adeline felt her whole body heavy like a wet sponge.

Unlike the reality where nursing was everything, her dreams were sweet.

She had been enjoying Darjeeling tea sitting in the rose garden of the Marquis’s estate.

“Mel.”

It was when she was muttering, wanting to add more honey.

Adeline’s mind gradually awakened to the feeling of someone shaking her shoulder.

The blurry focus in front of her eyes gradually sharpened, and her vision brightened.

Wondering who had woken her, there were red eyes looking at her.

And quite close, at that.

“Hii, hiik.”

Adeline immediately jumped up from her seat.

The Duke. It was Duke Torpeo who had been asleep for 12 whole days.

Adeline was so flustered that she kept hiccuping.

‘He’s awake! What should I do… What should I say here…’

No, more than that, how could he wake up so suddenly like this?

She wasn’t mentally prepared yet!

“You’re… awake? *hic*”

Adeline asked, hiccuping.

The Duke, frowning as if his body hadn’t fully recovered yet, uttered his first words in a hoarse voice.

“Mel.”

Adeline didn’t remember the fact that she had muttered “Mel” in her sleep.

And in fact, she considered it a slip of the tongue. There was no way the Duke who woke up after 12 days would be looking for honey.

The Duke, who had been holding his forehead for a very brief moment as if feeling a headache, raised his head.

Eyes faintly visible through the long bangs that hung down like drawn curtains.

It felt as if those cool eyes that seemed to pierce through were staring at her.

Adeline had to swallow dryly as she waited for the next words in tension.

She thought he might say something full of killing intent like,

‘Who are you to be in my house?’ or

‘I said I would kill you, why haven’t you left yet?’

The Duke, who had been facing her like that, slowly parted his lips.

“Is that my name?”

“…Pardon?”

“Mel, I mean.”

Adeline, too shocked, blinked her eyes.

Asking if Mel was his name.

‘Perhaps… have you lost your memory?’