“What are you talking about?”

Arkan responded curtly and turned away from Pellehar as if he didn’t want to hear any more nonsense.

“Thoughts can vary depending on how you think about it. Do you think I’m thinking this way because I like it?”

Pellehar reached out his hand over the chessboard.

At the tip of his fingers, one pawn toppled over. Then another, and another…

Arkan watched with a displeased expression as Pellehar knocked over an entire row of pawns.

He seemed to understand Pellehar’s intention. It was obvious just by looking at the smile hanging on his lips.

No matter how much Arkan refuted, Pellehar would not take him seriously.

It meant that no matter how much Arkan tried to resist, it would be useless, just like the falling pawns.

After knocking over all the pawns, Pellehar pushed the king and queen to the center and grinned.

“Whether you like it or not, the very fact that you spend all day thinking about one person means you have tremendous interest in them. Right?”

“I’m going to stop caring now.”

Pellehar grinned and placed a bishop next to the queen.

“Then is it okay if I make a move on Her Highness?”

Arkan flared up, snatched the queen from the chessboard, and clenched it tightly in his hand.

“Say that one more time. I’ll really kick you out. Stop joking around.”

If it’s not a joke, then what is he trying to do? Pellehar thought. But he had the upper hand. At least for now.

Staring at the king and bishop standing apart by the distance where the queen had been, Pellehar soon cleared away all the pieces and the board.

“Instead of this, go talk to Her Highness. The involved parties need to resolve it themselves. What gets solved by coming to me and doing this?”

“We need to be able to communicate to talk. And we can’t communicate.”

One of Pellehar’s eyebrows shot up.

For a moment, the face of Arkan as a handsome young man seemed to overlap with his seven or eight-year-old self.

The youngest prince who would immediately get angry whenever things didn’t go his way.

Back then, Pellehar thought of himself as just a guest freeloading in the palace, so he was mindful of Arkan in everything.

He had let Arkan have his way for almost everything.

‘Why don’t you just bang your head a bit.’

Pellehar, feeling a bit spiteful, said:

“Then assert yourself.”

Arkan, who had been lost in his own thoughts with a gloomy expression, looked at him.

“Assert myself?”

“You’re the king of Vetor, and also her husband. Tell her to follow the laws of Vetor.”

Arkan raised his eyebrows as if he was ready to hear all sorts of nasty things. But there was no answer.

He just occasionally moved his lips pressed together in a straight line, immersed in his own thoughts.

Meanwhile, Erdene holed up in the study for hours without moving an inch.

It was an unfamiliar form of protest for her.

As the sun tilted towards the west, a worried Sophia came to call for her several times and conveyed that she needed to have dinner, but Erdene simply shook her head in response.

And she sent Sophia away and remained alone in the study.

The scenery remained unchanged since Arkan left, except that she had moved two books onto the table.

‘Let’s see how this turns out.’

Erdene thought.

The more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t understand Arkan from a few hours ago.

She considered various possibilities for why he was so spiteful, but for Erdene, who was not in the habit of carefully observing and kindly soothing others’ emotions, it was a futile attempt.

She glanced down at the thick military strategy book she had already finished reading while holding out.

Reading it, she could tell it was a very old book.

She surmised it was likely completed around the time when Hirschstein had just gained power and established itself, before the inland alliance nations united around Vetor.

After finishing the book, she looked around the bookshelves a few more times, but there were hardly any other books related to military strategy that she could find.

Moreover, they were not in particularly good condition.

Some of the books – which she guessed were probably Arkan’s favorites – had new leather or cloth bindings on the covers, but the books related to military strategy and warfare were simply tucked away in a corner.

‘Since the deployment of Hirschstein’s military and knighthoods has changed… If the composition of the knighthoods remains the same, it would be best to prioritize selecting and cultivating spearmen first.’

Even while sitting and lying in wait in the study, Erdene was thinking about how she would newly structure Vetor’s knighthoods and how she would organize them.

‘We need archers too… Damn, Telma is more suitable for this than me.’

Erdene pondered for a moment with her arms crossed.

What did Arkan say earlier? Bring an adjutant and read books together or something like that?

‘You think I can’t do it if you tell me to?’

Erdene abruptly stood up and gestured to summon the attendant standing outside the door.

“Go find Telma, the knight commander of Hirschstein. Tell him I’m summoning him and bring him straight here.”

“Understood, Your Highness.”

The attendant immediately hurried off. Erdene sat on the sofa where she had been sitting all along and briefly looked around.

At that moment, she seemed to have disarmed herself.

An expression of not knowing what was what, like a young child suddenly dropped in an unfamiliar place…

It’s not much different. Erdene frankly admitted it. Every morning, she had to recognize her situation that had changed overnight.

An unfamiliar bedroom, an unfamiliar scenery visible outside the window.

The authority to look down upon the endless plains, mountain peaks, and valleys had now left her hands.

But as one day passed and two days passed, Erdene gradually adapted to that unfamiliar scenery. That’s how people are.

The prisoners she had held until now were like that too.

At first, they floundered, wailed, and lamented, but after a few days, they came to accept it, didn’t they?

Even after shouting that they would rather die, if they couldn’t eat or drink for three days, they would be ready to wag their tongues like dogs at the sight of a bowl of water.

‘Then what about me?’

Was she ready to wag her tail like a dog? Or was she already doing so?

A bitter smile passed over Erdene’s lips. There was no need to even think about it. She had already dropped to all fours.

And she stuck her face in to lick the water pooled at the bottom of the bowl.

She hadn’t sworn allegiance, but she had become docile. By her standards… she had.

Whether it was anger towards Tenek or anger towards Atelgadis, she was now making plans to achieve victory in the war against Hirschstein, wasn’t she?

In this peaceful and noble country where even the knight commanders were not trustworthy, she was thinking of newly training soldiers to achieve victory in the war that would someday come, wasn’t she?

‘But this absurd man…’

Recalling Arkan’s face, Erdene’s mood soured again as she frowned and pouted her lips.

As if the book Arkan had left behind after reading was his alter ego, she glared at it and kicked it repeatedly with the heel of her foot after taking off her shoes.

She thought it would relieve her frustration to some degree, but it didn’t.

Rather, only Arkan’s dumbfounded expression, his handsome and upright brows furrowed and his forehead clasped, kept coming to mind.

“What are you reading so intently every day?”

As if Arkan was right in front of her, she grumbled out loud and reached out to pick up the book.

The cover was beautifully decorated, and the title was written in an elegant cursive font in the center.

《Embers》

Erdene opened to a random page.

A character, presumably a woman, was making a desperate plea.

She flipped a few more pages.

“What the hell is he reading…”

Erdene let out a hollow laugh.

Now that she knew the book he had been reading with such a serious expression was a romance novel, it was endlessly ridiculous, and on the other hand…

Then the man and woman in the book embraced each other and passionately kissed.

That was the end, and when she flipped back to the earlier pages, there were lines of dialogue of them fighting as if they would kill each other, spanning ten pages.

“What a taste.”

It was a concise and sharp evaluation.

However, Erdene’s gaze lingered on the ending of the novel and the descriptions and lines that stood out here and there.

The man and woman who misunderstood each other spewing criticism at each other while professing love gave her a strange sense of déjà vu.

“Wow, what is this place? It’s awesome!”

At the sudden frivolous voice, Erdene was startled and put down the book.

Telma, who had opened his mouth in bewilderment, was looking around like a naive country bumpkin.