“There are eyes around. It would be better to go separately.”

But without waiting for her answer, Leon seized Adela’s waist and lifted her up onto the horse.

Seated together on one horse, Leon’s firm chest pressed flush against her back with no gap between them.

It was a familiar warmth, yet a strange tension rose in her.

Each time the horse cut through the dry wind, his hot breath scattered past the high collar covering her neck.

“Sit up straight.”

Her body tilted to one side for a moment, and Leon, gripping her waist firmly, said with cool indifference.

Adela, trapped in Leon’s arms on the horse, showed her discomfort and protested quietly.

“That’s exactly why I said we should go separately.”

“You are a cherished guest of the Urcheka Empire, so it’s only right that I escort you personally.”

Leon replied, holding her body securely in place.

Guest was a generous word. She was plainly a prisoner of the Urcheka Empire. So Leon was watching over her right now.

She didn’t know why, but Emperor Abarus wanted the Valent royal family wiped out entirely.

‘Why, exactly?’

If simple territorial expansion or the mines were the goal, there would be no reason to be so relentlessly set on exterminating the royal family.

Uncovering that secret was something she, now reborn, absolutely had to do. Only by finding it out could she expose the hidden truth between Leon and the Emperor.

Her thoughts settled, and Adela’s gaze came to rest on Leon’s calloused hands holding the reins.

‘The obstacles are piling up.’

Why Leon left her side without a word, and why he never answered the countless letters she sent, were questions that still had no answers.

To get there, she needed to thaw Leon’s frozen heart at least a little, but it seemed there was still a long road ahead.

Soon they arrived at the place the map indicated and both dismounted. Standing before the ruins of a temple, Leon gave orders to his men.

“Prepare torches. Half of you hold this position, the rest follow me.”

Parting through the thick weeds revealed a passage leading underground into the temple, yawning open like a black mouth.

Leon went down the dark underground stairs without letting Adela out of his sight for a single moment.

When the firmly sealed stone door finally opened, an enormous mound of grain and gold and silver treasures appeared, something unimaginable in a kingdom dried out by drought.

A low gasp broke from the men.

A lonely shadow crossed Adela’s eyes as she stared at the vast treasure.

Her father heard news of people starving to death in the drought and turned away every time. Even when she pleaded with him to open the storehouse and relieve the people, he scolded her for being immature.

‘Adela, a ruler without power is utterly useless.’

Adela’s jaw trembled faintly as she recalled her father’s voice.

“Do you truly have no regrets?”

Leon came up beside her and asked, and Adela shook her head. The mountain of jewels nearly blinded her, but they truly did not matter.

She didn’t want to live like her father, who tried to sell his own daughter to keep his mines.

‘I will save you.’

Adela hid her still-trembling hands by clasping them together and looked at Leon standing beside her.

“I have no regrets.”

She was quiet for a moment, then added.

“I mean it.”

Leon’s eyes flickered strangely in the wavering torchlight. He bit his lip, seemingly unconvinced, or perhaps suspicious of what lay behind Adela’s words.

It was then.

One of the stacked grain sacks lost its balance and toppled toward Adela.

“Watch out!”

In an instant, Leon’s long arm wrapped around Adela’s shoulder and pulled her into his chest. The sack hit the ground with a dull thud, and in the cloud of dust that rose, the two of them stared at each other with tangled, complicated expressions.

They were close enough that Adela’s heartbeat carried directly into Leon’s palm. Leon let her go with a furrowed brow, but his fingertips caught the hem of her dress for just a moment before letting go.

“Are you all right, my lord?”

A subordinate rushed over, moved the sack aside, and cleared the area.

Adela could only watch Leon’s back as he walked away, without even a chance to say thank you.

On the way back, a few carts followed behind the horse carrying Leon and Adela. The grain brought from the storehouse would be used starting tomorrow to ease the hunger of Valent’s people.

“Are you hurt?”

After a long silence, Adela asked, and Leon only said he was fine. But the grain sack earlier must have been enormously heavy.

He never used to say when he was in pain. The old memory made the corners of her lips lift slightly without meaning to.

Leon caught even that faint change and found his grip on the reins tightening on its own. He lowered his head and asked near her ear.

“Did you see something worth smiling at?”

“……?”

The road from the storehouse back to the castle was nothing but a desolate wasteland of ruins. All there was to see were withered, twisted plants and crows making ominous sounds.

Adela tilted her head in bewilderment, and Leon’s hand tightened as he pulled the reins roughly.

“Leon.”

After dismounting, Adela called out to stop Leon, who was already striding away.

“…What is it?”

“Tomorrow, it would be better to say the distribution is by Count Fershtein’s order rather than Emperor Abarus’s.”

To quiet the angry mood of the people, it was more efficient for Leon, who stood right beside them, to build trust than the Emperor far away in Urcheka.

“……”

Leon gave a short nod at Adela’s words and opened his mouth.

“Follow me.”

Surely he didn’t mean to have her attend to him tonight in this state?

Adela checked her disheveled appearance and anxiously tapped her fingertips together. She fell earlier and got dirt on her dress, and her hair came completely undone on the ride back.

From last night’s fierce lovemaking, a dull ache lingered below. If she had to be with Leon again now, she might faint within a few minutes.

She sorted through the clutter in her head and followed Leon up the stairs toward the third floor.

‘Why the third floor?’

Adela’s bedroom was on the second floor, and this was where Leon’s office was. She found it strange, but he walked on without a word.

At the end of the long corridor, they arrived at the entrance to the old annex.

“This will be my concubine’s new quarters.”

Leon handed over a key as he explained, and Adela blinked.

The old annex was structured so that a small door on the lower level led directly out to the garden. It also shared the tight security of the main castle while having its own separate entrance, making it the most private and secure space in Valent Castle.

“……”

Before Adela could say a word, Leon turned his back and disappeared toward his office. She watched his retreating figure for a long moment, then opened the door to the annex.

She spent her whole life in the bedroom on the second floor of the main palace. There were good memories there, but the ones that weren’t good outnumbered them.

Whenever she made a mistake at a ball or banquet, her father punished her in that bedroom. Going without meals or standing in punishment holding heavy books was ordinary. He was known publicly as a man of gentle character, but on days when his anger reached its peak, her father was violent enough to raise a cane or even a whip.

And even in her past life, until the moment she died, she spent terrible nights in that bedroom with Leon.

“The annex…”

For the first time, life came into Adela’s eyes as she faced this new space.

“Miss, you’re back?”

Sofia, who came ahead to tidy the annex, greeted her warmly. Adela spotted Sofia and ran to her without hesitation, burying herself in her arms.

She breathed in Sofia’s warm, familiar scent deeply, and the exhaustion of the whole day seemed to wash away.

“You’re long past the age of adulthood, and you still act like a baby. People might talk.”

Sofia rubbed her back gently as she spoke, and Adela grumbled back in a playful tone.

“Let them talk. Why should I care about that?”