Adela closed her book and moved to prepare tea, and Leon pulled her wrist.

“Stay seated.”

Leon held her arm and was still for a moment.

His complexion looked particularly gaunt, so she carefully pressed one finger to his temple. He immediately gripped her wrist and spoke in a voice cold enough to send a chill down her spine.

“What are you doing?”

“I heard this helps with headaches.”

“It seems the princess has quite a bit of experience tending to men.”

Leon stared at Adela with cold hostility, and his murderous gaze made her shoulders tremble faintly.

In her past life and now, the only man Adela ever loved was him. So why did Leon keep doubting her?

“I was copying what Sofia does for me.”

All she could do right now was be honest. Her obedient answer finally made him release her wrist.

“You need only fulfill your duty as a concubine.”

“…?”

“All you need to do is warm my bed.”

Leon was sharper than usual today. Adela turned the brightest smile she could manage toward him.

“I want to have Leon’s child soon.”

For a moment, Leon’s eyes wavered, unable to settle. He gave a short, dry cough and reached into his coat, pulling out something wrapped in an old handkerchief.

“What is this?”

He only shrugged at her curious question. She carefully undid the knot, and a slender platinum bracelet came into view. The blood-red ruby set at its center flashed beneath the lamplight.

“It came from the storehouse. Keep it.”

Adela hesitated, at a loss for words, and Leon, seemingly without patience to wait for an answer, snatched her hand roughly. The solid metal bracelet clasped around Adela’s pale wrist.

Click. The cool sound of metal broke the silence.

Leon pressed her wrist firmly, as though checking the bracelet was secure. His hot grip pressing down on the cold platinum made Adela’s brow tremble faintly.

“Never take it off. Not without my permission.”

The low voice was chilling enough to raise goosebumps. It felt less like a tender gift and more like a shackle.

“…It hurts, Leon.”

Even at Adela’s small sound of pain, Leon didn’t let go. Instead he pulled her captured wrist sharply toward him. The distance between them closed in an instant, and Leon’s rough breath scattered across the corner of her lips.

“This hurts?”

Leon’s gaze swept over her reddened wrist.

“…Hng.”

“This is proof that you are my concubine.”

With those words, Leon buried his face in her neck.

His ragged breath came through directly against the skin where they touched. The hand gripping her shoulder was still mercilessly firm, yet the fingertips clutching the hem of her clothes trembled faintly.

“…D*mn it.”

Leon breathed in her scent with relentless focus for a long moment, then wrenched himself away.

* * *

Adela’s expression was bright as she turned the bracelet Leon gave her the night before over in her hands. He was as cold as ever, but compared to her past life, things were not going badly now.

It wasn’t simply a physical relationship anymore. He applied medicine for her, and she received a gift.

The thing that made her happiest of all was that she could now exchange even brief words with Leon.

‘There’s no need to rush.’

Hurrying anything only ruins it.

Winning Leon’s heart little by little and carefully untangling the knot between them, twisted like a snarled ball of thread, was the way forward.

“Miss, are you up?”

Sofia arrived with breakfast and froze the moment she saw Adela in front of the mirror.

“That beast of a man!”

“…Oh.”

Sofia’s gaze stopped at Adela’s pale white neck. Red bruises, vivid as bite marks from an animal, stood out clearly.

Leon, after clasping the bracelet on her the night before, held her as roughly as always. Adela let her hair down to cover her neck and watched Sofia’s reaction carefully.

“What Sofia is thinking, it’s…”

“He nearly got beaten to death by slave traders and I saved him, and this is how he repays the kindness! How dare he leave marks like this on your body!”

All Adela could do was hold Sofia, whose eyes were brimming with tears from distress.

“I’m fine.”

“What reason could he possibly have to be so cruel to you, miss? People in the castle say it’s revenge. What on earth did you ever do to him, for him to just up and leave without a word?”

Adela’s eyes grew thoughtful as she patted Sofia’s back.

She desperately wanted to know the answer herself.

Why Leon left Valent two years ago, and why he came to hate her and her parents so deeply.

“By the way, did the late king really have a secret storehouse like that prepared?”

Sofia wiped her tears and asked, and Adela nodded. Her father was planning to sell even her like an object.

Telling Sofia this would likely make the tenderhearted woman faint on the spot. Adela buried the secret deep in her chest and spoke with a steady voice.

“Isn’t it such a relief that the people’s hunger has been eased a little?”

The kingdom fell and she could do nothing to stop it, and she was the only one left of the royal family. In her past life she was too consumed by her own wounds to think of the people, but this time she opened the storehouse and shed at least a little of the guilt she carried for so long.

Just then, a trumpet sounded loudly from outside the window, and busy voices followed. Adela moved to the window overlooking the main castle and spotted a familiar banner passing through the castle gates.

“…Oh.”

Duke Tilbury of the Arden Kingdom.

The color drained from Adela’s face the moment she confirmed his arrival.

Just as she expected, a maid came to fetch her shortly after.

Adela, now dressed and composed, made her way to the reception hall of the main castle. Leon and Claude Tilbury sat across a table from each other, facing off.

Without any hesitation, Adela went and took her place beside Leon. Duke Tilbury’s eyebrow gave a slight twitch at her choice.

“Princess Adela, I am deeply sorry to have come to you so late after such a terrible calamity.”

Claude, dressed in a black formal suit, greeted her with careful courtesy, and Adela returned the greeting with equal formality.

“Thank you for your concern.”

It was an official occasion, so she tried her best not to show any emotion. But what a hollow exchange this was.

The Arden Kingdom, a longtime ally of the Valent Kingdom, did nothing but stand by and watch when word of Urcheka’s invasion arrived, let alone send reinforcements.

Urcheka’s *ssault was undeniably overwhelming, but with Ardenian support, Valent might not have fallen so easily. And if that were the case, the people’s suffering would have been lighter than it was now.

‘Of course, all of this speculation is meaningless.’

Lost in her own thoughts, she heard Claude open his mouth in a composed manner.

“In light of the new chapter facing the Valent Kingdom, I have come as an official envoy on behalf of His Majesty the King. I do hope the gifts I have brought are to Count Fershtein’s liking.”

Duke Tilbury gestured, and a maid opened a wooden box on the floor to reveal gold coins, silk, and weapons.