“That I volunteered for a month-long expedition because I’d grown cold toward my fiancée, and instead played around with blonde women? Damn!”

It was nonsense that even someone from the North wouldn’t write in their diary. Alec’s anger reached its peak.

Even burying alive the southern trading company that dared to sell out Artua for money, and the idiots who whispered behind Isabel’s back knowing it wasn’t true, wouldn’t cool his anger.

But above all, Alec couldn’t stand his disgust with himself.

Surely the ‘information’ Isabel was checking before he barged into the marquis house was exactly this. That’s why she made that remark about dyeing her hair blonde while he caressed her hair.

Yet he was in heat like a beast, and instead of comforting the woman whose heart was torn, he spouted nonsense asking her to satisfy his desires.

“I really should bury them alive.”

Bury them all alive, and beg for forgiveness until Isabel’s anger subsides. As soon as Alec made his decision, he gritted his teeth.

“Enoch. How many knights do you need for Rania’s affairs? I’ll take five to handle this side first. I need to make sure the bastards involved in this never see sunlight again.”

“Shouldn’t you meet Lady Isabel and explain first?”

“……Butler! Send something Isabel would like to the marquis house, whatever can be prepared fastest! No, I’ll…… Ah, damn it. Damn it!”

Enoch decided to yield the task of delivering ‘good news’ to Rania, watching his poor brother who started tearing at his hair again, not knowing what to do.

***

The commotion caused by the southern trading company was perfectly resolved in three days. Enoch and Alec bundled together and dealt with the southern trading company along with ten noble families who dared to spread rumors about Isabel and Rania.

When Rania heard the news that the cleanup was finished, she gave something like praise saying ‘It ended earlier than expected?’ then grabbed Alec and pestered him to tell her the process.

“How did you do it? Huh? How did you do it?”

“You don’t need to know yet…… No. Fine. I’ll tell you.”

Alec, who was organizing the southern trading company’s financial structure as a gift for Isabel, put down his pen for a moment.

He remembered the warning he heard from Father yesterday.

⟨Alec. It would be better not to show that you treat that child like a child. Children like Rania are more sensitive to such treatment. Don’t just regard her as someone to be cherished, but sometimes show that you treat her as an equal sibling.⟩

Equal relationship…… It still seemed difficult for Enoch, but it wasn’t a difficult request for Alec. He had already experienced it once thanks to Enoch.

Alec straightened his posture, recalling Enoch’s childhood when he stubbornly insisted on doing everything the same as him, from swordsmanship to studies.

“First, I told the southern trading company owner that we planted illegal drugs in his warehouse and he could either die for possession or cooperate.”

“What are illegal drugs?”

“Drugs that make you lose your mind when you take them.”

What Alec planted in the southern trading company’s warehouse was a high-concentration aphrodisiac, ‘Forgeso’s Tail.’

This aphrodisiac made from a poisonous fern-family plant resembling the tail of Forgeso, the demon of lust, was extremely addictive and could only be treated with holy power, so mere possession was punishable by extreme penalty under imperial law.

⟨Do you want to live? Then I might give you a chance.⟩

⟨Please. I’ll do anything, just let me live!⟩

The trading company owner cooperated with the grand ducal house to avoid execution.

Thus the next day, news spread that the southern trading company owner who was caught bringing aphrodisiacs into the North avoided extreme penalty in exchange for handing over buyer records.

The six noble families who had been talking about Rania, and the four noble families who had been spreading slanderous words about Isabel, noticed the grand ducal house’s intention as soon as they heard the news and begged for forgiveness.

However, the grand ducal house confined those who came on their own to underground dungeons for a month and confiscated half their assets.

Thus this morning, the spectacle unfolded of proud nobles being tied up and entering underground dungeons meant for petty thieves.

“It’s going to get a bit noisy from now on.”

Already this morning, news came that the five most popular salons in the North had announced reservation closures.

What would become of the trading company owner who betrayed the northern nobles in exchange for saving his life?

What effect would the shameful punishment of the ten families have on the power relationships among northern noble families?

The nobles would excitedly gather under pretexts like literary discussion meetings and spread stimulating rumors.

On the other hand, they would remember the lesson that ‘now anyone who goes against the grand ducal house’s mood will face terrible retaliation regardless of truth.’

“So it will quiet down as time passes.”

“It would have been better if it had been like this from the start, less noisy.”

Rania giggled and poked at Alec’s sore spot, then changed the subject without giving her brother a chance to make excuses.

“I want to go see too! I want to go see the underground dungeon!”

“You won’t have time for that. This brother prepared a gift.”

“What is it? Is it better than a puppy?”

Alec pulled out an envelope from the drawer as if he’d been waiting.

“What’s this?”

“An invitation to send to House Bellington. I think ten days from now would be good for the date.”

“Bellington? Can I invite that child? Enoch said he didn’t like me playing with that child!”

“So were you going to stop playing?”

“No, I was going to play without telling Enoch!”

Rania put down the puppy and jumped toward Alec.

“I like Alec the best. Better than the puppy!”

“More than Enoch too?”

“I like the puppy more than Enoch, and Alec comes after the puppy!”

It would have been nice if she had stopped there. Rania rubbed her cheek against Alec’s chest and deliberately added one more thing.

“And after Alec comes Rian!”

“What? Why is that bastard after me? What exactly do you like about him?”

“Why does everyone keep asking? Alec, can you say when and why you started liking Isabel?”

“……”

Alec felt an intuition that if he just answered this carelessly, his whole life might become miserable.

He straightened his posture and carefully recalled the moment he first held Isabel in his heart.

“I was returning from my first winter subjugation, and there was an unknown woman standing in the main castle garden. But when I got closer, she was strangely familiar.”

“How was she familiar?”

“It was like the feeling when you discover Artua main castle’s spire on the way back from foreign lands and realize ‘I’ve finally returned to my land.'”

And the moment he realized the identity of the woman who turned her back after sensing his presence.

⟨Young master. Congratulations on your return.⟩

The child who had boldly asked if some love remained even though he had given his life to his sister, looked at him in surprise, then smiled with reddened cheeks……

⟨You brought the first snow back with you.⟩

The affection toward him was so deeply melted in.

It looked so warm.

Alec, uncharacteristically, fled without being able to say a single word in reply.

The emotion that made him so heated he had to escape, that created the impulse to immediately embrace that child. That it was love……

Realizing it wasn’t difficult.

The next day, Alec, certain of his feelings, sent a marriage proposal to Isabel’s family as soon as dawn broke.

“That’s love?”

“Of course it’s love. The moment I fell in love.”

Rania kept mulling over the story Alec told her, then suddenly stood up and shouted.

“Good. I want to talk like Alec too!”

“Like me?”

“Yeah. Hurry up and ask me. Why I like Rian.”

“Why do you like him?”

“It was spring, and I found that child hiding in the garden. He was really dirty but when I looked closely he was pretty. His eyes were……”

Rania tried to recall Rian’s eyes again to find the right expression. How did those gray eyes trembling with fear look?

Rania, still too young to understand pathos, pondered repeatedly.

“Ah! They were like shadowed winter.”

Then she compared the boy to a season that didn’t match the warm spring.

Eyes like winter. It was too heavy and lonely a comparison for an eight-year-old child.

But it wasn’t inappropriate either. Alec recalled the child’s portrait he had received from Mother. If he had to compare to a season, desolate and lonely winter would suit his appearance best.

“But the other kids were stupid and didn’t know that, so they bullied that child terribly. Bellington doesn’t seem to cherish that child much either. The clothes he was wearing were strange too. So I think I was the first person to recognize that child was pretty?”

Superiority was packed tightly between Rania’s words. The sight of her sparkling with elation that only she had discovered the young boy’s beauty.

“And, he kept blushing whenever I said anything even though he didn’t know who I was. He did everything I told him to. So I wanted to have him. How about it? Now Alec knows why I like that child too, right?”

When Alec nodded, Rania was pleased, saying ‘Next time someone asks, I can say it like this!’

However, Alec’s feelings as he held Rania were quite complex.

‘Now I understand why Enoch suddenly gave her a puppy as a gift.’

To Rania, the boy was nothing more than a puppy. A dirty dog covered in the filth of being a poor viscount’s bastard.

Rania wanted to hold the leash of that dirty thing. Even while silencing those who pointed fingers calling it dirty……

“Alec. I want to write the invitation! I’ll write to send him in pretty clothes, not like that time.”

She wanted to possess it.

Where would that twisted obsession lead?

How would the boy grow, leaning on that affection?

If he learned that the girl who first showed him affection treated him not as a person but as property.

‘I should tell Viscountess Bellington to properly educate the child before sending him.’

He would despair. It would surely be love to him.

So he would need to learn early how to give up. Because even if he realized it, he wouldn’t be able to escape.