#1.

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“Aah……”

Duke Dominic Linderto felt pain as if a needle pierced his head.

“Jeffrey. Bring me some water.”

His rough, cracked voice called for the butler, but there was no answer.

Only then did he realize he wasn’t in his room but somewhere else.

Pressing his eyes that refused to open, he slowly raised his body to find himself in a greenhouse filled with the cool air of dawn.

He sat up on the long sofa and tried to remember the previous night.

He hadn’t drunk much last night, yet he got drunk like never before.

‘It was after drinking the alcohol a count’s daughter gave me. I couldn’t control my body well.’

That’s right. He started feeling strange after drinking a glass of wine Silvia had poured for him.

His body grew hot, and he drank cold water repeatedly, but it was useless. The more he drank, the more maddening his thirst became.

“Duke. You seem quite drunk. Let’s go up to my room and rest a bit.”

Silvia’s blurry smile and her voice faintly reached him.

Her red lips moved slowly as if seducing him, and he was so thirsty that his gaze was drawn to them as if they were an oasis in a desert.

“Duke. It’s alright. Put your arm around my shoulder.”

The moment Silvia grabbed his arm, the Count and his wife called for their daughter.

“Silvia. His Highness the Crown Prince is looking for you.”

“Oh my! Duke Linderto was with our Silvia.”

His body felt too hot and dizzy, and all he wanted was to leave the party venue.

“I’ll be going now.”

“Not now! Duke!”

He shook off her hand that desperately held him and rushed outside.

His only thought was to get some cold air before his body became even stranger.

And following a faint light, he ended up walking to this greenhouse.

“Silvia definitely tampered with the drink.”

Then some scenes started appearing sporadically in his mind.

The innocent light green eyes he met in the greenhouse and the refreshing feeling of her lips.

The soft moan that escaped when he traced her lips and then delved inside following her breath.

Her face contorting under the moonlight as if allowing his invasion.

When the soft female body pressed against him trembled in his arms, he wanted to drive her to the edge.

He pulled her slender waist tighter so she couldn’t escape.

A wicked desire to turn her heated breath caressing his ear into sobbing pleas completely dominated him.

Each time his mind shattered into whiteness, the night’s fragrance deepened.

As the final image of him panting like a beast on the bench surfaced, Dominic jumped to his feet.

“Damn it! What have I done!”

He clutched his head with both hands as if tearing at it.

‘That woman. What was her name again?’

The scene where she revealed her name came to mind hazily, but he couldn’t remember the woman’s voice at all.

* * *

The day after the party, two people visited the Linderto mansion.

The first carriage to arrive belonged to the Crown Prince, emblazoned with the royal insignia in gold.

As Jonathan stepped out of the carriage and walked along the marble entrance, his lips tightened.

‘This time I absolutely cannot yield to that Dominic.’

The two young men were cousins who had grown up together since childhood. Naturally, they resembled each other in many ways and were always compared.

Jonathan, being the Crown Prince, certainly had the higher status, but Dominic was superior in everything else.

In academics, martial arts, business acumen, and even appearance, Dominic Linderto couldn’t be surpassed.

Of course, Jonathan didn’t feel self-loathing or jealousy for such reasons.

His optimistic personality was several notches above Dominic’s.

The Crown Prince had sworn to himself that if he could take just one thing from the Duke, he would remain his cousin and friend for the rest of his life.

“Your Highness the Crown Prince. If you had notified us in advance, we would have prepared properly……”

Butler Jeffrey, flustered by the Crown Prince’s unannounced arrival, rushed out immediately.

“Is the Duke in?”

The Crown Prince removed his spotless white gloves, entering as if ready to engage in combat with the Duke right away.

“I will inform him immediately. If you would wait in the reception room for a moment……”

“Never mind. He’s probably buried under a mountain of reports in his office anyway. I’ll go directly.”

“No. Um, Your Highness.”

The Crown Prince passed Jeffrey and headed straight to the office upstairs.

When the heavy office door opened without a knock, an irritated voice was heard from inside.

“What is it.”

Crown Prince Jonathan, who entered the office, was momentarily taken aback.

The Duke wasn’t sitting perfectly as always, looking like a painting.

Instead, he was lying stretched out on a long leather sofa with one arm over his forehead.

“Seems like you have a terrible hangover.”

Hearing it wasn’t Jeffrey’s voice, Dominic removed his arm to check the intruder’s face.

The Duke let out a small sigh and struggled to sit up.

“What brings Your Highness here so early in the morning?”

Dominic tried to show proper respect, but his rough, cracked voice and disheveled appearance made it difficult to expect any courtesy toward the Crown Prince.

While Dominic was rubbing his face wearily as if his head hurt, the Crown Prince sat across from him on the sofa with his legs crossed.

Clicking his tongue, the Crown Prince sneered.

“I should be the one completely drunk, so why are you in such a state? You’re unlike your usual self.”

Jonathan poured whiskey from the table generously into a crystal glass.

“Did you come all the way here to drink in the morning?”

“I proposed to Silvia yesterday.”

Dominic raised his head from his hands and looked at the Crown Prince before him.

His furrowed brow and tired eyes seemed to ask what he had just said.

“I proposed to Silvia, asking her to become the crown princess, and got flatly rejected.”

That finally explained why the Crown Prince had come so early in the morning and was drinking whiskey like water.

Dominic pressed his throbbing head with his hand and said in a voice that wouldn’t offer much comfort.

“I’m not sure what words of consolation I should……”

“You’re not going to pretend you don’t know why she rejected me, are you?”

An aggressive question flew at him.

As if this whole situation was somehow Dominic’s responsibility.

“Why didn’t you propose with that red diamond necklace I gave her? Don’t tell me you proposed empty-handed……”

“I did.”

“She likes puppies. If you’d given her a fluffy white one, holding it out when she was in a good mood……”

“I did.”

Dominic felt foolish and stopped speaking, then said halfheartedly.

“Then it seems she truly has no feelings for Your Highness, so wouldn’t it be better to give up? There are plenty of ladies desperate to become crown princess.”

Jonathan put down his glass on the table with a thud.

“Silvia is the only woman who can become crown princess.”

Looking at the resolute Crown Prince, Dominic was perplexed.

He stared at the Crown Prince with a look that said, ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’

“Then you should go to Count Muas’s residence, not here. Wouldn’t it be faster to blockade it with the army and lay siege until you get consent?”

“No. There’s an even more certain method.”

Dominic forced his tired eyes open and said.

“Then why didn’t you say that first? Tell me the method.”

His only wish was for the Crown Prince who had barged in unexpectedly to leave quickly.

“If Duke Dominic Linderto becomes a married man, then Silvia Muas will give up on you too.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Ha!”

A laugh burst from Dominic’s mouth as if he found it ridiculous.

“Perhaps the shock of rejection was so great that it temporarily affected your mind.”

“How insolent.”

Jonathan looked straight at Dominic with eyes that showed not the slightest wavering at his own words.

Only after seeing those deep blue eyes filled with firm resolve did Dominic wipe the smile from his face.

“You know this makes no sense.”

“If I make it make sense, then it will, won’t it?”

Jonathan crossed his legs the other way.

“Andalric Island.”

A paradise-like beautiful island that Dominic had been eyeing. The Crown Prince emphasized the short phrase as if Dominic wouldn’t be able to resist accepting it.

Dominic hesitated but still shook his head as if this wasn’t right.

“Why don’t you offer that to Silvia instead? She might change her mind.”

The Duke rose from the sofa, dusting himself off with an insipid smile as if he had said all he needed to say.