Right after the two medics disappeared, Rosie, left alone, slumped down at the base of the large old tree as if collapsing. Her legs had given out; she could no longer stand.

Hugging her knees with both arms, Rosie recalled the conversation she had just overheard.

Arthur’s marriage.

She couldn’t believe it.

Arthur had always been consistent, answering every question about marriage with his bachelor principle.

Naively, Rosie had believed those words steadfastly. Not only that?

Unwilling to reveal her true feelings to a man who didn’t see her as a marriage prospect, she had even declared herself a bachelor by principle too.

In truth, a desperate inner voice whispered that she wanted to build a home with him, but she always suppressed it. But it was okay.

If she could be with him, in any form, if she could just stay by his side, if she could love him, she thought that was enough.

‘There was a time like that…’

But now, before the word ‘marriage,’ all those resolutions crumbled like a sandcastle in an instant.

‘Oferun, was it…?’

A feeling of powerlessness washed over her.

Oferun was the family with the highest prestige in the Empire, second only to the Imperial family. Powerful enough to pull a single Arthur out of the battlefield if they wished.

The reason the medics’ gossip didn’t sound like mere rumor was because she knew the impact such marriage talks would have on Arthur.

‘Now I understand. I wondered why he hesitated yesterday…’

Now she finally understood why he couldn’t easily answer her confession. Whether he liked her or not was irrelevant; giving an answer itself could interfere with his marriage.

And he wouldn’t want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity either, of course.

She would have to wait and see, but the Arthur she knew was an extremely stubborn man. If he truly didn’t want to marry, he would have managed the situation from the start so that such marriage talk wouldn’t even escape those medics’ lips.

When on earth, without her knowing, had Arthur made such a decision and considered marriage? The fact was unbelievable.

To say that to me, and behind my back, to think of marrying someone else.

She felt betrayed.

But to claim that feeling, she was just a half-noble, half-commoner b*stard swordsman with nothing to her name.

Perhaps that was why.

Perhaps Arthur had lied to her about being a bachelor by principle.

‘…I was nothing from the start.’

The more she thought about it, the calmer she became. Then, in stark contrast to her terrifyingly stilled heart, hot tears streamed down her cheeks.

It wasn’t out of sadness. It was emptiness.

It was the realization that in all three years, Arthur had never loved her, not even once.

If he loved her, this couldn’t be.

He couldn’t claim to be a bachelor by principle to her face while scheming about marriage behind her back.

Even if he intended not to hurt her, he should never have put that lie about being a bachelor in his mouth.

***

The next morning dawned.

Rosie felt the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the barracks tent. As she lifted her heavy eyelids, the morning reveille sounded right on cue.

The familiar sound today felt like a noise that would tear her eardrums at any moment, and Rosie involuntarily furrowed her brow.

Pressing her hands over her ears for a while, the sound eventually subsided to a murmur.

‘I have to go out.’

It was the assembly call. Being late would surely mean penalty laps around the training ground.

Although the war had reached its final stages, turning into a stalemate, a surprise attack could come at any moment.

Training was ongoing as usual, so Rosie quickly changed her clothes and fetched water.

As she rinsed her face with cold water, yesterday’s events suddenly surfaced in her mind.

Clearly, a lot had happened, yet nothing had changed. It was so peaceful, so unlike normal, that she almost wondered if she had dreamed it all.

The reality that Arthur was getting married.

Really, if only everything were a dream.

That fleeting thought was accompanied by a sudden, twisting sensation in her gut, and nausea rose from deep within.

“Hurk, ugh!”

The abrupt retching caught Rosie off guard.

‘Why is my stomach so upset…?’

She hadn’t eaten anything wrong yesterday, yet a sour bile rose from within, and the urge to vomit became unbearable.

Having eaten nothing, only bitter stomach acid came up.

But it was brief. Once it subsided, Rosie had no time to tend to her pale complexion. She immediately threw on her coat.

As long as she held an officer’s position, she couldn’t be late.

A man was a man, and duty was duty.

Resolving to strictly separate public and private matters, Rosie stepped outside.

But that resolve shattered not long after.

She heard soldiers whispering. Isn’t there a saying that vultures gather where there is a corpse?

Faced with a situation eerily similar to the old adage, Rosie felt dizzy, but she dragged her body—which felt like it might collapse any moment—toward the center of the whispers.

‘What’s going on?’

And then, what seized Rosie’s vision was a magnificent carriage.

Whose carriage is this? she wondered briefly, but then saw the crest and was at a loss for words.

Because emblazoned prominently on the carriage’s front was a large letter ‘O,’ along with a crest depicting two mythical beasts.

‘O’ was the abbreviation for the Oferun family.

And those two beasts were the Oferun family crest.

At that moment, the carriage door opened, and a woman stepped out.

“So this is where the Second Prince resides?”

A refined, elegant voice, as if it had never tasted dust, echoed through the grounds a moment later.