1.

The separate quarters where the royal concubine lived, who had not even secured a place in the king’s memory, let alone his favor, were not much different from the lodgings of a newly arrived knight candidate.

The uniformly old and shabby furniture and the creaking noise from the warped window frames that seemed unlikely to keep out the cold were now familiar to Diane.

Still, noise was better than silence. When quietness bordering on stillness weighed down the room, it led to revisiting happy times that could not be returned to in a daze.

So Diane always lived with noise, and was truly recalling a fragment of her younger days for the first time in a long while.

It started with a small scroll brought by a white hawk at the risk of its life.

[The Castle of Roam will soon fall.]

At first, she couldn’t believe it. Who indeed could believe it? Wasn’t the wall of Roam as impossibly high as that of Avead Royal Castle where she had grown up? A threatening wall that made one automatically lower their head after countless imaginings of crossing it….

But thinking again, wasn’t it possible that, with their view blocked by the high walls, they knew nothing of the world that had already changed?

No one told Diane, and no one cared, but that’s why she could overhear many things.

They said the monster outbreak was unusual. Unlike wars between humans, it was said that purposeless, reasonless slaughter had already swallowed up three or four small countries.

Optimists might have expected humans to unite in the face of an overwhelming enemy, but what actually exploited the gap was the ‘heretics’ who had disappeared in the past.

A soldier who had dragged in a half-unconscious person had said through gritted teeth. That outside, it would be safer to encounter monsters rather than heretics….

Diane looked at the scroll again.

Perhaps it was fate. Maybe it was time to return to the sanctuary where she had been so happy in her childhood that she regretted the fading memories, where she had felt nothing but peace in her mother’s arms.

Of course, with the added meaning of saving ‘that man’s’ life, Diane felt courage she had thought would never be hers taking root in her heart.

Once the decision was made, her chest throbbed strangely. The heartbeat she had felt every time she went there for some time had intensified several times.

Diane, the only woman who frequented the prison, entered the building and descended calmly to the deepest part of the basement as she usually did, and no one stopped her or paid her any attention.

Despite being a princess of a country, and even the king’s concubine, she had been doing chores for the guards without any complaint, so it was perhaps natural that they didn’t guard against her. So despite her nervousness, executing the plan wasn’t difficult.

Rather, the variable was the man bound even within the thick prison, ‘Leon Bishutz’. She trembled every time even though it’s not her first time seeing him. She doesn’t know why. Is it because he’s dangerous?

“Um…”

Despite boldly opening the prison door with the key she had brought, Diane’s first word trembled noticeably.

“……?”

The man who slowly raised his head glanced at the guards sleeping as if they had fainted behind the small woman. Even though these were people who had never shown a speck of tension normally, this was a bit much…. As he naturally furrowed his brow, the woman’s shoulders trembled.

Diane’s mind went blank for a moment, forgetting what she was going to say, but thankfully the man waited for her to continue. Ah, maybe he didn’t wait. Maybe he was just too dumbfounded.

“Soon, something big will happen to the castle…. If not now, there won’t be another chance.”

The man just blinked slowly without saying anything. This time, Diane clenched her fists, determined not to stammer, and continued.

“I’ll help you get out of here, can you take me to the Kingdom of Avead? If you accept my proposal, I’ll reward you.”

“Reward?”

A shiver ran from the tips of her toes to the top of her head at the man’s low voice she heard after a long time. Why did she feel like prey before a beast when she was the one doing the rescuing? Of course, she needed this man too, but it wasn’t just for that reason.

“If you go where I want, I can give you any reward. How about ten million gold?”

It was an enormous amount of money. Even if she had never earned it herself, Diane knew the value of money well enough.

As expected, the man lifted one corner of his mouth faintly. Then he answered with a breath similar to a sigh.

“I hear footsteps, do you have company?”

“…Huh? Ah, no.”

“Then come closer and untie my hands too. We don’t seem to have much time.”

Even though she hadn’t received a proper answer about the contract yet, Diane approached the man as if entranced and began to untie the bonds.

Despite her haste, her hands fumbled repeatedly due to nervousness. However, Leon waited calmly until Diane untied one of his hands.

“…Ugh, my head.”

There was no way Diane could have obtained proper drugs in the first place. A guard who quickly regained consciousness sat up holding his head and looked around. The guard’s gaze soon stopped at the wide-open door of the deepest solitary cell.

“You, you…, how.”

The guard stammered as he saw Leon appearing through the open door, bending his joints. He inhaled, thinking he should quickly call his colleagues, but before that, Leon approached right in front of him, and after that, everything happened in the blink of an eye as if it had been predetermined.

***

“Let’s be a married couple.”

“……?”

Diane doubted her ears. Was there a new meaning to the word ‘married couple’? But the man dispelled her doubts with a firm tone.

“Then, if someone asks why a grown man and woman are sticking together while traveling, what are we going to say?”

She knew he was a willful man, but his boldness left her mouth agape. The man’s gaze fixed on her red lips was quite shameless. This man was serious. He was actually suggesting to her, someone of a vastly different social class — no, someone he would rarely encounter, even if he was reborn several times, once she returned to her home country — to pretend to be a married couple.

“It wouldn’t be to my advantage to arouse people’s suspicions unnecessarily.”

“No matter what, pretending to be married is absurd. Strange rumors might spread later…”

“Strange rumors or whatever, don’t we need to get back to the Kingdom of Avead alive first? If you can go without me, suit yourself. I have nothing to lose.”

The man stretched out on the wooden box he was sitting on as if annoyed. His jet-black hair had grown quite long and was about to poke his eyes. That too seemed bothersome, as he roughly pushed his hair back, a motion Diane quietly observed.

There were many scars on the back of his hand and exposed forearm. Although the fight was over, the muscles on his still-agitated body were swollen and twitching.

Her impression of this man now wasn’t much different from when she first saw him. A precarious feeling like holding a bomb about to explode. And yet, a man with an inexplicable emptiness.

Anyway, there was no other choice.

Although he might be a criminal in the Kingdom of Roam, to her, he was the only hope. This man named Leon Bishutz.

“If not a married couple, then…”

“What would you prefer, my dear princess?”

A strange light flickered in Leon’s eyes as he watched Diane biting her lower lip hard. The shadows were dark over the fallen guards who had lost their light on both sides. A single ray of light from the tall skylight fell on Leon’s head.

The red pupils, the only color in what seemed a dark appearance, made the viewer strangely intimidated. Leon’s aura instantly dominated the surroundings. It caught and held Diane’s gaze.

When the conversation didn’t continue, Leon abruptly stood up, and Diane’s head tilted sharply upward to look at him. He was the tallest person Diane had ever seen, so tall that she couldn’t even guess his height.

Her heart beat wildly as he approached with heavy steps. Thoughts flashed through her mind — a bit of fear, an impulse to back away, and conversely, an intuition that any wrong move might get her throat torn out.

Ah, she realized what sensation she felt from him. He was a predator. A beast that would snap one’s neck the moment they stepped just one foot outside human-drawn norms.

She had heard that was the very reason he was captured here. Yet the thin thread of trust that made her ask for his help was because of the story that he had killed people to avenge his sister.

The fact that he was from the Kingdom of Avead like herself was just a bonus.

“Siblings…. Couldn’t we say that instead?”