At Theo’s words, Liriope feigned a confused expression and tilted her head again.

“Oh, then maybe it was at the Hunting Festival?”

“Didn’t the Duke say it was too dangerous for you to attend? I’m pretty sure you’ve never gone to a single Hunting Festival.”

“Oh, then perhaps the New Year’s Festival…?”

“I haven’t left the Northern Duke’s estate during the New Year’s Festival for the past four years.”

“Th-then I must’ve seen you four years ago.”

“Weren’t you still at the Academy four years ago?”

‘Ugh, this guy. Why the hell is your memory so damn perfect?’

Running out of excuses, Liriope looked around in desperation. Theo slowly scanned her with a snake-like gaze.

“So, are you saying you really do like me?”

He asked the question as slowly as his gaze lingered on her.

Without missing a beat, Liriope nodded enthusiastically.

“Of course. I like you so much, you show up in my dreams all the time. And really, why would I lie about liking someone if I didn’t?”

“…”

“Of course, I understand why you might not believe me. I did chase the Crown Prince around so much that it probably seems suspicious. I get that. But it would still hurt if my sincere feelings were dismissed like they mean nothing.”

Liriope pressed her hand against her chest and cast her eyes to the floor with a sorrowful expression.

Since it had come to this, she figured she might as well make the engagement with the Duke of the North official and erase her ill-fated connection with the Crown Prince.

At least then, she wouldn’t meet a death ending.

It did make her a bit uneasy to involve the male lead—Theo, the Northern Duke—but she figured she’d just use him briefly and hand him off to the heroine later. No big deal.

Saving the villainess’s life wouldn’t ruin the whole plot, right?

Theo raised an eyebrow at Liriope’s dramatic performance, then slowly stood up, holding their engagement contract in hand.

“Well, let’s go with that for now.”

In his words, Liriope stood up as well.

At that moment, a faint but pleasant scent drifted from her toward Theo, and his expression subtly changed. His gaze locked onto her for a beat too long.

“But—”

Theo spoke in his low baritone voice as he stepped closer to Liriope, eyes fixed on her.

Startled by the sudden decrease in distance, Liriope looked up at him in surprise. Theo leaned his head slightly, his eyes boring into hers.

Not knowing what was coming next, Liriope panicked, glancing around nervously. Then Theo slowly bent forward.

He brought his lips close to her ear and spoke in a low, quiet tone.

“The moment I walk out of here holding this, there’s no going back.”

His breath brushed against the nape of her neck, sending a shiver down her body. The tingling sensation mixed with a chill that swept over her entire frame, and a sigh, more like a gasp, slipped from her lips.

Startled by her own breathy sound, Liriope instinctively stepped back. Theo’s gaze shifted slightly, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.

Liriope could feel heat rising from her ears to her cheeks, down her neck, spreading through her whole body. Embarrassed, she gripped her skirt tightly in both hands and avoided his eyes.

She didn’t need a mirror to know her face was probably bright red. She wished for anything—anything—that could hide her face right now.

Theo stared at her for a long moment, then let out a barely audible chuckle and straightened up again.

His gaze, still intense, lingered on her with an amused glint.

“Even if you cry and beg later, you can’t take it back.”

He said it playfully, waving the engagement contract in his hand, clearly enjoying himself.

That ticked Liriope off. She stepped forward and reached for the contract.

“Then maybe I should reconsider right now—”

But before she could even finish her sentence, Theo lifted the contract high above his head. As she reached for it, Liriope lost her balance and stumbled right into his chest.

On instinct, Theo’s arm wrapped around her waist.

Startled, Liriope pushed against his chest and quickly stepped back, and Theo also retreated just as fast.

Seemingly flustered by his own reflexive action, he cleared his throat and lowered the hand still holding the contract.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he looked at her calmly and said,

“Of course, I already have no intention of backing out.”

As Theo had just said that leaving the room with the engagement contract meant there would be no turning back, yet now claimed he had no intention of canceling it, a frown crept across Liriope’s forehead.

Her heart was still pounding from the unexpected physical contact, and her mind was already in chaos. The last thing she needed was him adding more confusion with such contradictory words. She forced the most polite smile she could muster and looked at Theo.

“The truth is, I’ve had a bit of a crush on you for a while, but I never expected things to escalate into an engagement like this. This is something my father arranged entirely on his own without even discussing it with me, so I’m just as shocked as you are. I assume you must feel the same way, right?”

‘So don’t you think we should just call off this engagement right here and now?’

Liriope stared at the engagement contract she so desperately wanted to tear to shreds and continued.

“So, what I mean is… you really don’t need to get caught up in this mess because of me or my father—”

At that moment, a faint chuckle escaped Theo’s lips.

It wasn’t frivolous or unpleasant—just strangely calm and curious.

“You’re the type to worry about unnecessary things, aren’t you?” he said.

When Liriope looked at him with a bewildered expression, he continued, a barely visible smile playing at the corners of his lips.

“Even if you cry and beg to marry the Crown Prince later, it’ll be useless. The moment you tried to use me, you should have been prepared to pay the price.”

Then, as if there was no need to hear another word from her, Theo turned and walked out of the audience room.

Liriope stood frozen, her eyes blinking blankly as she watched him disappear.

“…Huh?”

Only after Theo had completely vanished did a sigh escape her lips as she tilted her head back to look up at the ceiling.

‘I think I really messed things up trying to twist the original story…?!’

***

Back in the North, after stepping through a teleportation portal, Theo sat in his office at the ducal estate, staring at the golden-glowing engagement contract.

When none other than Duke Ricaze Steila himself had approached him about the engagement, Theo had thought it was utter nonsense.

And who could blame him?

Liriope Steila was infamously known across the empire as the ‘foolish noble lady blindly obsessed with the Crown Prince.’

No matter how harshly the Crown Prince rejected her or how hard he tried to shake her off, she would stubbornly cling to him, to the point of being painfully embarrassing.

For such a woman to suddenly claim she liked him instead?

It was impossible to believe.

Clearly, she was up to some dumb scheme, and if she intended to use him in it, she needed to pay the price.

So then… why did he feel so unsettled?

And that scent… what was that?

Theo remembered the soft, pleasant fragrance that had wafted from her when he got close. He couldn’t believe a person’s body could naturally emit such an alluring scent.

‘Maybe my nose’s been messed up from all that exposure to Razerian essence.’

Trying to dismiss the lingering sensation with that excuse, he frowned, though his body still burned with a desire to run back and confirm it again for himself.

“Are you really going to go through with the engagement?” asked Adil, his aide.

At the question, Theo’s expression seemed to stiffen for a moment—then he let out a short, dry laugh instead of answering directly.

“Who knows? What do you think?”

In fact, because of the living phoenix, Lynix, that Liriope had created as her graduation project at the academy long ago, he was quite pleased to have the engagement letter that could potentially hold her weaknesses.

As the only one among those with fire attributes who could produce an unquenchable flame, Liriope would undoubtedly be of great help in the frozen North.

And Lynix, especially, was something the North desperately needed.

Adil looked at Theo with a worried expression, but Theo didn’t notice his aide’s gaze. He was too absorbed in recalling what had happened at the duke’s estate.

The scent he’d noticed when he got close to Liriope… the way she blushed at his actions… the way she looked at him with bold eyes, pretending not to be embarrassed even though she clearly was—all of it had thoroughly unsettled his mind.

Especially when she had talked about the reason she’d fallen for him…

—“I mean, sure, I’m a little weak for handsome guys, but the reason I fell for you, Theo, isn’t because of that sculpted face, you know? It’s more about how you’re good at everything, your serious personality—it just stole my heart. And while we’re on the topic, you really are the most capable among all the empire’s nobles…”

He’d ended up raising his hand to shut her mouth before she could say more, feeling too awkward to keep listening. But still—he’d never encountered a noble lady who confessed to him so boldly and directly before. It had been deeply disconcerting.

And when he started coughing—her immediate reaction to summon a servant and order the Lazerian removed without a moment of hesitation was burned into his memory.

Only his personal physician and a handful of people working in the ducal estate knew that Lazerian triggered his allergies. Not even the people of the imperial palace, where he’d spent part of his childhood, were aware.

So, how did Liriope know?

And more than that, how did she notice he was holding back a cough and so casually have all the Lazerian flowers in the reception room removed?

Most noble ladies of the empire treated flowers as if they were extensions of themselves—something to show off or decorate with for the sake of appearances.

For someone like that to so readily order the flowers to be taken away, without hesitation or concern for appearances, was honestly surprising.

In fact, everything—from how she commanded the removal of the flowers without a second thought, to how she opened the window herself to air out the room—had caught him completely off guard.

And that unexpectedness had somehow stuck in his mind more than he realized.

Before he knew it, the corners of his lips were twitching upward again.

Though, of course, Theo had no idea he was smiling.