Ian, now wearing only a thin shirt and undershorts, turned to look at Cordelia. His gaze touched her white, rounded shoulder and traveled down along the slender curve of her arm. When it reached her sharp elbow and caught the faint trembling there, something briefly darkened in his eyes.

“…I’ll blow out the candle. Please lie down first.”

He said gently. Cordelia approached the bed with hesitant steps, lifted the covers, and lay down beneath them. Ian blew out the candle and felt his way through the darkness to the bed.

He lay down carefully. The woman flinched as the mattress shifted with his weight.

Ian turned onto his side with his back to Cordelia and closed his eyes. He breathed deliberately slowly and tried to keep his mind empty.

“…”

Silence stretched on. Ian lay still and listened. Behind him he could sense the princess’s quiet, shallow breathing. She did not seem to be asleep yet.

Time passed. Just as Ian was beginning to drift, a faint sound reached him from behind.

A soft, choked breath.

No, it was more than that. Ian opened his eyes. The quiet sound of his wife, who had become his that day, weeping in the dark with muffled sobs drifted gently through the room.

Ian lay there with a blank expression, listening, and slowly clenched his fist. There was nothing he could do but endure in silence.

The stifled crying went on for a long time. Until the man who had been listening quietly fell asleep at last, his heart aching.

* * *

How long had she cried? How long had she slept? Cordelia blinked open her swollen eyes. She had never woken to a morning feeling this wretched in her life. She experienced yet another unwelcome first.

She lay there in a daze for a while after waking and then realized she was alone in the room. She pushed herself up and glanced behind her. The other side of the bed was empty.

Cordelia reached out without thinking and ran her hand over the empty space. The neatly arranged pillow and bedding held not even a faint trace of warmth.

She bit her lip. The memories of the day before, which she wished had been nothing but a nightmare, swirled through her mind in excruciating clarity. She pulled her hand away from the pillow as though she had touched something repulsive.

She sat up in bed and pulled the bell cord. When she had been confined to her bedchamber, every attempt had been ignored, but something had shifted since last night, and it was worth trying.

Sure enough, a maid appeared not long after the bell rang. It was a different person from the one who had brought her food during her confinement.

Cordelia’s stomach turned. So this was how her treatment changed now that she was Ian Lakenon’s wife. She had spent her entire life as a highborn royal, destined one day to inherit power, and now she faced a reality that had changed in an instant, and despair settled over her.

“Bring me some water to wash with.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The unfamiliar form of address drove a nail into that despair. Cordelia took a moment to breathe. She had to hold back the urge to shout at the maid not to address her with that word. She kept her voice steady and gave her instructions.

“Prepare breakfast as well. I’d like to eat in the room.”

“Yes, of course.”

“…Has Sir Lakenon already eaten?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“I was told he went to the main palace to have an audience with His Majesty the King.”

Up and busy this early in the morning. Cordelia swallowed the sarcasm.

“Did he say when he would be back?”

“No, I wasn’t told that.”

“I see. You may go.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The maid bowed and left the room. Her manner was noticeably more deferential than the one who had attended the princess before.

Then again, she had been a prisoner then, and now she was the wife of a man who had earned the new king’s favor. Though in terms of having no real power, her situation was the same as before. Cordelia felt her spirits sink again.

Even so, the day continued despite her low spirits. When the maid brought washing water, Cordelia washed her hands and face carefully, and when breakfast arrived she ate everything that was set before her.

After that she asked for a change of clothes. The wedding dress from the day before had already been taken away by someone, and she had no desire to put it on again in any case.

When the maid brought a dress and boots, Cordelia put on the dress and changed out of her slippers into the boots.

She decided to go for a walk. She had no wish to spend the whole day shut inside the bridal chamber with its nothing but unpleasant memories.

“If Sir Lakenon should ask for me, please tell him I’m in the back garden.”

“Yes, my lady. Shall I accompany you?”

“No, I’d like to be alone.”

Cordelia had half expected the maid to refuse. However polished her manners on the surface, she could not forget that the girl was also one of the new king’s people.

She was probably there to watch her as much as to serve her. Hearing that the princess wanted to be alone, she might show reluctance and try to block her way despite being a mere maid.

But the maid did not. She answered agreeably with the same courteous manner as always, and Cordelia was left feeling vaguely unsettled.

It was fortunate, at any rate. She went outside without an attendant.

The back garden was meticulously kept, as befitted a royal palace. The season, caught between late spring and early summer, was one that made this land particularly beautiful, and it was just right for a walk.

But even the fresh breeze, the warm sunlight, the colorful blossoms, and the clear sky could not dispel the darkness that lurked inside the princess. Cordelia walked through the bright garden in a gloomy mood.

‘What has become of everyone?’

She was thinking of the others. Duke Rodrian and his son, her father’s other loyal retainers, the devoted ladies-in-waiting who had been as dear to her as friends.

The last she had heard, the duke was facing execution, his son’s whereabouts were unknown, and she had heard nothing at all about the ladies who had originally served her.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t wondered about them. In the early days of her confinement she had caught the maid who brought her food and pressed her about whether her friends were alive or dead.

But as the days of confinement stretched on and her questions went unanswered more and more, she had grown too tired to keep asking.

If even a mere maid ignored her so thoroughly, there was no hope that Ian Lakenon, a man of merit in the rebellion, would readily give her answers, so she had held back her questions with him as well.

But now that her situation had changed, however slightly, a thin thread of hope stirred back to life.

‘Maybe now, if I ask, he’ll tell me…’

I have become Ian Lakenon’s wife, after all. Whatever else it meant, I had become his partner, his equal in standing.

She deliberately set aside the fact that she was a wife in name only, in reality nothing more than a prize given to a man of merit. She was afraid that if she dwelled too long on the bleakest aspects of her situation, what little will she had left would break and she would never be able to rise again.

‘I must not fall apart.’

If it was my brother’s goal to break and defile me, if he feared that those who condemned his rebellion might rally around me as a symbol, then my helpless collapse would be his greatest satisfaction.

She could not allow that. She could be trampled, but she could not be completely broken. She intended to hold on with everything she had.

She walked for a long while like that, steeling her resolve inside. So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she did not notice someone approaching. By the time she sensed another presence, the person was already right behind her.

“Princess.”

Cordelia startled and spun around. A pair of dark violet eyes met hers. Ian was wearing the same fine uniform she had seen him in two days ago. It was not a particularly fitting look alongside the vivid bruise still spread across his face.

“I heard you were in the garden, so I came out.”

“…Did you have something to say to me?”

“Yes, I did. But…”

Ian tilted his head. His expression was one of genuine puzzlement.

“Why are you speaking formally to me?”

Cordelia fixed him with a cool look. But whatever her eyes said, her speech at least was fairly polite.

“Because we are husband and wife now. It’s only proper to show each other courtesy.”

It was customary for married couples to use formal speech with each other as a sign of mutual respect. She had decided to set her pride aside for now and observe the convention. Bending a little would be necessary if she was going to protect herself going forward.

Ian still looked faintly bewildered. His expression said he had never imagined she would address him with formality. That reaction grated on her somehow, and Cordelia added with a cool lift of her chin.

“So please call me ‘my lady’ as well. Stop using ‘Princess.’”

Being shackled to him through marriage and still being called ‘Princess,’ of all things. She laughed at the hypocrisy coldly to herself.

A traitor’s loyalist clinging to an old title gave her no sense of being respected. It only sounded like mockery.

Ian hesitated briefly. Then he answered in an even tone.

“Yes, my lady.”