Her words were somewhat heated, but her expression stayed composed. Even this was so like Karin that Feron let out a quiet breath of amusement.

“Think what you like. As always.”

His unhurried manner made Karin’s brow furrow.

“No. Say it yourself. Are you a monster?”

“Who knows.”

“I want an answer! Haa. Fine. All right. Then I’ll change the question. Those eyes.”

The knife Feron had been leisurely cutting his meat with finally stilled. The gaze he turned on Karin was quite serious.

Look. See for yourself. What about these eyes that look like a monster’s? Almost pleading that point.

Faced with Feron’s perfectly normal expression, Karin felt her will to interrogate him waver somewhat…… and yet she pushed the question out anyway.

“Do you think I was seeing things?”

In a slightly different direction than she had intended.

Ah. I hadn’t meant to ask it so bluntly. If Feron says yes, then I really……

“My wife has rather good eyesight.”

But Feron spared her the worst possible answer. Whether it was for her sake or simply the truth coming out, Karin felt a small rush of relief at the confirmation that she had not lost her mind.

“Right. Exactly.”

“……”

“My eyesight is very good. So I also saw the black liquid you expelled that day, writhing around……”

She had tried to savor the relief with her head held high, but even that proved difficult. If she had not lost her mind, then it was certain that Feron was the one who was wrong. Which meant……

“You can relax, Karin. I have no intention of harming you.”

He had torn into her shoulder like he meant to rip it off, and now he had the nerve to say something like that. Feron seemed to think the reason Karin’s expression had gone stiff was fear, and offered what he considered a reassurance.

“I woke up like this.”

“……”

“Just think of it as an illness. I can guarantee that I am your husband.”

A guarantee? How?

But rather than pressing that question, Karin turned her thoughts to her own hypothesis.

What Feron looked like no longer mattered. She had proven she had not lost her mind.

And she believed, to some degree, that he would not harm her.

If he had wanted to kill her, he would have done it already, and if he had wanted to wield authority by invoking his name as head of household, he would have done that long ago too.

But Feron had done none of it. He had even cut off a portion of his own assets and placed them under her name.

Trust came from the fact that he had willingly done something he had no obligation to do.

In that case, perhaps the one playing the villain was someone else entirely.

Elwin, who had invoked old sentiment and asked her to become his lover.

A cowardly loser who had failed to protect her when he could have, and came crawling in like a hyena the moment the victor fell.

Karin thought of Elwin’s irritating face and picked up her cutlery. Not because she had any appetite, but because she wanted to cut something, anything.

Feron, however, seemed to have finally decided she had settled down, and a faint smile touched his lips. He moved his knife and cut into his meat as well. He looked more natural by the moment.

“There’s one more thing I want to ask.”

Karin began, watching his aristocratic way with a knife, now entirely outside the bounds of her suspicion.

“About you dying. About whoever killed you.”

“……”

Feron’s death had been publicly declared an accident at the time, but Karin had never agreed with that conclusion.

Feron had said he had no memory of that day. If a creature had attacked him, that would not be the case.

“That…… and the reason you changed like this.”

Karin drew it out in a way that was unlike her. She was gauging where to stop the question.

‘I should probably leave out the mistress business, shouldn’t I?’

Karin could fill pages through the night if asked to list Feron’s possessiveness in writing, so she looked for the right line that would not provoke him. She had finally gotten Valstar’s assets into her hands, and she could not afford to die alongside her husband for treason.

“You spent a lot of time with His Highness the Crown Prince before you died. You went hunting together often.”

“We did.”

Elwin, who did not even enjoy hunting, had gone out of his way to come all the way to the rough Valstar territory. The stated reason was to learn hunting from Feron, and when Karin heard that, she had scoffed inwardly. A man who had barely managed to learn to ride a horse, going hunting.

If anything, Elwin was closer to a scholar. He had no talent for anything physical. Which made it all the more suspicious.

“You said you had no memory of that day. Was there any arrangement with His Highness? Like agreeing to meet in the forest, or maybe he had been acting strangely before that……”

Feron watched her quietly.

Karin was idly poking at the garnish beside her steak with her fork, and he burst out laughing. It was too much laughter for the situation.

“……What?”

Even as she looked at him in puzzlement, Feron did not stop his snickering.

He went on chuckling for quite a while, and Karin could not tell whether he was laughing at her theory or whether there was something else behind it.

He gave his head a light shake and fixed his gaze on the edge of the table, steadying his breath. Tap. Tap. Feron’s fingertips knocked idly against the armrest.

“What you’re worried about won’t happen.”

His pleasant low voice seemed to mean it as reassurance, but Karin only found it exasperating.

“I’m not worried. I’m asking whether that possibility exists.”

“My. You could worry about me a little.”

He put on a forlorn expression with a face that felt none of it. Seeing Feron react this way, it seemed her guesses up to now had been entirely off the mark.

“I thought this was the theory that made the most sense.”

She was murmuring almost to herself, and Feron responded.

“Well. There were plenty of attempts. Never once succeeded, though.”

Even as he answered, he recalled the past and laughed again. It was a snicker of pure contempt.

“Is my wife interested in archery?”

Feron asked with a playful lilt.

“Looking into poisons with a milder taste would also be worthwhile, especially the slow-acting kind. Or secretly cutting a bridge that someone needs to cross, or swapping out a telegram with the destination changed. None of those are bad options either.”

“……Must have been tiresome.”

“It was entertaining.”

Feron said it with a slow smile. But once the amusement left his face, a deep revulsion surfaced in its place.

In that brief moment of staring straight ahead, it was plain that he had known Elwin’s intentions all along.

‘I didn’t even need to bring up the mistress.’

Karin thought this and stirred her food without purpose.

“Still, you held back remarkably well. With that temper of yours.”

“Perhaps I should have just gotten rid of him.”

“If you’re going to do that, tell me in advance. I’ll need to divorce you first.”

It was the kind of exchange that would have made anyone listening recoil in horror, but to these two, the crown prince of the empire was worth less than the cut of meat on the plate. Something to chew through without a second thought and move past.

“Ah. And about the asset transfer.”

Karin looked up and met Feron’s eyes.

“Yes.”

“Why did you do it? What were you thinking, letting me receive that and then dispose of you?”

He wore a more serious expression than he had when asked about Elwin.

The faint curl at the corner of his lips looked less like someone weighing an answer and more like someone recalling a fond piece of mischief.

Even this was so naturally Feron that it felt right. The man in front of her was indeed her husband.

Whether it was a curse, possession by some creature, or some unknown illness.

He was a little more forward-looking than before, more understanding, more at ease, and carried an almost unsettling air of refinement, but Feron showed through in the small things.

It was precisely because they were small that she felt certain. These were things only the person himself would know.

Karin, who had been watching Feron quietly, dropped her gaze.

“Come back to your room now.”

“……”

“I’ll come by in the evening, so bear that in mind.”

Not even the faint clinking of silverware broke the silence.

In the complete quiet, Karin looked up at him.

“It’s been a while.”

Feron had gone still, a faint smile resting on his lips.

He surfaced from a brief moment of recollection and looked at her.

“I’ll be waiting.”