It was a memory from quite far in the past.

A turning point he could never forget, but for Karin, something that had simply passed. Or perhaps a nightmare.

It was the day of their wedding.

He had demanded Karin and pulled her down to his side, but he had never truly held her in his heart, and so when everything was over, emptiness came instead.

He had left her behind, still smiling through the reception, and come up to his room first.

What was the point of any of this?

He had achieved the original goal of bringing down that woman whose haughtiness had pierced the sky, but nothing remained for him because of it.

He felt neither relief nor satisfaction. Only a widening gap between himself and reality.

Nothing will change even with this. They will find a way to use even this.

The most damning part was that he had become exactly like them. A real contradiction, if there ever was one.

Clothes like these, food like these. Looking down at the heads of those who bowed before him, and now even forcing smiles at people whose only interest was what they could get from him.

His mind knew it was his own choice, but it was nothing short of repulsive. He had been deeply mistaken about something.

Nothing could be changed by a marriage like this.

It had not even amounted to a petty act of revenge. All that remained here was a contemptible man who had ruined a woman’s life, and a vain woman who clawed to hold her place even at the side of such a man.

Was this also the fault of a poor upbringing? As someone had once accused.

He had prided himself on never tasting failure at anything other than the circumstances of his birth, but tonight, at least, he had to admit defeat.

This marriage was a complete failure.

Knock knock.

He had just reached that conclusion and was emptying his glass. At this hour past midnight, there were not many who could knock on his door.

Knock knock. Knock knock knock.

There was feeling behind the knocking.

Had she come to curse at him again?

It had been the moment before the ceremony, when he went to meet her in the waiting room.

She had grabbed him by the collar and poured every insult she knew into his ear.

And then she crossed the red carpet and kissed him at the end of it. With the most radiant expression of happiness on her face.

If asked to name the most two-faced person he had ever encountered, Feron would choose her without hesitation. He had never seen anyone so skilled at concealing what they truly felt.

“I know you’re awake. I’m coming in.”

A clear voice carried through the wood.

The door swung open, and Karin appeared in light clothing.

Still wearing that displeased expression. Every movement guarded. Head tilted at that contrary angle, and those luminous eyes radiating pure exasperation.

What put the final touch on that contradiction was what she said.

“What are you doing? Why haven’t you come?”

Sharp eyes swept over him from head to toe.

“Drinking…? Haa…… Shouldn’t you have come over after a reasonable amount? Do I have to spell that out for you too? Honestly, pathetic.”

She stepped forward without warning and snatched the glass from his hand.

“So you’re going to lean on something like this.”

She muttered, looking at the golden liquid swirling inside. She set the glass down on the table and jerked her chin with an air of complete authority.

“Get up.”

Arms crossed over her chest, the direction she indicated with a tilt of her head was the adjoining room.

“What are you doing? You’re not the only one who’s tired, you know?”

She pushed her hair back with an irritated hand and let out a long breath. Even in the dark, her features were impossibly distinct.

The smooth line of her forehead, the sharp bridge of her nose. The clean line of her jaw and the feminine curve that followed beneath it.

Her thin clothing left her silhouette entirely visible. He was not unaware of what it meant, her gesturing toward that room dressed like this.

But why?

They were not the kind of couple who did such things.

She despised him, and he held her in contempt.

A different kind of emptiness had come over him now, but she was still someone he had no use for.

He knew all too well the cruel words that came from those tempting lips.

“Why don’t you leave?”

“……”

“My room.”

“……What?”

She looked at him the way someone might upon hearing something rather shocking, and did not look away. She had been standing perfectly straight without a trace of wavering, and she took one step forward and asked.

“Are you…… perhaps impotent?”

Her face showed no sign of thinking she had just been turned down.

With a grave expression, she raised a hand to cover her mouth, and her gaze dropped downward.

“My…… I hadn’t considered this possibility.”

He shoved back his chair and stood at the sight of her treating nonsense as an established fact. He stepped squarely in front of her and said in a tone of warning.

“I told you to leave.”

“Have you sought treatment? No. You wouldn’t have. If you had, rumors that the hero of Girian is impotent would have spread across the entire empire by now…… By the way, craning my neck to look up at you is a strain. Either lower your head or bend at the waist. One of the two would be appreciated.”

The same insufferable manner, without fail.

He walked forward to push her back. She retreated and hit the console.

“Ah…!”

With his thigh pressed firmly against her stomach, he murmured low into her ear as she reached back to tend to where she had been struck.

“It’s not that I can’t. I just don’t want to do it with you. Do you understand now?”

Karin blinked at the pressure against her abdomen. And before long she realized it was not only his thigh pressing against her. Karin answered with her usual slant.

“I don’t want to either.”

“Good.”

Karin grabbed his robe as he moved to step away.

“Even so, we have to. It’s an obligation.”

“A worthless obligation. One that doesn’t need to be……”

“Wrong. An obligation is called an obligation precisely because it must be fulfilled. Someone as ignorant as you has probably lived however you pleased up until now, with no regard for procedure or anything else, but now that you’re my husband, I won’t let that kind of behavior slide.”

Feron shook off Karin’s hand as she launched into her lecture.

He turned his back to her and picked up the glass from the table.

Clack.

The glass she knocked away tumbled across the carpet. The one saving grace was that the thick wool carpet kept it from shattering. Feron turned to look at Karin.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Do what you’re supposed to do first. After that, drink yourself into the floor or go to sleep, I don’t care.”

Feron let out a short breath, facing her stubborn expression. In the dim moonlight filtering through the window, Karin’s eyes shone clear.

By the look of it, she would argue through the night if he refused.

What does a wedding night even matter? Whether the servants gossip about the state of their relationship or not.

She looks at me like I’m something filthy, and yet she’ll do whatever it takes to protect her image in front of others.

Would anything change because of it? In the end, you ended up married to the foreign man you treated like vermin.

“You chose me. With those contemptible fingers of yours. So take responsibility for your choice.”

The hands she called contemptible had even less strength than that.

Slender hands that had never taken responsibility for anything in their life were pulling at his collar.

“Responsibility?”

“That’s right. Responsibility.”

An irrepressible sneer came out in full.

“Then can you take responsibility for what you just said? I have no intention of stopping once I start.”

A voice as dark as the color of his eyes bored into Karin’s ear.

Karin held his sharp gaze and curved her lips.

“Stopping partway through is the problematic thing, isn’t it? Otherwise……”

But Karin’s words did not reach the end.

A silhouette glimpsed briefly from below had made its presence rather impossible to ignore.

Karin tried to cover the slight flustering with composure, but she could not control where her eyes naturally went.

Feron said, sounding bored.

“If you’re not going to do this standing up, lie down.”

“I’ll manage on my own. Don’t give me orders.”

Feron raised a hand at Karin’s retort. With an expression that said suit yourself, he waited for her to move with complete indifference.