The man who had truly not been human in his treatment of her reached out with trembling hands to very carefully brush the hair from her forehead. Dana turned her head toward him while closing her eyes.

That gesture, looking as if she wanted to be touched more, excited the man who had reached out his arm. Dana didn’t show disgust toward him, didn’t avoid him, and didn’t reject him. Hope bloomed in his heart that had been covered in guilt.

Kaiden stayed by Dana’s side all day. When Dana woke up and looked for water, he tilted the water glass with his own hands; when the maid brought soup at mealtime, he fed her with his own hands; and he wiped Dana’s sweaty body with a wet towel.

Throughout this process, while feeling joy at being able to take care of Dana, he also felt disgust toward himself for feeling that way.

Dana slept almost all day long. While Kaiden felt elated by the fact that he could have such an effect on her, he also felt troubled that forcing such a brutal man onto the fragile Dana seemed like an uncivilized and violent act. When Dana’s mere existence had brilliantly pierced his dark night-like heart just by smiling and shining from afar…

Kaiden watched Dana sleeping quietly in bed. Though the afternoon summer sunlight was piercing through the open window into the room, the curtained bed was shrouded in darkness. Dana’s fair complexion, deeply buried in the light and thin white blanket, was slightly flushed. It looked as if she was still in last night when their bodies had joined. While that pleased him, it also made him feel sorry.

Kaiden raised his hand. Wind rose from his hand. Kaiden had contracted with the Divine Beast Bazesus. This meant he could also command other Divine Beasts that followed Bazesus. Though he didn’t attempt the naive act of speaking to Divine Beasts as Dana had tried, he could easily call and control Divine Beasts with necessary abilities without doing so.

How could he contract with Divine Beasts? How could he command Divine Beasts so naturally? Such questions weren’t important matters to Kaiden. It just happened, and he could just do it. Just as it had been since his birth.

Even without knowing his parents or origins, he simply existed. Even when he first held a sword, without any long training or teaching, he just knew how to swing it and where to strike opponents. Since everything just worked when he tried it, searching for reasons was more perplexing.

Dana was the only thing that existed in his life with a reason. Dana, who caught his attention because she shone; Dana, whom he wanted to possess because her smiling face was beautiful; Dana, whom he wanted even more because he couldn’t have her. The status he needed to have Dana, Rowen that he had to protect for Dana’s sake, the title he gained by marrying Dana…

Kaiden watched as a small Divine Beast whose name he barely knew flew in, fluttering its translucent long wings. Following his will, the Divine Beast moved its wings to blow cool air toward Dana. Dana’s hair swayed gently in the wind.

When he contracted with the Divine Beast he didn’t even know the name of but knew was remarkable, Kaiden was only looking at Dana. Her surprised face. He worried that the situation, which even he didn’t quite understand, might have made Dana uncomfortable or troubled.

The ignorant commoner knight who didn’t care about other reasons thought nothing else mattered as long as he could help Dana. If he could blow cool air for Dana when she was hot, if he could protect her from the danger of being sold off to another man…

While the Divine Beast created wind with its small wings, Kaiden picked up the parchment and pen he had placed on the bedside table. He scribbled on the parchment with the pen to write the poem that Dana had said she wanted to receive.

The monk whose face he couldn’t even remember had talked about a tragic poem that a knight wrote for the woman he loved. A poem that sang about an unreachable star.

Kaiden looked at Dana’s face. The princess was sleeping elegantly with her eyelids lowered. Even watching her slight movements as she breathed was a moving experience for him.

‘Have I reached you?’

Though he probably hadn’t yet engraved his existence in her as deeply as her existence was engraved in his heart, and perhaps he had been deflected by that bright light and grown distant again. But still, had he reached her and become able to reach her? Her lips, her chest, below that…

Kaiden recalled Dana’s words. You burned passionately indeed. To him, it still felt insufficient and distant, overwhelmingly so.

* * *

That night, Dana knew when Kaiden lay down on the bed where she was lying to sleep. She felt the man lying beside her extend his arm to hold her in his embrace. Despite being as stiff as could be, the man touched her with extremely careful hands. To Dana, who remembered his violent actions from the previous night, this felt very surprising.

Anyway, Kaiden continued holding her like that, and Dana fell asleep again in his arms. She was sleeping in her husband’s embrace. It felt very strange since it was something she hadn’t expected for quite a long time.

Dana fell asleep, unaware of the man who was filled with joy at the fact that the woman in his arms neither rejected nor pushed him away. Giving her husband a sleepless night in various ways.

After resting all day, Dana thought she should meet Queen Bridget the next day. Before meeting her brother King Taras again regarding Khalid’s return issue, she felt the need to first meet Queen Bridget to soothe her hurt feelings. Additionally, she wanted to get help in persuading Taras by staying in Queen Bridget’s good graces.

First, she needed to get permission for an audience with Queen Bridget. Dana planned to order her maid to request an audience right after breakfast.

Due to her still limited mobility, the maids prepared breakfast in the reception room. Dana sat on the reception room sofa with Kaiden, wearing light indoor clothes. In the reception room darkened by drawn curtains. Light soup and bread, ham and cheese were laid out on the table between Dana and Kaiden, along with fruit and wine mixed with honey.

“It’s been a while since we’ve eaten together.”

Since Kaiden had been leaving early every day after coming to the capital Larnas, it had been a really long time since they had breakfast together. Even as she spoke to Kaiden after saying the pre-meal prayer, she couldn’t look at his face. Her cheeks were hot and burning. Even though Kaiden had called a Divine Beast to create wind to cool her down.

Dana had just learned that it was okay to use precious Divine Beasts like that. Anyway, she expressed her gratitude thinking it helped with the heat, but the Divine Beast’s ability wasn’t very effective. Her face was hot and kept getting hotter. While thinking that the wind the Divine Beast was creating wasn’t doing its job properly, she knew deep down that it wasn’t an issue with the Divine Beast’s ability.

Dana couldn’t bring herself to properly look at Kaiden’s face. Through the previous night, they had now become true husband and wife. It was something she hadn’t even imagined until right before being intimate with him. Marital relations. Dana was too embarrassed because she couldn’t forget the sight of Kaiden during their intimacy, the feeling of him.

Dana remembered all the places where those lips had touched, where that tongue had entered. She would probably never forget it for the rest of her life. She also remembered what the now-hidden parts of Kaiden’s body had done to her. Everything made her face flush. Made her whole body hot.

The expression as he kept calling her name, the overwhelming presence and movements that completely dominated her. Things that could be seen through their intimate relationship. Things that only married couples could see and share.

‘Now we’re really husband and wife.’

That fact made her embarrassed. They were now truly husband and wife, and the relationship they had formed was one they would have to continue now that they were real spouses.

‘No, is it right to… continue…’

Dana wasn’t sure. She couldn’t get pregnant. She couldn’t fulfill the duty of continuing the bloodline. So there probably wouldn’t be a need for Kaiden and her to continue having marital relations. But Kaiden seemed to want to continue their married life.

‘It seems he wants to maintain our marriage even without children…’

That fact excited her. The way he wanted to keep being intimate with her, the voice whispering how good it felt inside her. Though they had passionate relations as she had told Taras, his words about it still not being enough…

Everything was embarrassing. It was even more embarrassing knowing that Kaiden was an unsociable man lacking in social graces. She couldn’t believe the passionate ardor of such a man. If she hadn’t felt it directly with her body, she certainly wouldn’t have believed it.

It felt like finding something that had been hidden in the dark blue night sky whose end and depth couldn’t be fathomed. Though it was too embarrassing to specifically say exactly what that something was.

‘Such a wonderful and capable man with deep loyalty to the kingdom, saying he’ll stay by my side regardless of anything else…’

He must be the most wonderful man in Rowen, no, in the entire continent. Dana thought with a shy heart.