She skipped the dull opening page pledging a marriage alliance and went straight to the additional terms on the next page.

[Article 1. S*xual relations shall occur no fewer than three times per week. However, during the first five years of marriage, whenever either spouse desires it, both parties shall faithfully accommodate the other, with no upper limit.]

Whoosh, Rose flung the needlessly fine parchment away. The blue wolf dropped its bone and bolted after it.

Jade grimaced and climbed down to retrieve the oath.

“What are you doing? Throwing a sacred oath around like that, there’s nothing you won’t do. Is this how you treat a fiancé?”

“Does it make sense to put the frequency of s*xual relations in a sacred oath? And you said your stamina was lacking! What do you mean five years of newlywed period?”

Rose glared at his back and ground her teeth.

“Read it again carefully. It doesn’t say honeymoon period. It says newlywed period, Rose.”

“No. Rewrite it. I’m a human being, I can’t meet a beast’s standards.”

A beast. What a beast. She should have seen this coming the moment he started going on about physical needs.

The memory of that beast’s merciless anatomy, witnessed on the day they exchanged rings, flashed through Rose’s mind and she recoiled, waving her hand through the air.

Unlimited frequency with that. She might not survive.

“Hmm……”

Having recovered the parchment with the blue wolf’s help, Jade looked over what he had written and murmured to himself.

“It would be a problem if you thought this clause was only for my benefit.”

“Don’t try to con me. It won’t work.”

“It’s not a con, you’ll genuinely thank me for this later. It was a thoughtful clause, as a husband.”

“Stop making me laugh and rewrite it. Do you think this oath is something to joke about?”

“Ha. I’ll rewrite it as many times as you like. I’ll change three times a week to thirty times a week.”

Jade’s eyes held the full defiance of a troublemaker who had once run away to another country.

“I won’t give an inch.”

Those blazing blue-green eyes looked nothing like someone bluffing. Why was he so fixated on this? Had he tried it with someone and found it that good? With what kind of woman? No, thinking about that would only put her in a bad mood, so she wouldn’t……

Anyway, this was exactly as she had predicted. He had planned to twist everything to his will from the start. There was no point spelling out detailed obligations in a marriage oath. She would only end up worse off.

“……How about we drop all the petty demands and just write a simple cooperation pledge? What do you think?”

With the situation turning against her, Rose improvised quickly.

“Like an ordinary couple. If we’re going to act like real lovers anyway, wouldn’t it make sense to do everything the real way, from start to finish?”

Like real lovers.

Like lovers who believed love would take care of everything else and simply wrote their names on a single page of an oath.

Like lovers who wrote their names on a pure oath with no shameless clauses about three times a week.

“From start to finish, the real way……”

Jade leaned against the rock with one arm and stared at her intently. The way the corner of his mouth curved upward was thoroughly suspicious.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll give it to you. Like a ‘real’ lover.”

“Starting after the wedding, of course.”

Rose added the condition quickly.

“After the wedding is when it becomes real. Until then, it’s a practice period. The spousal obligations written in an oath only take effect after marriage anyway, so I’m suggesting we keep it simple, like the real thing. No misunderstandings, please.”

If she left the timeline unspecified, Jade might go berserk like an enraged ape. Whatever that looked like. Either way, some animal instinct buried inside her was issuing exactly that warning.

“……”

Jade watched Rose wriggle her way out of the situation with the resourcefulness of a sibling to those troublemakers, and looked displeased, but gave his head a light shake and answered the way he always did.

“Suit yourself.”

“Good. Let’s just sign the first page.”

Rose grinned at things going her way, then caught Terra’s eye.

For some reason, Terra had forgotten to direct hostility at Jade and was watching the two of them with a thoughtful, faraway look. She tilted her head slightly, as though something had surprised her.

Surprised? She’s probably thinking, well, our Miss is actually winning the negotiation, or something like that.

“Ahem.”

Rose cleared her throat awkwardly and dipped the tip of the quill into the ink.

[Jade Camelot and Rosemaria Ordo swear to marry and become faithful spouses and partners to one another.]

The clichéd marriage vow, copied straight from the Noble Compendium, looked perfectly satisfying to her eyes.

Faithful spouses and partners.

Simple and elegant.

“There. Done.”

She handed over the signed stationery, and Jade held out the parchment. They exchanged the two signed oaths and each kept the one the other had written.

Jade looked at the signed stationery in silence for a very long time. The faint smile at the corner of his mouth was unreadable.

“What?”

Is my handwriting strange?

Rose narrowed her eyes and studied his script on the parchment with careful attention.

[Jade Camelot]

A wild, slashing script, written as though in a hurry. The letters seemed to carry the force of his thick arms swinging broadly.

Whatever else could be said, the fact that she had made those arms her ally was deeply, immensely satisfying. Those arms that would keep Anton and Piar in line……

“Oh, right. I have to go help with the festival preparations, so I’ll head off for today.”

She hurried to roll up the parchment and tuck it into her belt pouch.

“Festival?”

Jade scratched the back of the blue wolf’s neck and asked.

“The Belloti May Arts Festival. It’s quite well-known. Haven’t you heard of it?”

“Ah. The one that starts with art exhibitions and ends with couples losing their minds.”

“You know it well.”

Rose took pride in the May Arts Festival as a long-standing Melos tradition, but hearing him say out loud exactly what she had been privately thinking was too funny not to laugh at. She mounted her horse with a grin.

After a brief pause, Jade spoke.

“Should I come?”

The birds in the forest answered with bright, cheerful chirping.

“It’s a festival no ordinary couple would miss.”

He held up the oath and smiled. That was true, but……

“Aren’t you busy? The festival is next week.”

Everyone was busy as summer approached. Jade, having been away from Camelot for so long, would be more pressed for time than most. He could ignore the media pestering him with talk of the Empire’s most eligible bachelor, but the princes themselves seemed to be summoning him.

On top of that, he was already spending his free time coming and going from Hilude.

“Hmm……”

Jade narrowed his brows and ran his fingers through the blue wolf’s scruff.

“I’ll make time. Something came up, so I’ll head out first.”

He stood up briskly, untied his horse from the tree, and left without looking back. Watching his retreating figure was something Rose had grown used to.

“Really? How are you planning to come?”

She mounted her horse with a skeptical look.

The two of them enjoying a festival together? Melos’s festival?

The festival where every member of House Ordo would be out in full force?

“He’s not going to cause another scene trying to greet my parents again, is he……?”

Rose shuddered at the bad feeling creeping over her.

Last night’s disaster had only passed without incident thanks to Robert’s bewildered generosity.

Jade seemed to have more of a grasp on romance than she did, but she couldn’t afford to sit back passively and leave everything to him.

Should I ask Princess Helen for advice? Things like how to look like a couple in love. What kind of couple makes everyone want to root for them……

“I really should have watched more romance plays, Terra.”

She turned her horse westward and sighed.

“I’m not sure. Sometimes the lessons learned from secondhand experience are less useful than a sword with no blade.”

Terra, unusually quiet today, spoke in a calm voice unlike her usual self.

“Love will handle everything in the end. That’s my view.”

“What love?”

There is no love, that’s the whole point.

Rose glanced at Terra’s oddly dreamy expression and shook her head.

Father had been completely taken in by Jade and gone blank-eyed. Terra knew everything there was to know about Jade and was still acting like this. It was baffling.

Oh, please. Let their clumsy performance somehow manage to disarm even the hardened hearts of the remaining family members on both sides, and the citizens too.