“I like that name, Dusik.”

If he liked the name now, there was no immediate need to change it…… I looked at him with eyes that said, ‘Anyway, I said my piece and you’ve refused, understood?’

That was the moment. Perhaps misreading my expression, he brought his face close without warning and took a huge bite of my ice cream.

I stared at him with wide, startled eyes. Aiden straightened up, licked the ice cream from his own lips, and added in a perfectly serious voice,

“Too Chic…… quite a refreshing name.”

Imperial language, out of nowhere? And what was this joke delivered with a straight face? I was dumbfounded and flustered. Was I supposed to laugh? Not laugh?

“Wh, what are you……”

He watched me sputter in confusion, then cleared his throat and stepped back.

“Ah, you’re surprised. You didn’t look well, so I only meant to make a joke……”

Oh, so that was it? No, wait! Aiden making a joke! That was simply not possible……!

Startled, I looked up at him with wide eyes, and his expression turned quite serious again.

“And to be clear, that name is the one you gave me. That’s why I don’t want to change it.”

A gentle breeze stirred, and his dark hair danced in the current. I watched in silence.

Come to think of it, I still haven’t said it today. I had promised myself I would say it every day.

“Dusik.”

“Yes, my dear.”

“I love you.”

***

The first time is always the hardest. After that, it came easily.

The same was true of the words ‘I love you.’ The man who normally looked like a precisely crafted sculpture would make the most entertaining expression the moment he heard those words, one I had never seen before.

Every time I said I loved him, Aiden would flush red and not know what to do with himself, and he looked so much like a large, overgrown dog that I was simply delighted.

‘Isn’t this a good sign? It means that rational, rigid Aiden is starting to develop feelings……’

Unaware of what lay ahead, I was pulling up the corners of my mouth in a wide smile when my mother’s voice reached my ears.

“Your father took your husband along with him, and now I’m in quite a state. Last time he came back alone with a hundred fish, so with two of them out there, who knows what will happen. I never want to see another fish. Absolutely dreadful.”

I nodded along to my mother’s words and sipped my cocoa.

As she said, Aiden had gone to the shore today with my father to fish. A king going fishing? What kind of country is this? people might say, but Martina truly was a special place.

Royal family or commoner, that was all there was. No noble class existed. Honestly, with a population of only thirty thousand, what would be the point of sorting people by rank?

But for the royal administration to run smoothly, people capable of holding high positions were still needed. So the royal family scouted individuals of exceptional ability or held examinations within the palace to select them.

On top of that, members of the royal family would nap leisurely on the shore, go out shopping in Potela Market themselves, and marry ordinary citizens to build their own families. With no barriers of status standing between people, marriages happened freely between those who cared for each other, and as a result, Martina’s citizens tended to have warm and harmonious households.

‘It was something I had always dreamed of. A warm, loving home……’

A fleeting memory from the end of my past life drifted through my mind.

The me who had lived in Korea, Lee Hana, had grown up in a household where her parents’ relationship was anything but good.

After their divorce, it was only natural that she ended up in the care of her maternal grandmother, who lived in the countryside.

What had comforted me then was web novels.

But deep in the countryside, the internet cut out often. So I had taken to buying novels published in print, and the world I now inhabited had been one of the novels in my collection.

And on a certain day when I was nineteen, an unusually violent storm raged. Home alone, I had opened the worn, tattered copy of 〈Goodbye, My Savior〉 to calm my fear.

For some reason, this novel alone had always brought a quiet peace to my heart.

But the storm that day had felt different from the start, and sure enough, the ceiling began to rattle, and a landslide swallowed the house in an instant. That was Lee Hana’s final memory.

‘I think I might have heard a wolf howling faintly in my ear just then……’

Lost in the past, I took a bite of a cookie and chewed slowly, when my mother spoke with careful hesitation.

“To be honest, I worried a great deal when you brought that man home. He truly was like a wild beast.”

Even in a country where marriages between royalty and commoners were freely permitted, my marriage to Aiden had not been without its difficulties.

That was because the first time I brought Aiden, who I had thought had calmed down, before my parents, he had grabbed me by the throat without warning.

“Who are you people. What have you done to me!”

Those were the first words he had spoken in the imperial language. At the time, my parents had asked me to have Aiden expelled. But I had not agreed.

“How could I cause more pain to someone who already carries so much of it? True to Martina, a nation that stands for peace, I will forgive him. Leave the taming to me, and don’t worry.”

At that moment, Aiden, bound and listening carefully to my words, had spoken.

“You. It seems you can speak the same language as me. Is that right?”

“Yes. I can. So will you tell me? Who you are. You can at least tell me your name.”

“The truth is, I remember nothing. No matter how hard I try, I simply can’t……”

“Hmm. You don’t remember anything? Not even your name? Then for now, your name is Dusik. Yes! Let’s go with Dusik.”

At my words, my father pressed the back of his hand to his forehead with a pained ‘Oh, goodness……’ as though a headache was coming on.

I had been smiling the brightest smile at someone who had just tried to cut off my breath, and from a father’s perspective, that was simply incomprehensible.

But I had known it then. This man was crying, deeply and silently. And the hands around my throat had held back their full strength, afraid of breaking me.

Even after eating a sweet cookie, the tip of my tongue tasted bitter. I forced a smile toward my mother.

“I told you, didn’t I. That I would tame Dusik myself. I succeeded, didn’t I, Mother?”

“Easy for you to say. I was on edge the whole time as your mother, terrified he might do something like that again.”

My mother said she never wanted to go through that again, then absently ran her fingers through her own rich, rippling dark orange hair and smoothed her clothes with meticulous care.

“Riel, are you finished?”

“Yes. Shall we begin then, Mother?”

“Let’s. Chamberlain.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Please make the preparations.”

My mother and I rose from our seats. The crystal greenhouse, flooded with sunlight, felt particularly bright and warm today. A buoyant feeling came over me, a sense that today might actually be the day.

“You seem to be in good spirits, Riel.”

“Well, more or less.”

Four or five attendants grunted and strained as they set before me a pot twice my own size. Inside it, a tiny sprout poked up with endearing modesty, looking utterly small against the lush, dazzling flowerbeds filling the crystal greenhouse.

It was the same sprout I had attempted and failed with last time.

“I hope you succeed this time.”

My mother gave my shoulder a gentle, encouraging pat. I drew a long breath and fixed my gaze on the sprout.

A solemn tension settled over the warm greenhouse. The attendants and my mother all watched me, sending silent encouragement with their eyes.

Carefully, I spread both palms toward the sprout and began drawing up the mystical energy flowing from the tips of my toes. My life force.

Life force was divided into two attributes. One was the healing power my mother also possessed. The other was the power of nature that awakens life itself, in other words, vitality.

I had more aptitude for vitality than healing, but for some reason, I had still not awakened it.

Failing to awaken past the age of twenty was embarrassing. But my parents had never once rushed me or blamed me for it. I could not disappoint them.

Pouring every bit of strength into drawing the mystical energy to my fingertips, I noticed a greater flow of energy than usual, and then a deep green aura began to emerge.

The aura, aimed precisely at the sprout, transformed it into a plant with several branching leaves in an instant, and the stem grew until it reached my own height. It was not a rapid change, but it was far more than I had ever managed before.