At that very moment…

Emperor Felix was staring at someone concealed within the darkness.

“Weren’t you the one who said I’d gain both wealth and prestige if I made Rachel my imperial consort?”

A woman’s voice drifted from the pitch-black corner of the room.

“But you failed to claim her.”

Click.

Click.

Felix scratched the back of his head irritably.

“That red-eyed freak showed up out of nowhere and stole Rachel away. Does that make any sense?”

The soft flutter of a folding fan echoed through the darkness.

“Rachel…”

The woman spoke her name.

Felix blinked and looked up.

“She’s a clever girl. Far cleverer than we expected.”

“So what now? Do we just give up?”

“For now, we have no choice. If she’d returned home, we might have been able to argue that she still belonged to you.”

“But instead, she registered her marriage immediately and left for the North.”

“D*mn it.”

“No matter how absolute an Emperor’s authority may be, even Your Majesty cannot lay a hand on another man’s wife. It would be against the law.”

Felix anxiously bit at his fingernails.

The Imperial treasury was completely empty.

If things continued like this…

Everyone would eventually discover that the Emperor was broke.

“Be patient.”

A slender hand suddenly emerged from the darkness.

It gently stroked Felix’s hair.

“Another opportunity will come. In the meantime…I’ll introduce you to another girl. So that Your Majesty can endure until then.”

Felix snorted in satisfaction beneath her gentle touch.

“Hmph. That’s more like it.”

***

Fwoosh!

A scream tore through the forest.

Startled birds burst into the sky all at once.

That was the signal.

Flames erupted throughout the forest simultaneously.

“AAAH!”

“S-S-Save me!”

“AAAAAH!”

Fourteen years earlier…

Emperor Felix sat atop a cliff overlooking the Forest of the Elves, calmly watching the massacre unfold.

As though he had planned this long in advance, a table beside him had already been prepared with wine and refreshments.

Felix had only recently turned eighteen.

There was no one there capable of stopping him.

“Oh? One’s getting away. Over there.”

Felix casually pointed toward the fleeing figure below.

One of the Imperial Guards standing behind him like a wall stepped forward and drew his bow.

The arrow flew from the string.

It pierced the fleeing elf squarely through the temple.

“Hahaha! Excellent! Excellent! You’ve earned yourself an immediate promotion!”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

The sudden promotion made the other Imperial Guards’ eyes gleam with greed.

“Your Majesty! I’d like to kill one as well.”

Felix grinned excitedly.

“Then hit one in the eye. If your arrow strikes the eyeball perfectly, I’ll reward you with gold.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty!”

The guard strode confidently to the edge of the cliff.

“Mother! Mother!”

An elf covered in blood was desperately running while holding a child’s hand.

Without the slightest hesitation…

The guard fired.

The arrow pierced the mother’s eye.

Then another pierced the child’s heart.

“Excellent! Excellent! Hahaha!”

Felix clapped his hands in delight.

As the flames spread, the forest turned black beneath the fire.

The horrifying fate of the elves was laid bare.

It was dawn.

In the middle of the night, the Imperial Guards had quietly infiltrated the Forest of the Elves.

They set fire to the homes where the elves slept.

The terrified elves rushed outside…

Only to have their throats slit.

Those who somehow survived that were met by more Imperial Guards waiting at the village entrance.

Anyone who miraculously escaped the village fell to the mercenaries guarding the forest’s perimeter.

And those who managed to break through even that…

Were shot down by the Imperial archers stationed beside the Emperor.

It wasn’t a war.

It was a sl*ughter.

Mountains of elf corpses rose throughout the forest.

Felix simply watched the spectacle while munching on cookies.

Not long afterward…

A woman approached him.

She was the Imperial Mage.

“We found every High Elf and killed them. The elves no longer have a king.”

Felix curled his lip.

“Those filthy bastards who did nothing but make diseases. Good riddance.”

Spit.

“…”

After taking several swallows of wine, Felix lowered his voice so the nearby Imperial Guards couldn’t overhear.

“What about that half-elf girl?”

“We’ll begin searching for her now. No matter how long it takes…We will find her.”

From beneath the shadow of her hood, the mage smiled with crimson lips.

“Leave everything to me, Your Majesty.”

***

The moment Reiner and Rachel left the Imperial banquet…

They headed straight to the temple of Newberic and registered their marriage.

It had been a close call.

If they arrived even a little later…

The temple doors would already have been closed.

After leaving the temple with nothing more than a simple marriage registration completed, Reiner changed in two noticeable ways.

‘Nineteen? You’re not even an adult yet?’

‘I am! My family held my coming-of-age ceremony a few days ago! And in three more days, it’ll even be my birthday according to the lunar calendar.’

From that moment on…

He began speaking to her informally.

And he became just a little gentler.

“Rachel.”

When Rachel looked up, Reiner wrapped an arm around her waist and effortlessly lifted her onto his horse.

Before she could even react, she was already seated in the saddle.

Reiner climbed up behind her with practiced ease and pulled her cloak snugly around her.

“Let’s go.”

At his command, the men waiting behind them answered in unison.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

They immediately urged their horses forward, racing ahead.

Yet every one of them still found time to cast Rachel a cold, unfriendly glance.

“Hold on tight.”

As he spoke, Reiner pulled the blanket wrapped around Rachel closer until it covered part of himself as well.

The thick fabric prevented her from actually feeling his body.

Even so…

She could gradually sense his warmth.

They rode almost without stopping for two straight days.

The northern wind was so bitterly cold that even Rachel struggled to endure it.

Reiner halted only long enough to feed and water the horses.

Occasionally, while they rode, he would place pieces of jerky or dried sweet potato into Rachel’s mouth.

Each time…

She experienced a strange sensation.

His fingertips would brush lightly against her lips.

Until now, no one besides her bath attendants or nanny had ever touched her like that.

To drive away the unfamiliar feeling, Rachel recited the Newberic national anthem silently in her head.

Hundreds of times.

‘This is harder than I expected.’

The journey exhausted her both physically and mentally.

There was, however, one fortunate thing.

While they had been traveling, the period during which the imprint’s power was supposed to erupt had quietly passed.

‘My birthday on the lunar calendar must have already gone by. Thank goodness.’

Reiner, his men…

Even their horses seemed accustomed to traveling for days without sleep.

Rachel wasn’t.

She hadn’t slept the previous night because she’d been worrying about Emperor Felix.

Then she’d spent an entire day under constant tension.

Now her eyelids felt impossibly heavy.

“Rachel.”

At the sound of Reiner’s voice, she forced her eyes open.

“Rachel!”

“Gah!”

Startled awake by his louder call, Rachel blinked in confusion.

An unfamiliar sight spread out before her.

Dozens of strange men.

A magnificent castle kept in impeccable condition.

Looking up, she saw not one—

But three enormous castles towering over her.

That alone was astonishing.

What unsettled her even more…

Was the openly hostile look on every man’s face.

Just then, another voice made her flinch.

“My goodness! So this is the lady who’s become His Grace’s wife?”

An elderly woman with tightly curled hair hurried toward Rachel from among the crowd of rough-looking men.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Sophia, the head maid.”

“H-Hello.”

Rachel climbed awkwardly down from the horse.

The blanket slipped from her shoulders onto the saddle.

She braced herself for the freezing air to sting her skin.

It never came.

Looking around, she realized everyone nearby wore nothing more than long-sleeved clothing.

“It’s warm here. People are simply too frightened to venture this far north.”

Rachel turned toward the familiar voice.

The instant she did…

The top of her head bumped lightly against Reiner’s solid chest behind her.

His crimson eyes looked even deeper than the crimson sunset stretching behind him.

“My goodness. Our Duchess is absolutely beautiful. Doesn’t she look just like a doll?”

Sophia’s delighted praise made Rachel hastily turn her head away again.

Placing a hand on Rachel’s shoulder, Reiner strode forward.

“Get her washed and changed before sunset.”

After walking a few more steps, he suddenly stopped as though something had occurred to him.

He turned back toward Rachel and Sophia.

“Keep the clothes simple. I’m going to take them off her tonight anyway.”

Leaving behind a bright-red Rachel, Reiner calmly walked into the castle.

The dozens of men surrounding her immediately burst into whistles and crude cheers.

Rachel straightened her shoulders, refusing to let their piercing stares intimidate her.

Among all those men…

One gaze lingered stubbornly on her face.

A short while later…

That man quietly slipped away behind the castle.

Everyone’s attention was fixed on the newly arrived Rachel, so today he had little reason to be cautious.

He made his way to the dovecote behind the castle.

It housed the messenger pigeons most often used by Reiner and Vincent.

Hundreds of birds freely came and went through the open loft.

After making sure the caretaker wasn’t nearby, he found his own pigeon—the one with mismatched-colored legs.

Carefully, he tied the note he’d just written to its leg.

“You have to fly straight to His Majesty. And don’t get caught in the rain like last time. Understood?”

After one final look around…

He released the bird into the sky.