As though that was the signal, he immediately moved his hips. 

Looking down at her forehead with cold eyes. Both hands planted on either side of her. Edith only gripped the innocent sheets again.

Wilfred slowly burrowed into the woman. She was tight but not so much that she couldn’t accept him. Each time he moved, the entrance that had swallowed him whole opened bit by bit. 

Still, the cramped inner flesh squeezed him with difficulty, and he gritted his teeth at the sensation he was experiencing for the first time. A groan escaped from his throat involuntarily.

From somewhere, desire surged to hook the woman’s legs over his shoulders and bury himself deep inside her. Between self-control that had already reached its limit and desire, his head growing hazy, he withdrew his body and thr*st forcefully back in.

Edith tried to endure it.

But when he suddenly began moving violently like someone possessed, she recoiled at that sharp, cutting pain. 

Not just the intensity of the pain, but the very texture of the suffering was completely different from anything she’d known. 

Moreover, she was beneath the man’s large body with nowhere to escape. Instinctively, she became afraid.

A scream burst from her lips.

Wilfred’s movement stopped.

The man who until just moments ago had unhesitatingly hiked up her chemise, who without a single tender word or gesture had taken her like it was unavoidable anyway.

Then he asked quietly, “Don’t want to do this?”

“……”

She shook her head.

It wasn’t a question of wanting or not wanting. Just like passing the Goddess Frieze’s trial to get married, this was merely a rite of passage. 

It would be nice if it didn’t hurt this much, but thinking about it, there was no way she could persistently engage in such explicit acts like those she’d read about in books for hours with a man she’d met for the first time today. 

As he said, it was better to finish quickly.

But Wilfred wasn’t moving and asked again.

“Then, do you want to?”

Even during this, their bodies remained connected. Edith gasped at the feeling of the man’s body filling her growing even larger inside.

“This is duty.”

She squeezed out an answer. Edith didn’t notice because of her own pain, but Wilfred’s expression had frozen coldly.

“Tell me how it feels.”

What feeling? The feeling of his… thing firmly and hotly tearing through inside her body? The feeling of experiencing unfamiliar pain in an embarrassing place? 

She’d rather bite her tongue than say such things. But since he’d asked, she had to answer. He was her husband and the Crown Prince of Fenwick. 

Edith endured her embarrassment and said quietly, “Big… and hard…”

He demanded again. Irritably.

“Not that, tell me what you’re feeling.”

Though his voice was cold, the words weren’t heartless. If not for that expression, that tone, it would have sounded rather tender. So Edith spoke honestly.

“…Painful.”

It wasn’t just because it hurt. 

Right after finishing the forced march of traveling by carriage all day for ten straight days and barely sleeping at unfamiliar lodgings at night, she’d had to hold a wedding ceremony with a man she was seeing for the first time before hundreds of nobles who disapproved of her. 

She hadn’t had a single moment of comfortable rest since setting foot on Fenwick soil. Realizing this, the accumulated fatigue and sadness felt like they were crashing down on her all at once.

She struggled desperately to keep the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes from falling down her cheeks.

The man who’d been looking down at her for a moment spat out.

“Let’s stop.”

Then he actually pulled away. She trembled at that strange sensation of the large thing withdrawing from between her legs. Still, this wasn’t the time to think deeply about that feeling.

“Wait.”

Panicked, she grabbed his arm. So surprised she momentarily forgot both pain and fatigue.

‘Really, he’s going to end it here like this?’

Surely not, just because I said it was painful…?

That couldn’t be. Though they’d just met today, she’d already figured out that Wilfred was arrogant and proud, truly befitting a crown prince of a nation. For such a person to stop the act at a single word from her.

‘But wait, can you even stop this act midway?’

She was learning that for the first time too, but if they stopped, above all it would be shirking the Crown Princess’s duty. She didn’t want to become a bride rejected on her first night. She tightened her grip.

“This is duty.”

Wilfred shook off her hand all too easily.

“When you look half-dead like that, it k*lls the mood.”

‘Half-dead…?’

She didn’t quite understand the meaning, but hadn’t he said earlier she wasn’t ugly? Edith couldn’t make sense of anything. He didn’t seem inclined to explain.

When he stood up, embarrassed by her body exposed to the air, Edith quickly pulled down the hem of her chemise. Not knowing whether to be grateful or disappointed that the man didn’t even look at her.

The sound of fabric rustling, followed by a ‘click’ as he fastened his sword belt to his waist. For a groom to enter the bridal chamber wearing a sword on his wedding night. An unheard-of custom in Aberdeen.

Having dressed in an instant, he stood.

Like nothing had happened.

“I’ll send maids in the morning.”

Edith stared blankly at the Crown Prince’s back as he left, abandoning her alone in bed.

* * *

The next morning, Edith was greeted by what seemed like a dozen or so maids.

“Did you sleep well, Your Highness?”

“Was the bed uncomfortable, Your Highness?”

Edith blinked.

Aberdeen had people who attended to her too, but the youngest princess who received subtle ostracism from her other siblings could count her servants on one hand. 

But just how many maids did Osborne Palace have—she didn’t recognize a single familiar face from the past two days.

These women were uniformly refined and demure. And they all looked at least four or five years older than Edith herself. Their clothes were so similar she couldn’t tell them apart, so her gaze naturally went to the noticeably tall one among them.

The tall woman who noticed this smiled brightly.

“Shall I help you rise, Your Highness?”

At those words, the atmosphere in the room became subtle. Even Edith, just awakened from sleep, felt it.

‘What? Am I imagining it…?’

But she did need to get up and dress, so she only nodded.

The tall one approached, pulled back the sheet, and helped her up. Everyone’s eyes focused on this new Crown Princess and the tall one. 

The gazes sweeping from her hair, face, the nape and limbs exposed outside the chemise, down to her toes seemed to be appraising Edith’s worth. So she began to feel uncomfortable. 

Even last night’s Wilfred hadn’t scrutinized her this thoroughly. Moreover, the maids were all fully dressed while she was still in her chemise.

She tried to maintain her dignity.

“You, what’s your name?”

The smile vanished from the tall one’s eyes.

“Cecily Bell.”

“Your title?”

“Viscountess.”

As expected, a ‘Lady.’ Only women with husbands could attend the bedchamber of a queen or crown princess. Edith felt anew that she was married.

Lady Bell draped an amber tea gown over Edith. After that, she had to continue being exposed to the women’s curious gazes until she was presentable enough to walk the corridors. She didn’t dismiss them because she instinctively sensed that doing so would make her a laughingstock.

「I’ll send maids in the morning.」

The Crown Prince’s words.

Did he mean this—putting me on display for a horde of women at the crack of dawn?

‘Silence is silver.’

Glaring into the mirror, trying to keep her mouth firmly shut according to Aberdeen virtue, Edith finally couldn’t hold back and said.

“Dislike hair.”

“This was a hairstyle Her Highness Annabel favored—does it not please Your Highness?”

Lady Bell asked.

Her Highness Annabel would be the late Queen, Wilfred’s birth mother. If she was Wilfred’s mother, she must have been an exceptional beauty. 

But if she always pulled her hair up this tightly, she might have suffered from serious hair loss in her later years. Lady Bell had pulled the hair so hard Edith’s scalp was tingling.

“Redo.”

“You must have breakfast in half an hour.”

“Postpone.”

Now Edith could clearly feel the dozen or so glares stabbing into the back of her head.

Whether this was Fenwick royal tradition or hazing directed at an Aberdeen-born Crown Princess, Edith had no intention of becoming their plaything. 

For not just one or two but a dozen women to move around together like this meant there was an affiliation binding them together. Queen Annabel had died long ago, and the women were young, so they couldn’t be the Queen’s maids.

‘Then His Majesty King Joffrey’s…?’

But wasn’t King Joffrey bedridden, unable even to see his one remaining son’s wedding ceremony? He needed doctors more than maids.

‘Then surely the Crown Prince’s…?’

If Fenwick royal custom wasn’t different from other royal houses on the Svelta Continent, noblewomen would serve male royalty while noblewomen and noble maidens would share duties serving female royalty. 

‘Noblewoman’ didn’t mean they didn’t have intimate relations with male royalty. Rather, many noblewomen threw themselves into dalliances with men of higher status without worrying about losing honor or position precisely because they had husbands.

…Just like Edith’s mother.

To Lady Bell reluctantly loosening her hair, Edith added.

“Also dislike clothing.”

“Pardon me, but Your Highness the Crown Princess’s clothing hasn’t all been altered yet. Originally it was meant for another person to wear.”

Lucille was certainly taller than Edith. If she forced herself to wear it, the dress hem would drag on the ground. Lady Bell was no pushover either, deliberately reminding her of this.

“Then, my Aberdeen clothing.”

“Clothing brought from Aberdeen? Your Highness Edith is the Crown Princess of Fenwick from today.”

Edith silently untied the tea gown’s ribbon and dropped the garment to her feet. The Viscountess and the women held their breath. 

Back in her chemise, Edith declared, “Different clothing.”

Lady Bell wasn’t even smiling with her mouth anymore.

Edith felt just as displeased.

* * *

Following the judgment that even a workaholic Crown Prince wouldn’t handle state affairs the morning after his wedding night, Osborne Palace’s chief secretary Bernard Doville had canceled all of His Highness the Crown Prince’s morning schedule. 

The Privy Council nobles also thought His Highness wouldn’t attend on such a day, so no one said they’d come. So Bernard was startled when he saw Wilfred sitting punctually in the office. 

He wasn’t alone—he was with Count Rodney Peregrine.