The thighs he had lifted off the bed trembled violently.

After spilling every last wave of feeling into her depths, Andrea fell with Riley still in his arms.

In the wake of that tidal pleasure, a draining, trembling exhaustion washed over them both.

They held each other tightly, as though the other were the only thing left to hold onto, and stayed still.

The deep pulse where they were joined and the heartbeat pressed against heartbeat were shared between them. Even swept through with exhaustion, it was an unbearably blissful moment.

Riley lay sprawled across Andrea’s rising and falling chest for a long while, and then fell asleep just like that.

He smiled faintly, eased her down beside him, and pulled her close again.

He wondered whether this had satisfied even a little of the thirst to swallow Riley whole, and closed his eyes.

The slightly slower heartbeat, the heat of skin against skin, the salt-sharp smell of sweat, the thick and heady scent of what they had done together, all of it worked on him like a drug and left him drowsy. A languid fullness crept through his entire body.

A breeze through the open window carried in the scent of wisteria, but it was no match for keeping them awake.

Beneath the curtain that swelled and fell in slow waves, the two of them drifted into a sweet afternoon sleep.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Andrea and Riley returned to the palace on a late summer evening two months later.

The king, feeling the absence from state affairs, had firmly summoned the crown prince and his wife, whose stay had stretched far beyond the original schedule.

Seated across from his son and daughter-in-law, the king scolded them for leaving the capital unattended for so long, then wasted no time in making his eagerness for grandchildren plain.

With Prince Henry stripped of his royal status, the desire to secure a safe line of succession was clearly behind it.

“It would be best for the succession to be settled quickly, would it not.”

At the king’s prompting, Riley’s face colored slightly.

Even without his urging, the long honeymoon had been full of days spent pressed close to Andrea, and the memory came back to her unbidden.

They had tried every embarrassing position from the *rotic picture books. What had started out of curiosity had consumed them both so thoroughly that she had begun to worry it was becoming an addiction.

Andrea, however, answered without so much as a change in expression.

“Well, it will happen when it happens. Why doesn’t Your Majesty see about having a late child of your own first?”

“Hmm……”

The king stroked his beard and shot Andrea a displeased look.

He knew perfectly well about the incense burner incident that had left him unable to father children, and here he was saying something like that. Worried the young queen might hear, the king shifted his gaze with an uncomfortable expression.

Queen Esena, on the other hand, wore a prim look. She seemed a little subdued.

But wanting to change the subject, she brightened her expression dramatically and asked the two of them.

“This may be a rather late question, but how and where did the two of you meet?”

The wedding had been prepared with such lightning speed, even as Andrea was finishing off the Blanc family entirely, that there had been no occasion to ask something like this.

Esena, knowing nothing of Riley’s past, had been curious.

Officially, of course, the story was that Riley, having belatedly received her family title, had entered society and happened to meet the crown prince at some social gathering.

Even so, the queen had always suspected there was a different story she did not know, and the curiosity had stayed with her.

The king clicked his tongue and scolded the queen.

“Why on earth would you ask something like that of children who are already married? Good grief.”

Queen Esena shot back without backing down, giving him a slightly pointed look.

“One can be curious. They were engaged in under a month of meeting and married within half a year. That is hardly ordinary.”

Andrea, leaning back at his ease, picked up his teacup and cut in.

“Is that not the same for you two as well? When a man meets the one meant for him, he should be able to make her his within a single month. Is that not so, Father?”

With the arrow landing on him, the king gave a dry cough and looked away. The queen’s expression turned sour from that point on and did not brighten again.

After the son and his wife had gone, the queen turned to the king with a probing air.

“It is a little sad, is it not.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She cast her eyes down primly, fidgeted with her fingertips, then murmured after a moment’s hesitation.

“You are aware that the crown prince once had feelings for me, are you not?”

There was a note of self-satisfaction in her tone, and the king asked back with some irritation.

“And? What is your point. Are you saying that if not for me, you would have become the crown princess?”

Even at his sarcasm, the queen did not drop her prim expression.

“That is not what I mean…… What I mean is…… I seem to have inadvertently had a negative influence on the crown prince’s life and on the fate of the Kingdom of Arvel as a whole, without ever intending to.”

The king had no idea what she was talking about and asked back with growing irritation.

“What on earth does that mean?”

His mood was clearly beginning to sour, but the queen paid it no mind and said it anyway.

“The truth is, it is rather obvious that the crown prince, stung by losing me to Your Majesty, acted out of wounded pride and married the first person he could find on impulse.”

“……”

“In the end, because of me, a woman who was never properly vetted came to occupy the position of crown princess. What else would you call that but a profound influence on the fate of the kingdom.”

Even as her shameless words continued, the king’s confusion did not clear.

He frowned and asked sharply.

“So. Now that you are queen, are you saying you have your eye on the crown princess’s seat as well? That you regret losing my son?”

The king knew perfectly well that Andrea had willingly stepped aside for the queen, and had even been the one to actively plan and arrange the incident at the hunting grounds from the very beginning. Her words deserved nothing but a scoff.

Women, it seemed, all needed to believe that every man in the world was in love with them.

The king shook his head and moved to leave the sitting room, dismissing his wife’s delusion.

But the queen grabbed his arm.

“Are you leaving just like that?”

Her tone carried a note of reluctance, and the king replied all the more curtly.

“I have work to do. What is all this first thing in the morning?”

He looked down with irritation at his wife’s hand on his sleeve.

But Esena added, almost pleadingly.

“Now that the crown prince has returned…… you will have time again, Your Majesty.”

At that, the king’s voice grew more severe.

“How long do you expect us to go on resting like newlyweds? I am forty-nine years old. I have no intention of becoming a man put out to pasture just yet.”

The recent events had been a wake-up call for the king.

While he had been lost in the sweet dream of a new marriage with a young wife, the reality that Andrea had been fighting countless enemies entirely on his own had finally come into focus.

“It is time you started attending to your duties as queen as well.”

He pulled his sleeve free and gave his childish wife a cool glance before walking past her.

Left staring blankly at the door through which the king had gone, her lower lip caught between her teeth, tears of resentment rose in Queen Esena’s eyes.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

A few days later.

“The banquet preparations will need to be handled together. I will assign the items the crown princess is responsible for, so have a proposal ready by the day after tomorrow.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“……”

“……”

Riley had been summoned to the queen’s sitting room.

The stated purpose was to jointly prepare a social banquet for the wives of the foreign ambassadors currently in residence.

That was the official reason, but the queen seemed far more interested in the details of Riley’s personal history.

Riley, for her part, had deliberately overdressed, worried the queen might recognize her from her days trailing after Andrea as his attendant.

Queen Esena looked her up and down and curved her lips in something close to a smirk.

“……So then, does the crown prince treat you well?”

The queen was the same age as Riley, but she put deliberate weight into her tone, clearly conscious of her own rank.

Riley lowered her head with a show of shyness and answered demurely.

“……He treats me very well.”

At the easy reply, the queen smiled in an odd way and tilted her head.