But Esena, who usually dissolved into tears at the slightest reproach, showed no sign of wilting this time. She reached out boldly. Toward the waistband of his trousers.

“Please do not be so angry, Your Majesty. I came across a rather interesting book recently, and it suggests thirty-six delightful things that lovers can do together.”

Esena batted her long lashes with all the charm of her younger years and continued.

“It says that if you follow what is written there, two people who have grown distant can find their way back to each other.”

She no longer cared about a baby. What she wanted now was simply to return to the way things had been with the king at the very beginning, when everything had burned so brightly.

The king, breaking out in a cold sweat, was finding it impossible to actively remove the queen’s hand as it fumbled at his trousers.

“What? Thirty-six……”

Hearing the deep crack in his voice, Esena answered quickly.

“Yes…… let us try one a day starting today. I cannot stay long since I am about to go out, so just a taste…… let me show you. Short but intense!”

Esena winked, looking as though she had recovered all the liveliness of her younger days.

In the king’s eyes, as he wet his dry lips with his tongue, a long-parched desire was beginning to stir back to life.

The queen, not missing it, boldly began to undo his trousers, and the king squeezed his eyes shut, let out a groan, and tilted his head back.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

One bright afternoon.

Riley rested her hand on Andrea’s arm as he stepped out for a brief walk between duties.

This was her favorite part of the day: meeting again somewhere in the middle of it, even briefly, and strolling together through the quiet back garden.

Andrea always said he preferred the nights, but still.

“Let us go past that hedge over there today.”

“All right.”

The place Riley had in mind was a heath field enclosed by a laurel hedge.

Andrea pulled out his pocket watch, glanced at it, and set off willingly.

The king, who had recently appeared to be returning to state affairs, had vanished again.

Andrea’s workload, which had seemed to be easing, had grown heavy once more, and with it his stress.

But even this brief time with Riley was enough to clear away all of it.

The garden full of heather and gorse was dense and untamed, connected as it was to the hill behind the palace. Push through it and there was a secret arbor smothered in wisteria.

Riley had been planning to have tea there.

“I made sandwiches with peach jam! You can look forward to it, hehe.”

“Oh? You have been busy poking your nose into all sorts of things lately.”

“Even so, my husband comes first.”

Her coaxing worked its usual magic on Andrea’s fatigue, and he smiled with a hint of mischief, wrapping his arm around her slender waist.

“Hah…… shall we pop back to the room for a moment?”

He tilted his head toward her and asked with a sly look, but just then her footsteps came to an abrupt stop.

Andrea followed her gaze and narrowed his eyes.

There was someone already in the secret arbor, wisteria trailing down like curtains around them.

A couple, at that, deep in fervent kissing and embracing.

The thick heat the two of them were giving off seemed to carry all the way to where Riley and Andrea stood, several steps away.

The moment Riley recognized who they were, she grabbed Andrea’s arm and stepped back, and Andrea, pulling a vague expression, was dragged out of the garden with no real choice in the matter.

“Why should we be the ones to retreat? Would it not be nice to have tea together for the first time in a while?”

He did not mean it, but there was also a part of him that wanted to say something to the king, who had been dumping nearly all state affairs on him and had not shown up to the council of ministers in days.

Every time he went to the study, he was told the king was occupied with other matters and the meeting fell through.

And now here he was, in a place like this.

It had been a perfect chance to nag him about receiving state reports, and yet somehow Andrea was the one being scolded.

“Goodness, they have finally gotten along again, and you want to interrupt? You really have no sense of occasion.”

“What?”

Come to think of it, the king and queen had been kissing passionately, hands on each other’s faces, like lovers newly lit.

Andrea asked with a suspicious, sulky tone.

“Why are you so pleased that those two are getting along again?”

If the king managed to overcome his infertility and produce another prince, Riley would have every reason to feel threatened.

But Riley clasped her hands together, eyes sparkling like morning stars, and whispered.

“That would be wonderful too. But what I am really pleased about is that the picture book I left for them seems to have brought them back to their honeymoon days. Even without a child, they can be happy again like that! The power of art really is something, is it not?”

It was funny how proud she was, given that she had not even drawn that picture book herself.

“You actually went and gave it to them. Worry about our own harmony.”

Riley’s face went red and she shot back primly.

“O, ours is already more than enough without anything like that!”

She left out the part about it being too much, not wanting Andrea to sulk.

Andrea leaned his face close to hers and murmured darkly right in front of her nose.

“I do not think it is enough. I want more, much more. Let us try the study or the council chamber sometime, shall we?”

Riley shook her head as though she had heard something she should not have.

“W, we need to go back to being soft and gentle and sweet.”

“What does that mean?”

Riley gave him a look that said you really do not know? and explained.

“Sometimes you build up deep, intimate time together, but other times you need to spend quiet, tender, unhurried time together, like walking through a light watercolor landscape. That is what makes love grow strong and steady!”

It was, of course, a line from a cheap romance novel, but she firmly believed that even low-quality literature contained a truth or two worth taking note of.

Convinced she had become something of an expert on love, Riley walked on with a spring in her step, swelling with pride at having contributed to domestic harmony.

Andrea followed at a leisurely pace behind her, wearing an expression that made it perfectly clear he disagreed with every word she had just said.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

“Oh? What is this……”

One day, opening Riley’s desk drawer at her request, Andrea noticed something tucked away in the corner and paused.

He picked it up slowly and studied it for a long while, struck by a strange sense of familiarity.

A limited-edition set of colored pencils bearing the eagle crest of the Royal Knights.

This had been one of the commemorative items sold only within the capital as a limited victory memorial from long ago.

There had been many kinds of souvenirs, handkerchiefs, brooches, signet rings, and more, but the reason this particular one stood out in his memory went back to something that had happened in the past.

It was around the time Andrea, then a sixteen-year-old military cadet, was about to receive his knighthood. Queen Marietta, his mother, had by then been unexpectedly dethroned and was living in a residence on the outskirts of the capital. He used to visit her there once or twice a year.

That day was one of those visits, and since he had an appointment in the afternoon, he said his greetings to his mother and left without staying longer.

He was heading back to Tennetcy to attend the victory ceremony as cadet representative when he spotted a child trudging along the road.

His horse was just passing when the child stepped aside and looked up in his direction.

He glanced down at the child without thinking.

Tangled golden hair falling to the jaw, and eyes that seemed to hold a thousand emotions, clear as glass. The child blinked at him with the look of someone who had seen something curious, and was dressed in black mourning clothes.

But the fine lace collar and white stockings pulled up to the calves suggested a child raised in a noble household.

The child was also carefully holding a modest bouquet that looked to have been gathered from wild field flowers of various colors.

He was about to look away and ride on when the child called out urgently.

“Excuse me, Sir! Could you tell me which way to go to reach the Sistine Cathedral from here?”

Andrea eased his reins, and the knight riding behind him answered first.

“What for, little one? It is far from here. You cannot get there without taking a carriage.”

The child shrugged as though that was no matter and replied.