“She is taking a walk in the garden at the moment.”

“As expected. A clever maid.”

“She has always been known for her intelligence and competence. Even the future empress had her eye on her.”

Ahazan paused in the middle of signing parchment with a fountain pen dipped in gold ink and slowly lifted his gaze.

“Ah—what I mean is… Lady Langham, that is, ahem.”

The icy look that struck him like a blade nearly made Cal choke. He cleared his throat obediently. Still, he had to finish what he started today, no matter what. Even if a real blade flew at his neck.

Gathering his courage again, Cal spoke.

“Your Majesty…”

His sovereign, seated against the light while reviewing state documents, embodied living authority. Cal swallowed hard.

“Th-The marquis says it is time to set a date for the royal wedding…”

“I can’t hear you.”

The oppressive atmosphere had shrunk Cal’s voice without him realizing it. At Ahazan’s command to speak louder, Cal tightened his abdomen and declared,

“It is time to set a date for the royal wedding, Your Majesty!”

“Cal.”

“Y-Yes?”

Ahazan, idly scanning the final petition in his hand, suddenly called his name. The front of his loosely buttoned white shirt fluttered faintly in the wind.

Even as a fellow man, Cal could not help but admire Ahazan’s striking appearance. As was his habit, his gaze dropped downward, toward the chest that appeared and disappeared with the shifting cloth.

And, as always, his face stiffened.

His lord’s perfectly sculpted chest was covered in scars, so many that it was difficult to find unmarked skin. Cal knew exactly how each one had been earned.

“You have been on the battlefield with me for nine years.”

Out of nowhere, he recited their history.

That’s unfair, Cal thought, yet his resolve already softened, and he shut his mouth. An atmosphere far too tender for two hardened soldiers began to form.

“The Marquis of Langham is no ordinary man. It’s understandable that you’d be frightened.”

Cal was moved. Since when does he understand my heart so well?

Indeed, before comrades who had shared life and death, rank meant nothing.

I am the emperor’s comrade-in-arms!

His eyes reddening at his own sentiment, Cal perked up at Ahazan’s next words.

“But no matter what, a knight who was riding beside me on the battlefield only days ago…”

Ahazan turned only his eyes to meet Cal’s. It felt as though something rang sharply in the air.

“…has now fallen so low as to whine like a pathetic matchmaker. I hardly know what to do with you.”

Wait—that’s not what I meant…

A cold sneer touched Ahazan’s lips.

“What shall I do? Assign you to postwar reconstruction?”

Though he mocked him openly, there was a depth of sorrow beneath his tone. It was unmistakable ridicule.

Of course, Cal quickly composed himself and shifted stance.

“Y-Your Majesty, I would never dare urge Your Majesty into marriage—”

“Good. I thought not.”

“Of course not! It is a misunderstanding!”

“Yes. It had better be.”

Even as he spoke, Ahazan did not stop working. Dissatisfied with the proposal before him, he personally amended its contents in his own hand.

The ministers were suggesting mercy for the barbarian tribes who intermittently rioted in remote imperial regions, ravaging villages of innocent citizens. They had long hoped to assimilate those fierce warriors into imperial society.

Ahazan had never liked that stance.

“My engagement to Charlotte Langham will soon be annulled.”

He folded the corrected petition in half and handed it to Cal, speaking as if it were nothing.

“What do you mean?”

Cal’s face drained of color. Ending a seven-year engagement so abruptly and without ceremony was unthinkable.

But Ahazan merely raised a brow as if he could not understand the shock.

“My true fiancée has returned.”

“S-Surely you do not mean Queen Penelope?”

“Go to the marquis and inform him that I will soon announce the royal wedding.”

The Marquis of Langham had been so insistent on choosing a date because the bride had been his cherished daughter, Charlotte Langham.

But Clodine Penelope?

From how many years ago was that engagement being resurrected?

“Your Majesty, Clodine Penelope is no longer your fiancée. She is the queen of an occupied kingdom…!”

Risking his life, Cal dared oppose him. It was something that must never happen.

Yet regardless of Cal’s alarm, Ahazan rose calmly and walked toward the window.

There was a reason he had insisted on working today in the western office adjoining the annex garden.

Bathed in sunlight, the lush greenery shimmered. A faint smile curved his lips as he gazed outward.

At the end of his sight walked a woman like a painting, moving slowly through the garden.

“Clodine Ramier.”

“Pardon?”

From Ahazan’s lips fell a name that had vanished from the world seven years ago.

And it struck Cal like a winter blade.

“Never call her Penelope again.”

***

Clodine walked back and forth along the path lined with yew trees.

An hour had already passed.

Her body strained as though her legs might give way at any moment. But she could not stop walking.

More precisely, she could not stop thinking.

It was because of Pellier Sanderson’s letter.

[The Van Helsing Empire has provided our people with warm dwellings. The buildings are sturdy, the food plentiful, and the commercial districts well-developed. Though I do not understand it, the Empire grants all prisoners such treatment under the name of humanitarian aid.]

Mistreating prisoners violated the laws of war.

But such generous treatment was by no means required either.

What are they planning?

Clodine furrowed her brow.

Ahazan’s intentions were impossible to read. She had thought he was being petty over even a single bowl of porridge, but that, too, must have been deception.

Still, if her people had been well-fed all along, regardless of what she ate, then that alone was a relief.

But it was the next part of the letter that made Clodine’s heart twist once more.

[However, not a single citizen rejoices in the goodwill of the enemy nation that invaded without law, slew His Majesty the King, and stole our kingdom. All spend their days in tears, worrying only for Your Highness’s health and safety in captivity.]

The nation.

And the laws that governed nations.

The king unjustly slain.
The emperor of the enemy state.

None of it could be forgotten.

Yet no matter how weighty those matters were, they did not outweigh the lives of the people.

There was no way to revive a dead king. No way to restore a fallen kingdom.

The people who survived had to forget the past and live on.

A nation exists because its people exist, not the other way around.

Truthfully, she wished she could tell them to stop grieving, to accept the enemy’s kindness as it was, and simply survive.

But there was no way to send such words.

Clodine brushed at the tears that had gathered at her eyes.

“I didn’t prepare that gift so you could cry.”

At the sudden voice, her shoulders flinched.

She turned, and saw Ahazan standing at a distance.

The pity on her face as she thought of Pellier vanished, replaced with frost.

Ahazan walked toward her with the ease of a man strolling through his own garden.

When only a few steps remained between them, Clodine instinctively stepped back.

His gaze flicked down to her retreating feet.

He stopped.

Slowly lifting his lowered eyes, he looked at her languidly.

A curved smile spread across his lips.

“I never gave you permission to move away from me.”

The tone was soft, like a spring breeze.

Yet it chilled her to the bone.

Clodine trembled with anger.

“What are you trying to do to me— to my people? Why are you doing this to me?”

Ahazan looked at her up and down.

She was as thin and dry as firewood that might crumble under sunlight.

“Before you ask, try thinking first. What would a man who has just returned home from war want most?”

His expression curved almost shyly, as if teasing her on purpose.

Then it turned cold.

“At our age, it isn’t a difficult question.”

Shame flushed Clodine’s entire body.

“…What turned you into such filth?”

The tears she had held back spilled again.

The grief of losing her country was vast.

But the grief of losing her friend was just as unbearable.

‘Live your life. Forget me. Be free. I’ll fight for your freedom, Clodine.’

Those had been his words before departing for war.

A voice that had sounded unfamiliar with tenderness.
Eyes that seemed to hide warmth behind their restraint.
The pale air before dawn.
Even the faint scent of that ordinary morning—

Clodine remembered everything.

Everything was so vivid.

Only the friend before her now was blurred, as though wrapped in fog.

She could not recognize him.

“You.”

Ahazan, who had merely watched her cry with an empty smile, finally spoke.

That single word struck her heart like a blade.

“You. Yes, you. You made me like this.”

“I… I…”

I did nothing.

She shook her head, unable to understand.

But before she could finish, Ahazan’s large hand covered her mouth.

“Please. Hmm?”

“……”

“If you keep wearing that face as if you know nothing, I won’t be able to hold my temper, Clodine.”

“Mm—!”

She struggled against him.

The more she moved, the tighter his arm locked around her waist.