Clodine sat across from Rekri Alexia at a round tea table set up outdoors.

It was just past noon, and the blazing sun beat down upon the large canopy overhead.

“Do you not care much for tea?”

The situation was already awkward enough, and Rekri had not even glanced at the tea she had served him.

Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Clodine smiled awkwardly.

“If there’s another kind of tea you prefer…”

“I don’t particularly enjoy tea.”

She had only been asking so she could prepare something else if he wished, yet Rekri rejected the offer so bluntly it bordered on rude.

To be honest, Clodine herself had no idea how she had ended up sharing tea with Rekri in the first place.

After lunch, she had been taking her usual walk through the garden when she unexpectedly crossed paths with him.

He had been walking with another knight, chatting cheerfully.

But the moment he spotted Clodine, every trace of a smile vanished from his face.

Had he merely looked expressionless, she might have ignored it.

Instead, his brow furrowed as though he had encountered something unpleasant.

That expression left her deeply uncomfortable.

Come to think of it, Rekri had always been like that.

Ever since their reunion at the Imperial Palace.

It was strange.

Before she left the Empire to marry O’Neil Penelope, she had never once felt uncomfortable around him.

If she were being honest, Clodine had even believed they were fairly close.

‘Was I mistaken…?’

Men and women often thought differently.

Perhaps she alone had misunderstood the nature of their relationship.

The realization was disappointing, but not enough to truly trouble her.

Until today.

For some reason, she had suddenly felt the urge to stop him and sit him down in front of her.

She wanted answers.

She wanted to know whether Rekri merely felt awkward around her…

‘He hated her.’

Calmly staring into the amber-colored tea, Clodine lifted her cup in silence.

The warm tea filled her mouth with a rich fragrance she normally enjoyed.

‘So someone really can dislike it that much.’

Enough that they couldn’t even pretend to take a sip out of courtesy.

Maintaining her usual gentle smile, Clodine looked at Rekri.

He wasn’t looking at her at all.

Instead, he stared off in some random direction with a sullen expression.

“So, how is life in the knight order? I wonder if you’ve been having any difficulties.”

A faint scoff escaped Rekri.

Valoran despised this aspect of Rekri’s personality and usually kept him at a distance.

For the first time, Clodine thought perhaps that had been the right decision.

“I joined to do difficult things. If everything were easy, wouldn’t that be the real problem?”

Despite Merian standing nearby and serving tea, Rekri spoke with complete indifference.

“Oh, I see. So when Your Majesty faces hardship, your first instinct is to run away.”

At those words, Merian set down the teapot with an audible clatter.

Her sharp glare immediately turned toward Rekri.

“Merian.”

Clodine’s voice was quiet.

“I’ll handle this myself. You may leave.”

“Your Majesty, this man’s behavior—”

“Merian.”

When Clodine called her name again, firmly ordering her to stop, Merian reluctantly tidied the table and withdrew.

Despite having caused the disturbance himself, Rekri remained perfectly calm.

He simply picked up a cookie from the plate and began chewing.

Only then did Clodine finally arrive at the answer she had been searching for.

‘You hate me.’

Not merely indifference.

Not simple contempt.

He despised her.

‘But why?’

No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t understand the reason.

When Clodine remained silent for some time, Rekri finally let out a small sigh and began speaking.

“My mother ran away when I was ten years old.”

His voice was flat.

“She abandoned both my father and me. I heard she was a noble lady raised in comfort, but she ended up having an affair with a worthless man.”

His gaze remained distant.

“She left that day and never once came back to see either of us.”

Clodine set aside everything that had happened between them and listened quietly.

“They say a mother’s love for her child is the greatest love in the world.”

A bitter smile touched his lips.

“For me, it turned out to be the most useless and insignificant thing imaginable.”

His eyes darkened.

“That’s why I can never understand people who claim they’d die without each other. People who talk about love as though it’s everything.”

Because Count Helario Ramier had remarried quickly after her mother’s death, Clodine could understand at least a small part of the emptiness Rekri felt.

But there was an immeasurable difference between remarrying after being widowed and abandoning one’s family through infidelity.

She could not claim to truly understand his loss.

“Instead, I understand the hearts of abandoned people better than anyone.”

His gaze turned toward her.

“It feels personal.”

The look in his eyes was so cold that it almost seemed as though Clodine herself were the mother who had abandoned him.

“Of course, I learned something from Your Majesty as well.”

His voice sharpened.

“You demonstrated quite clearly how little it means to move your heart from one person to another.”

It sounded as though Rekri believed Clodine had betrayed Ahazan while he was away at war and chosen to marry O’Neil Penelope instead.

By Ahazan’s request, the truth had remained buried.

The world knew only that version of events.

No matter how unfair it was, Clodine had no way to defend herself.

“So that’s why you hate me?”

“To me, all women are the same. If it were me, I would never take a woman like you as my wife.”

“But perhaps there are circumstances you don’t know about—”

“And now you want to claim there was no other choice? If someone murders a person and then says they never wanted to kill them, does the dead come back to life? Does the crime disappear?”

As Clodine listened, her mind slowly went numb.

Partly because his words were insulting.

But more than that, because they had brushed against something deeper, an emotion that had been floating just beyond her awareness.

“Even if you threw yourself into danger a hundred times, a thousand times, to save His Majesty’s life, it wouldn’t change how I see you.”

His eyes were unwavering.

“In my eyes, Your Majesty is someone who could abandon the Emperor at any moment.”

His voice hardened further.

“And as for swearing loyalty to someone like that…”

A bitter smile crossed his face.

“Not even a blade at my throat could make me do it.”

Having said his piece, Rekri abruptly rose from his seat.

As though he could no longer bear to sit across from her for another second.

Then he walked away.

Left alone in the garden, Clodine stared down at the tea that had long since gone cold.

Her face had turned pale from shock.

***

Late that night.

After her bath, Clodine stood before the mirror, absently running her fingers through her damp hair.

The nightgown she wore was thin enough for the pale pink of her skin to show faintly through the fabric.

She looked almost transparent.

Like something that might disappear at any moment.

Unable to bear looking at herself any longer, Clodine lowered her gaze and turned away from the mirror.

‘My mother ran away when I was ten years old. She had an affair with a worthless man.’

‘I can never understand people who claim they’d die without each other because they’re in love.’

‘To me, all women are the same. If it were me, I would never take a woman like you as my wife.’

Rekri’s words continued to circle endlessly through her mind.

Just as she told herself to stop thinking about them, a sudden wave of dizziness struck.

Closing her eyes, she staggered.

And then, at the worst possible moment—

A memory she had spent the entire day trying not to revisit echoed sharply in her ears.

‘Mother had someone she loved.’

Clodine pressed a hand against her forehead.

A pained frown creased her face.

Then, unable to remain standing, she sank heavily to the floor.

‘It wasn’t Father.’

‘Mother used to meet him here.’

‘I couldn’t abandon her. I couldn’t deny her, Clodine.’

It had been shortly after their wedding.

During the honeymoon they had taken to commemorate their marriage, the two of them had spent several days at the villa that had once belonged to Ahazan’s mother, Selena von Lernando, the first wife of the late Emperor.

There, Ahazan had confessed something to her.

He had told her that Selena had loved a man who wasn’t his father.

That at the villa, unlike in the Imperial Palace, Selena had been happy.

‘What expression did he have when he told me that?’

For the first time, Clodine desperately wanted to know.

If she could, she wanted to return to that moment and watch him again.

To see his face.

To hear his voice.

‘What did he sound like? Was he sad?’

Or had he been furious?

No matter how hard she tried to remember, she couldn’t be certain.

Clodine remained seated on the floor, hugging her knees tightly.

And as she sat there, words Ahazan had spoken in the past, words she had never fully understood, began surfacing one after another.

‘I wonder if you’ve ever considered being a little less obvious. About treating this marriage like your second one.’

‘I’ll make sure you don’t have eyes for anyone else. I’ll make you love only me.’

‘Clodine. Who are you holding right now?’

‘You talk as if saying ‘I love you’ is some promise that can never change.’

‘Just because you saw someone who looked a little like him, you can’t stand in front of me and start reminiscing about a dead man. Am I wrong?’

‘Just when I thought I could finally have that damned love with you, there are still so many things getting in the way.’

There had been too much in those words to simply accept.

Too much that felt unfair.

That was why she had always thought Ahazan’s actions and accusations were excessive.

Because she had already decided for herself how Ahazan ought to see a woman named Clodine.

Even if he had abandoned her in the past, she had remained faithful to her love for him until the very end.

Surely that love deserved to be regarded as something noble.

She had never once considered another possibility.

That Ahazan, like Rekri Alexia, might have grown up carrying a profound distrust toward both love and women.

‘Then again…There’s no reason Ahazan wouldn’t think that way.’

He had chosen to take her as his wife.

But perhaps living with a woman who had once married another man had left him with complicated feelings he could never fully suppress.

Perhaps even as he listened to her confession of love, he wondered whether that confession might one day be directed toward someone else.

Perhaps after they made love and lay together in bed, just before sleep claimed him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he himself had become a shameless man carrying on with another man’s wife.

“…Ah…”

The moment that thought fully formed, Clodine felt as though her chest would burst.

A sob escaped her lips.

She sprang to her feet.

If she didn’t see Ahazan right now…if she didn’t tell him that every one of those fears was wrong…she felt she would never be able to endure it.