“Is your friend going on a honeymoon?”

“Yes, they’re going to Fullman.”

“Ah. That’s quite far. If I had known earlier, I would have assigned some knights to accompany them.”

“That’s really not necessary……”

“Isn’t it dangerous for just the two of them to go?”

There were several errors in Gideon’s statement.

First, the parents would never have sent just the two of them. They would have either attached family knights or hired mercenaries to ensure their safety.

And strictly speaking, they weren’t two but three. There was someone else in her friend’s belly.

Tatiana had learned this when she met with the tea party regulars after the field training ended. She had thought the wedding date seemed a bit early, but her friend had hurried because she didn’t want to wear a dress with a protruding belly.

‘How sly.’

If she had known earlier, she would have bought one more rattle.

Tatiana, who had been enjoying watching her nephew lately, was happy to hear about her friend’s pregnancy. But at the same time, she couldn’t help thinking,

‘When will we have a child?’

It had been quite a while since the coronation, but was he making any plans for children? They weren’t an ordinary couple, and for royalty, offspring weren’t a choice but a duty.

She had been curious about what was going on in her husband’s mind lately. She had been thinking about this for quite some time. So after much deliberation, she decided to just ask him.

“Honey?”

Gideon froze in his lying position. We were having fun, and suddenly “honey”? Did I do something wrong again? Looking at her with suspicious eyes, Gideon pondered his answer for a long time, but there were too few clues.

He nodded slightly as if to say, go ahead and speak.

“Tell me.”

But Tatiana, even after calling him, remained lost in her own thoughts for quite a while. Actually, this was something she had often thought about even before marriage. She knew that there was a life cycle that most people in the world generally followed.

Having dreams at a certain age, achieving professional accomplishments a few years later, and then at some point, getting married in droves. Sometimes it felt as if there was an age when new challenges were permitted.

But she was someone who believed that everyone’s life cycle didn’t need to coincide.

What determined it wasn’t others’ precedents, but one’s own will. It was enough to walk her own path in the direction and at the pace she wanted. Though sometimes that seemed like the most difficult thing.

But one thing that had changed after marriage was that there were matters that couldn’t or shouldn’t be decided solely by her own will.

Children, for example. When would be a good time, how many they wanted, what kind of family they had dreamed of. Wasn’t the other person’s opinion just as important as her own?

They had already discussed this once before. Gideon had said he wanted to postpone having children until the political situation stabilized. He said that when there’s someone to protect, variables also increase.

Tatiana now knew exactly what that meant. In his mind, even then, he had envisioned the civil war situation. Perhaps he had even imagined worse scenarios.

But now that he had become king and successfully taken control of state affairs, wasn’t there no longer any reason to postpone having children?

What was his current opinion on this?

She pondered briefly what question could encompass all these thoughts. But it was difficult to summarize this in one sentence…… so she ended up omitting too much.

“What are your future life plans, honey?”

“……”

What was this about now? Gideon rubbed his brow with his index finger at this question that had been cut off at both ends.

But when she opened the conversation with such an abstract statement, he felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It was probably their wedding night.

‘Does Your Highness have any firm beliefs about post-marital chastity?’

And the moment he recalled that, surprisingly, Gideon vaguely guessed what Tatiana wanted to say now.

He had rarely found it difficult to read others’ intentions originally. Even when talking with his adjutants, he could see right through their thoughts after just a few opening words.

But the experience of understanding despite such vague speech was rare even for him, making him wonder if he had been sharing a brain with his wife for some time now.

Nevertheless, he requested, “Don’t beat around the bush, speak directly. Start with the conclusion.”

Tatiana went “Hmm,” as she pondered. But she didn’t have confidence in speaking elegantly.

She just gave up and asked bluntly and crudely.

“Isn’t it time for us to have a child?”

Gideon, who had been lying comfortably with his arm as a pillow, immediately sat up at those words.

“No, you can keep lying down to talk……”

He couldn’t do that when his wife was initiating a conversation on such a topic. This was an issue he had also been seriously contemplating.

“Do you want to have a baby? Already?”

“……It’s not really ‘already,’ is it?”

“It is. You’re still young. Do you even know how to properly hold a baby?”

Tatiana blinked with an “Oh?” Haven’t you seen me holding Evan? How he smiles brightly in my arms.

When she widened her eyes as if to ask why he was fixating on that, Gideon waved his hands saying that wasn’t what he meant. Gideon also knew that Tatiana was good with babies. It was actually he who was not adept. He hadn’t even attempted to hold his nephew yet.

He simply wanted to convey that they were still young and there was no need to rush.

Because……”

“Titi. If you have a baby, you won’t be able to train with the sword like you do now for at least ten months. And that’s not just for the baby’s sake, but for yours too.”

“……”

“You won’t even be able to do a handstand in the morning as you please.”

He asked if she was really okay with that, saying they could take it more slowly, and Tatiana snickered. She thought, so that’s what he was concerned about.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that his reluctance to bring up the baby topic first was out of consideration for her. Because no matter how much they tried to minimize it, the time she would have to put down her sword couldn’t be reduced to less than a year or ten months. Because he couldn’t force her to take a hiatus as a swordswoman.

“I can organize sword manuals for a while. I also need to oversee the training of apprentice knights.”

“……”

“I don’t know what Your Majesty thinks, but I’ve always studied magic even when I didn’t have magical power. Others might not think so, but I did.”

“……”

“I don’t consider those times as dormant periods anymore.”

In truth, if she thought she would only practice swordsmanship for one or two years, she wouldn’t have been able to poke his side first like this about having a child now. But she knew that she would live as a swordswoman for the rest of her life.

Until now, she had been unable to shake off her impatient heart and had kept running. There was a sense of achievement each time she accomplished something, but sometimes she also felt empty and hollow. Yet throughout all this, swords and magic books were always by her side. She would eventually pick them up again. Even after achieving something…… it never ended.

Why? Because she did it out of love.

Whether she achieved her goals or not, her love for it remained the same.

She had only recently come to realize that this wasn’t a short-term race but a long-term plan for her life.

She had thought that a swordsman’s life was to burn like a flame and gloriously perish, but she wanted to walk this path for a long time. Like a tower master.