Was Last Night Too Intense?
The small, plump lips of Veronica protruded at least three inches. Her violet eyes blazed with resentment and jealousy that burned far more intensely than they had the day before.
The child stopped in her tracks as she was about to approach her father, then deliberately stomped her feet with a loud thud and marched back up the stairs.
“Ah, my lady…!”
‘Veronica! Please don’t go! Stop your dad for me!! I don’t want to be hugged either!!’
My desperate telepathy failed to reach the little lady’s retreating back.
Only after Veronica had stomped away in a huff did the Grand Duke Gareth finally release his crushing embrace, letting go of my shoulders with obvious reluctance.
“Oh dear, I’ve made quite a mess of your hair.”
The Grand Duke reached out with his large hand and gently, tenderly brushed the disheveled strands back from my forehead.
‘Aaaagh! Seriously, stop it!’
Goosebumps erupted all over my body, but I could only force an awkward smile.
“Ahem. I have some documents to collect from my office before we depart, so I’ll head up first. I’ll see you outside.”
Leaving behind a satisfied smile, the Grand Duke strode briskly up the stairs toward the fourth floor.
I stood there, completely drained, staring blankly at the broad back of the Grand Duke as it disappeared from view.
“……Butler.”
“Yes, Sir Bale.”
“His Grace really…… seems to like people quite a lot.”
When I muttered in a dazed voice, the butler standing beside me broke into a warm, benevolent smile.
“Haha, it’s a very familiar sight to those of us who have served the Grand Duchy for a long time. After all, he grew up receiving such abundant love from the previous Grand Duke. The blood of the Arteta family carries a warmth hot enough to melt the cold northern winds.”
‘Ah…… So it’s an ancient family tradition of being total pushovers.’
In a romance fantasy world teeming with assassination threats, a family that went around radiating such pure, blind affection? It suddenly made sense why they had collapsed so pathetically in the original story.
While I was clicking my tongue internally, the butler glanced around cautiously before leaning in with a far more serious expression and whispering.
“However, as you asked earlier, Sir Bale…… there does seem to be something unusual about how urgently His Grace is rushing this visit to the capital.”
“Pardon? What do you mean?”
“The truth is, right after His Grace arrived at the mansion yesterday, he secretly asked me how many days he could stay at the Grand Duchy before departing for the capital. He clearly wanted to spend as much time as possible with his family.”
The butler tilted his head.
“Yet this morning, the moment the sun rose, he suddenly changed his orders and declared we would leave today. In my thirty years of service, I have never seen him act so capriciously.”
The butler’s words left me puzzled. The man who had just been hugging me hard enough to break my bones. Someone who cherished and cared for me—a complete stranger—this much, would leave his beloved wife and daughter behind after just one day? Especially when he had been so eager to stay longer just yesterday?
‘Why? There was no summons from the imperial palace, no urgent message. He pushed the schedule forward himself?’
No matter how much I racked my brain, no answer came.
‘……Ah, whatever. Since he has to go anyway, maybe he prefers to get the annoying stuff over with quickly and then come back to spend quality time with his family. That must be His Grace’s style.’
My brain, still exhausted from the war, refused to engage in complicated deductions. I decided it wasn’t my place as a former common soldier to dig into the capital’s political games or the Grand Duke’s whims, and simply let it go. Never once imagining that the real reason stemmed from the secret shame and frustration Gareth von Arteta had suffered in his bedroom the night before.
A short while later, outside the grand entrance of the Arteta Grand Duchy Mansion.
A magnificent carriage waiting to carry Gareth von Arteta to the capital sliced through the chilly northern morning air. With the escort knights lined up in formation, three of us—Lady Rebecca, Veronica, and myself—stood side by side at the entrance to see him off.
But the atmosphere was anything but normal.
“………”
“………”
A suffocating awkwardness and icy chill flowed between the couple on the verge of parting. It was so stark that I could vividly recall the tender scene from this very entrance yesterday, where they had clung to each other without caring who was watching, tears streaming down their faces.
Gareth von Arteta kept clearing his throat and couldn’t meet Lady Rebecca’s eyes. Lady Rebecca, for her part, wore a pale face with tightly pressed lips instead of her usual gentle smile, staring only at the ground.
“……Then, I’ll be going. I leave the mansion in your care.”
The Grand Duke’s voice was painfully stiff and dry. There was none of the passionate embrace or affectionate touch he had shown me yesterday.
“Yes. Have a safe journey, Your Grace.”
Lady Rebecca’s reply was colder than the winds at the Northern Wall. The distance between them felt impossibly vast, both physically and emotionally.
‘……What is this atmosphere?’
I glanced back and forth between the couple, reading the room. Just then, a small sigh came from Veronica, who stood beside me. The child was quietly watching her parents’ awkwardness while fidgeting with the ears of her beloved rabbit doll. As if this scene was all too familiar.
‘Again……’
Veronica’s expression seemed to say. This cold morning that always followed the night her parents entered the bedroom together. Even to a child’s eyes, her parents’ discord was painfully obvious.
But my brain, which had no way of knowing the true circumstances and had been brutally trained for a year on the battlefield, leaped to an extremely vulgar and ridiculous conclusion.
‘Wait a second. At dinner yesterday, Lady Rebecca whispered to His Grace that she didn’t want to do it while he was drunk. That means they did it after he sobered up, completely conscious……’
My gaze flicked briefly to Gareth von Arteta’s massive frame and bearded face, then shifted to the delicate figure of Lady Rebecca.
‘……Did he go too hard last night? Enough to make her sore? Or maybe he went somewhere she hadn’t allowed…… Is that why she’s angry?’
A husband built like a giant returning from the battlefield full of vigor, and a wife reuniting with him after a year apart. It seemed perfectly reasonable to suspect that during their long-awaited night together, the Grand Duke had failed to control his strength and upset his wife, or that some argument had broken out.
‘Ah, what am I doing? Why am I so interested in someone else’s marital spat, especially their bedroom matters? My brain really must have rotted away at the Wall.’
I cleared my throat and awkwardly turned my gaze elsewhere.
While I was lost in my own shameful delusions, Gareth von Arteta climbed into the carriage.
“Depart!”
At the knight commander’s booming shout, the carriage began to roll forward slowly. The sound of its wheels grinding against the stone path shattered the quiet morning of the Grand Duchy.
Even after the carriage passed through the iron gates and completely vanished from sight, Lady Rebecca never once waved. She simply stood there, staring silently at the spot where it had disappeared.
‘They say a couple’s fight is like cutting water with a knife, but this cold war might last longer than I thought.’
Only once the carriage was completely out of sight did Lady Rebecca let out a short sigh and whirl around. An exaggeratedly bright smile was plastered on her face, as if she were forcibly shaking off the gloomy, chilly mood from moments before. In a voice pitched noticeably higher than usual, she spoke to me.
“Right then, Sir Bale! Now that His Grace has left, we should get to work as well!”
“Pardon? What work would that be……”
“We made a promise yesterday! I agreed to be your literacy teacher. I’ll start teaching you the letters right away today. There’s a study room on the fourth floor. Shall we go!”
Lady Rebecca lightly tugged at my sleeve and led the way. The Rebecca I had seen yesterday had been bright and a bit quirky, but today she seemed especially over-the-top.
“Ah, yes. If that is what you wish, my lady, then right away……”
I was answering in a daze as I was being pulled along when suddenly—
“M-me too!”
A small voice rang out from behind. When I turned, Veronica was trotting toward us, clutching her rabbit doll in one hand. She stopped right beside me and thrust her other hand high into the air.
“I want to join too! I’m going to the library too!”
At Veronica’s sudden declaration, Lady Rebecca stopped and widened her eyes.
“Oh my, Veronica? But you can already read difficult books all by yourself. Sir Bale has to start from the most basic alphabet, so it will be terribly boring for you, won’t it?”
Despite her mother’s gentle dissuasion, Veronica shook her head vigorously and stubbornly insisted.
“It doesn’t matter! I’ll just bring my own book and read next to you! Anyway, I’m coming too!”
As she spoke, Veronica shot me a quick, fiercely sharp glare.
‘Wait, why is she glaring at me again……’
I immediately understood the meaning behind those tiny eyes. It was a warning against me for monopolizing her father’s hug on the stairs that morning. While she had been too shy to approach, this ugly outsider was now trying to steal not only her father but her mother’s attention and time as well. She was clearly feeling threatened.
‘It was bad enough that he took Dad. I can’t lose Mom too, huh?’
The future villainess’s cute yet blatantly obvious jealousy nearly made me burst out laughing. I barely held it in.
“Sigh, when our little lady gets stubborn, there’s nothing we can do. Shall the three of us head to the library together then, my lady?”
When I played along with a lighthearted tone, Lady Rebecca let out a small, helpless laugh.
“Hehe, very well. It looks like we’ll have two students today. You’ll need to be nervous, Sir Bale. Our Veronica is a much stricter teacher than I am.”
Lady Rebecca walked ahead. Behind her, the little lady Veronica followed with quick steps, constantly glancing back to keep a wary eye on me. And sandwiched between this mother and daughter, I would have to sweat through my literacy lessons.
The northern morning breeze blowing through the windows felt unusually cold today.
‘Still warmer than the Wall, though.’
Crash—!
A crystal wine glass shattered against the wall. Red wine, like someone’s bloodstain, trickled down the ornate wallpaper.
“Failure? That worthless bastard dares to fail?!”
Gawain von Arteta, the younger brother of Gareth von Arteta, snarled with a twisted face. For an entire year while his brother bled at the Northern Wall, he had secretly prepared and infiltrated an assassin. The message that the assassin—who should have ended his brother’s life—had absurdly failed had just arrived.
Knock, knock.
Startled by the sound of breaking glass, a servant cautiously knocked on the door.
“Lord Gawain, is everything alright in there?”
Gawain closed his eyes tightly and steadied his ragged breathing. Then he smoothed the rage from his face and painted on a gentle, benevolent smile.
“Ah, I accidentally let the glass slip from my hand. Come in and clean it up.”
“Yes, understood.”
“Also, since my brother will soon be arriving in the capital, make sure the servants thoroughly clean and decorate the mansion. And close the door properly when you leave.”
“As you command.”
Gawain maintained his mild expression until the servant bowed repeatedly, cleaned up the broken glass, and left the room.
Click.
The moment the door shut, the smile vanished from Gawain’s face. He slowly walked over and looked down out the window. The capital’s scenery spread out before him, with the imperial palace in view. He could not kill his brother in the middle of this glamorous capital. If the Grand Duke, returning as a hero of the North, were assassinated here, all suspicion from the imperial family and nobility would immediately fall on him—the only blood relative who stood to gain the most.
“Tsk, you stupid fools. Ruining a perfectly drawn picture……”
Gawain flicked his hand in irritation and suddenly noticed a drop of red wine splattered on the back of his hand.
Slurp.
He slowly licked it up with his tongue. The sweet aroma of wine filling his mouth gradually calmed his frayed nerves.
“……Haha, that’s right. There’s no need to get angry.”
The corners of Gawain’s mouth twisted up in a grotesque smile.
“There’s no need to rush at all. After all, I have plenty of time.”
Even if his brother Gareth arrived in the capital alive, nothing would change.
Gawain recalled the scent of the highest-grade tonic he had painstakingly prepared and sent from the capital every month for the past few years, claiming it was for his brother’s health. In the old days of the empire, when women could not join the choir, a secret elixir had been fed to young boys to prevent their voices from breaking and to preserve their beautiful high tones permanently. He had disguised that very drug—one that gradually shut down all masculine functions, essentially a castration drug—as a medicinal tonic and fed it to his brother.
“Poor brother. Congratulations on surviving the Wall and returning. But your seed has long since dried up, hasn’t it?”
No matter how tightly he embraced his beloved wife Rebecca, Gareth would never be able to produce another heir after Veronica. The power of the Arteta Grand Duchy, with no male successor, would naturally fall into the hands of its only remaining male bloodline—his own.
“Just a little longer, and everything in Arteta will be mine alone.”
Gawain’s sinister, suppressed laughter echoed chillingly through the dark office.