Chapter 9

His dismissive attitude left Adeline feeling unexpectedly embarrassed, and she replied primly.

“I never attached any meaning to it. I only ask that you refrain from such behavior in the future.”

Leon narrowed his brows as if he were hearing something absurd. In the mountains, she had seemed thoroughly frightened, practically shrinking under his presence, yet now she spoke with a boldness that made him wonder when that trembling girl had vanished.

For the entire year the trial had been ongoing, she had spoken so little that she scarcely raised her eyes, hiding behind a black veil as though terrified of the world’s gaze. He had assumed she was a timid woman by nature, though she had fled into the mountains without hesitation and now answered him back at every turn.

Leaning forward slightly, he rested both arms upon his knees.

The movement brought his face noticeably closer, and under the compartment’s muted lights, his steel-blue eyes glimmered with focus as they settled on Adeline.

“You’re rather ungracious to the man who saved your life. Or is it insolence?”

“I would say it was closer to the opposite of saving my life, wouldn’t you?”

A chill rippled down her spine as the memory of his cold, threatening voice returned, the voice that had cornered her in the darkness.

In that moment, something glinted from within the parted folds of his coat, a flicker of silver.

A revolver?

A pistol?

Before he could notice her staring, she tore her gaze away and lowered her head.

At that moment, the man extended his arm toward her.

Startled, Adeline immediately shifted toward the corner of the seat, lifting her small handbag as a makeshift shield before her chest.

Leon’s eyes narrowed, surprised by the quickness of her reaction. He slowly withdrew his hand.

“For a princess raised in a greenhouse, you’re quite quick. I heard your king was obsessed with military cultivation that he put even his own children through harsh training. Were you among them?”

“…No. Not me.”

“That’s right. I heard you were the frail one, always kept in the northern winter palace. How unexpected. One would expect that a king so fond of his daughter would keep her close, not send her to a palace a week’s travel from the capital. Were you such a troublesome princess?”

“….”

“Then again, who could understand the mind of a man mad enough to think he could become the monarch to unify the central continent?”

Leon muttered that he had no interest in deciphering a madman’s motives, then turned his gaze toward her. Even as he insulted her father, Adeline showed almost no reaction, and he regarded her in a steady, measuring silence.

“Since you seem confused, let me clarify something. I’ve no intention of forcing myself on a woman I haven’t even properly married.”

“…A wedding?”

“Did you not hear it the first time? You’re marrying me.”

Her lips parted wordlessly.

Not because the idea of becoming this man’s wife suddenly struck her anew, but because he had spoken the word ‘marriage’ aloud.

Whoever she married, she had never expected to be acknowledged as a true wife. At best, she had assumed she would be treated as little more than a warm body in someone’s bed. No, perhaps not even that. Merely a wife in name, nothing more.

“If you’re expecting anything like a proposal, you’d best abandon that hope now.”

A look of sheer disbelief crossed Adeline’s face. Only hours ago, she had taken him for a cold, impenetrable man, though the more they spoke, the more unpredictable his personality revealed itself to be.

“…I never expected anything of the sort.”

Still, I can’t promise I won’t so much as lift a hand toward you. Aren’t we going to be the kind of relationship where we see everything of each other anyway?”

His upturned eyes held a subtly different light than before.

“Having a child means we’ll have to strip naked, bite, suck and lick, and do all sorts of things.”

“….!”

Stunned by the man’s audacious attitude and his explicit explanation, Adeline’s lips parted slightly, but the man spoke again with a cold, derisive smile.

“Stop pretending to be innocent. The only reason the three nations agreed to this arrangement at all was for the sake of appearances. Our child, the child we are expected to produce, will be the one to govern Velasque. To prevent either of us from harboring ulterior motives, they’ll start pressuring us to produce an heir as quickly as possible.”

She knew.

Of course, she knew that this marriage was nothing more than a political pact dressed in ceremonial lace.

She knew she was being used as a convenient symbol wrapped in silk and sorrow, meant to disguise the black-hearted greed of the Allied Nations and soften the backlash of their own citizens, all under the noble pretense of ‘continental peace.’

But…

Would it truly unfold so easily?

Adeline’s lips parted and closed several times, uncertainty warring with the words she wished to speak. Just as she finally gathered the courage to voice them—

“But… Velasque is—”

Screech!

Just then, the train’s whistle shrieked, swallowing her words whole.

The carriage jolted forward, and Adeline closed the mouth she had been about to open. Silence settled over them as the train slipped through the dim, unbroken stretch of dawnless sky. Whatever conversation might have followed dissolved into the stillness between them. As if intending to sleep, the man sitting across from her pulled his formal military cap down and closed his eyes. Seated in a posture that looked stiff just to observe, he didn’t so much as twitch.

Even so, Adeline didn’t let down her guard.

She kept her gaze fixed on him, watching for any sign that he might, at last, be asleep. He didn’t stir, not even when she shifted faintly in her seat. Thanks to that stillness, she allowed herself to study him more closely.