Chapter 3
She felt the blood gradually draining from her fingers.
‘Kiss the enemy who killed my father…?’
Anaide lowered her eyes beneath the pure white veil. The flower stems of her bouquet became soaked with the cold sweat seeping from her hands.
Fear preceded anger and irritation.
Did they really, really have to kiss? Anyway, Fernir would loathe kissing her, and Anaide also found the thought of pressing lips with him repulsive.
But once again, what won wasn’t the desire to avoid but the instinct to live. She bit her lips tightly and tried not to avoid the hand touching her side.
Now another hand would climb to her waist, and her body would be pulled toward him with no room for escape.
Right. Rather than see his face, she should close her eyes.
Fernir was the man who had exposed her true nature—that despite saying she wanted to die, she actually desperately wanted to live. She didn’t have the confidence to endure his disgust toward her indecisive self right before her eyes.
She finally closed her eyes and turned her body toward where he was.
At that moment, something hot and large pressed against her closed eyelids.
It was Fernir’s hand.
As her red vision darkened to black, rough skin touched her lips and quickly withdrew.
Anaide’s eyes widened. When her vision brightened again, the kiss was already over. Her gaze wandered through the air, following Fernir’s hand as it slowly descended.
Soon applause spread like bells from the guest seats that had been quiet throughout.
From now on, she would live not as Rutilan’s only princess, but as the queen.
Though her life hadn’t ended, her spirit had already grown old. It felt as if even the remaining vitality of her soul had been sucked into Fernir through that kiss.
Anaide resolved in her heart to ignore the momentary warmth she had been given…
It’s a dark night.
After finishing the wedding ceremony and entering the bridal chamber, Anaide stroked over her thin slip with her hand. Her eyes, exhausted from fatigue, gradually deepened.
‘Why… is everything happening so fast?’
Surrendering herself like a small boat before a storm, she could now view things rationally.
Everything had been excessively smooth. The wedding ceremony and the preparations for their wedding night.
To succeed in rebellion naturally required investing enormous time and money. So the coronation and execution had to be carried out swiftly. The longer they dragged on, the more exponentially the losses would grow, and the situation would turn unfavorable for the rebels.
Her father being accused of such ridiculous charges must have been Fernir’s measure to quickly inherit the throne.
Anaide regretted that she shouldn’t have loved him. For a king of a nation to be executed so quickly… His murderous intent toward her father was an obsession she couldn’t even dare imagine.
But everything had been too fast and clean. Unresolved questions remained in the process.
She clenched her fists, recalling the execution that had taken place just three days ago.
‘Were there really no nobles who opposed marriage with me?’
She couldn’t fathom why he would troublesomely keep her alive.
No, was it even normal for there to be no commotion about keeping ‘Princess Anaide’ alive?
Fernir was a duke. This meant he essentially had royal blood, and indeed his great-grandfather had been royalty.
So wouldn’t it be much better to welcome a new queen rather than marry herself, a direct descendant…? This thought kept occurring to her.
‘Could it be that Fernir developed some feelings while pretending to be my lover?’
Too precious to kill or confine to a room, but with her bloodline being what it was, he couldn’t leave her free either.
Anaide bent her waist at the goosebumps rising on her skin. Though she had clearly thought she wanted to live, her mind kept dwelling on objective reasons why she should die.
‘Could it be that I want to live even such a wretched life?’
Perhaps that was it.
Whatever the reason, she would welcome anything that provided justification for her to remain alive.
Her lips trembled and spasmed. The sense of betrayal toward her lover-turned-rebel made normal thinking impossible.
The shock couldn’t even become a scar and kept festering. She placed both hands near her heart and fluttered them like butterfly wings.
“What are you thinking about to be standing there so vacantly?”
At that moment, a familiar man’s voice came from behind her head.
She hadn’t even heard the door open. Anaide deliberately crossed her arms, worried her skin might show through the thin negligee, and turned around.
“…Hello.”
Then Fernir also crossed his arms in response. Anyone looking would think they were lovers in a cold war, but for Anaide, it meant facing alone an enemy who could be cruel to her at any moment.
It was a completely unwelcome situation, and her insides burned with anxiety.
After the silence, Fernir spoke first.
“You don’t seem to be doing well.”
Indeed, she knew he wouldn’t make false pleasantries. Anaide shook her head as she returned an answer.
“I suppose you don’t think you’re the one who made me this way.”
Since he had murdered her father and become king, she should properly use the title ‘Your Majesty,’ but Anaide changed the word with what little rebellious spirit she had left.
Fortunately, Fernir didn’t immediately bark at her to change her address or strangle her. Instead, he simply gestured and pointed to a corner.
Approaching where he pointed with half-doubt, she found a bottle of liquor and small cups there.
Why was he pointing to alcohol? Could there be poison in it? Anaide glanced at Fernir with wavering eyes.
“Why? Don’t tell me you thought we’d get through the first night without doing anything?”
“What is that?”
“Wedding wine.”
Anaide’s expression changed strangely upon hearing Fernir’s answer.
Liquor drunk by men and women before spending the night together. Did all married couples go through this process? Did he expect the wedding night to go smoothly with alcohol’s help…?
‘He doesn’t seem like the type.’
When she hesitated and turned away from the bottle, this time he approached the table and grasped the bottle’s neck. Then he tapped the table with the round edge of the bottle’s bottom.
“You need to think about solidifying your position, Queen.”
Anaide hesitantly moved away from Fernir as he came closer.
The emotion on his face was unfamiliar. She couldn’t tell if he was happy to secure his target, or if he purely found this situation entertaining.
Fine wrinkles formed on her eyelids.
She had anticipated he would make her bear children. Since royal legitimacy was passed through bloodline, ultimately she would have to carry Fernir’s child.
But there were still unclear parts. She looked at his lips, then finally voiced the question that had been circling in her throat.
“…Why did I have to live?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your bloodline also contains royal blood. So why did you need me? You could have taken another consort.”
Fernir’s lips curved down slightly. At the illusion that the surrounding temperature had dropped a little, she trembled faintly.
He rolled his eyes as if pondering, then frowned as if finding something disagreeable. Then he shrugged as if it were obvious and opened the liquor.
“Because I need a proper son.”
Anaide’s face scrunched slightly.
It was an odd statement. Not an heir, but specifically mentioning a son? Though cases of women becoming family heirs in the kingdom were much rarer than men’s cases, precedent wasn’t entirely absent.
‘Shouldn’t the child’s gender not matter? It’s not like I can change the baby’s gender at will.’
Of course, if Fernir wanted a son rather than a daughter, there was nothing to say…
Anaide watched the clear liquor filling the cup before her while gauging Fernir’s mood. It didn’t seem like he would properly answer the question she had asked first.
She carefully grasped the cup and threw another question at him.
“Why must it be a son?”
“Because I plan to raise him as a knight myself.”
The moment she heard the word ‘knight,’ her mouth instantly became unpleasant. Though she hadn’t drunk, a bitter taste circled her tongue.
This person would put a sword in the hands of their future child, whether the child wanted it or not. Naturally, the wife bearing the child’s will didn’t matter to him either. To him, a queen was merely a tool.
Anaide, who had been caressing the edge of the transparently cut glass cup with her fingertip, questioned:
“…Female knights–”
“No. It should be the same gender as me–easier to educate and make into a squire.”
At Fernir’s firm explanation, Anaide forcibly swallowed her unfinished words.
He grasped the bottle’s neck and downed all the remaining liquor as if emptying it. It was violent behavior more befitting some alley rogue than a gentleman.
To avoid staring at his constantly undulating Adam’s apple, Anaide squinted. As she barely managed to swallow a sigh, Fernir set down the bottle and this time tapped the table with his fingers.
“Of course, if a princess showed heir-worthy talent that would be fine, but I need a prince more. It would be easier to take him around.”
Anaide didn’t know how Rutilan’s knight-squire system worked, but she knew most squires who took knights as masters were teenagers just hitting puberty.
It seemed he wanted a boy because of issues like secondary sexual characteristics. She threw a question at him, just in case.
“Do you mean… if you were a woman, you would have wanted a princess as heir?”
“That’s right, exactly. Then you would have had to be a man.”
He nodded readily. Then he casually placed his hand on the skin extending from her neck to shoulder.
Anaide’s index finger, which had been timidly rubbing the cup’s edge, stopped abruptly. The warmth she had thought distant suddenly closed the distance as if demanding she face reality.
Her gaze fixed on the empty space right next to Fernir. There, instead of the familiar-shaped blankets, was a stark pure white bed.
If she drank this liquor, she would inevitably be dragged there.
Thinking this, she gripped the glass cup as if to shatter it. The skin covering her knuckles turned pale white. The smell of alcohol pierced her nostrils. Her sticky palate had now become like a desert.
Anaide’s body cooled like firewood left outside in midwinter. It was when she was only staring into the innocent liquor cup.
“Why aren’t you drinking?”
Fernir’s shoe tip touched Anaide’s heel in her slippers. With his hands stuck in his trouser pockets, he lifted his shoe tip and brushed from her heel to ankle bone.
“You can’t possibly want to do it with me sober.”
“…”
“If you’re going to handle it, you need to drink, hmm?”
