Chapter 3
“……If you don’t mind, would you care to join me for dinner this evening?“
Calix answered without even sparing her a glance.
“Do as you wish.“
Hearing his positive response, a smile as lovely as a spring blossom bloomed on Selena’s face.
Only after Selena completely turned around, bidding him farewell for the evening, did Calix properly gaze at her retreating figure. Her thick, voluminous golden hair caught the morning sunlight, sparkling with unusual brilliance.
Jerome, the adjutant who had been watching Selena’s departure alongside him, spoke up.
“This is a first, Grand Commander. A woman looking directly into your face for more than three seconds.“
“So?“
“Pardon?“
“It doesn’t matter. Besides…….“
A woman bought with money.
Nothing more, nothing less.
From the very beginning, Calix had not taken a wife to produce an heir. It was entirely to put on a show for those rats in the imperial palace.
Born between a voluptuous, womanizing emperor and a princess taken as a hostage from a foreign land, Calix had not known a single moment of happiness since the day he was born.
An emperor father who showed no interest in him, a mother who detested him with a passion, and half-brothers who looked down on him with utter contempt.
“Look at that hair. Fittingly gloomy and ominous black.”
“To think I share a father with a bastard like that.”
“Who knows? His mother might have secretly strayed and spawned him with some other stray dog.”
“He’s nothing more than a complete mutt.”
Though they were imperial family members living in a magnificent palace decorated with all manner of jewels and gold, a rotten stench emanated from them upon even the slightest inspection.
And that was not all. Calix had stubbornly survived the battlefields to which the imperial family had sent him, as if hoping he would die. Because if he didn’t kill, he would be killed. Driven by the singular determination to stay alive, he had crossed mountains of corpses and stained his hands with countless blood.
In recognition of those achievements, he had been granted the title of Grand Duke a few years later, but Calix’s heart remained utterly hollow.
The reason ordinary people blushed and lost their voice in his presence was due to Calix’s signature chilling aura and indifferent expression. Yet, whenever he appeared at a banquet, everyone would light up their eyes and struggle desperately to get on his good side.
Women would thrust forward their voluptuous bosoms as they approached, while men rubbed their hands together like flies trying to curry favor. A dazzling appearance, exceptional swordsmanship, and even the title of Grand Duke.
To Calix, however, it was utterly absurd.
‘And yet, behind my back, they call me names like the God of War or a bloodthirsty demon. Absolutely laughable.’
Calix hated humans. No, he distrusted and despised them. He was utterly sick and tired of hypocritical people. The battlefield, where one merely had to swing a sword without thinking, was preferable to a banquet hall.
He often thought it would be better if people truly feared him. Then, at least, they wouldn’t bother him with trivial nonsense.
And then, one day, his “sword” spoke.
—Shall I make it so that other people genuinely fear you, just as you wish?
The demonic sword he had acquired while out on a campaign saw right through his innermost thoughts.
While Calix usually brushed off the demonic sword’s words, that particular statement was something he couldn’t simply let go.
—You’ve fought in all those wars, yet isn’t it absurd that you don’t have a single scar on your face? If your outward appearance truly resembled a “monster,” people wouldn’t dare bother you anymore.
The demonic sword chuckled.
It wasn’t a bad proposition for Calix. After much deliberation, he decided to accept the sword’s offer.
Though he was already formidable, Calix’s gaze seemed exceptionally sharp today. As the knights swung their swords, they repeatedly glanced his way, unable to hide their nervous tension.
Every single one of them was dying of curiosity. They desperately wanted to ask who that lovely woman from earlier was. Judging by their conversation, she seemed to be his wife, but what was with that chilling, worse-than-strangers attitude?
‘His wife truly is to be pitied.’
Out of fear that Calix might strike them down, none of them dared to voice it aloud, but all the knights felt a deep sense of sympathy for Selena.
Calix’s gaze, which had been glaring at the knights, slowly shifted toward Jerome.
“Jerome.“
“Yes, Grand Commander.“
“Go and find out. What that woman is doing wandering around inside.“
“Understood.“
Even Jerome, his adjutant, was someone he didn’t entirely trust; it was only natural that Calix didn’t trust his newly acquired wife. Jerome followed the Commander’s orders without a single word of complaint.
“The reason I came here was because I wanted to look into your eyes and talk with you just once more.”
Calix sneered as he recalled what Selena had said earlier.
More often than not, those who saw him for the first time couldn’t even make proper eye contact or failed to hide their looks of disdain. They looked at him, bound by a contract with a demonic sword, as if he were a monster.
Yet, that woman was different. She had met his gaze as naturally as if it were nothing—to a degree that felt almost burdensome.
“……If you don’t mind, would you care to join me for dinner this evening?”
She had even gone so far as to propose that they share a meal together.
Calix’s eyes narrowed even sharper than before.
‘It seems she’s trying to lower my guard somehow, but fat chance.’
Who knows? Perhaps even stumbling over the hem of her dress last night due to the dim light had all been a calculated act.
In truth, it didn’t matter to Calix who his wife turned out to be. She was merely a wife for show; he had no intention of producing an heir or sharing a wedding night. That was precisely why he hadn’t seen the need to hold a wedding ceremony, ordering instead that his wife be brought straight to his bedchamber.
Calix thought to himself:
‘Rather than handing over what I’ve built to those imperial rats, it’s better to take a complete stranger as a wife and pass it on to her.’
Aside from the rumors of him being a monster, the wealth and power Calix had accumulated over the years were more than enough to threaten the imperial family. Of course, he had not the slightest intention of actually leaving anything to Selena.
‘Seeing how unbothered she is even after seeing this face of mine, I cannot rule out the possibility that she is a spy sent to sell my information to the imperial family.’
When taking a wife, he had stipulated the condition that she must have no ties whatsoever to the imperial family, but whether she truly had connections to the palace was something time would reveal.
‘That dinner of hers, I will gladly accept.’
Calix’s eyes gleamed with an eerie light.
Watching him from afar, the knights exchanged uneasy glances and shook their heads.
Following the Commander’s orders, Jerome masked his presence so as not to alert Selena, observing what she was up to.
Strolling down a long, straight corridor, Selena suddenly came to a halt and spoke to her attendant.
“By any chance, is there a garden?“
“Yes. If you go to the end of the corridor on the first floor, there is a greenhouse garden filled with various rare flowers.“
“Let us go there.“
The attendant guided Selena.
When they reached the end of the corridor, true to the attendant’s words, there was indeed a garden. The garden appeared to have been neglected for a long time. Without a gardener, thick bushes grew wild among trees of all sizes, and the scent of grass filled the air, stinging their noses.
The attendant only knew that a garden existed here; it was abundantly clear from her flustered expression that this was her first time seeing it in person.
However, to Selena, who had practically lived confined to a viscount’s estate, even the neglected garden felt extraordinarily beautiful.
“Thank you for guiding me. Would you hand me the lunchbox?“
Accepting the lunchbox from the attendant, Selena added,
“You don’t need to follow me around from here on. You may take your rest.”
“B-But…….”
“It’s fine. I shall behave quietly.”
The woman before her was the Grand Duchess. Unlike the terrifying Grand Duke, she was an absolute beauty exclaiming an air of lingering melancholy. Unable to refuse the Grand Duchess’s command, the attendant reluctantly nodded and took her leave.
Holding the lunchbox, Selena began to explore the garden. Her dazzling blonde hair, resembling molten gold, swayed erratically with her steps.
Watching from a distance, Jerome moved his steps, pressing himself tightly against the trunk of a tree.
Perhaps because he had moved too hastily, Jerome made the mistake of stepping on dry leaves at the base of the tree—a slip unlike him.
“Ah.”
Startled by the rustling sound, Selena spun around in surprise. Her wide-eyed, cowering posture resembled a frightened rabbit.
Jerome swiftly hid his body behind a nearby tree. However, Selena was already approaching in his direction, having set even the lunchbox down on the ground.
He could feel Selena stopping at close range.
Jerome debated whether he should slip away toward another tree right now. But suddenly, Selena bent down. She did so without a single care about getting her dress dirty.
“Oh, my goodness…….”
‘What is she doing?’
While Jerome stood frozen, a small squirrel from among the thick bushes hopped straight into her arms.
Selena smiled dazzlingly down at the squirrel.
“Hello there, little squirrel?”
Now that he looked closer, she had noticed a squirrel in the garden and approached it. Jerome felt a slight sense of awkwardness.
‘Wait, why is there a squirrel in the garden?’
Jerome knew that Calix occasionally visited the garden. Being about forty-five times more sensitive than an ordinary person, there was no way he wouldn’t know that squirrels inhabited the grounds.
The plump squirrel seemed to take a liking to Selena, rolling onto its back and acting as affectionate as a puppy.
‘Just why is a squirrel here? Is there someone else feeding them?’
Because the Commander ran such grueling training sessions, the knights would resort to petty tricks at every opportunity, whining that they were sick. Having to constantly sort out who was genuinely ill and who was just shamming, Jerome hadn’t imagined that any of them would have wandered into this vast garden.
Furthermore, Jerome knew that every time the Commander returned from the battlefield, he dismissed all the existing castle servants. His reasoning was that the staff might have become informants for the imperial family while he was away.
‘Did he make an exception for the gardener and leave them un-fired?’
Even this assumption didn’t make sense. If a gardener had been feeding them, the garden wouldn’t have looked so overgrown and untouched by human hands for a long time.
‘It’s not the gardener. Then who secretly brought animals into the garden? Could it be that the Commander is raising animals himself……?’
The Commander petting a squirrel with a face like that.
Just imagining it sent chills running down his entire body. No matter how he looked at it, the Commander he knew would never do such a thing.
“Oh my, you had a friend too?”
At Selena’s words, brimming with delight, Jerome shook off his stray thoughts and continued watching her.
Before he knew it, the single squirrel had grown to two. Moreover, a white rabbit hiding in the nearby bushes came twitching its nose and crept closer to her.
“Are you hungry?”
Even though there was no way the animals could understand, Selena spoke to them as if they were children.
“What ever shall I do? This isn’t my home, so I cannot feed you as I please. I would love to share my food with you, but you mustn’t get sick from eating it.”
A slight shadow fell across Selena’s bright face. As she slumped her shoulders with a crestfallen expression, the small animals rubbed their faces against her in comfort.
“I’ll try speaking to the Grand Duke during dinner. To ask if I may feed you all.”
Jerome couldn’t help but wonder if those words were sincere. Surely the Commander, who abhorred even human beings, couldn’t possibly be fond of such tiny animals?
What kind of person was Calix? He was a man who left even the management of his regular riding steed, a black stallion, entirely up to Jerome.
Jerome pressed a hand to his forehead.
At that moment, the words that followed from Selena’s lips made Jerome’s teal-colored eyes widen.
“The Grand Duke seems like…… a good person.”
“…….”
It felt as though he had heard something he shouldn’t have.
