Chapter 1

Translator: Nox

Chapter 1

Episode 1. The Second First Night

2023.09.01.

<Prologue>

In the dead of night, Blair stood before the door.

Today was her wedding day, and this room was where she would spend her first night with her husband.

After standing there blankly for a while, she draped a shawl over her thin nightgown that clung to her curvaceous figure and knocked.

“……”

Her husband did not seem to have arrived in the bedroom yet.

Blair let out a small sigh of relief and entered the room, sitting on the sofa.

And waited for her husband.

Ten minutes passed.

Thirty minutes, then another thirty.

An hour went by, and her husband still did not come. Unlike in the past.

‘Is he not coming?’

Staring at the firmly shut door, Blair suddenly remembered the nature of this marriage.

‘Well, this time it’s not a real marriage, but a one-year contract marriage.’

A marriage solely for their mutual purposes.

There was no need to fulfill spousal duties like a real couple on the first night.

‘This is actually better.’

Facing that handsome face and sharing warmth and intimacy with him again might make her fall into the delusion that he loves her.

Just like she had in the past.

‘Spending the night with him is just that one day—the day Asiel was conceived.’

Today wasn’t that day, so it didn’t matter.

Blair concluded that her husband wouldn’t visit her room tonight and took out paper and a quill from the drawer.

She began calmly drafting the contract to prove this contract marriage.

It was at that moment, as she finished the last sentence of the contract.

Suddenly, warmth pressed against her back, and a man’s large hand suddenly planted on the desk.

Startled, Blair turned around to see the man who had approached silently behind her.

A height towering over ordinary men, a perfectly sculpted masculine body visible through the gaps in his robe.

Softly tousled black hair framing cool eyes like the blue summer night sky.

A face so beautiful it could make any man or woman hold their breath upon meeting his gaze.

Duke Herdin del Mark.

The man who had officially become her husband today.

As if reading her mind from her startled eyes, he asked,

“Why do you look so surprised? It’s our first night, so it’s only natural for husband and wife to spend it together.”

“……I didn’t think you’d come.”

“After waiting up without sleeping until now?”

His words struck right at the heart, and Blair tightly pressed her lips together.

“I was just waiting in case. It wouldn’t be polite if you came and I was asleep.”

At the word “you” that slipped from Blair’s lips, Herdin’s eyes darkened further.

“That sounds like you were prepared to spend the first night.”

Blair flinched at his hand caressing her cheek and the low voice whispering in her ear.

But what surprised her more was his words.

‘Why on earth?’

In her previous life, Herdin had accepted his brother’s unwanted marriage proposal to extract the truth from her.

The first night, the affection—it was all just an act to bind her and uncover the truth.

So in this life, to avoid being swayed by his playacting, she had proposed first before the marriage.

‘If you accept my proposal, Duke, I’ll cooperate fully in uncovering the truth of ‘that day.’’

She had promised to give him what he wanted without him deceiving her.

She thought he wouldn’t put on any more seductive acts, but why?

‘Once you learn the truth, you’d have no more business with me, right?’

Just like he had in the past.

But he reacted the opposite of her expectations. It was bewildering for Blair, who had thought he wouldn’t even come to the bedroom.

“There’s no need to necessarily have a first night—”

“I want to.”

His gaze, whispering lowly, was fixed on her red lips. His hand cupping her cheek stroked them with his thumb.

Her heart began pounding rapidly at the heat from his fingertips.

At that moment, Herdin, who had been staring at her lips, lifted his eyes, and their gazes met.

“Right now.”

Unrefined, intense desire swirled in his blue eyes.

Before Blair could recoil from the raw desire, his approaching lips devoured hers.

Blair suddenly remembered that he was a man, too.

‘Men can share their bodies even with women they don’t love, they say.’

Yes, this isn’t love. Not even pretending to love for some other purpose.

Just a moment’s desire.

Thinking that way made her heart feel lighter. Blair gathered her confused feelings, closed her eyes in resignation.

In the past, the unfamiliar, intimate act with him had terrified her, making her tremble.

His large frame felt like a beast about to devour her, or a prison confining her.

Yet she had fallen for him instantly, believing it was love because of his gaze only on her, the warmth of his tight embrace.

‘But now I won’t be fooled by that warmth.’

Spending the night with him was solely to meet her child.

‘Asiel, my baby.’

If she could just meet that child she loved more than her own life again.

She could spend night after night with the husband who might have killed her before her regression.

<Episode 1> The Second First Night

Today was the day Herdin returned to the townhouse after nearly a year.

It was the first time since Asiel was born.

Blair personally chose the dress and accessories she would wear today. It had been a while.

After getting ready, Blair entered the room connected to the bedroom. There was a small cradle.

The baby inside hadn’t fussed once and was clumsily waving his tiny hands toward the mobile, playing alone.

Blair instinctively smiled softly and picked up the child.

“My baby, you woke up without crying and played so well?”

“Uung. Eueu! Ububu!”

Held in his mother’s arms, the baby giggled nonstop, babbling unintelligibly. As if knowing it was the day to meet Daddy, he seemed in a good mood.

But Blair’s eyes, gazing out the window while holding the child, were bitterly sunken.

Herdin had left for the main estate of the Delmark Duchy in the north shortly after Blair became pregnant.

On the surface, it was to subjugate the magic beasts that raged every summer, but Blair knew he was fleeing from his unwanted wife due to the marriage.

Still, she caressed her growing belly day by day, praying he wouldn’t get hurt.

Her husband was the continent’s only magic swordsman blessed by a divine beast and a war hero renowned for his strength, but she couldn’t help worrying.

On nights she couldn’t sleep from worry, on nights he appeared in her dreams, Blair sent letters.

The baby in her womb is growing healthily. Please return safely without injury…

But no replies ever came.

She told herself no news was good news. As the lord of the vast northern territories, he must be busy.

……She had to think that way.

Time passed like that, summer and autumn of rampaging magic beasts ended, and winter approached.

Herdin still hadn’t returned to the capital.

In the meantime, the baby in her womb grew vigorously, beginning to kick. Around then, Blair spent many nights awake with tears.

The increasingly strong kicks felt like the baby demanding its father.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, baby…….’

She pitied the child who wouldn’t be loved by its father. It felt like it was all her fault, tearing her apart inside.

Half a year after he left, one winter day, Herdin came down to the capital.

He was only there for business at the Imperial Palace and expressed he wouldn’t visit the residence, heading straight back to the main estate.

Hearing that, Blair, in her late pregnancy where even going out was difficult, went to see him unannounced.

It was their first meeting in half a year.

But his blue eyes looking at his wife after half a year were as cold as a frozen winter lake.

‘Why have you come here? Your body must already be heavy.’

Before his quiet coldness, the words “I missed you” that had lingered in her mouth couldn’t be spoken.

In front of him, she always became a sinner.

Forgetting her resentments and sorrows, her heart still racing toward him felt pathetic.

Blair composed her emotions and opened her mouth with a forced calm expression.

‘Herdin. Can’t you spare just an hour—no, thirty minutes……?’

Her voice trembled subtly as she ended the calmly started plea.

Herdin, who had been gazing at her silently, reluctantly nodded.

The two boarded a carriage together. Blair had until they reached the del Mark Duke’s Residence from the Imperial Palace.

In the silence filled only with the sound of the carriage, Blair fidgeted with her fingers aimlessly. She had so much to say, but facing him made her mind go blank.

Then, the baby in her womb began to kick. Fiercely, as if announcing its presence to its father.

Blair frowned and caressed her belly.

‘He seems healthy like you, Daddy. His kicks are so strong, it’s hard to sleep at night.’

‘Is that so.’

‘Would you like to feel……?’

‘……No, it’s fine.’

At his curt response, as if dealing with a stranger’s child, Blair quietly shut her mouth.

She hoped he would understand her pain even a little. Perhaps she wanted to act spoiled, out of character.

Though she had been like that throughout the pregnancy, as her due date neared, her fear of childbirth grew.

Hearing other nobles had their mothers by their side, she had cautiously asked her own mother.

It was a request she, knowing her mother’s temperament, wouldn’t normally make, but her fear was that overwhelming.

But as expected, her mother refused.

‘It’s something every woman goes through once. What’s there to fear? Even if I went, what could I do?’ came the reply, along with midwives from the Imperial Palace.

So she wanted to ask her husband. To please stay by her side, even for a few days when the baby was born.

But before his indifferent reaction, Blair couldn’t say a word. The baby’s busy movements stopped. Tears threatened to well up.

That would be utterly pathetic.

Blair swallowed the emotions rising to her throat and looked out the window.

The carriage had arrived at the residence.

Herdin stared blankly at Blair’s belly with an emotionless face, then bid her farewell as if to a stranger.

‘I wish you a safe delivery.’

The butler opened the carriage door.

It was truly time to part, but Blair hesitated.

So much she wanted to say, but only things she couldn’t.

Lips trembling as she looked at him, Blair finally thought of one request she could make.

‘……A name. Please name our child.’

Unable to refuse even that, he pondered briefly and offered two names.

‘Diana if it’s a girl, Asiel if it’s a boy. How about that?’

He added she could choose another if she preferred, but Blair named their son Asiel.

Because it was the first thing Daddy had given, thinking of his son.

But even after Asiel was born, Herdin didn’t come to the townhouse. Now, after another half year—a full year—he was returning.

“Madam, His Excellency will arrive soon!”

Her personal maid Rina entered the room with the news.

Blair kissed Asiel’s chubby cheek and whispered,

“Asiel, Daddy’s coming.”

“Abbu?”

Blair carried Asiel down to the first floor of the residence. All the servants were out, waiting for their long-absent master.

Soon, hoofbeats sounded from afar, and the carriage appeared.

Blair’s heart swelled with anticipation for their reunion, knowing it was foolish.

She knew he resented her. She remembered the countless nights she spent crying alone, clutching her belly.

But now, Asiel stood between them.

No matter how much he hated her, he was the child’s father, and she the mother.

Blair wanted to build a proper family with him now, for this lovely child if nothing else.

She felt certain that seeing the child who took after him so perfectly, he would agree.

The carriage soon pulled up before the residence. The door opened, and Herdin stepped out.

Forgetting all resentments, Blair approached excitedly to show him Asiel.

“Her—”

But Herdin reached out not toward Blair and Asiel, but into the carriage.

The woman who took his hand and descended had dazzling silver hair and stunning beauty. She stood side by side with Herdin.

The duke’s servants began murmuring at the sight.

A woman who rode in the same carriage as their lord.

Whatever her identity, her importance to Herdin was clear from how he treated her.

Blair’s steps halted abruptly. Her violet eyes shook as she stared at them.

Herdin’s cool blue eyes and the beautiful woman’s golden eyes met Blair’s at the same time.

“Hello, Madam.”

The angelic woman greeted with a smile. Her brilliant golden eyes sparkled like jewels.

Blair stared blankly at the woman her husband had brought.

The humid air of late summer, thick with heat, choked her. More than the summer a year ago when he left.