IHMEB - Chapter 16 < Being Held in My Enemy's Arms >
Having An Enemy's Baby
“...Can I?”
The hot man's gaze landed on the back of my neck, which had become cool as the night air swept by.
'Even if I show you something good, it's still a good thing.'
If I cut out the story, it seems that Kaian was trying to show me the good things about him.
The first night I spent being bombarded with insults about Vermont.
And the second night that followed.
I had no choice.
Kaian paid the bride's ransom to the Duke of Vermont.
There was no option for me to reject him. To that extent, the power of the head of the family was absolute.
The right to decide my welfare was merely transferred from the Duke of Vermont to Kaian, Duke of Temnes.
But why are you asking this?
An impulsive question flew out of his mouth.
“If I say no, you won’t do it?”
Then Kaian did not respond and remained silent.
‘Look. My thoughts aren't even that important.'
It was a time when I was feeling bitter.
"Yes. If you don’t want to, I won’t force you.”
My eyes widened at the unexpected answer.
“But the longer I endure it, the more it will be your responsibility to bear it.”
The feeling of being moved for a moment, wondering if he was being considerate, faded away.
“It’s a threat.”
“You are misinterpreting what I honestly said.”
Kaian's lips touched my fingers that were still holding my pajamas.
“In Vermont, they never listen to each other all at once.”
The man's moist breath dotted my collarbone, the nape of my neck, and behind my ears.
Vermont.
Hearing the name while being held in the arms of my enemy filled my ears with sorrow. I relaxed my shoulders and hands, which had been holding on as if it were my last bastion.
However, I could not tell whether my aching heart was due to the disease gnawing away at me or because my heart was broken.
Kaian laid me down on the bed and pressed my hands holding my pajamas to the sides of the bed.
When I lay down as if I had unfolded my own clothes, he slowly lowered himself onto them.
When hot lips touched my bare skin in the cool night air, I cried out.
In an unfamiliar bedroom.
The only place I could cling to because I was used to it was Kaian.
***
The capital of the Kingdom of Oberon was the optimal environment for governance.
Located in the center of the entire kingdom, the fertile and wide granary plain stretched endlessly to the south of the capital.
The place where the royal castle was located gradually rose, and behind it was a steep cliff, making it a natural fortress.
The Shen River, which flows widely below, was the lifeline of the kingdom.
As if to boast of the country's abundant wealth, the castle was built of white stone and its roof was covered with gold leaf. When viewed from a distance at night, it shined as dazzlingly as if the sun had come down to earth.
King Oberon, who rules the kingdom, and Valquiterre, the noble and great young King of the kingdom, were also characters whose last names seemed to have been transformed into humans.
Nobles and Princesses from neighboring countries praised King Oberon's beauty, saying that they could not breathe if they had to make eye contact even once. The marriage request that followed was a bonus.
He had rich, light lemon-blonde hair, white skin, and deep blue eyes on either side of his high, straight nose.
The man's lips, which seemed to have light pigment due to his hair and skin, had a pleasing complexion.
The shirt he was wearing was buttoned up and rolled up, revealing his thoroughly toned chest and abs, in contrast to his soft and beautiful appearance.
It was when Valquiterre, lying diagonally on the bed, was reading all kinds of letters that had come from abroad.
His bedroom door burst open without warning.
“Valquiterre!”
The woman who ran into the room, solemnly calling the King's name, looked exactly like him.
A woman with blue eyes and lemon-blonde hair hanging down her back in a messy manner lunged at him, ready to punch him.
“How can this be!”
Seeing Valquiterre's attitude of not even turning his head when she burst in through the door, she seemed even more indignant and stamped her foot.
“I asked you to marry Kaian!”
“Bianque.”
Unlike when she ran up to his face, which looked like she was about to burst into tears, just hearing her name once made her flinch and become dispirited.
“You have no manners.”
"Brother."
Bianque was Valquiterre's sister, two years younger than him.
She grew up as the King's younger sister and the only Princess in the royal family, and the only suitable groom in the entire kingdom was her maternal cousin, Kaian, Duke of Temnes.
“You said we’d get engaged when you back from a trip? I heard that Kaian got married. And that too by the King’s command? You fooled me, right? You never intended to make me a Duchess from the beginning, did you?”
“Did I say I would get you engaged to Kaian?”
"That...”
Bianque bit her lower lip in exasperation.
Her brother never said she would get engaged to Kaian.
Bianque persistently begged Valquiterre to marry Kaian.
When Valquiterre said that he would marry her after returning from this trip, she naturally assumed that the missing subject was Kaian.
“Then who on earth was I trying to get engaged to?”
Bianque screamed, shaking at his betrayal.
“Is there a man in the kingdom who would marry me? Even if I want to choose, I can’t! They all died!”
The death of their mother, Queen Silvia, who ruled the kingdom, was sudden.
Valquiterre, who inherited the throne as the new ruler, was only eighteen years old.
A country ruled by a young, child-like King was not a place to cooperate and accompany but instead became a piece of gold that fell from the sky.
Before the funeral could be properly held, war broke out in all directions: east, west, south, and north.
Kaian, who lost his parents around the same time, went to war and came back alive, but the circumstances of other families were different.
The younger brother took on the duties of head of the house where his brother was and went to war.
However, in families where there was no man to go to war on his behalf, the head of the family went out on his own.
In cases where the heir was still unmarried, the marriage was hastily done without even considering whether it was compatible with the family tradition. The idea was to get a wife and have a child before going off to war in case his army was cut off.
After five years of war, Valquiterre's rule and the country were stabilized, but there was a shortage of male nobles of marriageable age.
The worries of the noble ladies who could not find a partner to marry grew deeper day by day.
Those who turned their attention quickly married foreign nobles.
However, as the conditions of the marriage market in the war-torn kingdom became known to foreign countries when peace returned, families began to carefully consider their dignity and assets again.
Daughters who were looking for young, attractive aristocratic grooms, even in foreign countries, were increasingly being married to older and broken men.
Then, this time, since it was better not to be a nobleman, they began to bring in wealthy and well-established commoner men who were running merchants or working in administrative positions in the royal castle as sons-in-law.
Then, the upper-class commoners, who were not nobles but were earnestly accumulating wealth, protested. The commoners' first-class son-in-law was taken away by the nobles due to their status.
Naturally, men tried to get married with thorough calculations, as their children would also become nobles once they gained status, and as the planned marriage between commoners was ruined, incidents of hawks pulling each other's hair on the streets became a frequent occurrence.
“You said you didn’t want to get married abroad!”
Even though she had already set her eyes on a foreign country, Bianque was sick of the old husband.
Queen Silvia had Valquiterre and Bianque as her children.
The Queen's twin sister Elise married the Duke of Temnes and gave birth to Kaian.
Their mothers had the same beautiful appearance as identical twins, but their dressing styles and moods were different, so there was no confusion between the two.
However, because the sons who were born were thoroughly entrusted, both Valquiterre and Kaian were extremely handsome. There were quite a few opinions that the two looked similar, perhaps because their mothers were twins.
In any case, Bianque had been seeing men of her own age closely since her childhood, including Ragon Valquiterre and Kaian, and she was disgusted by the sight of gentlemen of a wide range of ages whom she might choose to marry.
And that too on the day of her debutante.
On the day she returned from her debutante, Bianque promised herself that she would soap the backs of her hands, which had been touched by the lips of middle-aged gentlemen countless times throughout the night.
She says she will never get married unless it is Kaian.
She might think she was shaking even though he didn't even touch her glove directly by kissing her, but the situation in the marriage market in the Kingdom of Oberon was such a shock to Bianque.
“Your husband.”
Valquiterre opened his mouth.
“I plan to look for it from now on.”
"What?"
Tears welled up in Bianque's eyes.
“You gave away the best groom in a perfectly fine kingdom to Vermont, which is nothing but trash. Are you crazy? I can’t believe I’ll find out from now on.”
Her mother's only sister was the Duchess of Temnes.
Madame Elise, who became her aunt, was also a great presence to her, so Bianque loathed Vermont like Temnes, even though she was the Princess of the kingdom.
“Princess Bianque.”
Valquiter called to her sternly in his low voice.
“Do you think that action is befitting the dignity of a Princess?”
The fact that he called her by her official title, not her name, meant to tell her not to think about climbing up.
“I hope you don’t suspect that I’m sending my only sister to an old nobleman’s job. You need to go away.”
"...I will follow the King’s will.”
Bianque gritted her teeth, forced her head down, and headed out of his bedroom.
However, the beautiful Young Lady's innocence was shattered, so she ended up screaming in anger.
“A marriage made by royal order can be canceled by royal order! If it’s not Kaian, I’ll die!”
The servants who were opening the door in the hallway were startled by Bianque's voice and froze like statues, only looking at the King.
“she don’t even have the courage to die.”
Valquiterre muttered cynically, put down what he was reading, and looked into space.
“Has it been about a month now? Have Kaian entered the tomb called marriage?”
Even now, having pushed his older cousin to the precipice of marriage, Valquiterre was still unmarried.
Up to this age he was never without a Queen.
It was customary for the Crown Prince to be engaged even when he was ten or six years old.
There was another reason why he did not get married until this age.
This is because he wanted to have a wife who was better than Kaian.
He didn't know about Kaian, who was surprisingly dull, but Valquiterre hated him since he was very young.
As a Prince, Kaian didn't like being tied down because he was the heir to a Duke and had twin Princesses as his mother, and he also hated being compared to who was good at everything and who was not.
Nevertheless, Kaian was a useful chess piece.
Because the Temnes family was basically prolific, there were many people who were collateral blood relatives.
Kaian was in such a difficult situation that he believed that he could take over the family in case something went wrong rather than getting married himself.
On the other hand, he must have been confident that he would come back alive, but Valquiterre was horrified by Kaian's arrogance.
He hated the confidence that he could achieve everything his way.
So Valquiterre gave the order to marry Vermont.
He intended to give him the most terrible marriage he could give him.
Valquiterre smiled beautifully, rolling his eyes as he imagined the bloody North Wind blowing over Temnes.
“I wonder if we’ll be able to see something good next month. I hope it’s fun.”
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