IHMEB - Chapter 25 < Her Lips >
Having An Enemy's Baby
“What are you doing without opening your mouth?”
Kaian's eyebrows furrowed obliquely.
As soon as I saw it, I said 'Ah' and opened my mouth, but the cut of meat he held out was too big.
He took back the meat he offered as if he were going to feed me and cut it into small pieces with a knife.
"Ah.."
The meat that returned to my mouth was still too big for me to eat.
“It has to be smaller than this...”
“That’s annoying.”
Clicking his tongue, Kaian cut into the meat again. When I finally took a bite of the piece of meat with his fork, I quickly took it without saying anything.
There is nothing wrong with meat.
As soon as I put the meat cut by the enemy into my mouth, the juice that wetted my soul flowed, making me happy.
“Do you usually eat that little?”
“... Yes?"
As soon as I swallowed the meat, Kaian spooned me some fruit pudding.
I quickly took it again and ate it before he frowned.
'Am I eating a little bit?'
He says that even after seeing the bowl completely empty?
Are you being sarcastic about me eating a lot?
It was a time when I was confused.
“I asked because you were bitching about it.”
Just a bite?
I blinked my eyes.
'Could it be that women in Temnes also eat more than this?'
The plate I just emptied is more than what I ate when I was in good health at Valmonde.
I had never seen anything like other Temnes women eating at Rowen Castle, so that's what I thought.
“The doctor said you need to eat a lot to completely recover.”
“It’s still a lot better now.”
“That’s not even close.”
Kaian scooped up and fed me the potato dish that I had just said out loud that it was delicious.
As I calmly took it and ate it, I wondered if he liked to feed me.
***
Kaian was on the verge of being crushed by the piled-up work of the Lord.
He got married suddenly because of the King's order, so he wasted time going to and from Valmonde, and he had a grand wedding banquet at Rowen Castle.
This wedding banquet was held for only three days, but as soon as the wedding was decided, it was as if the butlers and castle residents were hired for a whole month to prepare.
This was possible because Rowen is a land with abundant food, but from other territories, it would have taken at least three months just to airlift the alcohol and ingredients needed for the banquet.
Then, Claudel got sick with Herzol, so he lost his time for a while, such as getting medicine and going water buffalo hunting, and all sorts of things piled up.
The fall festival was just one month away.
Rowen was a warm land all year round with no winter. Therefore, the festival held to celebrate the harvest when the seasons changed in the central region of the Oberon Kingdom had no meaning.
However, as the customs near the capital became more refined and admired even in regions with different seasons, festivals were held throughout Oberon's kingdom regardless of the season when the 'autumn' season came.
“They say Valmonde’s fall festival is held on ice.”
Suddenly, he wondered what Claudel looked like at the festival in Valmonde.
In Valmonde, which was frozen for more than half of the year, the ground began to freeze in the fall of the Kingdom.
“Even though she's the daughter of an enemy family, I feel different now that she has become my wife.”
In the past, when he thought about Valmonde, he thought about how to rule the land recovered after occupation from Temnes, the end and end, and where to place the first occupying army in Valmonde's territory.
While being so busy, Kaian took the time to go see Claudel and take care of her.
When Claudel fell.
Seeing Claudel thinking that of course, she was going to die and that there was no room for her to survive, Kaian did some self-deprecating self-reflection.
He did not know that if he turned his back and treated her coldly, Claudel would live a short life or something similar, and it was true that it was a waste to even give Vermont a place in the territory.
What Kaian realized through this incident was that rather than thinking of Claudel as the daughter of his enemy, he thought of her more like his own wife.
Although he doesn't know exactly why.
Before she first came to the castle and spent the night, just seeing Vermont's unique red hair made him angry, but when he met Claudel, his uncomfortable and unpleasant mood quickly disappeared.
Even thinking about it again, it was difficult to understand why he felt so strongly about saving Claudel.
After sending the dead woman's body in the carriage to the Duke of Vermont, who had sent his sick niece despite the King's orders, he could have started a fief war by questioning whether the Duke of Vermont had tricked him into marrying the sick woman.
It had been four years since Kaian had been preparing for a territory war that would burn down Vermont.
After receiving reports from the battlefield that Vermont was suffering from a drought and that the food shortage was worsening, they cracked down on food being sent to the north from then on.
There was also a case where a person who was brokering the export of food from Rowen to Valmonde committed suicide after being caught up in Vermont's accusation that Valmonde and its residents were starving because they did not grant export permits.
How could something that had been prepared so intensely and meticulously be so casually undone just because one woman died?
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to get married twice anyway. She has already been accepted as a bride, so it’s not something that can be done without it.”
The reason that Kaian was able to convince himself was because of his realistic and rational judgment.
Because Claudel became his wife.
Now she too was Temnes, not Vermont.
To obtain the heart of a baby buffalo, Kaian dug five deep traps in the wide grassland.
The female wild buffalo was over 2 meters long, but the calf was much smaller.
A small, deep trap was dug to prevent it from falling in, archers fired arrows in succession, and knights on horseback drove them in one direction.
Once they formed a group of hundreds of people and started running, there was no turning back.
Like soldiers marching in line, even if they stop or try to turn around, their own compatriots with huge horns behind them attack them.
The cub fell into a trap that had been placed, and even when its mother made a pitiful noise and tried to look behind it, it was dragged by the group, hitting its back and side.
After the round of driving, luckily there were two calves caught in the trap, so Kaian quickly pulled out the calves with a rope before the leader of the buffalo herd returned to them, placed them on a prepared cart, and jumped out.
It was a clean hunt that even the elites who had been watching Kaian's achievements for five years were impressed.
Kaian didn't think that even such a task would be that difficult.
In everything, there is an overarching goal.
He had no choice but to break through if he couldn't avoid seeing blood in the process, but he didn't think it was necessary to risk the life of an elite knight when he could only get the details in such an indirect way.
What made Kaian undefeated was his outstanding ability in both civil and martial arts.
And he assured himself that he would never fail in the future.
As always.
Claudel, who was fed not one but two wild buffalo calf hearts, stopped vomiting blood in one day and stopped coughing on the third day.
The doctor said that the reason she did not wake up was because her disease was so deep that her suffering body could not rest.
However, Kaian was not too worried about her not waking up.
Because he will not fail to save her life.
It was Kaian's mental world that most people could not access.
Even bringing a dying person back to life was something he was able to accomplish with the power of a God.
After saving Claudel, his slightly shaken confidence and identity returned to their original state.
He had to be the one to decide whether to save or throw away someone's life in front of Kaian.
The woman who everyone said was hopeless was taken from the God of death.
That was the Lord of Temnes, Kaian himself.
Now, as the butler said, he was trying to maintain discipline within the castle for the sake of the future heirs he would raise, so he was trying to eat together in Claudel's room once a day.
“In the past, when I was this busy, I could just fill my stomach.”
Having spent five years on the battlefield, he had a very rational personality.
Before marriage, when he was very busy, he would eat ham, cheese, and meat sandwiched between bread in his office.
“You don’t know this kind of sincerity. She seems like a tactless woman.”
In his own way, Kaian had lunch with Claudel every day to help her regain her dignity and recovery.
Meanwhile, his eyes kept turning to Claudel's face.
The woman, whose illness had subsided, was growing like a pale green flower bathed in dew at dawn.
Her complexion returned to her pale skin, and her cheeks, which had lost weight, plumped up nicely.
And more than anything, what caught his eye was her lips.
Her lips, which were light pink, turned bright red, and she was so amazed that he kept looking at them.
Claudel's small, pretty lips moved diligently throughout the meal.
Kaian cut the amount into dozens of pieces that she could eat with three strokes of her fork and ate it diligently. It looked so similar that it was difficult to take his eyes off it.
One time, after she emptied her plate, their eyes met, so he hesitated and cut up his portion of meat to tell her to eat more, but he didn't have the jaws to fit into her small mouth, so he cut and cut again before she was finally able to eat it.
Every time she ate, Claudel became more alive and prettier, so Kaian wondered if this was what it felt like to have a pet.
He's never raised anything like that.
It was true that he felt rewarded because she was eating well and her condition was noticeably improving.
Knock, knock.
There was a knock on the office door and the butler came in.
“My Lord. Where would you like to eat today?”
When the butler asked whether he should go to Claudel's room or settle things lightly in the office, Kaian stood up.
“I’m with Claudel.”
"Yes. My lord.”
The butler said while walking down the hallway.
“Madam practiced dancing in the morning.”
“Dance?”
"Yes. The dance teacher you asked for came today for the first time. The doctor said that moderate exercise would be more helpful for recovery, so I quickly searched for a suitable person within the estate.”
"Good job."
However, when Kaian arrived at Claudel's room, his eyes immediately frowned.
“What are you doing now?”
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