Kael Hardeion, Duke of Hardeion. Twenty-six years old. Unmarried.
He was, moreover, one of only three dukes in the empire—and while the other two were middle-aged men, he was not.
The place Kael hated most in the world was high society.
He had come to this conclusion at the age of thirteen, attending a gala with his parents.
High society was nothing more than a mating ground for the well-dressed.
‘Marriage’, they called it. At the end of it all, the purpose was to find a suitable match—weigh the conditions, strike the deal, and produce offspring through the basest of animal impulses. The blue-blooded aristocracy, so devoted to their precious dignity, were in practice driven by motivations as vulgar as any creature in the wild.
Kael viewed the entire enterprise with cold contempt. The idea of being physically close to another person repelled him entirely.
From that point on, he declined every social invitation—and every marriage proposal and matchmaking meeting along with them. He had no interest whatsoever in romance or in building a family.
He simply returned to his duchy and worked.
And then a letter arrived from the Empress.
‘To my beloved nephew Kael,’
‘My wonderful, darling Kael. I trust you’re well.’
‘I write because I’ve just thought of exactly what I’d like for my birthday this year.’
‘For my forty-fifth birthday, the gift I’d like from you is your attendance at the Lagrasse Foundation gala in the capital.’
‘Surely you wouldn’t think of overlooking your empress aunt’s birthday entirely?’
‘You have now failed to give me a birthday present for five years running, this year included.’
‘If you choose to ignore this letter as well, I will personally select a suitable young lady and come to Hardeion myself.’
‘— Your aunt, who carried you on her back as though you were her own child.’
Kael’s brow creased in distaste. He stared at the letter in silence.
The Empress.
The mother of the empire. And yet she had, for years, harbored an inexplicable obsession with her nephew’s marriage.
“‘Tch.’ What a nuisance.”
Everything that wasn’t work was a nuisance.
But ignoring the Empress’s birthday was simply not an option.
* * *
He arrived deliberately late, when the gala was nearly over.
Outside the entrance to the hall, the air was thick with perfume and face powder and the sourness of wine, all of it churned together in one suffocating wave.
‘Damn.’
Kael pressed his sleeve against his nose and frowned. He had come to a standstill just past the threshold—feet frozen to the floor—when he heard an unusual sound.
“‘Heh.'”
He turned.
A woman stood nearby, coiling and uncoiling herself in what appeared to be an excess of bashfulness. She had fair skin and small, honey-golden hair—and a pair of luminous green eyes that refused to leave his face.
“What.”
“You’re very handsome…”
“…?”
She went on sneaking glances at him from beneath those clear, transparent eyes. Then she pressed both hands to her cheeks and turned pink with self-inflicted embarrassment.
“You’re ‘so’ handsome… ‘hehe’. Oh, I’m embarrassed…!”
‘I’ve walked into something deeply wrong’, he thought.
“Maybe I could fall in real love now after all…? I don’t have a fiancé anymore… ‘ah’, looking at you makes my heart go all—thump thump thump—I wonder if this is actually love…”
She clutched her own chest like a woman in cardiac distress and beamed a dreamy, dewy-eyed look in his direction. Those green eyes sparkled like cut emeralds.
Already half in love, she was apparently constructing an entire imaginary future with him.
He addressed her plainly.
“Out of my way.”
“Oh—! Are you leaving?”
Her face crumpled into the expression of a raccoon who had just watched its prized snack dissolve in a river.
He despised nuisances. Women most of all.
“That is none of your concern.”
“Mmm… you’re so cold… Ivelina is sad…”
He had never heard that name in his life. He raised an eyebrow.
‘Who is Ivelina?’
At that precise moment, she reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
“Can’t you stay and play with Ivelina a little longer? I don’t have anyone now that my engagement’s been broken off… and I’m bored…”
“Who exactly is this ‘Ivelina’ person?”
“‘Heh’. It’s me.”
Ivelina looked down, abashed, and let color spread across her cheeks.
The shock of it registered plainly in his eyes. Third-person self-reference was not something he had encountered before.
‘Is she out of her mind?’
‘Tch.’ He grimaced. He wanted no part of whatever this was.
But Ivelina was already swinging his collar back and forth, sharing personal details he had not asked for—writhing with cheerful energy as she rattled on.
He shut it down coldly.
“Enough. I don’t care who you are.”
And he turned and walked away.
‘Shuffle shuffle.’
She was following him. A few steps behind—just trailing along like a duckling.
He told himself he didn’t hear her and kept walking.
‘She’s small. She won’t keep up.’
‘Shuffle shuffle!’
She kept up. Determined, even accelerating—the hurried click of heels now audible, accompanied by small, strange sounds of exertion.
He lengthened his stride to lose her. By the time the garden was half behind him, the ornate front gate was in sight.
‘…’
The footsteps behind him went quiet.
“‘Phew.'”
He slowed down and let himself exhale.
‘What an extraordinarily strange woman.’
And then—from somewhere back the way he had come—voices.
“C—come on, stop this!”
“Hm? Lady, we’re not weird or anything. We just want to have a little fun.”
“Let go of me! I have people with me—!”
“Relax, we’re not going to do anything. Just be friends! And what people? Looks like you came alone to me.”
“No—no, I didn’t—! I have a partner—!”
Several men had formed a loose circle around Ivelina. They had each taken hold of one of her wrists and were clinging on like leeches. She kept trying to pull free—and the more she resisted, the more they laughed and pressed closer.
He stopped.
He stood there and considered.
Then Ivelina started to cry, and he turned around and walked back.
“Ivelina.”
His voice dropped low and clean and absolute—and every one of those ridiculous men went still at once.
Ivelina’s tear-streaked face flooded with relief. Her eyes flew frantically in the direction of the voice. They found him.
“‘Hick’—could you help me, please…!”
The men turned—slowly, joints creaking—and a massive black shadow fell over them.
Black hair like a starless sky. Eyes the deep red of blood. A head almost absurdly small atop shoulders that spanned a small horizon. A build that came within striking distance of ten heads tall.
A precisely fitted black formal uniform of unmistakable quality.
The Duke of Hardeion.
The man of legend—who had buried and destroyed every person who had ever made an enemy of him.
The men’s pupils dilated with raw animal fear.
“Is there something I can help you gentlemen with regarding my partner?”
“W—we—that is—w—we didn’t know—s—sorry—”
The hands around Ivelina’s wrists went limp and dropped away. The men began retreating in small, trembling steps.
Terror and relief collided inside Ivelina at once, and her legs gave out entirely. She sat down hard on the ground.
“‘Hick’… I was so scared…”
She sniffled in a way that had absolutely no business being as pitiful as it was—wiping her eyes, voice catching in her throat.
‘No stage director on earth could have timed that better’, the retreating men thought, their faces draining to the color of paper.
‘And why the childlike lisp all of a sudden—’
Kael kept his eyes fixed on them without blinking. Merely by looking at them—as he always did—he was more than enough.
The men began to tremble visibly.
He tilted his head and spoke from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Ivelina, sweetheart. I told you to stay right next to me. Look what happens.”
“‘Hick’… I’m sorry…”
The men stared.
The small, delicate woman was being quietly scolded by the terrifying man—and she was weeping with wide, soft eyes and a lisp.
‘Well. That’s—honestly that’s just—damn.’
Kael found himself quietly grateful that Ivelina was, apparently, not quite right in the head. Her reactions made this hasty performance feel entirely believable.
He looked at her with complicated eyes and exhaled.
The men could barely breathe under the combined pressure of the pink-and-black atmosphere swirling between the two of them.
So Kael added one more line for their benefit.
“Enjoy the show?”
“S—sorry—! We have committed a grave offense—!”
“P—please, please forgive us—!”
They scrambled onto all fours and fled.
Somewhere in the garden—in a dark corner, concealed behind a tangle of ornamental shrubs—
Someone had been watching all of this from the very beginning.
* * *
