Follow Your Heart [EN]: Chapter 8

#8.

It was Roderick who opened his eyes first.

At first, he frowned slightly, noticing a difference in his body.

It was a good difference, of course.

The moment he saw the familiar face, lips slightly parted in soft breaths, he realized he’d been using Hailey Duncan’s lap as a pillow.

He also realized he was hugging her too tightly.

“………”

The courtiers watched as the King frowned, then raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Why am I doing this?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t know *why*. It was an expression of disbelief.

That *he*, who hadn’t slept properly for days, was sleeping soundly like this in front of so many courtiers.

However, Jade answered directly.

Although Roderick had never explicitly said so, she vaguely knew that he sometimes couldn’t remember things.

“You had tea, sat side by side, and then…”

“………”

“You simply fell asleep.”

*Of course*, Her Majesty had poked and prodded him a few times, and then His Majesty had returned the favor… but she couldn’t possibly say *that* out loud.

Meanwhile, Roderick chuckled in disbelief. It was a somewhat familiar story.

He got up, roughly swept his hair back, and looked at the Queen, who was still completely asleep.

Time passed, and after a moment, Roderick said,

“Have her moved somewhere comfortable to sleep.”

The courtiers, who had been hesitating, became somewhat frantic at the order.

The servants stepped forward a little faster than the knights, but in the end, it was Jade, the commander of the Knights, who carefully lifted the Queen. She was, after all, the King’s wife, and he couldn’t entrust her to just any man.

Just as Jade was about to leave the audience chamber, everyone froze at Roderick’s next words.

“Put her in my bedroom.”

“………”

“Don’t wake her unnecessarily by taking her too far.”

The King’s bedroom was much closer.

To people as jaded as they were, it didn’t sound like such a pure intention, but they *were* a married couple.

Even if the intention was a little… *darker*, it couldn’t exactly be called *wrong*.

So the King’s servants looked at the Queen’s maids with suspicious eyes.

*Really*, nothing happened?

Actually, are they… *okay*?

Unable to be sure of the affairs in the high-ranking people’s bedrooms, they glared at each other with distrust.

However, most of them eventually concluded that it was unlikely.

One had jumped into the river, proclaiming she wouldn’t go through with the marriage, and the other had suspected Duncan [referring to the Duke of Duncan, Hailey’s father] from the start, so there was no way they could be on good terms.

Lee Jae, opening her eyes in an unfamiliar room, wore a troubled expression.

She opened her eyes to find herself in another unknown place.

Her first thought was whether she had died without realizing it.

Lee Jae got up and looked in the mirror first.

Apricot-colored hair, white skin, a slightly pointed chin. It was Hailey Duncan.

She let out a sigh of relief.

Roderick, when he was in his right mind, wasn’t a tyrant who would chop off heads for his legal spouse touching his body.

*Yes, you’re not such a terrible husband after all.*

Actually, I wasn’t even *that* sleepy.

However, Lee Jae once again wore a troubled expression.

The state of the room she looked around was… *serious*.

“Being here would give you a mental illness even if you *didn’t* have one.”

Lee Jae intuitively realized that this was the King’s room.

The spirits, with a similar aura to what he carried around, were huddled in the corner because of Lee Jae.

“……At this point, it’s amazing that you’re even alive.”

Lee Jae, who felt an ominous energy like a haunted house in the King’s sacred bedroom, immediately opened the door. She felt nauseous.

Then Deborah and the maids were standing outside the room, as if they had been waiting.

The head maid, seeing Lee Jae’s pale complexion, assumed the Queen was embarrassed and began an explanation.

“This is His Majesty’s bedroom. We brought you here because you fell asleep.”

“……Why?”

*Why* did you bring me to this haunted house?

I’m the kind of person who doesn’t go to haunted houses or cemeteries, even by accident.

“His Majesty told us to bring you to a close place so that you wouldn’t wake up on the way.”

Lee Jae, who was holding back her nausea, wore an expression as if she had heard something strange.

She soon laughed humorlessly.

The King doesn’t even know that he received help.

*Nevertheless, he gives me a little bit of a consultation fee every time*, she thought.

As Lee Jae was sensitive to such gloomy energy, it wasn’t a very welcome direction.

But she touched the amulet in her arms several times. She belatedly had this thought.

‘It would have been much better if I had hidden a few [amulets] and left them behind.’

However, the courtiers were looking at the Queen with puzzled faces.

In the end, Lee Jae bit her lip while walking out of the room.

A few days later, Roderick proposed a meal to Lee Jae.

It was their first meal together in fifteen days since their ceremony.

Jade reported on the contents of the letter he had secretly confirmed in the Queen’s study before that.

‘Your Majesty, Duke Duncan has sent a letter to Her Majesty the Queen.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said to bring people from the Dukedom to serve her. He is very worried that you have been sick and uncomfortable.’

The King and his people all laughed at the story. Anyone could see that it was an intention to plant Duncan’s people in the royal family.

And Duke Duncan naturally knows that the King will not allow it.

This is just one of the minor power struggles that frequently take place between the King and the nobles.

However, Hailey was from the Duncan family and would receive more and more requests for interviews.

Who can guarantee that she will not become her father’s puppet and become the center of the nobles?

The reason why Roderick kept putting marriage proposals in humble families and pointing to the Duncan family as the mastermind behind the two accidents was the same reason.

So this meal was purely a setting prepared to gauge Hailey Duncan’s reaction.

Roderick came to the luncheon venue and sat down first.

He was lost in thought for quite a long time.

He was thinking about how to bring up the topic, and there was only one conclusion to the conversation he had to make.

Even in the meantime, Roderick’s nerves were frayed.

He habitually frowned, covering his forehead from time to time.

The moment the Queen, dressed in a flowing dress, appeared, he frowned even more than before.

Because he had fallen into a very strange feeling.

Strangely, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the air was getting clearer.

And the more she took a step towards him, the more refreshing the air felt, becoming thicker and spreading further.

It doesn’t make sense, but it was actually a sensible feeling.

But he, narrowing his eyes and looking at Lee Jae, dismissed this unrealistic feeling in one word.

“How strange.”

Lee Jae stopped trying to approach at Roderick’s words.

“Yes?”

“No.”

“………”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

He shook his head and pointed to the opposite side with his finger.

“Sit down, now that you’re here.”

Lee Jae silently sat down in the seat he indicated.

Roderick tapped the table with his finger for quite a long time, just looking at her.

Lee Jae was also lost in thought for a while and said nothing.

However, before all the food came out, it was Lee Jae who spoke first.

“Your Majesty, I have something to tell you.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“A few days ago, Duke Duncan, my father, sent me a letter.”

At those words, Roderick was silent for a moment.

Everyone else was holding their breath and nervous, but Roderick was in a slightly different mood from them.

Until just now, he was clearly thinking about how to bring up the topic, but he realized that he had completely forgotten about it.

He chuckled and decided to hand over the initiative of the conversation to the Queen.

“What does the Duke say?”

“He said he would send people from the Dukedom to serve me. He said it would be more comfortable that way.”

Lee Jae said that and glanced at him before adding.

“Should I show it to you? There’s nothing special, but I brought it.”

Roderick shook his head. It was content that had already been confirmed in the manuscript.

Instead, he asked Lee Jae with interest.

“So what do *you* want to do?”

“Are you giving me a choice again this time?”

Then a hint of a smile passed through his blue eyes.

It was because he understood what the Queen was referring to.

It was the day he told her to choose one of two things: accept the royal marriage or die for sure this time.

He pondered for a moment before nodding briefly.

“If you want.”

Jade, who was listening, wore a bewildered expression.

The flow of the conversation was going somewhere… *wrong*.

He told her to pull it to our side, but it was in the form of being dragged along.

But Lee Jae, who heard the affirmative answer from the King, joked with sincerity.

“Is the choice more… fair than *then*?”

Roderick laughed out loud this time.

He rubbed his eyes and did a dry wash [a gesture of wiping one’s face with one’s hands], then said,

“It’s quite a sight to see you start saying everything you want to say honestly.”

“Yes, I was too arrogant after all. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s better now.”

Roderick nodded as if to tell her to continue.

However, Lee Jae once again wore a troubled expression.

Lee Jae was honestly curious about Hailey Duncan.

*Hailey Duncan, would you have taken your father’s side? Is it better to have a father like that than not to have one?*

But the diary is vast, and Lee Jae, whose memory is incomplete, doesn’t know what kind of person she was.

In the end, Lee Jae said the conclusion she had come to.

“I’m going to write that I can’t accept the offer. I haven’t been in the royal family for long, but if I do that already, it won’t look good to people.”

It was a satisfactory conclusion for everyone in that place.

But Roderick, who felt a subtle undertone, narrowed his eyes.

Even if she had asked him, he would have said no anyway.

But she didn’t bother to blame the cause of the refusal on him.

You could say she put him in debt.

It wasn’t a reply that completely turned her back on the Duncan family. There is room for the word ‘not yet’.

However, the royal family and the nobles did not need to have a power struggle over this issue.

They lost the excuse for the time being.

It was different from her father’s intention, but that’s why it was rather Duncan-like behavior.

*Should I see that blood is thicker after all?*

Roderick glanced at Jade standing at the door.

Jade paused, and the King’s gaze was asking.