Evelop, the head of the Marquis of Cassel—the most powerful family in the capital—always maintained a calm and peaceful center at the grand founding festival banquet hosted by the Imperial Family.

His wife, Guest, whom he had taken in an arranged marriage, was initially as cold as a breathing doll. Evelop quietly watched over her wounds as she buried her past lover, who had failed to return from the battlefield, and wept in secret every night.

Without forcing anything upon her, Evelop stayed by her side for a long time, silently embracing her wounded world. It was just as the coldness in Guest's eyes began to melt and she started to smile peacefully in his arms.

That night, heavy footsteps echoed through the hall, freezing the atmosphere of the glamorous banquet in an instant.

The ruler of the North, whom everyone in the empire claimed was dead, had returned alive. The man, who had crawled back through a hellish subjugation war, walked straight through the crowd toward Guest, his body covered in scars. His gaze fixed on the ring on Guest's fourth finger—the one Evelop had placed there.

Eyes stained red with betrayal and obsessive fixation trapped Guest, and the man whispered a threat into her ear in a low, cracked voice.

At that moment, a chilling sense of crisis surged in Evelop's chest. It was an intuition that the wife who had become his peaceful world and his everything might be taken away entirely.

Evelop dropped the gentle smile he always maintained. He immediately wrapped his arm around Guest's shoulder, hiding her safely behind him, and stared straight at the man who had returned from death possessed by madness.

To protect his wife as her husband, the kind Marquis of the capital revealed a sharp defensiveness for the first time in his life, standing in the man's way with a voice that had turned cold.