"I will definitely make that child the heir of Temnes."
After muttering it aloud, he was moved once again. How could the woman who'd become his wife be like this?
Even before her expected death, Claudel had thought of Valmonde's subjects. Even when she'd entered the enemy's house, she'd possessed an honest side. Even in his most heartfelt moments, she could have truly hated him and grown cold after he'd first calculated the Duke of Vermont's influence—but Claudel hadn't done that.
Once, twice—even when disappointed or frustrated, she'd tried again. Every time Claudel did that, she'd touched Kaian's heart. He was convinced that she would never give up or let go of him.
When people collided, traces were left behind. Little by little, she'd melted the strong heart of a man she'd thought was as cold as stone and as hard as iron.
"So small and weak."
It was surprising that such a strong heart existed within a small woman who could be easily held in his arms.
Kaian gently kissed the hair below Claudel's ear and carefully stood up. Everyone in the castle must have sought their beds, so he was the only one walking through the dark hallway.
The guard standing watch in front of the Lord's office straightened his posture and raised his spear when he saw Kaian returning late at night.
Kaian approached the office desk and, instead of sitting down, headed to its right side. The wide desk's top protruded stylishly in all directions, and when he ran his hand underneath, he discovered a secret device carved into the thick wooden board.
*Click.*
When Kaian activated the mechanism, the desk sections placed left and right of the door rotated, revealing an empty space in the floor—a hidden chamber.
Kaian put to good use the castle his ancestor Temnes had renovated. What he liked most was this secret space beneath the desk.
It might be convenient to have a pump allowing hot water use in his room without fetching it from the castle kitchen, but from his perspective as family head, it made no difference whether water was drawn by machine or carried by servants. The bedroom's open ceiling had been of little use beyond showing it to Claudel once.
But the place to hide family secrets was different. The mechanism that moved the desk could be concealed so that in an emergency, it would never be found even if someone suspected something and broke the entire office floor with an axe. It would be impossible to steal what was hidden.
This was because the walls surrounding the secret space were double-layered—if damaged, poison would flow out and melt or destroy the contents. That kind of thoroughness definitely made him think scholars were scholars.
Inside were documents about titles and fiefs passed down through the family. Documents containing oaths of vassals who'd sworn allegiance to Temnes and the land and rights granted to them in return. Certificates of repayment for money lent to other fiefs or noblemen—there were several cases of quite large amounts never returned, and the previous Duke of Temnes used to call this hidden wealth.
If something happened in the estate and urgent money was needed, he could rightfully demand it from these families. There were even a few deeds where parts of estates had been mortgaged in return for borrowing money. The deed with the family head's seal guaranteed that the lands Temnes ruled actually existed throughout Oberon's kingdom.
And several leather pouches filled with large gold bars and precious stones as big as his finger.
Kaian knelt in the lamplight, reached in, examined what lay within, and withdrew one book. After restoring the desk to its original position, Kaian sat down and stared at it without opening it.
The book—rough as thick black leather folded in half—contained the Temnes family's most intimate secrets.
He opened the notebook partway and began flipping through it.
*Rustle. Rustle.*
Words written in straight letters on each page passed beneath his fingers. As each page bearing the names of previous Dukes of Temnes went by, Kaian's face became increasingly expressionless and the warmth in his eyes disappeared.
What was written in this book were records of babies and births born to the direct descendants of Temnes. However, contrary to the known fact that there were one, or at most two or three heirs, there were records of seven, eight, twenty, or more babies.
It was called "succession identification."
In the Kingdom of Oberon, many people were born with brown hair and brown eyes. Among them, lineages with distinctive symbolic colors—such as the Oberon royal family, Vermont, and Temnes—were unique.
People valued and revered what they didn't have. What was common was worthless. The rulers had realized this early on.
Rather than pledging a hundred words of loyalty, it was far more advantageous to gain hegemony by openly making people aware they were different and superior, showing them with their own eyes.
From the beginning of the Kingdom of Oberon, physical peculiarities like hair color and eye color had been sacralized. The head of a distant ancestral family had followed such moves by the royal family.
If marriages within a family were excessively consanguineous, there was a high possibility children would be born with genetic or mental problems. However, the more blood mixed with external sources, the lower the probability of children being born with the symbolic colors.
So these records had been kept from generation to generation.
What was written in the book Kaian opened was a record of "succession identification." Childbirth was the birth of life. As expected, the possibility of children with black hair and red eyes being born into the family was low.
Moreover, beyond preserving the bloodline, the family head's marriage was made after various political calculations, so the possibility of the spouse having the colors desired by the family was once again reduced.
However, there had never been a child with brown hair and brown eyes acknowledged in the Temnes family.
The contents written in the book were records penned directly by family heads. It was written when a Duchess gave birth and what color hair and eyes the child possessed.
Children born without the symbolic colors were discarded.
"Succession identification" literally meant selecting a suitable child as the family's successor. However, under this pretext, if the baby's appearance was unsuitable for a family head, the infant was secretly abandoned.
Meanwhile, genetically speaking, the child's descendants might have black hair or red eyes, so their locations and growth were regularly monitored.
If a Duchess was unable to bear children, it was also practiced to secretly impregnate women outside the family with the previous Duke's heir, who was a blood relative. If the Duchess successfully produced a worthy heir, the child born outside the family was either exchanged or abandoned depending on appearance.
Sometimes, if children with black hair and red eyes were born simultaneously, there couldn't be two heirs. That child became something that shouldn't exist under heaven and was hidden away.
Even if the family head wasn't healthy or lacked the ability to rule the territory, if he had black hair and red eyes, he was completely revered within Temnes' walls.
Even now, there were quite a few people in the collateral bloodlines with black hair, but very few with red eyes. There was only one man with black hair and red eyes: Kaian.
However, his father seemed to have had slightly different thoughts from previous Temnes heads. The previous Duke of Temnes had apparently struggled to accept the family secret he'd inherited when becoming family head.
Kaian's father had been a very upright man. It would have been difficult for such a person to obediently discard newborn babies like objects in the name of family glory. Also, since he'd taken the Kingdom's Princess as his wife, he wouldn't have been willing to do that to children born to a wife of such noble status.
The previous Duke had wanted to stop the succession determination. His father had judged that the territory people's respect for the Temnes family wasn't solely about appearance. And Kaian agreed with that thinking.
If he'd been a poor and sickly family head, he might have been obsessed with the symbolic color he'd been born with. However, the man considered one of the most outstanding family heads of all time held a firm belief that character didn't change based solely on hair and eye color.
Even if Kaian had ordinary brown hair and brown eyes, the bearing of an undefeated warrior was something trained from within—not something innate.
"Vermont's red hair and golden eyes are also its symbolic colors."
The territory's residents all had common brown hair and brown eyes. It wouldn't be psychologically easy if he suddenly ordered the people—who bowed their heads in excitement just seeing him ride with his jet-black hair flying—to serve a family head who looked just like them.
The idolatry that had been close to brainwashing for hundreds of years couldn't be broken so easily. It would be taken for granted that Claudel's child would have Vermont's symbolic colors.
He didn't know what kind of child she'd give birth to, but Kaian thought this was a heaven-sent opportunity to eliminate their harmful customs.
When he thought of the Duke of Vermont, he got annoyed and for a moment thought he could never recognize a child with red hair as Temnes. But looking at Claudel, her red hair was striking and beautiful.
In any case, if the child was born healthy, Kaian intended to break this practice in his generation. It had to be today—the day he'd learned Claudel was pregnant.
Kaian dipped the pen nib in ink and began writing in the empty space.
*[Kaian Pluck Temnes.]*
*[The first child born to my wife Claudel Quinn Temnes of the Vermont family will be the heir.]*
He hesitated, then wrote one more line.
*[May the sacrifice without honor end here.]*
Taking someone's life on the battlefield was answering the call of the country to which one had been commanded. One didn't mourn the daily life of those who'd passed away. It was Oberon's flag clashing with another country's as swords met.
However, protecting the young and vulnerable was a law that must be kept.
Kaian's eyes stopped on the records of the previous Duke of Temnes.
*[Elise Hexa Temnes, October 28, 613, Kingdom Calendar. Delivery. Twins.]*
Twins.
Kaian's eyes grew even darker as he looked at his birth record.
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