**Chapter 52 — It's Only Natural, for a Couple**
*I Ended Up Living Next Door to My Ex-Husband*
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"Devon, please — let the two of them stay in the village tonight!"
Chief Devon blinked at Bianca, visibly caught off guard. So was I.
*Cedric and I. Together. In this village.*
The schedule hadn't accounted for this, but as the surprise settled, I found myself reconsidering. An unexpected stay meant more time with the villagers — more opportunity to actually reach them. Perhaps this wasn't an unwelcome turn after all.
*Cedric and I will be in separate cabins, obviously. So it doesn't really matter.*
I gave Chief Devon a slow nod.
"I'd like that as well. If you'll have me, I'd be glad to stay and help with whatever work needs doing around the village."
"......"
"That is, of course, only if you and the villagers are willing."
Bianca, sensing an opening, seized both fistfuls of my skirt with an expression of luminous excitement.
"Then I want to stay too! All of us together!"
Chief Devon looked at the child's beaming face and struggled visibly to maintain his composure. His gaze skipped over me entirely and landed on Bianca.
"Everyone in this village would be glad to have His Highness and the Princess stay. The two of you are always welcome here." He paused. "But Princess — do you really think His Highness the Grand Duke would agree to such an arrangement? Staying here, with..." His eyes flicked toward me, then away. "That seems rather unlikely."
He trailed off, the old image of Cedric — cold, remote, contemptuous of Rebecca — clearly warring with what he had just witnessed in the square. The gap between the two was apparently proving difficult to reconcile.
Then Cedric rendered the question moot entirely.
"I'm agreeable to it."
Devon blinked. "...Pardon?"
"I said I'm agreeable. My feelings on the matter shouldn't be a concern."
Chief Devon stared at him.
"But Your Highness — surely the accommodations here would be far too rough for the Princess—"
"Not at all!" Bianca clasped her hands together, her eyes going wide and earnest. "I *love* it here. It's been my dearest wish since I was eight years old — to travel somewhere with my family, outside the castle walls."
She let her voice soften just slightly, her expression turning wistful.
"I've never had much family. Only the two of them, since I was born. Every time I saw my friends go on trips with their parents, I used to watch and think..."
Her eyes shimmered with the unmistakable glisten of impending tears.
The effect on the surrounding villagers was immediate. Every gaze pivoted to Chief Devon with an unspoken but thunderously clear message: *The Princess has made a wish. What exactly are you waiting for?*
Chief Devon, a man who had weathered decades of politics and difficult employers, was entirely undone by one small girl with transparent eyes. He exhaled, long and defeated.
His gaze finally, reluctantly, came to rest on me.
"It seems there's nothing to be done."
The distrust in his expression hadn't vanished — but it had softened into something more like resignation.
"I suppose I should at least offer you some tea."
He turned away.
"Please, both of you — come to my cabin for a moment."
---
Once the Grand Duke and Duchess had disappeared inside, the square came alive again — but differently now.
Bianca and Mina drifted toward each other with the careful, sidelong movements of conspirators who have been waiting for an opening.
"I hadn't planned for us to stay the night, but this is even better," Mina murmured, her expression somewhere between scheming and delighted. "Don't you think so, Princess?"
"I was thinking the exact same thing." Bianca's eyes were bright. "We have to make the most of it, Mina. This is our chance."
"Agreed. To do that properly, we'll need Devon's help."
Mina's gaze slid toward Chief Devon with a smile that made him take a small, instinctive step backward.
She approached anyway.
"Devon. I have a small favor to ask — nothing complicated, I promise."
Devon eyed her with the wariness of a man who has heard those exact words before and lived to regret them. But Mina was already leaning close, and after a moment of resistance, he bent his ear toward her.
Whatever she whispered made his brows rise incrementally.
Mina pulled back and gave him a look of serene expectation.
"It's something the Princess wants very much. You wouldn't want to disappoint her."
Devon said nothing. But he didn't refuse, either.
---
Inside the village chief's cabin.
The moment the door closed, I turned to Cedric.
"Since when were you following me?"
He smoothed his brow with the expression of a man who knows he has done something embarrassing and is deciding how to frame it.
"...Since you left the Dark Mansion in the carriage."
From the very beginning, then. I pressed my fingers to my temple.
His earlier words came back to me: *Even if you were to leave, I have no intention of letting you go quietly.* There had been something almost frantic beneath the surface of it — something I hadn't fully registered in the moment.
Cedric seemed to recall it too. He fixed his gaze on the window and pressed his lips together with a slightly pained look.
"I couldn't see straight. I genuinely believed you were leaving for good."
A pause.
"And when I heard that Adrian had also left the Dark Mansion this morning—"
I blinked. "Adrian went back to the demon world today. He told me himself — something regarding his family's succession. Why does Adrian factor into any of this?"
Cedric's eyes widened slightly, then blinked several times in rapid succession — the expression of someone whose hidden reasoning has just been laid bare without ceremony. He cleared his throat.
"...In any case." He moved on with admirable composure. "When did you decide to come here and apologize? I assumed this village had been forgotten entirely."
"You knew about Gray Zone Village?"
"Of course. Our family has supported them since they settled here, and I've visited often." He said it simply, without performance. "We lead the mixed-blood demon community. That comes with obligations."
"I see. That's... genuinely good to know."
He gave me a quiet smile. And then, with no warning whatsoever, said something entirely unlike himself.
"Which is why you don't need to put yourself through an apology on their behalf. Whatever insults were given in the past — I can handle it."
I stared at him.
"...I'm sorry?"
This was the man who, in another life — or what felt like one — would have demanded the apology himself, if he'd bothered to care at all. He certainly wouldn't have considered shielding Rebecca from the consequences of her own behavior.
"If words aren't enough to change their feelings about you, I could arrange for them to return to the demon world. They'd be well taken care of."
I continued staring.
Cedric's mission had always been the integration of mixed-blood demons into human society. He had spent years on it. And here he was, casually suggesting he'd uproot them all for my sake.
A sudden, alarming thought occurred to me.
I took a step back and looked at him carefully.
"Who are you?"
"...Who am I?"
"You're Vincent Norman, aren't you."
"I am Cedric Twins."
He shook his head with the faintly aggrieved expression of a man who has been asked this question one too many times.
I peered at him for another moment. There was no trace of Vincent's particular brand of mischief anywhere on his face.
"So you are Cedric. And you genuinely meant everything you just said."
He nodded.
"Then please — don't do any of that. Don't send anyone anywhere." I shook my head emphatically. "If I cause them more disruption after everything else, I'll have made things immeasurably worse. Whatever resentment they have now would be nothing by comparison."
And if the mixed-blood demon community turned against me in earnest, my already precarious situation in this world would deteriorate in ways I didn't want to contemplate.
The cabin door opened before I could say anything further. Chief Devon entered carrying a tray with three teacups, moving with a quiet elegance that seemed slightly at odds with the modest surroundings — the natural bearing of a man who had spent decades as head of a Grand Ducal household.
"Please, make yourselves comfortable."
He set the tray down and took a seat across from us. An awkward silence settled over the table.
"Your Highness," Devon began after a moment, addressing Cedric, "are you truly certain about staying? Surely your affairs—"
"A single day won't bring everything to a halt. I have capable people." Cedric lifted a hand. "If it isn't an inconvenience, I'd welcome the chance to rest here for a while."
Devon's expression warmed immediately, the way it had in the square when Bianca had spoken to him.
"An inconvenience — absolutely not. Your Highness is always welcome in this village. You know that."
Then his eyes moved to me.
The warmth evaporated. His face didn't become hostile exactly, but the welcome in it closed like a shutter.
*Right. Cedric and Bianca are welcome. I am tolerated, at best.*
I held his gaze and said nothing, keeping my expression pleasant.
"Then I suppose I should show you to the cabin where you'll be staying."
Devon unrolled a leather scroll across the table — a hand-drawn map of the village, rendered in careful detail on pale brown hide. He studied it for a moment.
"For the two of you..."
His finger moved to the far edge of the map, toward the tree line where the village gave way to the beginnings of the forest.
"...You'll stay here. Together."
I looked at the location he was pointing to. Then I looked up.
"Just the two of us? Alone? Out there?"
"Yes. That's what I was — ah — informed would be the preference."
Something in his tone suggested these were not, in fact, his own conclusions. He looked mildly confused himself, as though he was relaying instructions he hadn't entirely understood.
I turned to Cedric.
Before I could say a word, he spoke.
"That works for us."
He said it with perfect equanimity, as though the matter had already been decided and required no further discussion. I leaned toward him and lowered my voice to something between a murmur and a warning.
"Cedric. What are you doing?"
He did not lower his voice in return.
"The village chief has made a decision. The head of this community." He said it with unassailable reasonableness. "There aren't many vacant cabins here, Rebecca. If we insist on separate quarters, there won't be room for Bianca and her attendants."
A pause. A small shrug.
"So what would you have us do?"
"...Excuse me?"
"Besides." He stopped. Looked at me for just a moment too long, something shifting in the line of his mouth.
The corner of his lips curved upward — smooth, unhurried, and entirely too self-satisfied.
"Sharing a space is perfectly natural. For a couple."
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