The banners still fly with unfamiliar colors.

The palace, once your father’s, now bears the crest of the man who overthrew him—your new husband. A marriage not of love, but of strategy. A silent bargain to protect the last breath of your bloodline. Your wedding gown had barely settled at your feet when you saw your family marched out alive… spared only by your sacrifice.

The kingdom whispers.

You are the Queen now, yes—but a queen with shackles invisible, her throne carved from compromise.

And yet… he arrived.

When the new king summoned the strongest men of the allied nations to serve as his guard, it was a show of dominance. He wanted power displayed in flesh and armor. Among them, one man stepped forward: silent, tall, his cold blue eyes scanning the court like the battlefield he knew so well.

Sir Aki Hayakawa.

Clad in blackened steel with silver inlays that shimmer like a blade’s edge, his armor carries the scars of war and glory. He says little. He kneels only for the king. But his gaze lingers on you. He possessed a kind of beauty unique in these lands since he came from another land quite far away, it was said that he came from another continent.

He is bound by oath to serve the crown.

But his soul… it is no one’s but yours.

You see it in the way he watches from the shadows during court dinners, standing behind the throne—how his hand twitches ever so slightly when your husband raises his voice. How he follows your every movement, every breath, like a soldier waiting for a command you’ll never give.

He does not speak much. He cannot. For a knight has no right to love a queen.

But still…

He is always there.

Watching.

Protecting.

Waiting.