"Phew..." Fresh out of her evening bath, Stella Aizenwald was dressed in a silk robe with nothing underneath. Now that she'd cleansed herself, she was ready to head to bed — where her husband was likely pretending to sleep.

Even though it was still a bit early to turn in, the couple had been through a tough day. Playing niceties with their guests from the east sounded easy, but they had to take all sorts of things into consideration, all while showing goodwill by helping their new allies adjust to the new environment.

Frankly, Stella's brain was fried. Her husband was a bit better off, having been given special education in these matters since he was young, but Stella was from a household that prided itself on its martial might. As such, she'd received minimal training regarding such matters — just enough to not be an embarrassment.

In fact, she learned most of her non-combat-related skills through self-study. After all, she felt that it would be inappropriate for her to marry into the royal family as a brutish woman who only knew how to fight.

Vianna was an exception, of course. She was a bit too excellent.

"Speaking of warbeasts... Dear gods, that tribe chief was no joke. I thought Father-in-law said she got spooked by Sir Viktor...?" Stella casually remarked to herself as she dried off her hair in an instant, using a gust of wind from her forefinger. After she was done, she flipped her hair before examining her form on the changing room mirror, making sure she looked just as good as she thought.

'Looks good. Let's make some babies... Or not. I can't be pregnant when I'm headed off for battle.'

She also had to close the gap to Ascendance before she could even think of having children. After all, no matter how baseless it was, Stella didn't want to go against the superstition about women losing some potential for Ascendence every time they gave birth.

As the saying goes: where there's smoke, there's fire — since the superstitious belief survived for such a long time, even becoming incorporated into various cultures, then there must be some truth to it.

Shaking off her thoughts, Stella eagerly made her way to the bed she shared with her husband.

'Practice makes perfect... hehehe...'

Even if they weren't aiming for pregnancy at the moment, it still wouldn't hurt to prepare for the eventuality. At least, that was the reason she used to shut down her husband's protests.

'Like hell, I'll let you use your stamina as an excuse! Now that we're married, we can finally do it without all the secrecy!'

Stella snickered to herself as she made her way to the bed, already anticipating the passionate moments she would spend with her husband. Although he sometimes feigned resistance, she knew he liked it. Stella found it quite endearing, even — that's why she didn't mind as much.

As for his claims that she was too eager or downright insatiable, Stella didn't take them too seriously either. The elder sisters in her clan told her about how perpetually horny men were, so Stella was sure her husband would like it if she acted this way.

'Besides. I have to do this so he doesn't think about getting more wives... Though I suppose he's too busy for that.'

The night was young, so they would have plenty of time for intimacy before they actually had to go to bed. And if they really wanted to, skipping several days of sleep would be a minor sacrifice for them — especially with the new medicine her cute little brother-in-law gave out.

'Caffeen, was it? Or was it Cough-in?'

As she walked towards the bed, Stella's mind was occupied with idle thoughts. Her beautiful dark eyes were drawn to where her husband lay, and upon closer inspection, she realized that he was pretending to be asleep.

Just as she had expected.

'Fool. I can hear your heartbeat speeding up!'

Unfortunately, she would never get the chance to do what she wanted to since a certain crystal within her spacial storage ring suddenly sent out a signal.

"What is it now..." Stella muttered with obvious irritation, her beautiful face twisted into a scowl. "I swear to the Sun God, if this isn't important, I'll..."

The moment she took out her communication crystal though, her eyes widened. She was surprised to find that the message had come from Donovan.

"What could that old man possibly want at this hour...?" Stella frowned as she grasped the crystal tighter, letting the telepathic message pour into her mind. In a single second, her brain processed hundreds of words and even a few images depicting a very forlorn Reivan, slumping his shoulders.

'Aw... he's kinda cute like this...'

Shaking her head to clear her mind of foolish thoughts, Stella summarized Donovan's inquiry in a few sentences.

[The plan succeeded. Reivan too affected. Need your help cheering him up. You're good at it.]

"Ah-huh. Why me, though...?" Stella couldn't help but scratch her head.

'Wait, when he says I'm good at it, is it because I did it for Roland when he had his ego brought down a peg?'

Certainly, when Roland underwent something similar to what was happening to Reivan right now, Stella had been the one to cheer him up. However, that didn't mean she could do it to other people as well.

'I mean, I can't do those things to anyone other than the man I love!'

Reivan was too outstanding, so it was agreed that he had to be brought down to earth early. In contrast, Roland was close to average so there was no need to humble him until he was fifteen, right after he aced the final coming-of-age ceremony.

At the time, her heart was set on marrying Roland. And Roland was obviously set on her as well. As such, she didn't see anything wrong with doing certain acts before their marriage.

'Ugh. What do I tell that old bastard now...?' Stella scratched her head with a frown.

Judging from images she'd seen, Reivan was more depressed than they'd expected — his eyes looked like they belonged to dead fish.

"Hey. What're you doing...?" Roland threw aside the blankets he'd been hiding under and sat up on the bed. "Is this some sort of ploy to get me to stop feigning sleep...? Because if it is, it just worked."

"Well, now I know what to do next time then." Stella smiled wryly as she also plopped down on the bed. She then began to give her husband a summary of what she was troubled by.

After hearing her out until the end, Roland nodded his head in understanding.

"Yeah, there's no way we can cheer Reivan up that way." he immediately said while rubbing his chin. His expression was troubled as he also tried to come up with some ideas. "In the first place, aren't we exaggerating things? There's no way the little brother I know is that down about anything. He's probably bounced back by now."

Stella's lips curled up in a sneer. "That's what I thought about you too, but then you spent a week cooped up in your room, remember?"

"..." Roland was speechless for a moment before he protested. "Hey, it was just five and a half days, so technically, it wasn't a week..."

Ignoring her husband, Stella pondered. Since it had something to do with a child, Stella thought it would be a good opportunity to learn how to deal with children — after all, she also intended to have one someday.

How did one normally cheer up a child?

'Toys?'

Reivan seemed too mature to actually enjoy them, so Stella threw that idea aside.

'Food... well, I suppose it might work if we find something really good, but he's too used to palace cuisine to be amazed by most things...'

Gifting him a practice weapon, something young boys loved playing with, was also not a very good idea. Reivan now had a Soul Armament of his own, after all.

'Clothes...? Wait, that's a nope.'

Young boys inherently despised getting clothes as presents too, so Stella chucked that idea out the window too. Besides, Reivan was already wearing the best clothes money could buy — clothes Stella couldn't afford to buy.

'Why is this so hard...?'

Growing up, making Roland happy was incredibly easy for her. She knew pretty much everything about him, so gift ideas flowed out of her head like an endless stream. And if all else fails, a surprise kiss would never fail to put a smile on his face.

Stella reminisced about the old days for a moment. Roland was younger than her by two years, so she'd always found it enjoyable to spoil him a bit. The way his cheeks burned red whenever things got a little too... steamy was also cute. It was like having a little brother that wasn't really a little brother.

'That's it!'

She suddenly felt like an illumination crystal lit up in her head.

"Hehe..." Stella chuckled to herself as she cooked up her plan.

"What's wrong with you...?" Her husband's brows furrowed as he suspiciously backed off. "I don't like the way you're laughing..."

"Oh, shush. I just thought of a way to cheer your brother up."

"Uh-huh." Roland leaned back, letting his back sink into a pillow's soft embrace as he crossed his arms. He heaved a weary sigh as he nodded. "Let's hear it. I'm already getting a bad feeling about this."

"Helen!" Stella chirped proudly as if her idea was pure genius. "We just throw Helen at him! She'll be Stella version number two! Made to cheer up Roland version number two. Am I a genius or what?"

In contrast to the pretty woman's expectations, Roland closed his eyes and massaged his temples in exasperation. "That's immoral. What the hell are you thinking?"

"What in the world are you talki—" Stella's eyes suddenly widened in realization as she threw the closest pillow she could get her hands on to her husband's face. "I didn't mean it like that!"

She'd meant it more in the sense that boys were easily cheered up just by spending time with pretty girls. In no way did she think to induce any lewd situations between the children.

'If Rein does anything like that to my little sister, I'll knock some sense into him myself!'

Luckily, the boy was too young to know about the birds and the bees. No matter how mature Reivan was for his age, he couldn't possibly be such an early bloomer, right?

"We'll just get Helen to spoil him and boom. He's happy again," Stella explained. "Simple stuff will do. All boys are suckers for a pretty face. I'll give her a crash course, so don't worry."

Roland felt his headache worsen. 'My worries just increased exponentially. Especially since you told me not to worry.'

Still, his wife meant well, so he was reluctant to completely shut her idea down. Besides, as a male, he couldn't help but agree with the idea that hanging out with a cute girl would be a pleasant experience for most boys.

'But Rein doesn't seem very interested in girls...'

When Roland had been Reivan's age, he'd already had a number of crushes. The Saintess was the first, with his stepmother following soon after — something he didn't want anyone to ever know. Soon after, he'd grown out of admiring kind, adult women, and gravitated toward kids his own age.

'There was the gardener's daughter, that librarian's granddaughter, the Primero's niece...'

Roland inwardly listed off the various crushes he'd gone through before he met Stella. He didn't want to admit it, but he'd been a fickle child, so he'd switch his interest to a new girl every few weeks.

From what his father had told him when they were drinking privately together, Rodin was much the same in his youth. In fact, they shared the similarity of having the Saintess as their first crush.

'It must run in the family...' Roland smirked at the thought, but then he frowned. 'Which makes it even weirder that Rein isn't the same...'

There were a number of pretty palace maids roaming around the halls. Some people who worked in the palace took their children to work with them too — with permission from their superiors of course.

And yet, Reivan hadn't shown much interest in any of them.

'Is it because he's surrounded by beauty all the time...?'

Roland idly thought that it was Vianna's fault that Reivan's standards were so skewed. Stella may have also shared some of the blame.

In any case, Reivan did not particularly seem interested in girls, so Roland wasn't too confident about Stella's plan.

Suddenly, a horrifying thought crossed the prince's mind. 'Could it be that my brother swings the other way...?'

Feeling goosebumps on the back of his neck, Roland shook his head. Reivan had shown no interest in boys either, so Roland abandoned that idea.

However, he inwardly decided to inform his father about this possibility. Just in case.

'The first king says that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, but even so, it would be troubling if someone from the royal family was one...'

Members of the royal family had to produce children. That was a cold, hard fact. Ideally, they would have many partners to produce children with. However, men from the Aizen Royal family's lineage seemed to attract women of... strong will, with even stronger fists.

As such, in the entirety of Aizen's history, no king had ever had more than one wife.

Even the men who didn't become kings stayed monogamous due to the insistence of their first wives.

'It's at the level of a curse, at this point.'

If warbeast culture was to be followed, however, Reivan would be different.

In addition, Vianna intended to have Reivan revive the Glacial Wolf tribe. As the last non-Ascendant member of their tribe, the task naturally fell on Reivan's shoulders.

'Mother's very vocal about making a harem for Rein... so I hope he's not...'

Deciding to place all his hopes on Helen, Roland sighed as he laid back down and prepared to sleep. He was far too tired to think about this at the moment, so he left the responsibility to his future self.

"Wait wait wait..." Stella interrupted his departure to the land of dreams. "I know something suddenly came up, but why are you acting like going to sleep is the natural course of events? Take your clothes off."

"Ah." Roland gasped as he hid under the covers. "I know we just got married and whatnot, but w-we should just do this tomorrow... I'm really tired today. Aren't you tired too? You looked like your brain was squeezed out earlier."

"No."

His wife's merciless refusal was the last thing Roland heard before the lights dimmed and the walls were covered with a layer of wind, blocking off all sounds.

"We need to practice, dear husband. This is also a form of training, no? And your little brother did his best in training earlier too..."

Stella smirked provocatively.

"Are you going to let him beat you already?"