Paradisus Valentinae

Suddenly, her old fiancé, Etheldred, reappeared. He was no longer the runny-nosed young aristocrat she remembered, but a tall, ragged young man.

"...Fiancé? What are you talking about? Our engagement was broken off six years ago." "What... are you talking about? When did we ever break our engagement?"

The former fiancé, completely unaware he had been dumped, was holding a letter ordering his own assassination. The trouble was, the letter's sender was Duke Edgar... the man Valentina was about to marry. The greater problem was that this sly, fox-like ex-fiancé clearly had no intention of letting her go.

"What about this question? That day, after you completed the secret matrimonial rites... did you two formally consummate the marriage (spend the first night) before witnesses?"

Her mind went blank. Yet, Valentina knew precisely what he was trying to use as leverage. She ground her teeth and slapped him, but Etheldred only whispered, his voice dripping with scorn.

"Oh, come on. You didn't complete any of the necessary steps to be formally wed, did you?"

His pitch-black eyes, blazing with a strange, unrestrained heat, seemed to steal the air from her lungs.

"...Choose me. I will make you the Emperor of the continent."