I Reborn to Save Her, She Loved Him

Chapter 3

Dead silence slammed down over the dining room in an instant, the air thick enough to cut with a knife, ice-cold and oppressive.

Alistair froze, rooted to the spot, his face drained of all color, deathly pale.

He knew his first ever attempt at cooking had produced some pretty sad-looking dishes, but he never imagined she'd dismiss the food he'd poured his heart into as fit for livestock...

His personal maid, who'd been watching the whole exchange from the side, finally snapped. She spoke up, her voice sharp with anger, "Every single dish on this table was cooked by the Ninth Prince himself!"

Rowena's body went rigid as a board. She stared at Alistair in stunned disbelief, her voice dropping to a quiet, unsure murmur, "Please forgive my thoughtless words just now, Your Highness."

Humiliation washed over Alistair in a hot, suffocating wave, and he couldn't force a single word past his tight throat.

After a long, agonizing beat, he finally spoke in a low, self-deprecating murmur, "It's fine. My cooking is terrible. This is no fault of yours, Princess Consort."

Rowena's confusion only deepened at those words, a strange feeling twisting in her chest.

She held Alistair's gaze for a long, hard moment, then curtsied low. "In that case, I have some matters to attend to. I'll head back to the study first."

With that, she turned on her heel, boots clacking against the stone floor, and walked straight out of the dining room without a second glance back.

That night, she didn't even return to the master bedroom to sleep.

Alistair lay alone on the wide, plush velvet bed, and for the first time, a gnawing doubt crept into his mind.

'Could he really ever win her heart back?'

The next day, the sky was barely painted with the faint gray light of dawn when Rowena headed for the knight training grounds behind the castle.

Even after the king had stripped her of her military power under the guise of their marriage, she'd never once skipped her swordplay and equestrian training.

At exactly 6:15 a.m., Rowena tramped back into the main hall of the old castle, drenched in sweat.

Alistair hurried over to greet her immediately, "You're back, my lady."

Rowena flinched back half a step on pure instinct.

Before, Alistair had hated the smell of sweat that clung to her after training and the knight's attire she always wore, going out of his way to avoid her like the plague.

But today, he didn't so much as wrinkle his nose. He even pulled out a linen handkerchief, leaning forward like he intended to wipe the beads of sweat off her forehead himself.

Rowena's whole body tensed up. "I can do that myself."

"You must be exhausted after all that training. I learned how to make your favorite honey soft cakes especially for you. Want to try one?"

Alistair speared a piece of the soft, fluffy cake with a small silver fork and held it out to her.

Rowena lowered her eyes to look at the dessert. Soft, warm morning light spilled over Alistair's refined, handsome profile, making him look so gentle and bright that it was almost hard to look away.

Her throat tightened slightly as she met his eyes, bright with sincere, eager hope. In the end, she relented and took a seat.

"Thank you, Ninth Prince."

The two finished their breakfast in silence. Not long after Alistair watched Rowena head out the door, his cousin, the hereditary earl Lord Percival Pembroke, dropped by for a visit.

"Alistair! Come with me right now. I've got a crazy good scene to show you!"

Before Alistair could even turn down the invitation, Percival hauled him straight out the door.

Half an hour later, the prince's gilded four-wheeled carriage rumbled to a stop in the busiest part of the royal capital: the Gilded Salon!

The Gilded Salon had everything you could want for a good time, gambling tables, live music, all kinds of amusements, and only the highest-ranking nobles were allowed through its doors.

Percival knew the place like the back of his hand, and he led Alistair straight up to the second floor.

"Your Highness, Lord Percival! The VIP golden booth upstairs is all ready for you!"

The so-called golden booth was the best spot in the entire Gilded Salon, with an unobstructed view of every single entertainment area on the floor below.

Percival grabbed his arm excitedly, jabbing a finger at the insect-betting table up ahead.

"Alistair, let's put our money on the reigning champion fighter, the 'Valiant Knight'! Drop a full thousand gold coins on it, straight up!"

A thousand gold coins? That was enough to cover six months of rations and supplies for an entire knight squad stationed at the border fortress.

That was the exact military funding Rowena had fought tooth and nail, risking her life on the battlefield, to beg for in his past life, and right now, it was nothing more than pocket change for his cousin to blow on a silly bet.

This kind of reckless, frivolous spending was just standard for the nobility.

Alistair stared out at the crowd of nobles drowning themselves in pleasure, wasting their days away in drunken hedonism, and a heavy, suffocating weight settled in his chest.

Who would have guessed that this seemingly peaceful, prosperous golden age would crumble into a war-torn hell scape in just three short years?

The nobles burned through money like it was water, while the common folk at the bottom of the social ladder were left homeless and starving. The warning signs of the kingdom's coming collapse had been hiding in plain sight this whole time.

"I'm not joining the bet." Alistair sighed softly, his gaze drifting down to the floor below. "Percival, let's head back."

"What's got you being such a buzzkill today?" Percival asked, completely baffled, and refused to move an inch.

Alistair didn't want to argue with him. He didn't bother pressing the issue, turned on his heel, and walked out of the Gilded Salon alone.

But as soon as he reached the front entrance, he came across a group of bored, troublemaking young nobles spoiling for a fight. Alistair was wearing plain, low-key casual clothes that day, so they didn't recognize him at all. They barreled straight into him, hard.

The force of the knock threw Alistair off-balance, and he stumbled forward, going down hard.

He was milliseconds away from slamming face-first into the stone pavement when a pair of hands reached out from the side and steadied him firmly.

It was Beatrice Langley, the nationally renowned female scholar who'd passed the aristocratic academy examinations.

Her features were soft, and her eyes brimmed with concern as she asked, "Ninth Prince, are you alright?"

Alistair froze for a split second. Across both his past life and this one, he'd only crossed paths with Beatrice a handful of times.

Back then, he'd only ever held up the poised, intellectual Beatrice as a point of comparison to Rowena just to get under her skin.

Running into her out of the blue like this left him unbelievably awkward.

He instinctively tried to step back and put some space between them, but a sharp twinge popped in his ankle first, searing, burning pain that left him unable to even stay on his feet.

Beatrice grabbed his arm again to hold him up. "Watch your step, Ninth Prince!"

Cold beads of sweat were already popping up on Alistair's forehead from the pain. He was just about to thank her when a frigid, sneering voice cut through the air not far away.

"Someone's in a good mood, aren't they, Ninth Prince? Parading around the Gilded Salon with a female academy scholar for fun right out in the open."

Alistair's heart dropped straight into his stomach.

He whirled around, immediately locking eyes with Rowena, her gaze cold enough to cut straight to the bone.