Chapter 1

"Benedict, I promise you that Clay and I are no more than friends. Even if we're intimate, there are absolutely no feelings involved."

Evanna Johnson pushed me away and ordered someone to fetch Clay Armstrong.

I saw the trace of lust in her eyes, and my chest tightened. "I can be your cure, too."

"We never had a formal wedding ceremony. Do you really think I'm the kind of woman who would use a man's body as medicine?" Her eyes darkened with anger.

Right on cue, Clay walked in from outside and dropped to his knees in front of me. Even the way he looked at me was full of resentment.

"Lord Campbell, I know you men from Carvon are all possessive when it comes to women, but you can't put your jealousy above General Johnson's life! If you refuse to let me cure General Johnson today, I'll kneel right here and die with her!" he spat.

I reached out to help him up, but Evanna was faster. "Get up! You're my army physician. You don't kneel to anyone else!"

She had been hit with a love hex. With a pull and stumble, she fell straight into Clay's arms.

"General Johnson!" he cried out, tightening his hold on her.

She clutched his arm. "Help me into the inner room so we can purge the hex."

With that, the two of them started toward the inner chamber.

"Darling!" I called out to her.

She turned to look at me, still leaning against Clay's chest.

The lump in my throat grew larger. "You and I are the ones who are husband and wife. It… It's not appropriate for him to cure you."

"Benedict, it's not that I don't trust you. It's just that this hex is no joke, and Clay and I are more compatible," she said. Her brows were tightly furrowed, her tone already laced with impatience.

Panic flared in me. Since when had they discovered this sort of "compatibility" between them?

Before the beaded curtain could fall, I grabbed her sleeve. "Do you still remember the vow you made to me beneath the palace walls?"

She said, "I won't go back on my word. I'll still be your wife. But Benedict, you live a life of comfort in Carvon. You don't understand how things work in the army."

I didn't understand?

The Campbell family had produced ten generals, and every one of them had died on the battlefield. From the day I was born, I'd grown up riding with my father and brothers along the frontiers. I'd spent 18 years doing that—what exactly was it that I didn't understand?

Clay cut in anxiously. "General Johnson, curing you is what matters now."

"Stop kicking up a fuss and behave. You'll still be the master of the Johnson household," Evanna said, looping her arms around his neck.

"But—" I couldn't even get another word out before she cut me off.

"Do you want me dead?" Her voice turned ice-cold and razor-sharp.

When the beaded curtain finally fell, I sat down, not knowing whether to be amused or mad. Evanna was my wife, yet I'd never even seen her body. Because she'd requested an imperial edict to go to war, I'd completed the wedding ceremony alone.

After that came three straight years of war. Now that she'd finally returned, she'd chosen to fall into bed with another man…

My heart ached, and bitterness flooded me. From behind the curtain came the sounds of two bodies tangled with each other, low and wanton.

"General Johnson, aren't you afraid he'll get jealous and leave you?" Clay's soft, teasing voice drifted out, threaded with a hint of teasing.

Evanna's voice was laced with sobs and moans. "Faster. He's all that's left of the Campbell family. He has no choice but to depend on my family for survival. In the soft, glittering comforts of Carvon, all he knows is pleasure and indulgence.

"It's natural that he has no idea how many hard choices are made on the battlefield. Don't be upset, Clay. I'll teach him these things, bit by bit."

I sat outside and listened the entire night, until the chill sank straight into my bones.