Chapter : 135
“Then shall we head back before it gets any later? You’ve been tired since we started moving at dawn today.”
Diumed, lifting the wooden box again and tucking it under one arm, pointed toward the entrance of the greenhouse.
Lysithea followed where he led, then paused briefly in front of the greenhouse door.
Diumed looked down at her, as if asking what was wrong.
“Shouldn’t I ask what you talked about with Her Majesty the Empress?”
If he didn’t want to say it, she had no intention of pressing him.
Still, the bitterness that had flickered across his face when Christie mentioned the empress, and the pensive look he had worn right after meeting her, lingered in her mind.
If letting it out to her would ease his heart even a little, she was more than ready to listen.
“Oh, that?” he said with a shrug, as if it were nothing. He bent slightly to meet Lysithea’s gaze.
“Were you worried? She just asked if I was doing well, and told me to speak up without hesitation if I was having a hard time.”
There was no way Empress Keisha would ever do anything that might harm him.
She had always been someone who fretted over not being able to give him more.
“Your unworthy sinner greets you, Your Highness.”
The moment the chief maid stepped out, the empress bowed deeply to Diumed, as if she had been waiting for it.
He took the hands of the empress, who had prostrated herself on the floor, and helped her up.
“Your Majesty, please don’t speak like that. And please, don’t lower your speech either.”
“How could a subject stand above her master? Though I may now be enduring a time of humiliation beneath the enemy, when the time comes, I am someone who will serve Your Highness.”
After the death of his mother, the person whose life was overturned just as much as Diumed’s was Empress Keisha.
Back when the empress was still Lady Keisha Phaethon, Prince Oswald had secretly marked Keisha Phaethon as his future bride.
It wasn’t because he was particularly fond of her.
Among unmarried women, he judged Keisha to be the most suitable match for his status.
When rumors spread far and wide that Prince Oswald was preparing a proposal, Keisha went to Crown Princess Rueira and burst into tears.
Rueira comforted Keisha—who swore she would rather die than marry Prince Oswald—and then summoned Oswald and harshly reprimanded him.
The matter eventually reached Emperor Catlin’s ears.
Though he too found it distasteful that the Phaethon lady reacted with such revulsion at his son, the one actually steering the empire’s affairs at the time was his eldest daughter, Rueira.
Emperor Catlin sided with Rueira.
It annoyed him as well—just how much of a scoundrel must his son have been, that merely being mentioned as a marriage prospect made everyone recoil in fear?
Sick of worrying over his son’s marriage, the emperor ordered his consort to get rid of the prince at once.
Under the emperor’s fierce command, the House of Spencer brought in a fallen noble from a distant collateral branch as the prince’s marriage partner.
Oswald harbored deep resentment toward both Keisha and Rueira over this incident.
It was from then on that Oswald began to build his power in earnest.
After finally pushing Rueira aside and ascending the throne himself, Oswald announced that he would take Keisha as his empress.
To demand marriage from a man whose lawfully wedded wife was still alive and well.
Depending on how one looked at it, Keisha might even have seemed like a replacement bride.
For Keisha, who had lived as the cherished eldest daughter of a prestigious noble house, it was an unspeakable humiliation.
Keisha thought:
This was all a revenge Oswald had planned for a very long time.
She went to Oswald and threw herself at his feet, begging for mercy.
She pleaded with him to forgive the mistakes of her youth and to withdraw a command she could not bring herself to obey.
Oswald merely savored Keisha’s submission and rejected her plea.
Instead, he threatened that if she refused to the very end, he could not even guarantee Diumed’s life.
Keisha’s reason told her that Oswald could not kill Diumed.
After ascending the throne amid the suspicious death of his sister, killing even his nephew—who had effectively lost his claim to succession—would be too heavy a political burden.
But that day, Oswald’s threat made Keisha realize something else.
The young son of the person she had chosen as her lord for life still remained within the imperial palace.
She had to protect her lord’s son, who might already have died because of her own foolish actions.
Hoping that one day Rueira’s son would drag that vile Oswald down from the imperial throne, Keisha donned the crown of empress.
To Keisha, the position of empress was nothing more than a temporary disguise.
She remained, even now, the most faithful servant of Rueira and her son.
That blind loyalty of Keisha’s became yet another burden to Diumed.
On days when he met the empress, Diumed was plagued by a suffocating sense of pressure and self-loathing.
The boundless expectation—that he would naturally overthrow Oswald and restore Rueira’s glory—pressed down on him heavily.
He felt a measure of responsibility for the misfortune Keisha had endured, but he could not fulfill her expectations.
When he left the imperial palace, it wasn’t only the frailty of those days that he buried behind him.
He had long since cast aside even the last scraps of lingering attachment.
“The problem is that Her Majesty is still living in the past—seeing me as a royal second in the line of succession, and herself as a daughter of a noble house. That makes things uncomfortable.”
He didn’t want to be bound again to a past he had only just escaped.
“Don’t you regret the place that should have been yours, Diumed?”
Lysithea looked straight at him, as if trying to read his heart.
Out of habit, Diumed pressed a gentle kiss to her eyes.
“Not at all.”
There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in his voice.
It was a question he had answered long ago, within himself.
“When I was young, everyone said I had to follow in my mother’s footsteps, so I thought that was just how it was supposed to be. If I’d kept living like that, I would’ve believed without a doubt that it was my place.”
Before he had even come of age, he was taught the art of kingship.
His tutors told him how to rule the people, but never why he had to do it.
Ascending the throne and ruling the empire was considered only natural, since he was born as Crown Princess Rueira’s son.
“No one ever asked whether I had the ability, or whether I truly wanted it. I just went along with it out of inertia, like that…”
It was the same for him.
Questioning what one had held since birth was no easy thing.
All he had done was try his best in the place given to him.
“After I lost everything, I finally had the chance to think about what I really wanted.”
Only after everything that had seemed as natural as breathing was taken away did he understand.
Things gained without effort could vanish just as easily, in an instant.
Once he realized that, even the magic people praised him for no longer seemed all that extraordinary.
Compared to magic granted by the stars, wasn’t a knight’s sword perfected through tens of thousands of swings, a tanner’s practiced hammering, or a scholar’s lines filled with anguish far more beautiful?
What one achieved through one’s own struggle did not disappear so easily.
Only after his once-full hands were emptied did he come to know what he truly desired.
“Lysithea, I like my life now. This isn’t a loser’s excuse, nor some pathetic self-justification.”
His face looked almost refreshed, as though he had shaken off long-held emotions.
“I hate that seat that turns people greedy. And I don’t want to live a life where I have to be on guard and suspicious for the rest of my days just to protect it.”
Those who hold power inevitably have to fight to keep it.
And in that process, it isn’t only enemies they must battle.
They must constantly weigh and choose between their own beliefs and principles, their conscience and morals, even friends and blood-related family.
Diumed had no confidence he could live such a life.
“I don’t think I’d be happy.”
“Then what kind of life would make you happy, Diumed?”
“First of all, I want to live a bit more lazily. Even now, by my standards, my life is far too diligent.”
With utmost seriousness, Diumed launched into a lecture on the importance of sleeping in.
“I can’t even remember the last time I slept late.”
He didn’t forget to grumble that he’d been especially busy lately and was sorely lacking in oversleeping.
Lysithea cupped his cheek and shot him a sideways glance.
“Adequate sleep is important, but if you mean staying up late at night, that’s a problem. You should be sleeping at night.”
“But—”
“Just a moment.”
As he was about to make an excuse, Lysithea hurriedly covered his mouth and crouched behind a large tree, pulling him down with her.
The sound of heavy boots drew closer, and there was a sense of someone outside the greenhouse.
It seemed to be a guard on night patrol.
As if shining a lantern inside, an orange glow skimmed precariously over their heads.
The wavering light cast shadows across his face.
At that moment, their eyes met. His heart pounded loudly.
He couldn’t tell whether it was fear that the sound of his heartbeat might be heard, or the poorly timed flutter of excitement.
Perhaps noticing her tension, he narrowed his eyes with a smile and pressed a brief kiss to the palm covering his mouth.
The guard’s boots paced around the greenhouse, drawing near and then retreating.
As the light moved away, his face sank back into darkness.
Pale, slender fingers reached up, grasped Lysithea’s wrist, and gently pulled her hand down.
The red lips that had been hidden beneath her palm parted.
“Still, my lady.”
Between the sound of the guard’s boots and his own heartbeat, his low voice slipped through.
The teasing title he sometimes used, spoken so close to her ear, made it tingle.
His lips brushed against her palm again.
Perhaps because of the chill of the night air, goosebumps rose where his lips touched.
Keeping his lips pressed to her hand, he lifted only his gaze and whispered,
“An autumn night is far too short to waste on mere sleep.”
“No matter the season, I don’t think any night would ever be long enough to satisfy you, Diumed.”
“Well, that’s—”
His mouth was covered once more.
Lysithea grabbed his collar and pressed her lips to his.
Unlike the cool night air, their touching lips were blazing hot, as if set aflame.
The wooden box slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground.
Freed, his hands wrapped around Lysithea’s head.
As if they meant to spend the short night awake, their kiss that day was especially long—
long enough to fill the old greenhouse with white breaths scattered through the cold air of the autumn night.
