“The weather is really nice. Is it always like this here?”

Aidan spoke while cutting the meat placed before him.

“This is indeed the best season for weather.”

Karina responded while keeping her eyes fixed on her plate. The two were dining in the garden of Karina’s palace at Aidan’s suggestion. As Aidan had said about the warm weather and clear sky, the sky was truly deep blue without a single cloud.

Unlike the peaceful scenery, chaos reigned in Karina’s heart. For some reason, she couldn’t look directly at Aidan’s face. Even though she was obviously avoiding eye contact, Aidan kept staring intently at her. His gaze felt so intense that it made it even harder to meet his eyes.

“Does the food not suit your taste?”

Karina’s hand, which had been picking up meat with her fork, paused at Aidan’s question. In truth, regardless of whether it suited her taste or not, she couldn’t tell what anything tasted like.

“It seems fine.”

Aidan added another comment while chewing his meat. Of course it was. The palace chefs were composed of the most skilled individuals in the empire. The problem was Karina herself. No, if it weren’t Aidan sitting across from her, she might have been able to properly enjoy this excellent food.

“Or is your dining companion the problem?”

The unexpected question made her look up, only to meet Aidan’s grinning face. Just reacting to his words felt like revealing her true feelings, so she quickly lowered her head and continued eating.

“Am I making you that self-conscious?”

Amusement laced Aidan’s voice. Even without looking at his face, she could clearly picture his upturned lips. That made her try even harder to focus solely on eating.

“Really cute.”

The casually thrown words made her choke on her food. Only after several coughs and a sip of water from the table did she calm down. As she put down the water glass, she felt his gaze and inadvertently turned to meet Aidan’s eyes directly. He had set down his fork and knife and was staring intently at her. Seeing his lips curve into a gentle smile, she found herself unable to look away first.

“You’re really cute.”

Aidan repeated the same words. Karina didn’t know how to respond. She hadn’t been called cute since she was very young. Beautiful, noble, dignified — most adjectives directed at her were of that sort. As she grew up, she was taught that was how she should be, and Karina herself wanted to be that kind of person. Childishness or showing weakness was not allowed for her.

But now Aidan was treating her completely like a child. She felt irritated thinking they were only two years apart, but then remembered something about him being thirty-seven inside despite his appearance, so she just kept quiet. Actually, by that logic, shouldn’t her soul’s age also be added by three years? Since she had come back three years… Even so, she was still much younger than the person inside Aidan.

“Was it that shocking?”

Aidan asked again, but Karina kept her lips tightly sealed and gave no answer. She understood exactly what ‘it’ he was referring to. Since she had been conscious of it all this time, it must have been obvious. Besides, this man was unnecessarily perceptive.

“It must have been your first kiss, no need to ask.”

Her face instantly flushed when he specifically mentioned ‘kiss’.

“You’re getting red again.”

Aidan smiled until his eyes narrowed.

“You seem to find this amusing.”

Feeling like he was teasing her, she answered curtly and put down her fork.

“No need to get angry. It’s a compliment.”

Aidan responded with the same gentle smile, unperturbed. Not understanding what was supposed to be a compliment, she stiffened her lips and turned away, but Aidan cut a piece of meat from his plate, picked it up with his fork, and held it out to her.

“Eat well. I’m worried you might collapse from being too thin.”

Was he expecting her to eat that? Karina looked back and forth between his face and the meat on his fork with a bewildered expression. Though the servants and knights were keeping their distance to let them dine comfortably, Aidan’s action itself was startling.

“I still have plenty of food left on my plate.”

She meant to refuse the meat he offered, but Aidan showed no sign of backing down.

“That’s that. This is my heart.”

It seemed impossible to have a proper conversation with him.

“Do you act like this with all women?”

The thought of whether Aidan had acted this way with Kate Spencer suddenly crossed her mind, making her words come out harshly. Right after, she almost let out a bitter laugh thinking this person wasn’t that person.

“No.”

As she was internally telling herself to stop speaking nonsense, Aidan answered without hesitation. Meanwhile, he pushed the fork even closer. It seemed he wouldn’t lower his hand until she ate it, so she reluctantly slightly leaned forward and accepted the meat from his fork.

“I never had the chance to have women around.”

His smile deepened, apparently satisfied that Karina had accepted the food.

“You say you’re almost forty but you were alone?”

Though the servants were far enough away that they shouldn’t hear, she still asked in a low voice just in case.

“Almost forty is too much. I’m thirty-seven.”

Whether thirty-seven or forty, it was still an unfathomably distant age to her who was barely twenty. She couldn’t even guarantee she would live that long. Though everything was flowing somewhat differently from before, if the future was already determined, she might end up with the same conclusion no matter how much she struggled.

“It’s all the same unrealistic age to someone whose life ended at twenty-three.”

Her true feelings suddenly spilled out without her realizing. She felt Aidan staring at her intently and realized she had said something unnecessary, but it was already too late to take back.

“Who?”

As expected, Aidan asked with confusion.

“Did I misunderstand your age? Didn’t you say you were twenty? Then whose life ended at twenty-three? Unless by ‘life ended’ you mean something different from what I’m thinking?”

She tried to explain that ‘life ended’ meant something other than death, but Aidan cut that off too. When asked like this, she couldn’t make excuses.

“It was meaningless talk, just ignore it.”

She chose to push through rather than make excuses. Aidan made a long “hmm” sound and stared at her. His penetrating gaze felt burdensome, as if he could bore holes through her face.

“Well, everyone has their circumstances.”

Fortunately, he seemed to want to conclude the conversation at this point without digging deeper. Though grateful he was letting it go, his reaction, quite different from others, puzzled her. Most people would have pressed more about what she meant.

Because his situation was far from ordinary.

Though that reason wasn’t sufficient to explain it, she decided to leave it at that since she had no intention of explaining further anyway.

“Don’t you feel wronged?”

The topic changed, but the question came out of nowhere.

“About what?”

“That you couldn’t date anyone until that age. Don’t tell me it was because you had to preserve your chastity to become the prince’s consort?”

Though he’s not entirely wrong, for some reason she didn’t want to admit it.

“How can you be so sure I’ve never dated anyone?”

Before marrying her, Aidan had already done everything possible and impossible with Kate Spencer. Thinking about it did make her feel somewhat wronged. She should have dated at least once, regardless of marriage.

It wasn’t that she lacked opportunities. Even after Karina became the prince’s consort, there were quite a few noble sons who showed interest in her. Since Aidan openly kept a mistress, that bastard, Lloyd, had even suggested it might be better for the prince’s consort to have her own private life too. It was so absurd that he mentioned not just some nameless noble but someone from the imperial family whom she had to face frequently in the palace, that she wouldn’t even associate with him.

She wondered if things would have been different if she had kept a lover like Aidan did. Though she had considered it, she still disliked the idea. She would rather get divorced than maintain the title of prince’s consort while each having their own lovers — what kind of promiscuous behavior would that be?

Perhaps with such thoughts, she too had looked down on Aidan as vulgar. Just as the Empress and Lloyd had dismissed Aidan, Karina had viewed him similarly, albeit for different reasons. Of course, since he had provoked it first, she felt no remorse.

“You should have tried dating. Everything is experience, after all.”

Aidan’s words pulled her back to reality.

“Your Highness speaks as if you have extensive experience. Well, I suppose that’s natural given your age.”

Though her tone had grown quite sharp, Aidan just smiled faintly.

“I told you earlier. I didn’t have the chance to have women around. My life was quite rough.”

His smile somehow looked more bitter than usual.

“Actually, even sitting down to eat with a woman like this is a rare occasion. Most of those times were purely for business.”

His explanation still didn’t make much sense to her. In the Griffith Empire, once people turned twenty and completed their coming-of-age ceremony, most received marriage proposals. It was even more so for women, and even men rarely remained single past twenty-three. So it was hard to believe that he had no women around until thirty-seven.

Could he have been extremely ugly or had major personality issues? As she frowned at that thought, Aidan leaned his upper body slightly forward, reducing the distance between him and Karina.

“So, would you like to date me?”

Karina’s eyes widened at his words, delivered with a bright smile.