Wait, he’s the Emperor. Isn’t he busy? How does he find the time to stop by every single day?

Until now I couldn’t understand why he kept showing his face without any particular business, but today a different thought occurs to me.

Is he tired? Does the relentless attention, from people pushing marriage on him when he has no intention of marrying anytime soon, weigh on him?

According to Elren, yes. Heliones was fed up with the pressure to marry and the bold advances of the young ladies. I gave a polite bow to Heliones, who stood to receive my greeting, and took my seat across from him.

As always, Heliones pulled out the chair and only sat back down after I had settled into mine.

I’m no longer his wife, yet it seems his principled self still wins out over his imperial self. This has been his way, constant and unchanged, since our days as husband and wife.

“Would it be all right for me to attend the birthday banquet?”

“!!”

At my question, Heliones’s eyes flew wide open. He had been sitting there with that blank expression of his, the kind that made you wonder why he had come at all. His face usually carried a cool, sharp-edged look, but in moments like this he was almost endearingly like a startled rabbit.

No. Is now really the time to be admiring my ex-husband’s face? Get a hold of yourself.

“If it would be acceptable for me to attend as well…”

“Please come! Of course it is!!”

Ah, just as I thought. Then again, knowing Heliones, he would never bring himself to tell me not to come. He truly had been trying to invite me. I had misread him for nothing.

This was the first official event since the imperial family’s restoration. How many young ladies would be setting their sights on him?

Even with an ex-wife at his side, one who was simply waiting for the day she could stamp the divorce papers again, it might at least reduce some of the more reckless attempts.

I now understood his intentions, but one thing still nagged at me.

“There is something I promised when we divorced, to your mother, or rather, to Her Majesty the Empress Dowager. Given how things have turned out…”

“Ah, there is no need to worry about that.”

“Pardon?”

“I have already explained the situation to her.”

“Oh.”

It seemed he had already spoken with his mother. He would know about that promise, then.

Well, he is staying in the capital specifically to finalize the divorce, so she would have no choice but to understand. It is only a brief interval before the ties are severed for good. In that case, there is no reason to hesitate.

I would simply have to do as Elren said and be his faithful chaperon.

“Then I will plan on attending. Having you there will make the event many times more meaningful.”

There it is again. “You.” No, he said “my wife.” I know it is a habit and hard to break, but that title really does put me in an awkward position. When it was just the two of us I let it pass, but if he uses it at a formal event it will surely cause problems. Today I have to point it out, even at the risk of seeming rude.

“Your Majesty.”

“Yes. Please, go ahead.”

“About the way you address me. ‘My wife’ is not quite right, is it?”

“Pardon?”

“I am no longer Your Majesty’s wife. If someone were to overhear at the banquet, strange rumors could start.”

It is not an unreasonable thing to say. I only want to correct the title out of consideration for his reputation.

But Heliones’s face, which had been flushed like a ripe peach just moments before, drained of color in an instant. Not pale, but transparent, like ice on the verge of melting away entirely.

“You are right. You are no longer, my, wife.”

Why is he reacting like this? Is correcting a form of address really such an uncomfortable thing? I said it for his sake, but somehow I feel unsettled now too.

“I know it is a habit and hard to break. That is why I never bothered to correct it before. But at a formal social event…”

“Yes. I understand perfectly well what you mean.”

Whether he truly understood was another question. The end of Heliones’s sentence clipped short, like a child who had taken offense.

So he has this side to him too. Somehow I feel like I have been discovering more new sides of him lately than I ever did when we were husband and wife.

“If I overstepped and hurt your feelings, I apologize.”

I needed to smooth things over first. He was, after all, the Emperor. Whether I was right or wrong, he was not someone I could afford to cross.

I dipped my head in a bow and looked up to find Heliones’s expression even darker than before I had apologized.

Why? I could hardly dare ask an Emperor why he was making that face, which made it all the more miserable.

I simply sat there, stiff and uncomfortable, hoping his mood would lift on its own.

“I will take my leave. An invitation will arrive shortly.”

“Yes.”

He announced he was leaving again, out of nowhere, and I rose to see him off, but before I could even lift my head, Heliones was already gone. He had walked so fast that the hydrangea leaves by the entrance swayed in his wake.

I turned to Elren, hoping he might know why Heliones’s mood had soured. But Elren only shook his head slowly with a rueful smile.

As if things weren’t already complicated enough, now I had one more thing to worry about.

My head was about to split trying to make sense of the Emperor’s unpredictable moods when someone came to the lodgings.

The door opened and two men stepped into the entryway carrying a large painting, saying it was a gift from Nelia.

* * *

It feels like swinging between heaven and h*ll. Perhaps this is what a sword feels like, tempered in turns between a roaring forge and ice water.

Perhaps it endures that agony and comes out all the harder and sharper for it.

Heliones walked into his office at the imperial palace with the most miserable gait imaginable, startled by his own mood, which felt ready to pick a fight with anyone who came near.

“She’s coming.”

“Pardon?”

“She’s coming. To the banquet.”

“Ah, Lucian?”

“Yeah.”

But you’ve been waiting so eagerly for her to come, so why are you in a foul mood again? Count Fonta watched Heliones sinking deeper and deeper into his large chair and twitched his thick eyebrows.

“But why do you look so defeated? It went just as Baron Elren said it would.”

“She says she’s not my wife.”

“Pardon?”

The man who normally explained and gave instructions with precise, methodical clarity had suddenly gone monosyllabic. Where did the subject go?

“My wife, no, Lucian said she’s not my wife anymore, so I shouldn’t call her that.”

Now Count Fonta understood why his lord, always so composed and dignified, was slumped over and groaning like a puppy abandoned by its owner.

‘Ah. That was a bit harsh.’

He could understand Lucian’s position. Given her nature, if he called her that at a public event and someone heard, it would cause talk, so she’d had no choice but to say something.

Still, harsh was harsh. Blood runs thicker than water, and Count Fonta was firmly on Heliones’s side. He was certainly not helping his lord win over the princess of a fallen enemy nation, now reduced to a commoner, out of any fondness for her.

He was doing it simply because he wanted his lord and friend, who had walked on thin ice since the day he was born, to find genuine happiness.

“Does she dislike being my wife?”

“It’s not that, it’s just that legally speaking, you’re strangers now…”

“Those papers have your signature on them. As far as I’m concerned, I know nothing about it.”

He’s not a child. Is he throwing a fit? Truly, the old saying that love makes fools of us all is nothing but the truth.

Count Fonta began coaxing and soothing Heliones the same way he handled his own five-year-old twins.

“You said you wanted to start from the beginning, didn’t you? Friends first, then lovers, then husband and wife. Just take it one step at a time.”

“Right. Yes, I did say that.”

“Yes.”

“D*mn it! Do you have any idea how long that takes? My wife is right there in front of me and I can’t even touch her, can’t hold her. What is this?”

But this man spent two full years of marriage keeping his feelings so perfectly in check that even his closest attendant never noticed. So why is he like this now?

In truth, Heliones could have ascended to the throne two years ago, at the moment Rodencia fell. There were many nobles at home and abroad who wished to see the imperial family and the old order restored, and Heliones was the sole surviving heir of the imperial bloodline.

But Heliones did not hold his coronation right away. He waited a full two years, identifying his allies and eliminating his enemies. He brought order to the affairs of the fallen Rodencia, extended a hand to allied nations in need, and brought hostile states to their knees without exception.

With a natural military genius and a political instinct that seemed to see the future, Heliones built his absolute power step by step.

Count Fonta, who knew well that his lord was not a man of truly ruthless character, had worried that Heliones might hesitate when the time came to deal with his own relatives, but Heliones eliminated his political enemies without a moment’s hesitation.

Driven like a man starving for power, Heliones moved toward absolute imperial authority.

Count Fonta had believed his lord, who had spent his whole life suffering the indignities of a b*stard, pursued power because he never wanted to endure that again. But that reasoning was wrong.

It was only when he watched the way Heliones looked at Lucian that he finally understood.