Later I had become a person so broken in feeling that I no longer screamed even during fire t*rture, so what was this that had tears threatening to spill? I held the muscles around my eyes tight and crouched there quietly, looking again and again at the blurry, longed-for sight before me.

No matter how long I looked at this miraculous landscape Heliones had made for me, I did not think I could ever tire of it.

But at the same time, I quickly remembered that emotions were not particularly useful for survival.

I hurried to collect myself and offered Heliones my thanks.

“I had no idea you would go this far. I feel I have caused you trouble again, and I am both sorry and grateful.”

“Trouble? The garden has become this lovely because of it. When I need to clear my head, I plan to come out and admire it from time to time.”

At his light yet considerate reply, I let small creases form at the corners of my eyes and tilted my head slightly.

“But since it is a variety I have never seen before, I confess I have no idea how to care for it. And I have no desire to ask Young Lord Roned…”

“I will tell you. I am no expert, but I know enough.”

Heliones would never tend the garden himself, but I shared what I knew with sincere effort. Heliones sat beside me, leaning in to look carefully at whatever my finger pointed to, nodding along and smiling with his eyes in a way that seemed genuinely pleased.

The way his body leaned quite far forward told me he had taken a real liking to the flowers.

Delighted to find that Heliones liked the same thing I liked, I chattered on and said things I did not even need to say, and Heliones listened to all of it without the slightest sign of boredom, nodding along steadily.

What a good feeling this is. A natural conversation with someone who actually listens.

“Geothermal warmth, you say. Then it must be difficult for them to survive winter in Frianc.”

Heliones, who had been listening attentively like a diligent student, furrowed his brow slightly and raised an important question.

“In Rodencia they are perennials, but it will likely be difficult here. Still, Roned mentioned he had grafted them with a Frianc native plant, so with good care, new shoots might come up again next year.”

“Next year. I see. I do hope we can see the flowers again next year.”

By next year I would most likely already be gone from the capital, but I quietly agreed, hoping Heliones would tend the flowers of my homeland well in my place.

“Yes. I hope we can see them again next year too.”

Talking about one thing and another, quite a lot of time had passed. The full moon had already moved past the middle of the sky. Not wanting to keep Heliones any longer, I offered a polite farewell.

“I seem to have stayed far too late. I will take my leave now.”

“Not at all. I had many questions. Thanks to your thorough explanations, I think I will be able to tend them well.”

I rose from my seat, bowed my head deeply to the Emperor in a gesture of respect, and gathered the shawl that had slipped down a little as I prepared to leave.

“Come anytime.”

“?”

The voice was light, difficult to tell whether it was sincere or in jest, and when I turned my head, a warm and wistful smile I had never seen before rested on Heliones’s cool face.

“Is it not more enjoyable to admire something with a person who truly appreciates it? You are welcome to come and see them at this hour, anytime you like.”

A slightly strange feeling came over me.

When we had lived together as husband and wife, he had turned down even a brief conversation in the study, and yet now that we were strangers to each other, he was telling me to come anytime. And with an entirely different warmth in his manner from back then.

His thoughtfulness toward me, struggling as I was under the weight of the gossip, touched me, and yet it also felt as though this degree of distance had been the right one for us from the very beginning, and a quiet ache began to rise in one corner of my chest.

Ah, but was there any need to ache? It had been a political marriage from the start. It was only natural to feel more at ease now that neither of us had anything to worry about on the other’s behalf.

I stood where I was, a little apart from Heliones, and smiled back at him with the same warmth. I was not sure how well I had hidden the quiet ache in one corner of my chest that I was deliberately ignoring.

“I may come every day, you know.”

“I will be waiting every day.”

A manner that was impeccably neat and composed. And yet the reflection of Heliones in the still pond beside us trembled with considerable unsteadiness.

Are you all right? Now that you have become Emperor, is the reality of it still not easy to bear?

Suddenly a flood of questions I wanted to ask him poured into my mind.

Who was I to be curious about how he was faring? For this solid man who had climbed to the highest seat on his own, it would be quite an impertinent question.

But if he needed someone to sit with comfortably and talk, if that could bring him any comfort, then gladly, anytime.

“Yes. Then I will come every day.”

Half in jest and half in earnest. At those words, Heliones’s perfect smile wavered for just a moment.

Or had I mistaken it for the trembling reflection in the water? Looking again, it was the same composed smile as before.

I left the red garden hoping that the smile on his face was genuine, not a forced one like mine.

* * *

Heliones was not a man who let himself be shaken by groundless rumors in the gossip sheets, but the fact that the contemptible word mistress had been attached to the name of the noble Lucian was deeply disagreeable to him.

Mistress was a fine-sounding word, but Heliones knew from experience exactly what treatment an Emperor’s mistress actually received.

At a single word from the Empress, he and his mother had been made to live as though they must not be seen in public even on national holidays, let alone at official imperial events, despite their noble birth.

Mistress, for Lucian. Was someone out of their mind?

Lucian was not someone to satisfy a passing desire. She was the companion he would walk the rest of his life beside.

For that alone he had severed ties with his own mother and thoroughly removed everything that stood in his way.

Heliones felt like dragging the journalist who had written such nonsense in by the collar, hanging them upside down, and subjecting them to a waterboarding, but the Frianc Empire had a tradition, as a leader among nations on the continent, of avoiding the suppression of the press, and so he was enduring it with gritted teeth.

The article had not even reported a falsehood. It had merely offered commentary. Punishing it might only stoke the idle curiosity of gossipmongers.

Heliones was burning inside. Not because of the sly old men who kept applying subtle pressure on him to take an Empress. His mind held only concern for Lucian, who was suffering because of pointless rumors.

He had doubled the guard at the residence where she was staying and ordered thorough checkpoints in the surrounding area, but this was the busy capital. Complete control was practically impossible.

When word reached him that letters of curse and even the carcasses of animals had been thrown over the wall of Lucian’s residence, the thought of sending her to the countryside for a time did cross his mind, but he abandoned it almost immediately.

‘No. I could not survive it.’

He did not know how he had managed the past two years. Heliones looked at the hydrangeas blooming across from the entrance of the residence where Lucian was staying and realized for the first time that summer had come.

At that moment he understood that for the two years she had been gone, he had lived without knowing how the weather changed or how the seasons passed.

Only after finding you did the warm wind finally blow, and the flowers bloom, and the sun grow hot.

‘No. Never again. We cannot be apart.’

He could not help being selfish. Having her before his eyes yet being unable to hold her was a torment that made him shudder, but if he could no longer see her whenever he wished, he thought he might truly die this time.

Some would say he was being dramatic, but what would they know? Who else could understand the pain that gripped his heart whenever he thought of Lucian?

“I will send an invitation every day.”

Count Fonta watched Heliones bury his face in the flower Lucian had pressed her face against to breathe in its scent, inhaling it with an intensity that looked nearly like eating it, and spoke with a look that was equal parts exasperated and pitying.

“Yes. If she comes every day, there is nothing more I could ask for.”

Heliones closed his eyes briefly, pressed down the emotions that kept trying to surface, and rose from his seat wearing the face of a composed Emperor.

“The matter I asked you to look into?”

“Word came up at a luncheon held at Duke Balthar’s villa. They are saying an Empress of Frianc origin must be selected without delay.”

“Duke Balthar seems to have quite a lot of free time on his hands. So passionate about his youngest daughter’s marriage.”

“How shall we respond?”

At Count Fonta’s question, Heliones gave his instructions with the same calm, settled expression he wore on a battlefield.

“We should keep him busy. Move forward with the suit.”

“You mean the embezzlement of funds from the educational foundation?”

“Yes. And what has become of Lewian?”

Count Fonta bowed his head with an expression of deep apology and answered in a voice that shrank as he spoke.

“He is certainly within the country, but his trail refuses to surface. We have all the houses of nobles with ties to the Rodencian royal family under surveillance, but whether he is simply not going out or hiding somewhere unexpected…”

It had already been two years since Lewian disappeared. No matter how foolish the man was, he could not have spent two years doing nothing. Heliones was confident he could grind down whatever that pathetic fool had prepared, but the problem was Lucian.

He could not allow Lucian to be put in danger again because of a half-brother who was worse than an enemy.

“Find him quickly. Kill him on sight. No. Bring him before me if you can. I want to kill him with my own hands.”