The emperor swiftly extended his hand in front of her eyes.

“Ah, no, what are you.”

“Your gaze is too blatant.”

“When did I. Don’t jump to conclusions as you please.”

The emperor, who had been laughing lowly, silently ate his sandwich. Patricia ate meatballs made by shaping minced meat and vegetables into round balls and cooking them. The seasoning had soaked in well, giving it a savory taste. The aftertaste was nutty.

She took out a plate of peeled and sliced fruit from the fruit basket. She ate an unknown red berry.

A warm breeze blew. The lush summer fruits were sweet. Patricia turned her gaze from the lakeside and looked at the emperor.

“Um, by the way, Your Majesty. Did we also eat here when we went to Pana Castle?”

“No.”

“I feel like we had a picnic by the lake sometime.”

The wind tousled Harchen’s bangs. He brushed his hair back.

It must have been with that bastard Eden Patterson. Patrick might have been there too. Now I’m getting jealous even of Patricia’s forgotten memories.

The hot wind that passed through Harchen touched Patricia’s face. There was a scent of cigar in the air coming from him.

“Seems like you went on a picnic with some guy?”

The emperor, who spat out with a cold expression, drank his tea. Patricia knew that the emperor was aiming his words at Sir Eden.

It might have been so. She felt like she had once sat by a shore like this and eaten a packed lunch with Sir Eden.

But was it okay for the emperor to speak so rudely?

Truly, his ill-mannered way of speaking detracted from his beauty.

Was there no one to point it out to him?

Patricia took a deep breath, intending to say something out of a sense of duty. At that moment, the emperor put down his teacup and stood up first, saying he would excuse himself.

As he stood, a shadow like a large tree fell over Patricia’s body.

“When I’m near you… it’s hard to endure.”

The emperor muttered in a low voice, as if talking to himself, words that were incomprehensible. After looking down at her for a moment, he silently turned and walked straight away.

Patricia exhaled the breath she had been holding only after seeing the emperor’s back.

Although the exact meaning wasn’t conveyed, she caught the nuance. How could he say such things as easily as drinking water? And he wasn’t even waiting for an answer.

Patricia also found it hard to breathe when the emperor was near. If they were just a bit further apart, she could observe him comfortably.

As he walked along the lake, he leaned against a tree and took out a cigar. Calip, standing beside him, cut the end with a cigar cutter and lit it for him.

Harchen smoked the cigar while looking towards Patricia. She sat with her back straight, drinking tea and laughing while chatting with a maid who had scurried over at some point.

Her eye corners crinkled as she smiled under the sunlight, the corners of her mouth lifting. Then she glanced this way briefly and covered her cheek, which his gaze had touched, with her palm, blushing.

Harchen’s hands clenched involuntarily. He tightly clenched his fist, veins protruding, then relaxed it.

“Calip, prepare for departure.”

Harchen swiftly mounted his warhorse and galloped through the forest.

Patricia went down to the lakeshore, wet her hands in the cold water, and pressed them to her heated nape.

Before boarding the carriage, she looked back towards the tree where the emperor had been leaning. He was nowhere to be seen.

The tall tree stood neatly like the emperor. Casting a long shadow.

*

Until they entered the territory of Viscount Beil, the emperor’s warhorse ran to the front left of the carriage Patricia was riding in.

When Patricia turned her head towards the window, he was immediately visible, and a constant distance was maintained. She liked that this much distance allowed her to comfortably observe the emperor.

She gazed at the emperor’s straight and broad back, dressed in a white summer formal uniform. It was a solid back that exuded firm strength.

She repeatedly tried to objectively assess their relationship, now that there was some distance between them.

Setting aside their positions as the emperor and princess of the empire, from a general perspective, was it possible for a man like Harchen to actively express affection towards her?

What on earth did the emperor like about her? She couldn’t answer the questions that came to mind.

Perhaps she was a person lacking in self-love. There was a possibility, having grown up as a shadow princess in the West Tower for many years.

Nevertheless, Patricia consistently considered herself to have a strong will and firm worldview.

When alone with Patricia, Annie would talk about even the trivial things she remembered. Annie said that Patrick had hired her two years ago to help Eva, who had knee pain, and they lived together in the West Tower.

Through Annie, Patricia was able to roughly sketch the imperial genealogy of the two empires in her mind. Fortunately, the direct bloodlines of the two imperial families weren’t complicated.

It was surprising that there were as many as three princesses in the Karsik Empire.

Patricia couldn’t hear about what she was really curious about – her mother’s death, her relationship with Patrick, and the decisive reason for donning armor and starting a war.

“Annie, am I good with a sword?”

“Of course, Your Highness is fast and agile. You’ve enjoyed quite a few sword matches with His Majesty the Emperor as well.”

“With His Majesty?”

“Yes. His Highness Patrick would run away, and Your Highness Princess would charge in recklessly. Hehe, even Sir Eden has been pushed back more than once or twice. You would only put down the sword when Eva nagged.”

“Eva seems strict.”

“No, Your Highness was a bit, freely, well actually dangerously. You would sneak out secretly. You put ropes on the West Tower and climbed the walls.”

“Ah, I see.”

Patricia was pleased to learn that she had not been confined solely to the West Tower. It also explained why she had escaped when she was taken prisoner at Pana Castle.

She had planned the escape route with the help of Brie, the white eagle that Patrick had introduced to her.

In such a situation, it was admirable that she had tried something and succeeded, rather than being meekly held captive in low spirits. She gradually learned about herself and her self-esteem was boosted.

“You also had a bright personality. Especially, you had a deep affection for Eva. When Eva was sick, you would secretly jump down from the West Tower, ride a horse, and go to a doctor outside the palace to get medicine, without the knights knowing.”

“Is that so? I want to meet Eva soon.”

Annie started to nod off while complaining about Eva’s strong personality and how she nagged Annie herself a lot.

Patricia helped Annie lie down sideways on the carriage seat, supporting her head. She took off the sandals that showed Annie’s toes.

Patricia looked up at the sky through the carriage window. The cloudless blue sky was like her empty mind. It was rather refreshing to be empty.

She placed her hand on the window sill and stuck her head out the window. She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky behind.

Brie……!

In the sky above, maintaining a constant distance, an eagle with a yellow beak was following. Before parting with Patrick at Pana Castle, Patrick had called Brie and taught her how to deliver letters between them.

The eagle, being a bird of prey, didn’t know that Patricia had lost her memory and didn’t recognize its existence.

As Patrick had explained, when she pressed her hand between the eagle’s wing joints and squeezed its body, it closed its fierce eyes. It rubbed Patricia’s hand with its yellow beak tilted diagonally.

Hello, Brie.

The white eagle usually dominated Patricia’s sky, watching her, and came down at her whistle signal to deliver letters to Patrick, he had said.

Patricia was overwhelmed with harsh emotions when she heard that she had been confined to the closed West Tower immediately after birth.

No matter that an oracle had been given, and that she was born as a female taking away the energy of her twin Patrick, why had her mother made such a decision?

Perhaps Patricia herself didn’t want to deny her own existence. Was there someone who could clearly tell who Patricia was?

She felt proud that she had lived without losing her dignity in a closed and confined environment, based on just a few stories.

Maybe the emperor had seen through Patricia’s hidden nature and come to like her. Thinking this, she pressed the back of her hand against her heated cheek.

Anyway, she who had been the shadow princess of the West Tower of Tane had become the empress of the Golden Empire.

Her husband, the emperor, was so breathtakingly handsome that she could watch him silently without noticing the passage of time.

Of course, his bad speaking habits needed a lot of correction. He expressed and demanded affection without filtering, but he didn’t forcefully satisfy his desires.

Patricia wanted to hear about the emperor. She wanted to know even trivial habits about him. No, she just wanted to spend time talking about him.

Patricia imagined various things about the emperor by herself until Annie woke up from her deep sleep and came to her senses.

“Oh my, Your Majesty, you should have woken me up.”

“You were sleeping so soundly. There was nothing to do anyway.”

Annie took out a glass bottle with ice chunks from the snack basket placed on one side of the carriage seat and poured it into a pewter cup, offering it. The pewter cup somehow looked familiar to Patricia. The lemon water refreshed her mouth.

“How was the wedding?”

Annie clasped her hands together and recalled the scene of boarding the wedding carriage. She described in detail the shape of the wedding dress Patricia had worn and even the lace pattern of the long flowing wedding veil.

“…In a chiffon dress embroidered with lace and silver thread, wearing a white gilded lamb crown, you looked like a goddess descended from heaven, and His Majesty, dressed in a matching white ceremonial outfit embroidered with silver flower patterns, was so handsome that one couldn’t close their mouth.”

Patricia imagined the emperor in his ceremonial attire. Her heart fluttered.

He must have looked handsome, being such a beautiful man.

“By the way, Annie. Did I really consummate the marriage?”

“Of course. Lady Anna sent the proof of the first night to the Empress Dowager’s maid, and they took the confirmation to the temple.”

Patricia leaned her head out the window. The sunlight falling on the emperor’s shoulder epaulettes dazzled her eyes.

With that emperor… I spent the first night, really did. Then why have even such important memories disappeared?

“Um, so in your opinion, did I like, His Majesty?”

Patricia was embarrassed to ask, but she was curious. Surely she couldn’t have liked the arrogant and rude emperor, but strangely she kept looking for him and staring at him.

She might have been a lookist who only cared about appearance, even if her personality was terrible.

When her body touched the emperor’s, she was startled, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Rather, her heart raced and some part of her body heated up.

She could guess what kind of lewd acts he wanted to do at Beil Manor, and found herself imagining it. The desire to run away in fear and the anticipation crossed each other at every moment.

“Yes, in my opinion, you did like him.”

“Tell me the basis for that judgment.”

Annie’s face turned red in an instant, whatever she was thinking.

“I heard from Eva. The day after the first night, when she was helping you bathe, Your Highness, no, Her Majesty the Empress’s neck, arms, legs, your whole body was all red and bruised.”

Patricia pressed the almost dry, lukewarm handkerchief against her heated neck.

“And when His Majesty came out of the bathroom after washing and suddenly entered Your Majesty’s dressing room shirtless, his chest, neck, and shoulders were also red and…”

“Stop, stop talking.”

Patricia covered her tomato-red cheeks with both hands. Annie also fanned her own bright red cheeks with her hand. At that moment, the emperor stuck his face through the carriage window.

“Patricia.”

“Eek!”

“What.”

“You suddenly came close.”

“Why, were you having naughty thoughts about me?”

“N-No, I wasn’t.”