It wasn’t an uncomfortable emotion or an awkwardness like wearing someone else’s clothes. At this moment, everything for Ines was a miracle. It was a kind of anxiety that someone experiencing a miracle might feel.

If happiness is too overwhelming, can he understand?

Ines buried herself in the arms of the man scrutinizing her closely.

“Yes, that’s right. I traveled through time.”

At her words, Carson smirked.

“Otherwise, how could something like this be possible?”

Until now, Ines had never thought that traveling through time was lucky for her. It was just a given duty and a heavy obligation.

On the heavy and past road, Carson, whom she met, was the only light in her dark life. But to Ines, Carson was no longer a god.

He was now a miracle to her.

Carson gently stroked the woman’s hair nestled in his embrace. When his lips gently pressed against her white-exposed shoulders, her shallow breath tickled his chest.

“That’s right. It was really strange. I felt breathless from the first time I saw you. The thought that I had to protect you was an instinctive and desperate feeling.”

Whispering to himself, Carson held Ines even tighter, like a mantra. He had to protect her. Otherwise, it felt like he would suffocate and die.

Ines wept so much in his embrace.

You were like that. While I considered you a god, you thought you had to protect me.

When a lot of time passes, Ines might be able to pour out the past to him.

I really traveled through time. Now I might understand the reason.

“Maybe it was because of that dream.”

“…Dream?”

Looking up at her with tear-stained cheeks, Carson sighed. He seemed to be regretting why he was revealing words he had never spoken before on such a miraculous day.

“It’s a dream where you fall into a lake.”

Today, this man seemed determined to make Ines cry. It was annoying to think why he was revealing words today that he had never said before. The mention of a dream where you fall into a lake.

“Although it’s always the same place, it’s always different. Some days you’re very close, and on other days, you’re so far away that I can’t even reach out my hand.”

“…”

“But fortunately.”

Carson let out a relieved breath as if he had finally confessed.

“I always save you. I’ve never failed once.”

“Never?”

“Oh, well, once. When Noah woke me up from my sleep.”

Looking at Ines’s face, he chuckled.

“But don’t worry. Even then, I saved you. So what I’m saying is… I’ll always do my best.”

“…”
“So, as long as you hold my hand, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Thinking about it, that was the case. He had believed all of Ines’s words from the beginning.

Was it because she saved his sister? Even so, blind faith like that was hard to understand with ordinary words and thoughts.

“I will support everything you plan to do in the future. As the empress, you don’t need to be concerned about my opinion. Of course, you don’t have to do anything. I just don’t like to see you struggling.”

“Anything?”

“Yes.”

Avoiding each other’s gaze for a moment, Ines rested her forehead on his neck. She kept thinking that he was making her act too flustered.

“Was the lake full of birch and silver fir trees?”

Whispering with her body pressed against his, Ines asked. Carson’s shoulders seemed to tense for a moment at her question, but soon, a tender voice returned.

“Yes, it was.”

“Really… Was the lake so large that it could capture the entire view of the forest?”

“Yes, it was like that.”

“True… It must have been a beautiful place.”

Carson answered as he lifted Ines. The scenery with her was always beautiful, no matter where it was.

“In the dream, you always wear a green dress.”

Struggling to breathe with her suppressed breath, Ines listened to his words.

She didn’t know if some unknown force that had turned her back to the past had planted that one specific point in his dreams during countless intertwined moments in time.

It might be unknown whether Carson remembered the Ines from the time he hadn’t experienced, due to that force.

“Perhaps, that’s why I first gave you a green dress.”

Maybe the pitiful Ines was pitied by the god, and a relentless interference allowed them to avoid a sad fate?

While the Imperial Palace faced the rising sun, the Imperial Queen’s Palace was steeped in the deep hues of the evening glow. The red light had spread under the feet of the two.

When he was her god, his unquestioning faith was taken for granted. But looking back, it was a miracle.

All the moments when she met him, believed in him, and fell in love with him were miraculous.

Every moment that naturally unfolded like the rising sun or the ebbing and flowing waves was a miracle. It was difficult to explain with any other words.

Now, Ines could no longer resent the god who had driven her with profound agony.

Carson gently pressed his lips against Ines’s teary eyes. The moist lips slowly moved, stealing Ines’s breath. Even time seemed to melt away gently.