My Villainous Husband

44

I turned a blind eye to him with all my heart. Thankfully, Eden was also quite tactful.

“You must be familiar with the Imperial Palace’s garden by now.”

As the Empress, I gave out a ceremonial greeting while I smiled mechanically, Eden kept his mouth shut.

‘Nice! You keep pretending that you don’t care about me.’

It was another paladin, who seemed to be the oldest, who answered me.

“It’s so beautiful. It’s fresh every time I see it.”

Even though his answer was rather mellow, the other paladins looked a little uncomfortable.

It was fully understood.

I heard that the people of the paladins were injured a lot in the friendship sparring. In addition, even the Knights Commander of Actilus tried to step on the fallen paladin with a horse’s hoof. Contrary to me, who was stunned and thought, ‘What if someone dies?’, the young maids who told me the story were really excited.

…As expected, the national characters of this country.

I decided to be considerate of the paladins. This meant that I decided to leave this place as soon as possible.

However, Raniero did not move.

“Your Majesty.”

I called him carefully.

“Hmm?”

He responded kindly. It was a bonus that he also made eye contact with me and smiled.

‘…What is this?’

It felt like someone was sliding ice on my spine. Until now, my relationship with His Majesty has been more frightening than sweet. Despite that, I could not dispute him pretending to be close. I was so embarrassed that my face flushed red.

“I-I’m leaving now.”

‘These paladins look uncomfortable, too.’

However, the answer that came back to me was a spectacle.

“Hm, why are you so heartless?”

Saying so, Raniero then wrapped his arms around my waist. The physical contact itself was familiar, but after the scary moment that happened a few days ago, the words that came out of his mouth were so shocking that I stopped being stiff.

…Your Majesty, since when did you consider heartlessness to be a bad thing?

The next moment, Raniero began to ask the paladins quite kindly — was there anything uncomfortable to sleep in, and was the meal suitable for their tastes? — all the while, he brushed my hair or intertwined his fingers between mine.

Although I was used to doing this in front of people, the atmosphere was slightly different today.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly what, but something was different.

Upon hearing Ranieor’s greetings, the paladins showed signs of absurdity in various ways. Eden also had a similar expression, but it seemed that the surface of his thought was different. He flinched and glanced at me for a brief moment.

Despite the fact that I tried to pretend I did not notice, our eyes met.

‘I thought you said he was crazy, just like the original novel?’

That seemed to be what he was asking through the gaze. However, It was true that he was crazy! It was even more strange that he was doing this now, so it was even more frightening. He is usually bloody.