Chapter 294 (1/2)

I barely lowered my head and looked at my outfit again. I was wearing a muslin chemise that has no décorrations except for a couple of folds.

Did I jump into his arms wearing this?

When I recalled his embarrassed expression, I blushed suddenly.

While I was sitting aghast for some time, I put on other clothes with a sigh. Then, I put on a thin shawl and once again checked it before opening the door.

Looking around, I saw him standing by the window at the end of a dark corridor and looking up at the sky.

“It’s rather dark outside, but won’t you walk with me for a while?”

I nodded at him, who asked me carefully, then I walked toward the garden with him.

Was it because the winter was around the corner? The night air that touched my skin was quite cold. I breathed in the moist air that wrapped around my body. The breath I was letting out faintly rolled up and scattered into the air.

The moon lurking in the clouds poked out its face. In the deep night when even the worms were asleep, only the sound of his and my footsteps rang out in a space filled with a silvery halo. Listening to that small, regular sound from the grass, I looked to my side at his sudden calling.

“Aristia.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“As for the fate you said a little while ago… are you referring to that dream?”

I was suddenly speechless. What should I answer? Given that he asked the same question in the past, it seemed that he also knew something about my past. But do I need to tell him about it when he doesn’t know the details? What if he would be hurt by what I have to say?

“…Let’s sit down first. ”

“Oh, yes, Your Majesty.”

When I nodded, he took out a handkerchief and laid it on the bench. Then he had me sit down although I refused.

“I told you that you shouldn’t sit on the cold floor as you are so weak.”

“… Thank you, Your Majesty. ”

He nodded silently and sat next to me. He said, looking up silently at the branches of the della flower tree over my head, “Please tell me what kind of man I was in your dream.”

“…”

“I want to know how I hurt you or what you wanted in your dreams.”

“…”

“So… I want to make sure you never go through that again. ”

When I was asked the same question in the mist in the past, I didn’t answer to the end because I didn’t trust him then. Of course, I didn’t want to hurt him, but the bigger reason was that I didn’t trust him.

But now it was different because I trusted him. I knew he really loved me, so I had no reason not to tell him about my past, which I had already gotten off my chest. What I was worried about was that he might feel hurt after listening to my story.

“Well, I had a long dream. ”

I began to tell him, looking up at the stars shining in the dark. I had so many stories to tell him, which started with my first meeting with him when I was ten, such as the fact that I made all-out efforts to become a woman who was suitable for him, but the more I did, the more I felt estranged from him, the fact that I was struggling to survive in the social circles, the fact that I always felt heartbroken, finding he was always cold to me, the fact I became his concubine after Jiun took the status of the empress from me, and the fact that I stood up all night, wrestling with Jiun’s work, and…