Only a heavy silence had settled over the carriage bound for the temple. Both men were busy, sunk deep in their own thoughts.
Kirian glanced sidelong at Luan, who sat across from him gazing blankly out the window. The fact that their eyes weren't meeting felt unusually anxiety-inducing today.
That redheaded brat.
In his head was the face of the impudent novice priest he'd seen in the waiting room during his last visit. The eyes that had looked straight at him. The manner of speaking his mind in full even while seeming to shrink back. Ordinarily he'd have given it good marks.
But the way that kid had looked at the Empress was the problem. It had gone beyond mere admiration. Though the kid himself didn't seem aware of it, the gaze trailing after Luan like a freshly imprinted duckling was the very picture of a subversive element. The bold attitude of squaring up to him without flinching grew more irritating the more he thought about it.
He half wanted to order the personal priest changed right then. He wanted to bark at Luan never to see that kind of brat again. But Kirian held it in.
Lose my temper here and he'll just clam up again.
Everywhere I went, I was a ghost.
He didn't want to hear those words again. He never wanted to see that listlessly resigned figure again, the one who'd called himself an existence that may as well not be there. Luan would never know how sharply that voice and that scene had lodged in his heart—the “just like the past five years” spoken as he turned away, spent.
I started wrong.
Kirian was realizing, to the bone, that his approach had been fundamentally wrong from the very beginning. When the man first entered his sight, he shouldn't have suspected, interrogated, and tried to lock him away by force. He was a wounded person, and such people needed first to be gently embraced and soothed. And yet...
How the hell does one gently embrace someone, anyway?
From a young age he'd lived his whole life amid plots and power struggles. He could survive only by suspecting everyone. To a Kirian who'd lived that way, tenderness was a harder problem than reciting the Empire's legal code backward.
A deep crease formed between Kirian's brows. Had there ever been anyone around me who could properly demonstrate the word "tenderness"? No. This was a serious matter. While he was rummaging through the lookalike faces around him for anyone usable, the carriage arrived at the temple.
“We've arrived.”
This time, at Luan's strong insistence, the procession came with only minimal escort. Setting out without notifying the temple in advance was Luan's arrangement for a dramatic encounter between the two.
Separately, the sudden visit by the Emperor and Empress sent the priests and soldiers guarding the temple entrance rushing out, faces ashen.
“Please summon my personal priest.”
At the words he spoke the moment he stepped from the carriage, Kirian's brow furrowed slightly. Asking for that brat the instant we arrive? But at Luan's words, the senior priest who hurried over wore a deeply troubled expression.
“The thing is... Your Majesty, Aiden is not present at the moment.”
“Is he attending to other business?”
He'd surely instructed that the man not be given other tasks, since preparing to receive him alone was busy enough. Worried it might be another case of bullying within the temple like last time, he asked, but fortunately it wasn't that direction.
“Recently, the boy was found to have some talent for swordsmanship, so he occasionally observes training with the temple's order of knights. As luck would have it, this is that time...”
At that answer, Kirian's eyes sharpened.
“Moonlighting?”
It was a flaw perfect for finding fault. But Luan lightly brushed aside Kirian's conjecture. If that's the direction, it's an even better route. Originally, after awakening his divine power, Aiden had become commander of the temple's knights, so his training in the sword must have been considerable. So this was the point where that talent had been discovered. This is far more productive.
No, wait. He seemed to manage the herb garden really well too. He's surely just multitalented. His shoulders rose involuntarily with pride.
“Since we came without sending word ahead, we'll wait. Please tell him to come to the prayer room when his training is over.”
He recalled that the sofa in the prayer room had been quite plush last time. Last time he'd circled around to the back of the temple to meet Aiden, but there was no need for that. The prayer room was used by many nobles, so one could cross through the temple's beautiful garden to reach it.
As Luan moved off naturally, Kirian fell into step right beside him.
Sensing the mood between the two, Kael, along with the escort knights, naturally widened the gap to about twenty paces behind. It was already a temple guarded ironclad by temple knights. And among all of them, Kirian's martial prowess was overwhelmingly the strongest. Right now, reading the room was the chief duty.
The surroundings grew quiet. Kirian found this hushed intimacy rather to his liking. When he turned his head, platinum-blond hair fluttering in the breeze shimmered under the gentle sunlight. The earlier garden stroll had been less a stroll than show business, so this was effectively his first time walking with Luan alone. It was a pretty fine feeling.
If only it weren't for the words Luan said next.
“Your Majesty, what did you think of Aiden?”
“...That redheaded brat, you mean?”
Kirian's lips jutted out, but inwardly Luan cheered. The Kirian who registers most people as so many limbed somethings passing by remembers his appearance exactly. Well, who could forget such a dazzling, beautiful youth? No, wait. As expected of destiny, he was imprinted at a single glance, perhaps.
“Red, you say. It's a sunset-tinged scarlet.”
Kirian's eyebrow twitched. He didn't like Luan praising the kid's looks. Lost in his own delusion, Luan launched into a sales pitch for Aiden.
“It's so curious that he's the same age as you, Your Majesty. Maybe that's why I feel even more drawn to him.”
“You think there's only one twenty-year-old in the world? They're a dime a dozen.”
Kirian grumbled in reply. There has to be a bit of resistance to it. Irritation flared at the words drawn to him, but once again Kirian held it in.
“The two of you seem to have so much in common. Your Majesty has such striking looks, after all. So does Aiden.”
“He could pass for a woman. What use is a man that scrawny?”
Kirian scoffed, running down Aiden's appearance. But Luan only grew more content. Textbook. Isn't that the standard line a prickly man uses when checking a gentle beauty? As expected, this was the main route. Luan wore a benevolent smile and defended Aiden enthusiastically.
“They said his swordsmanship talent was discovered, didn't they? If he builds up his skill, maybe he could even spar with you, Your Majesty.”
“Out of the question. You know swordsmanship isn't mastered so easily.”
“Aiden's the hardworking type.”
They're on those terms already? Kirian quietly ground his back teeth without showing it.
“What's more, his character is gentle and delicate. I really like that you and Aiden are the same age, Your Majesty. He's just the sort who could softly soften your fiery temper.”
“What's wrong with my temper?! When have I ever flown into a rage?”
Kirian flared up as if wronged. Luan stopped walking. On this, I have plenty to say. When he stared at Kirian with deadpan eyes, the man's back tensed.
“...Is this from the person who drew a sword to take a man's head right in front of me?”
“...”
To this he had no reply. He had drawn his sword in fury at both Harkan, the northern knight commander, and Duke Requies. Not exactly the kind of behavior to display before a faint-hearted (?) empress. Caught dead to rights, Kirian cleared his throat and looked away. But even so, he stubbornly said his piece.
“In any case, I don't like that kid.”
“Why?”
“His eyes are insolent.”
It was an absurd bit of nitpicking.
“That's because you haven't yet seen the boy's true worth, Your Majesty.”
“...How do you know that brat's true worth so well?”
Kirian's red eyes pointedly bristled.
“What's so precious about that redheaded brat that you keep coddling him?”
Telling Kirian he wanted a divorce, counting down the remaining cooling-off period, throwing up walls—and yet. His tone was brusque, but thick beneath it was deep resentment and jealousy. Not that Luan would ever notice.
“Coddling? It's an objective fact.”
Having dismissed Kirian's jealousy as nothing more than denial of his own feelings, Luan shrugged.
“Meet and talk with him often and you'll come to see Aiden in a good light too, Your Majesty. I guarantee it.”
“Why would I meet that brat often? I'd rather be with you—ha, never mind.”
It didn't sit well with him that an absent priest was butting into their stroll alone—the knights twenty paces back didn't count. Kirian scrubbed at his face and stalked off irritably. Talk till you're blue in the face and the Empress will just keep defending that impudent novice priest brat. It angered him to think of how thoroughly the kid had won Luan over.
I'm dying of frustration.
He hadn't expected smooth sailing, given how tangled the relationship already was. But another man cutting in was a separate matter. All the more so if it was that novice priest with the insolent eyes.
When Kirian, stewing alone, had crossed the garden and reached the corridor before the purification chamber—
“Lord Luan!”
A clear, limpid voice rang out from the far end of the corridor. When he turned toward the sound, scarlet hair, slightly damp with sweat, was streaming through the air. Red, he says. Such an oddly pretty shade of hair. The way he came running was like nothing so much as a soft-drink commercial.
While Kirian was still thinking, Aiden had drawn this much closer. He seemed to have rushed over the moment he heard the news during his knights' training. But despite that refreshing entrance, sparks of crimson fire flew in Kirian's eyes.
Lord Luan?
Kirian's brow crumpled fearsomely. Not Empress, not Lord Luanisiel, but how dare he... "Luan"? The cheek, calling him by a pet name?
Just as Kirian opened his mouth to reprimand the irreverent form of address, Aiden, who'd belatedly noticed the cold-faced man planted right beside Luan, flinched and hastily straightened his posture.
“Ah... I greet Your Majesty.”
The dog-tail-wagging smile of a moment before had vanished without a trace. His body, gone rigid with tension, looked like a cowering lamb. Watching, Luan clicked his tongue inwardly.
The imperial dignity act has him spooked. You have to make a soft atmosphere for the relationship to progress.
But to Kirian it looked otherwise. In the waiting room, this had been a kid who'd looked him dead in the eye and said his full piece. Impudent but never crossing the line, an exceedingly irksome kid. This now, by anyone's reckoning, was a feigned demureness. As expected, Aiden's gaze was fixed on Luan.
With no way of knowing the Emperor's inner thoughts, Luan tossed out a joke to lighten the mood.
“'Your Majesty' is too stiff. You used to want to call me hyung.”
“Th-that was...!”
Aiden's white cheeks flushed crimson in an instant. Luan chuckled lightly, as if charmed by the boy's embarrassment. Kirian, of course, was not.
Hyung?!
What on earth happened between them in the meantime for such an intimate title to come up? Kirian's eyes turned fearsome, but Aiden, not minding him in the slightest, kept his gaze locked on Luan. How galling that he could put on such a pitiful face. But Luan, without a grain of perceptiveness in him, failed to catch the duplicity. He smiled gently and said,
“Just kidding. But feel free to use a comfortable address. I've given my permission.”
“...Yes, Lord Luan!”
Aiden again broke into a smile like a flower in full bloom. It was a harmless, innocent, truly dazzling young man's smile. There was no way Kirian's heart wouldn't flutter at the sight of it.
But the eyes of the Kirian watching that harmless smile had already turned pitch black.
Lord Luan?
A blaze rose in his chest.
Permission?!
It was a pet name even he, the husband, couldn't use. And the man had granted it to a wet-behind-the-ears nobody of a novice priest. It was then.
Aiden's gaze flicked toward him for a moment. And his eyes curved into half-moons as he smiled. That was... unmistakable provocation.
This sly little bastard!
With Luan present, he couldn't unleash killing intent, but his eyes were already as good as it. The kid who calmly took that glare and turned his eyes back to Luan as if nothing had happened—how could such a thing be cute?!
As Aiden led the way and Luan followed toward the prayer room, Kirian stuck fast to his side. That the Emperor's fist was clenched tight, no one—no, at least Luan—failed to notice.
