If Your Heart Remains Unchanged
If Your Heart Remains Unchanged
Daniel's gaze wavered upon hearing Selvia's confession.
He couldn't quite process the emperor of a nation saying "I love you."
Daniel was no fool.
He had at least vaguely sensed that Selvia had feelings for him.
He couldn't have not known, even if he'd wanted to.
He had met her countless times, and on several of those occasions he had rescued her from danger.
Ordinarily, developing fondness for the person who saved you was only natural.
But he had not anticipated that it would transform into love.
After a long silence, Daniel swallowed dryly and opened his mouth.
"......Your Majesty. Do you understand the implications of what you just said?"
Selvia nodded slightly.
She meant it in earnest.
Because of that, the flustered Daniel paused for a moment before speaking.
"That was a truly impulsive remark. There is a high probability that Your Majesty is currently too unsettled to make proper judgments. So......."
Daniel stopped mid-sentence and closed his mouth.
Because the shouts of soldiers had ridden the wind from afar.
─ We must secure Her Majesty the Emperor's safety, so move quickly! 2nd Platoon, begin searching around warehouses and storage facilities. 3rd Platoon, with me, search the outdoor garden!
─ Understood!
─ 3rd Platoon! You heard, follow me! Quickly!
It seemed the Imperial Guard soldiers tasked with the search had already reached this place.
"Your Majesty."
Daniel pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket.
"The Imperial Guard will soon come rushing here. They are tight-lipped men, but rumors cannot be entirely prevented from spreading. So how about wiping your tears?"
He was telling her to maintain her dignity, because it would be troublesome if the soldiers caught her weeping and some unsavory gossip began to circulate.
It was a sound argument, yet somewhere she found it displeasing.
Selvia, steadying her heart with a deep breath, reached out her hand to accept the handkerchief.
But the moment she was about to take the handkerchief, Selvia's hand stopped.
After a moment of hesitation, Selvia ultimately withdrew her hand and raised her head.
Her blue eyes looking up at Daniel were tinged with a sulky air.
"Would you wipe them for me?"
"......You mean for me to do it personally?"
"Yes. It is an order."
Daniel could not understand why Selvia was acting this way, but he did as he was told.
"Excuse me."
Bowing his head, Daniel gently held Selvia's cheek with the hand that held the handkerchief.
And so he began to carefully wipe away the tears that had welled up at the corners of her eyes.
Perhaps because she liked that, Selvia accepted Daniel's touch with an expression that had softened a little.
Selvia's petulant behavior seemed far removed from an emperor.
Seeing Selvia, who had always acted maturely, show a side so full of vulnerabilities felt novel, and somewhere within, he found her cute.
However, the words Selvia uttered once the tears were all wiped away were not cute at all.
"So, what is your answer?"
Daniel, who had been about to withdraw his hand, froze just like that.
"Do not even think of passing this off clumsily. Because I meant what I said with all my heart."
She was asking for a definite answer to the confession she had mustered the courage to speak aloud.
Daniel too could more than understand Selvia's position.
Because when someone lays bare their true feelings, treating it as a joke and brushing past it was as good as a sin.
So Daniel also resolved to approach Selvia's sincerity with earnestness.
"Your Majesty. We are currently at war. This is not an appropriate time to discuss love. So even if I were to give you a definitive answer now, what would it change?"
Was he indirectly saying no?
It was just as Selvia, thinking it could not be helped if Daniel disliked her, was about to force a bitter smile.
"However, once the war is over, the situation will be different."
A look of puzzlement surfaced on Selvia's expression, which had been sinking into disappointment.
"If that feeling you hold in your heart, Your Majesty, continues to persist even after the war ends......."
A faint smile spread across Daniel's lips as he looked down at Selvia.
"I too shall sincerely accept Your Majesty's heart."
He was saying he would accept if that heart remained unchanged even after the war ended.
Because Daniel thought this feeling Selvia harbored was a temporary thing.
Emotions were inherently unstable, prone to change at any time depending on the moment and the place.
But Daniel did not know.
He did not know that the feeling Selvia held was far older than he thought.
She had never impulsively confessed her love.
So from Selvia's perspective, what Daniel had just said was not much different from 'Let us marry once the war is over.'
"......Is that true?"
Selvia, her eyes wide with surprise, asked like a young girl.
When Daniel nodded to indicate he meant it, Selvia's lips parted gently.
It felt as if her heart was pounding wildly and a ringing sound echoed in her ears.
While her mind went blank, Selvia, as if possessed, grabbed Daniel's arm.
"Your Majesty?"
Before the flustered Daniel could pull his body away, Selvia stood on her tiptoes.
As their faces drew closer, their lips met.
"......!"
"......."
The kiss under the moonlight continued for several seconds before breaking off.
Lowering herself from her tiptoes, Selvia looked up at Daniel with a dreamy expression before belatedly coming to her senses.
"Ah......."
Her face flushed, Selvia hurriedly averted her gaze.
"I'm sorry. This was definitely......."
A wave of embarrassment washed over her to the point that even she could not understand why she had done it.
Raising a hand to cover her mouth, Selvia half-closed her eyes.
"Impulsive. Yes. S-So, please forget what just happened......."
Even if she asked him to forget, there was no way he could erase a kiss with the emperor from his memory.
Daniel was equally shocked, and so an awkward silence settled between them.
Only after a long while did Daniel, who had come to his senses, open his mouth vacantly.
"......Your Majesty."
"I'm sorry. Please don't say anything right now."
Daniel complied.
In truth, he had no idea what he ought to say either, so it worked out well.
Just as that strange mood was lingering between the two, the sound of soldiers' footsteps reached them.
If they continued to stand awkwardly around each other, the soldiers would find it strange.
To clear the atmosphere, Daniel let out a dry cough.
"If you need a little more time to think alone, I shall send the soldiers away."
Smiling faintly at Daniel's consideration, Selvia shook her head.
"It's all right. You said it yourself, didn't you? That you are who you are now because of the memories, the unwanted ones included. If so, then the same must hold true for me."
After taking a deep breath, Selvia faced forward.
"I am not a substitute for the princess."
Daniel had told her.
That the one he served was not the dead princess but the emperor who stood before his eyes.
And that others would feel no different.
So she would no longer cling to the memory of the dead.
"No matter what anyone says, I am the rightful emperor of this Empire."
Watching Selvia regain her confidence, Daniel let out a low chuckle.
"Of course. Your Majesty the Emperor."
*
As people go through life, they create despair in their hearts, great and small.
Because life is never smooth, and one experiences adversity regardless of one's own will.
The greater the magnitude of that adversity, the more uniformly a person succumbs to frustration.
This inevitable yoke of fate was something not even the emperor of the Empire could escape.
"It's all right. I'm truly all right. Chief of the Inner Court Office? Why are you crying? No, rather, I'm the one who's sorry. It's fine, so please just go home for the day. Everyone stop worrying! I told you I wasn't hurt anywhere."
But adversity, depending on how one set one's mind, could be overcome to any extent.
Selvia, who was now surrounded by Imperial Guard officers and Inner Court Office personnel, chatting with them amiably, was the very proof of that.
As Daniel breathed a sigh of relief at that sight, he also felt an odd chill run down his spine.
'It's safe to say almost no one knows about Selvia's past right now. But.......'
The moment this shocking truth took the form of a rumor and began to spread throughout the Empire, the Empire would find itself in an uncontrollable situation.
If a civil war were to break out in wartime, when they were already struggling to hold off the Republic and the Allied Nations, they could follow a trajectory straight into ruin.
Of course, the evidence to prove that 'Selvia is not of the Emperor's bloodline' was located in the Imperial Relic Repository of the Imperial Palace.
Not only was it enshrined in a place no one dared approach, but it was also possible to destroy it if he wished.
That meant he could erase the evidence from this world forever.
So a civil war would not break out over mere rumors.
'But if the party spreading the rumor is the Prince.......'
It was not entirely impossible that the Empire's situation could hurtle toward catastrophe.
Letting out a sigh, Daniel turned his head in the direction of the Old Town.
The Prince was now confined within the cathedral, waiting for Daniel Steiner.
'Arno. Knowing the ripple effect of the information you held, is that why you proposed a deal so confidently back then?'
He recalled Arno in front of the servant's corpse, laughing a laugh stained with madness.
'I'm sorry, but.......'
Daniel furrowed his brow.
'I have no intention of dealing with a bastard like you.'
He was going to make him thoroughly pay the price for having given Selvia despair.