I Won’t Accept Your Regrets

“Your Majesty, should I report to His Majesty about your arrival?” The servant asked me cautiously, frozen as ice.

He had already come to his senses, but I was still in shock.

Now I wasn’t sure if I wanted to meet Raymond face to face.

“No, no. His Majesty does not need to know that I am here.”

“…Yes, Your Majesty.”

I walked away from his office.

* * *

“Get out of here!”

Upon returning to the Empress’s palace, Helen yelled at the maids.

The maids who were in charge of my bedroom left the room and I sat down on a chair.

“Your Majesty… are you all right?”

Helen has probably already found out about Lizena’s return.

She came up to me and said carefully:

“All the maids and servants have already heard the news. Maybe by tomorrow the rumors will reach everyone in the palace.”

Rumors that Raymond’s first love, Lizena, is back.

Raymond and Lizena.

This couple was very popular in secular society.

“Helen, did you hear that too? Didn’t it seem to me?”

This meant: ‘I heard everything clearly, but didn’t want to believe it’.

Helen’s face became worried.

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon.”

Helen tilted her head, as if I might think it was her fault.

“No, you have nothing to do with it. Leave me, Helen. I should be alone.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Helen quietly closed the back door.

Only my deep sigh sounded in the room, where silence reigned.

“Oh, Lizena, and why did you suddenly come back?”

Lizena left the Empire seven years ago to become a concubine in the Western Kingdom.

As long as she was a concubine and not a queen, she couldn’t leave the royal palace of the Western Kingdom as long as the king was alive.

But why and how did she return to us in this Empire?

I once wanted her to come back and make Raymond happy, but now I don’t.

Now I didn’t even want Raymond to hear about her at all.

After all, now he has become my husband.

I knew better than anyone else how much Raymond loved her.

The thought of this made me feel a stab in my heart.

Lizena will be back the day after tomorrow.

Lizena left and Raymond married me, but he never told me that he loved me.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that he was the worst option for me. Anyway, he followed what he promised on his wedding day.

The promise that there will be no other woman in his life but me.

After ascending to the throne, he changed the Empire’s law ‘on marriage’ into a monogamous channel, which made him many enemies. Naturally, the government was also dispersed.

He kept the promise he made to me. Up to this point.

An exemplary marriage, except for feelings.

I have never been sad that he does not love me.

He said from the very beginning that he couldn’t give me love, but I took the opportunity and married him.

Since he did everything in his power, I had no doubt that our marriage would be happy, even without his love.

But that was exactly before Lizena, his old love, reminded of herself.

If Raymond still loves her, we will never be happy together.

How sweet would it be to see a woman again, with whom he broke up against his will?

I just imagined the two of them together, and my breath caught in my throat.

I feel like I went back in time when I could look at this perfect couple with a stone in my heart.

At that moment, I felt a pain in my stomach.

I grabbed my stomach.

Since I already had a miscarriage, I have to be very careful. Avoid stress and not move too much.

The words spoken to me by the doctor came to mind.

After all, now I’m not alone.

Coming to my senses, I slowly took a breath.

“Forgive me, my child. Your mom has completely forgotten about you. I won’t do that anymore.”

I haven’t felt anything yet, but apparently a little life has arisen in this flat stomach.

I’m not alone anymore.

Besides my love for Raymond, I have a precious being that I must protect. So I just can’t afford to be nervous about Lizena’s return.

As I calmed my worried mind, I heard Helen’s voice and a knock on the door.

“Your Majesty, dinner is almost ready.”

“Oh, already…”

Looking out the window, I saw that it would soon be dark.

I didn’t even realize how fast time was rushing because I thought too much.

I got up from my chair so as not to be late for dinner.

* * *

I was in a hurry, but Raymond was already in the dining room.

Despite the fact that we were married, we were always only together in the evenings, so we couldn’t meet face to face in the busy morning hours.

All day I waited for us to have dinner together.

Time passed, and I felt obliged to be with him.

Today I felt especially bad, although I had seen him think about something else before.

Maybe he’s thinking about Lizena now?

Have you ever thought about me?

When everyone noticed my lateness, I hurried to apologize:

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon for being late.”

Only then did Raymond’s black eyes turn to me, as if he had just noticed me. It was a keen gaze, as if he were looking at prey on a dark night.”

“It’s okay, its me who came early.”

He looked like he didn’t care and sat down.

When I sat down, the servants quickly served food on the table.

Raymond smiled softly when he saw the tables were full of food. He said to the servants:

“Leave us.”

All the servants left the hall, and the door was locked tightly.

Raymond sighed slowly, frowning his handsome forehead slightly. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.

He wearily ran a hand over his chin, looking at me and holding a glass of wine in front of him.

The red liquid in the glass formed a whirlpool at his graceful gesture.

He told me, as usual, in a dry voice:

” I visited Duke today.”

I answered him calmly, because I decided not to be formal when we were alone.

“Yes”.

When I smiled awkwardly at him, Raymond gave me an indifferent look.

“Good”.

He kept giving me such unimportant news, and that was our entire conversation in recent days.

After the miscarriage, we became too distant from each other.

I was sad, but I wasn’t offended. I thought that was his way of dealing with sadness.

But today, oddly enough, his coldness has doubled.

I wondered what was going on here.

After the miscarriage, dirty rumors spread in the Imperial Palace, because the court doctor diagnosed me with infertility.

But he worried about his relationship with Lizena, more than anything in the world.

He’s going to have a child… I should have told him.

When I first came to the Imperial Palace, I just wanted to tell him this good news, but no more. It was too difficult to communicate.

Because even when I entered the dining room, and even when I sat down in front of him, he didn’t look at me.

I have known him for a long time, so I can judge his thoughts by the expression on his face.

He was now in a state of great sensitivity.

He seemed to be immersed in some kind of anxiety and couldn’t hide his nerves.

Lizena…

There was nothing in the world that made him so much anxious… except for her.

Why is she returning to the Empire? Will she return to the West after a short visit, or will she stay in the Empire forever?

It was something I didn’t want to hear, but it was something I definitely needed to know.

I bit my lip in bitterness and finally turned to Raymond.

“Raymond…”

“What?”

I looked into his cold eyes and said a name I didn’t want to say.

“I heard that Lizena is returning to the Empire. Is it true?”