Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 44

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 44
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Edwin’s eyes slid away from Lina’s gaze.
He felt a pang of guilt—he’d left before completing his task properly.
‘If only that raccoon of a High Priest hadn’t changed the date of the Grand Prayer Ceremony.’
Edwin found himself disliking the temple even more.
From the war’s earliest days, the temple had drawn a line, insisting it belonged to no secular nation.
The Alliance of Kingdoms believed in the Minos Faith too, so they’d hoped to attach themselves to whichever side won.
‘Then, once the Empire began to look victorious, they started clinging to us.’
Offering to dispatch priests to treat the wounded, proposing ceremonies to pray for victory—all of it calculated.
Edwin wasn’t generous enough to accept the temple’s shamelessness.
He’d rebuffed every helping hand they extended for show.
‘Not that they offered anything of real value anyway.’
Yet he couldn’t refuse their proposal to hold a ceremony in honor of the fallen soldiers and citizens after the war ended.
The Minos Faith claimed the majority of the Empire’s population, and it was difficult to sever ties completely.
The moment Edwin accepted the temple’s suggestion, the High Priest inflated the proceedings as if he’d been waiting for exactly this.
The temple had lost public favor by neglecting even civilian casualties during the war.
A successful Grand Prayer Ceremony was meant to bury the negative sentiment.
Reviving the old procedure of lighting the Sacred Flame from the long-defunct Old Temple was part of that design.
‘And incidentally, it’s a way to needle me a little.’
His intentions were transparent, but since the ceremony nominally honored the war’s victims, Edwin decided to let it pass—just once.
Walking for several hours presented no hardship to him.
The Empire’s early losses had been heavy, casualties numerous; expanding the Grand Prayer Ceremony’s scale was something Edwin wanted as well.
‘If only the temple hadn’t rescheduled it to the day I’d set aside to meet with Diaz.’
The temple’s whimsy had made things difficult for Everett Rohas alone.
The real Everett Rohas, that is.
The temple’s arbitrary change of the Grand Prayer Ceremony’s date was plainly beyond Edwin’s patience.
After reading the temple’s notification letter, Edwin had considered canceling his attendance.
But Kyle had talked him out of it.
Word had already spread among the people that the Emperor would attend the ceremony; backing out now was impossible.
That would play directly into the temple’s design—making it appear the Emperor disrespected the divine.
Even if the temple had lost some public confidence, the vast majority of the Empire’s citizens followed the Minos Faith.
Distrust of the temple and faith in Minos were separate matters.
Edwin was not particularly devout, but successive emperors had positioned themselves as Minos’s chosen, and he couldn’t ignore the temple entirely.
In the end, Edwin had no choice but to accept Kyle’s persuasion.
He’d decided to make a perfunctory appearance.
But he had no intention of directly engaging the temple’s petty games.
Kyle’s nagging had forced him to light the Sacred Flame himself, but Edwin slipped away at the first opportunity.
After exchanging clothes with Everett Rohas.
‘A flame that burns regardless of who lights it.’
The notion that only a legitimate emperor could kindle the Sacred Flame was pure legend, the sort of thing fanatics believed.
Neither Edwin nor Kyle was particularly devout, though Kyle surprisingly held to such superstitions.
Transporting the Sacred Flame to the main temple fell to Everett Rohas instead—a man of similar appearance and build who’d frequently served as Edwin’s double during the war.
The road from the Old Temple to the grand temple was cordoned off, ensuring no one could approach closely enough to see.
The High Priest who received the Sacred Flame would see Everett’s face instead.
‘It’s a pity I won’t see that raccoon’s look of confusion firsthand.’
Lina’s misunderstanding differed somewhat from the truth, but the fact remained—he hadn’t done what needed doing.
What the temple or nobility would find outrageous, Edwin had executed without a second thought. Yet before Lina’s violet eyes, an unfamiliar twinge of conscience stirred within him.
‘The temple inserted unnecessary procedures. There’s no harm in skipping them.’
The temple had started this quarrel first, Edwin reasoned in his own defense.
Having chosen the most peaceful path within the bounds of not actually overthrowing the temple—the one presuming to challenge him—he had no reason to feel uncertain.
Though it was hardly an argument to make before someone who’d spared the very assassins threatening her own life.
Opening his mouth, Edwin hoped his explanation would sound as plausible as possible to Lina.
“I had business at the Imperial Palace. That’s why I came early.”
Meeting Lina had been a prior commitment, and she mattered more to him than the temple.
Since he was speaking truth, Edwin’s tone remained composed.
“Did you finish what you needed to do at the palace?”
At his assurance that he wasn’t shirking, Lina’s eyes regained their warmth.
Though she seemed to have accepted ‘his business at the palace’ as something other than their appointment.
Instead of correcting her mistake, Edwin smiled slightly.
“Yes.”
Edwin gently took Lina’s hand and nodded.
“Lucky for us. If there’d been nothing keeping you at the palace, Rohas would’ve had no choice but to walk all the way to the temple.”
Lina laughed, raising her free thumb.
“Shall we go?”
Unlike Edwin, who tensed whenever their hands touched, Lina seemed quite accustomed to it by now.
She began walking without much thought, leading his hand along with her.
‘Right now, all I hear is the sound of my own heartbeat.’
Edwin found that slightly disappointing.
But he didn’t let it show to Lina.
He didn’t want to appear clumsy before her.
Hand in hand, the two of them walked the second half of the Summer Rose Garden they’d been unable to see the last time, when darkness had fallen.
Thanks to hastily increasing the number of Magic Stone lanterns, the interior was brighter than before.
For a while, neither spoke.
After changing the type of Magic Stone in the lanterns, the Summer Rose Garden had taken on an even more storybook quality. Lina’s eyes couldn’t seem to leave the roses.
Edwin’s mood, which had dipped slightly earlier, slowly improved at the sight.
When Lina concentrated on something, she tended to fall silent.
Through repeated experience, Edwin had learned to quiet himself as well, his earlier impulse to speak first fading.
He enjoyed watching her when she was absorbed in something, and the silence felt peaceful.
Edwin walked a half-step behind Lina.
To take in the whole of her.
When her lips parted slightly—that small, unconscious gesture that appeared when she was deeply immersed—he’d thought it endearing about twenty times over.
But then, after a long span fixed on the roses, her gaze began to divide.
That enigmatic violet gaze, colored by some emotion he couldn’t quite decipher, touched him and retreated repeatedly. Edwin felt his composure unravel.
‘Was she not admiring the flowers? What’s she thinking about?’
Contrary to his expectations, she seemed no longer absorbed in the garden’s beauty.
Her expression had grown taut—not the look of someone simply observing flowers.
The summer roses were at their peak, yet neither Edwin nor Lina could focus on them anymore.
That instinct he’d honed in battle, the sense that had saved him and his soldiers countless times on the battlefield, suddenly activated.
Where moments before there had been quiet peace, now there was the hush before a storm.
Each time her restless gaze found him, his unease intensified.
‘Did I make some mistake?’
Edwin searched his recent conduct, and when he found nothing obvious, his mind spiraled backward through every meeting they’d had.
There were more than a few moments that nagged at him from the very first encounter.
The way her gaze kept returning to him was unsettling.
Lina might look soft, but her resolve was firm; she didn’t tend to dwell long on worries.
If something displeased her, she would say so honestly.
‘Could it be something difficult for her to voice?’
If there was something among the things Lina struggled with—something she couldn’t easily put into words—
Only one possibility came to mind.
More precisely, that one possibility loomed so large it eclipsed all others.
Was it that?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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