The Stand-In Empress’S Wedding Night [EN]: Chapter 323

323. Father, You’ve Matured

2024.02.02.

Among the honored guests, Rosie and Melanie chose to stay in the palace they resided in during their time as imperial concubines.

Zelda thoughtfully suggested this, believing it would be more comfortable for the honored guests than using separate palaces on different levels.

Besides, the West Palace, where the concubines used to live, was currently entirely vacant.

“How does it feel to be back after so long?”

Hector asked Melanie as he entered the bedroom.

“It brings back old memories.”

Melanie replied, her face filled with reminiscence.

“Ah, those lonely days as a concubine, unnoticed by the Emperor?”

Melanie glared at Hector’s teasing tone.

“Just kidding.”

Hector sat on the bed, pulled Melanie onto his lap, and laughed.

“I can’t even get angry because it’s true.”

Melanie coolly acknowledged her past.

“You weren’t lonely after you met me. That’s what matters.”

Hector’s large hand stroked Melanie’s small face.

“I was pretty, wasn’t I?”

Melanie asked, poking her cheek with her index finger.

“Even our Mao doesn’t do things like this.”

Hector grabbed Melanie’s hand and pulled it down, but secretly, he thought his wife was cuter than his young daughter.

“I do it because Mao doesn’t.”

Melanie said primly, then pressed her lips firmly against Hector’s cheek.

Melanie was a step above her daughter in terms of charm.

“Was I pretty? Is that why you fell for me?”

When Melanie asked again, Hector retorted,

“Did I fall for you first?”

It seemed like her memory had been manipulated.

“Who was it that threw pomegranates – that weren’t even that good – to seduce me?”

Hector recalled that memory.

Melanie couldn’t argue when the pomegranate story came up.

Hector seized the opportunity and continued his questioning.

“I seemed really cool, didn’t I?”

“I admit it. I’d never seen anyone so handsome other than His Majesty Linell.”

“?”

*Is this what they call having rose-tinted glasses?*

Hector burst out laughing.

It wasn’t that he thought he was ugly. But back then, there were plenty of handsome people in the Rafion Imperial Family.

Prince Norton, Grand Duke Martins, and the Master of the Magic Tower were strutting around the Imperial Palace.

Besides, even though he was crazy, Prince Tesler was also staying in the Rafion Imperial Palace at the time.

It was a bit embarrassing to compare their looks to his.

“Do you still think so now?”

However, Melanie’s subjective evaluation was more important to Hector than an objective assessment.

“Of course. I know for sure now that we’ve all gathered again.”

“Know what?”

“That my husband is the sexiest.”

“Well, that’s a subjective judgment, but if my wife says so, then so be it.”

Hector’s cheek twitched.

“Even judging objectively, my husband is the best.”

Melanie exclaimed in a confident tone.

Hector chuckled, feeling good even if it was just empty words, and stroked the waist of Melanie, who was making a fuss on his lap.

“Thank you for the thought.”

“It’s not just something I said to make you feel good.”

“Really? Then what is it that I’m the best at, even judging objectively?”

It was a question he asked without much expectation, but Melanie’s expression was quite serious as she answered.

“My husband is the biggest.”

“……What is.”

“Huh?”

“You have to specify what that is. If you just say that… Melanie, there’s room for misunderstanding.”

“Ah, of course, I’m talking about height. Height!”

Melanie burst into laughter, clutching her stomach, wondering what this man was thinking.

“I might be the biggest in other things too.”

“For example?”

“Like my head, my hands, my feet…”

“I think you left something out?”

Melanie squinted and asked.

“I can’t say that part because I can’t verify it.”

At Hector’s answer, Melanie burst into laughter again, which she had barely stopped.

The two naturally lay down on the bed and looked at each other.

“Anyway, my life has been fun since I met you.”

Melanie whispered, touching Hector’s Adam’s apple as it moved up and down, then raised her voice again and continued,

“Oh, we were talking in the drawing room yesterday and I said we’re still hot for each other, you know? But no one believed it!”

“Why not?”

“They said it couldn’t be true since we’ve been married for seven years. Only Empress Zelda sympathized, and Empress Rosie and Catherine doubted it.”

“Then let’s brag again later.”

“About what?”

“That we made love even after coming here.”

“Are you… getting a signal now?”

“I’ve been getting it since a while ago.”

Hector took off his uniform jacket.

“But today is a bit of a dangerous day.”

“What is?”

“It’s a day when we might have a fourth child.”

“That’s not a dangerous day, it’s a blessed day. Do you not want a fourth child?”

“No~? Children are proof of our affection. But, how much time is left until dinner?”

Melanie punched Hector’s chest and twisted her body, then asked the time.

“This much is left.”

Hector looked at his watch and held up four fingers.

“Enough time to make love four times?”

“……Well, I didn’t mean it that way, but four hours isn’t an impossible number of times.”

Hector tilted his head and kissed her.

Memories from seven years ago came flooding back, and the two people’s movements became more and more intense.

Knock, knock, knock.

A polite knock echoed through the bedroom.

“Who is it?”

Hector got up and straightened his clothes.

“I wonder? A servant?”

Melanie muttered with a disappointed expression.

Hector told them to come in, and the bedroom door opened timidly.

“Mao? Did you come alone?”

In the Aclato Kingdom, the twins always went together, so it was unusual for Mao to appear alone.

“Theo is still at the main palace. In Princess Lily’s room.”

“What are they doing there?”

“Moira and Moni are there too. They’re all playing there.”

“So you came back to the West Palace alone? From the main palace?”

Hector asked in a surprised voice.

“It’s a simple thing to ask the servants to do, what’s the big deal.”

Mao pulled up a chair and sat facing Hector and Melanie.

“Did something happen? Did you fight with someone?”

Melanie looked at Mao’s gloomy face with worried eyes.

“Am I a child? To be fighting.”

“You fight because you’re a child.”

Hector said mockingly, and Mao tilted her head, then,

“Then did Father only become an adult recently?”

“……What?”

“I heard you fought a lot on the sea until a few years ago. Because of the pirate business.”

Mao asked precisely.

He didn’t know when pirate ‘deeds’ had turned into pirate ‘business,’ but he was just as embarrassed.

“……Who said that?”

Hector couldn’t deny it in good conscience, so he chose to interrogate the person who revealed the truth.

“No, Mao. He never did that.”

Melanie blurted out a lie in embarrassment.

That’s something the children can find out when they become adults.

There was no need for his young daughter to know that her father, who was like a mountain to her, had made a name for himself as a pirate.

“Moira and Moni don’t lie.”

If the source of the rumor was them, there was no use denying it.

Mao was bound to believe Moira and Moni more than her parents.

Even though they tended to exaggerate things, they didn’t make up things that didn’t happen, so the princes and princesses of each country had quite a bit of trust in the two of them.

The same was true for the adults who delivered letters and greetings every other day.

Still, he was grateful that they had softened the word pirate ‘deeds’ to pirate ‘business’ when talking to the children.

“Father hasn’t done pirate business… for several years. It means he doesn’t fight anymore.”

“You’ve matured late. Congratulations.”

“……Okay. Thank you.”

Hector answered absentmindedly and let out a hollow laugh.

He couldn’t get angry when he saw Mao’s face, which sincerely thought it was a good thing.

On the other hand, Mao sighed as if the ground was sinking, as if she had some worries.

“Baby? What’s wrong.”

Melanie asked soothingly.

“Mother, I have something to ask you.”

“Huh? Yes, go ahead.”

“You said yielding is a virtue, right?”

Mao brought up what Melanie always said when she fought with her twin brother Theo.

The cause of the fight was mostly that they were clamoring to read a new book first.

“That’s right. Yielding is a virtue. But why? Did something happen that you have to yield?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to yield. What should I do?”

For the usually gentle Mao to say that, it seemed like she wanted something very badly.

Hector and Melanie also became serious at Mao’s unusual expression.

“What is it that you have to yield?”

“A man.”

“What, what?”

“What did you say?”

Melanie and Hector were shocked at the same time.

Words they had never expected came out of Mao’s mouth.

“If I yield, but I still like that man, what should I do? Should I become a concubine?”

“Just take him.”

Hector blindly offered a solution without even knowing what was going on.

It was a thought worthy of a pirate king.

“The problem is that the opponent is too strong. They’re headstrong. And ignorant…”

Mao took off the shoes she was wearing and shook them upside down.

Dirt fell out of the shoes.

It was clear that Princess Lily had put dirt in her shoes.

She hadn’t seen it directly, but she had witnessed Princess Lily taking dirt with a small shovel in the garden and putting it in her bag, so Princess Lily was the most likely suspect.

She had been talking to Prince Rams in Princess Lily’s room at the main palace for a short time, and she had taken off her shoes under the table, but she didn’t know when the dirt had been put in.

However, when she put on her shoes, Princess Lily seemed to be staring at her and sending a warning with her eyes.

Mao also felt something rising up inside her, so she pretended to be nonchalant and left the room. Then she got into the carriage waiting outside the main palace, and somehow she had been wearing shoes with dirt in them all the way to the West Palace.

“If Theo was as tall and handsome as Prince Rams, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Who are you talking about? Prince Rams? Didn’t Prince Rams not come this time?”

Lily quickly retorted at Hector’s question.

“He arrived at the main palace earlier.”

“Oh my, did you already greet him?”

Melanie asked with a smile.

“Did I just greet him? I’m on my way back from giving him my heart too.”

“!”

“!”

It was a new side of her daughter, who she thought was just docile.

Hector and Melanie’s mouths dropped open at Mao’s words.

“But Mao, is the man you’re going to yield to by any chance Prince Rams?”

Melanie said, trying to hold back her laughter.

“That’s right.”

“So you’re wondering whether to yield Prince Rams to Princess Lily or not?”

“Princess Lily.”

“What? What is this…!”

Things were getting strangely twisted.

“What is Theo even doing?”

She had told him so many times to stick close to Princess Lily.

Melanie asked, erasing her smile.

“I don’t know. He was just picking his nose.”

***

“Princess, a messenger bird has arrived from the Imperial Palace.”

In a shabby inn in Rafion Imperial City, a woman entered the room and said to Resilia.

“Really?”

Resilia, who had been pacing anxiously in the room, smiled brightly.

It had been seven years since she was stripped of her status as a princess, but there were still forces that followed the legitimate siblings of the Shattonil Kingdom.

They were also out of power, so they couldn’t be of much help. However, they were quite useful for small errands or as informants.

Thanks to these followers, Resilia was able to live in the monastery without much inconvenience.

It was far from royal life, but it was incomparably more comfortable than when she was in the dungeon under the spire.

Her brother, Prince Tesler, was also living as a monk in a monastery far from the capital of the Shattonil Kingdom.

They couldn’t meet or write letters because of the royal family’s surveillance, so sometimes followers would travel between the two monasteries to directly convey the siblings’ well-being.

The two were wandering around monasteries in the Shattonil Kingdom and the Rafion Empire.

If they settled in one place for a long time, there was a risk that they could gather forces there, so they had to move monasteries once a year, going back and forth between the two countries.

Resilia was scheduled to live in a monastery in the Rafion Empire for a year starting this month, so she was moving there.

She was lucky.

It was a monastery about an hour away from the Rafion Empire’s Imperial City, but she decided to rest at an inn in the Imperial City for two days.

One of the knights guarding Resilia was also a follower, so if he accompanied her, she was allowed to go out briefly.

The person who had just sent the messenger bird, Elsa, was a servant working in the Shattonil Royal Family.

Elsa had also informed her of the shocking news that Grand Duke Martins, who had ascended to the throne, had adopted Melody, the daughter of Pesilini.

As Melody’s close servant, she had also followed her to the Rafion Empire for Princess Lily’s birthday party.

The letter Elsa sent through the messenger bird contained the news that Prince Rams of the Patsha Empire, who had not arrived at the birthday party yesterday, had arrived at the Imperial Palace today.

Resilia thought that God had heard her prayers.

“Our Rams has come!”

“Yes, he arrived this afternoon.”

“My son has come. Finally…”

It was as if Rams had come to save her.

“Princess, what are you going to do?”

The follower who received the messenger bird’s letter asked cautiously.

“I have to go see my son.”

Resilia answered, clenching her teeth.