The Stand-In Empress’S Wedding Night [EN]: Chapter 345

345. If It Wasn’t a Substitute Empress (2)

February 24, 2024

Linell flinched at the sound of knocking.

First, he had to pry off the woman who was clinging to his waist with both arms.

But she wouldn’t let go, as if his body was her lifeline.

“Do you even know who I am to be acting so impudently…?”

He didn’t think it was right to say that to a woman who was delirious and sick, so he just shut his mouth.

“Your Majesty, it is time to go to the banquet hall.”

His secretary, Raphael’s voice, was heard from outside the bathroom.

“Tell them I will not be attending the banquet tonight.”

Finding out who this woman was took precedence over the banquet.

“Pardon? Are you suddenly unwell? Shall I come inside?”

“No! Don’t come in. Go and bring the Master of the Magic Tower.”

“Are you hurt, perhaps? Did you slip on the floor? Did you strain your back when you fell? Is your head alright?”

“…….”

As he didn’t respond, Raphael began to spin more and more elaborate tales in his head.

“Your Majesty, you mustn’t injure your back of all things! If you hurt the very place you’ve never properly used so carelessly, you won’t be able to use it when you really need it later, and you’ll feel even more lonely than you do now…”

Raphael knocked incessantly on the bathroom door, rattling off unnecessary worries.

“Shut up.”

He barely swallowed the curse that threatened to spill out.

“Shut up and go get the Master of the Magic Tower, quickly!”

He commanded toward the bathroom door, looking down at Zelda’s head, buried in his chest and breathing raggedly.

“Yes, Your Majesty. But should I only bring the Master of the Magic Tower?”

“…For now.”

Yes, let’s save this woman first and then interrogate her or whatever.

Linell made up his mind.

“Understood. Your Majesty, stay as you are, don’t move unnecessarily. I’ll go and get the Master of the Magic Tower right away!”

Raphael urged him several times and hurried out of the bedroom.

“Even if I wanted to move, I couldn’t…”

Linell was lying on his side, facing Zelda, held in her arms.

He was shirtless, so he would have already felt the chill and his body temperature dropping, but for some reason, he wasn’t cold at all.

“What are you, really?”

There was no reply, but he repeated the same words several times.

It wasn’t possible to feel warm just by being close to someone with a fever, so the cause was clearly this small woman.

“She doesn’t even know who she’s holding, fearlessly pressing her body so close like this… at this rate, really… Haa.”

Linell’s labored, rough breathing brushed against Zelda’s blonde hair.

He still couldn’t see her face clearly. It was buried in his chest, so he could only see the top of her head.

He had caught a glimpse of her face when she had tumbled out of the storage box a little while ago.

It was just an ordinary woman’s face.

No, wasn’t she a bit too pretty to be ordinary?

Linell was startled by the sudden thought.

“…Crazy bastard, what are you saying?”

And about a sick woman, no less.

Haa, he sighed deeply and ran a hand over his face.

When he bent his arm to raise his hand, he inevitably ended up embracing her.

“Umm… good…”

Zelda murmured against his chest.

It was a statement that she felt good because her body was cooling down, but Linell couldn’t help but interpret the meaning of those words differently.

The area of his chest where her hot breath touched spread warmth as if he were warming himself by a bonfire.

“Is she feeling it even as she’s dying?”

Whoever she was, she was bold and amazing.

He understood, but as he wasn’t an easy man, he didn’t show any reaction.

Linell, unaware that she couldn’t see his face, arbitrarily speculated based on the reactions other women had shown him.

Still, I’m not that heartless.

Feeling inwardly pleased, he patted Zelda’s back, who continued to groan and sweat.

His clumsy hand, which had never patted anyone before, touched her back roughly and repeatedly.

Rather than patting, it was more like nudging her to get up.

“Heeung…”

Zelda reacted involuntarily to his cool touch, even in her unconscious state.

“Hey. I know you’re grateful, but there’s no need to make such… strange noises.”

“…….”

She responded to his touch without fail, but when he spoke to her, her groans subsided.

Linell, feeling uneasy when even her breathing couldn’t be heard, deliberately brought his hand to the back of her head.

Then, Zelda let out a comfortable breath again.

Linell, relieved by her breath, was quite surprised by his own actions.

He was dumbfounded by his increasingly strange feelings and tried to pull his body away, but she wouldn’t let him.

Zelda instinctively tightened her arms as if she sensed he was trying to pull away.

“Alright, alright. Cling as much as you want while you’re not in your right mind.”

Because you’ll want to faint again once you wake up and realize who I am.

As he gave up on moving, his eyelids began to droop. He felt like he could fall asleep like this.

Ironically, his mind and body were more comfortable and stable than ever.

Several minutes passed. The drowsiness that had been washing over him vanished the moment he heard Velos’s voice from outside the bathroom door.

“Your Majesty, it’s me. I heard you fell? Did you hurt your back so badly that you can’t get up? Why the back of all things… I offer my deepest condolences before the treatment.”

“That damn…”

They’re all spouting nonsense in turn.

It seemed Raphael had made a fuss to Velos as well, saying that he had slipped on the bathroom floor and hurt his back.

“Cut the crap and come in.”

It seemed better to show them the situation directly rather than explaining it with words.

At Linell’s command, the bathroom door opened.

“Oh dear, why did our unmarried Majesty suddenly fall on the floor… Huh!”

Raphael, who had entered the bathroom ahead of Velos, froze on the spot upon discovering the two people clinging to each other on the floor.

“Why are you here too?”

“W-What is going on? It’s not that you hurt your back… were you using your back?”

Raphael raised his voice in surprise, but a secretive smile appeared on his face.

“Master of the Magic Tower, sew our secretary’s mouth shut.”

He glared at Raphael and spoke commandingly to Velos.

“What is really going on?”

Velos was just as surprised.

When Raphael had first come to him, he had thought that the Emperor had slipped on the bathroom floor and slightly strained his back, or that his body temperature had dropped sharply while bathing, but good heavens.

Moreover, when he entered the bathroom, he could only see Linell’s back at first, so he really thought he had slipped on the floor.

But as he got closer, he saw a woman nestled in the Emperor’s arms, lying on his side!

“Don’t misunderstand.”

“It’s hard not to misunderstand in this position, isn’t it?”

Velos replied with a dry cough.

Well, that was true.

If he had witnessed Velos or Raphael in this state in their rooms, he would have said the same thing.

“Who is she?”

Velos asked.

“Don’t know.”

“You’re holding a woman you don’t even know so desperately?”

“It’s not me, it’s this woman who’s holding me, can’t you see?”

“I can see. I can also see that Your Majesty is holding her in the same position.”

At Velos’s words, Linell finally realized that his arms were also around the woman.

“What… what happened…?”

“I think that’s the question we should be asking, Your Majesty. Where did you bring her from?”

Raphael asked seriously.

“Seeing as she’s already in the bathroom upon first meeting, did you fall in love at first sight?”

Velos asked with a slightly playful tone, leaning in to see the face of the unconscious Zelda.

“She popped out of there.”

Linell pointed with his chin at the storage box where Zelda had been.

Velos and Raphael made even stranger expressions at those words and stared at the storage box.

“…Could it be Prince Tessler’s gift?”

Raphael rolled his eyes and cautiously offered his opinion.

What nonsense.

“Hah, quite the hot gift.”

He chuckled, inadvertently uttering those words as he felt the warm body temperature emanating from Zelda’s body.

“Wait, I was wondering why the temperature here was so high, but it’s not because of the water in the tub, it’s because of the person in Your Majesty’s arms. I think we should move her to the bed for treatment?”

Velos sensed Zelda’s fever in the meantime.

“Yes, take a look at her condition. She’s not even groaning anymore, she seems to be completely out of it.”

Linell, who had been holding the limp Zelda, left the bathroom and laid her straight down on the bed.

While Velos examined Zelda’s energy with both hands, he put his clothes back on and approached the bed.

“What’s wrong with her that she keeps losing consciousness?”

“It’s not just a fever from being sick.”

Velos said with a serious expression.

“Then…”

“She’s carrying a Hwansin [a divine spirit or energy], which is causing the fever. To think that this woman was that child back then…”

To meet her here like this?

Velos recalled the story of Zelda that he had heard from his disciple Logan 12 years ago.

“A Hwansin, like the one that was in your body 250 years ago?”

Linell raised an eyebrow, recalling something he had once heard from Velos.

“Yes. I need to see Logan right away. I’ll tell you the details after I get a magic potion from Logan.”

“Alright. But this woman… you’re not going to leave her here as she is, are you?”

“Her name is Zelda von Troba. While I go to meet Logan, Your Majesty will have to take care of Zelda.”

“Why me?”

Linell frowned.

“It’s not a loss for Your Majesty either. Your body temperature has risen. Your energy has also become more stable.”

Velos said, examining Linell’s body with both hands in the air.

“That’s because of this woman, no, Zelda?”

“Yes. Your Majesty should be feeling it better than anyone else, shouldn’t you?”

Linell couldn’t deny Velos’s words.

But,

“…It’s uncomfortable. You take her out. Take her to that magician Logan and feed her a potion, or take her to your room.”

“If I were to carry a young lady from the Kingdom of Shatonil, who was also in the royal family, back and forth at this hour, wouldn’t that cause unnecessary misunderstandings? And just as Your Majesty’s energy has stabilized, Your Majesty’s hypothermia is also helping Zelda.”

“That’s ridiculous. My body has never been beneficial to anyone. What nonsense are you talking about?”

Linell scoffed self-deprecatingly.

“You’re acting like a fever reducer for Zelda. That’s why she was hugging you so tightly, even unconsciously. Not because she likes you.”

“?”

Who said anything about that?

Linell was quite displeased by that particular point that Velos had mentioned.

“Well, I’ll just keep an eye on her, so hurry up and get the potion. Or bring that Logan guy. I need to rest too.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I’ve always known that Your Majesty is a very kind person.”

Velos left with those cheesy words and hurried off to meet Logan.

“I’ll be going too.”

Raphael turned to follow Velos.

“Why are you leaving?”

“Well, I feel a sense of pressure that I should, perhaps?”

“Who’s putting pressure on you?”

“Your Majesty’s instincts…?”

That was Raphael’s intuition.

Linell cursed under his breath, but he didn’t stop Raphael.

In the end, Raphael left the bedroom as well, and he was left alone with Zelda again, just like before.

“This is driving me crazy.”

Linell was tired in many ways.

The comfort he felt after a long time met with fatigue, and his eyes began to close again, and his posture began to falter.

As time went on, his body, which had been sitting on the bed, gradually began to take up more space on the bed.

One hour later.

Velos, who said he would be back soon, didn’t come, and Zelda’s consciousness returned first.

‘Where is this? Who is this man?’

Zelda, who had opened her eyes, raised herself up and looked down at the strange man lying on his side towards her.

“Is this a dream? I must be dreaming…”

Otherwise, she wouldn’t feel so drowsy and her body wouldn’t feel so cool.

She had been taking magic potions ever since she had been scarred by the fire, but she had never felt so refreshed.

How long had it been since her head felt so clear and light?

She hadn’t even taken a magic potion today?

Yet, her body felt not only perfectly fine but even refreshed, so it must be a dream.

Moreover, the man’s face, illuminated by the light, didn’t feel real at all.

Zelda gazed at the sleeping Linell’s face as if she were admiring it. It even made her wonder if he was the male lead in the romance novels she usually enjoyed with Bonnis.

Come to think of it, that male lead also had black hair, didn’t he?

Could it be that God had taken pity on her life and sent her into the world of that novel?

She carefully raised her hand and touched the sleeping Linell’s hair.

She could feel it. It wasn’t an illusion.

This time, she mustered more courage and placed her hand on his forehead.

“Huh?”

It was too cold to be the skin of a living person.

It was like a person who had just been pulled out of the ice.

“D, did he die?”

Zelda was startled and turned his eyes inside out.

Then, she brought one of her index fingers under his nose.

A cold breeze touched her finger.

Fortunately, he was breathing, but it was as cold as the biting wind blowing in the middle of winter.

“You have bad habits.”

The ice man opened his eyes.

“W, who are you?”

“Someone you can’t even imagine.”

“Is this perhaps… a dream?”

Zelda asked, looking down at him with wide eyes.

“If it’s a dream, do you think you’d be in bed with a man like this there?”

…What is he saying?

Zelda looked at Linell, whose tone was quite arrogant, with disapproving eyes.

“You have bad habits, and even your eyes are impure.”

He also sat up, sending her an unpleasant gaze.

“This is a dream, wake up. You’ll wake up when I say one, two, three.”

Zelda flinched her shoulders, closed her eyes tightly, and counted down as if she were chanting a spell, folding her fingers one by one.

“One, two, three, four, five, six! It’s not a dream. It’s true that you’re someone I can’t even see in my dreams.”

Linell quickly counted the numbers in her place and chuckled as he leaned back against the head of the bed.

“Who… who are you? If it’s a dream, wake up! If you’re a ghost, begone!”

Zelda shouted, wielding a pillow at Linell.

“Is it okay if I’m the Emperor?”

“If you’re His Imperial Majesty, of course… Huh? Eeeek?!”

Zelda’s face turned pale in an instant.

The Emperor? Could it be that Emperor of the Lapion Empire who is supposed to arrive at the royal palace today?

If what this ice man was saying was true, she was as good as dead.

To dare wield a pillow at the Emperor.

The edge of the pillow even grazed his temple just now.

Zelda’s lips trembled.

Yes. Now that’s the expression I like.

Linell straightened his head, which had been tilted by the pillow, and whispered to her in a languid voice.

“What are you going to do? You’re in big trouble now.”