Ereina was walking awkwardly in the clothes worn by the northern natives after a long time.
After a year, the pants stood out too much among the elegantly dressed aristocrats.
Unlike the garments of the nobles with loose sleeves and ornaments, the clothes she was wearing were plain and only highlighted her small figure.
Ereina had a headache with a sense of the damage that everyone seemed to laugh at her.
Everyone in the audience was turning on her as she dragged her horse to the stadium with a flushed face.
A roaring roar-.
Numerous lumps of words were shot down at her. Ereina didn’t understand any of those words, but she accepted them painfully.
It has always been the case since she came to the capital.
The lonely, slender reed was shaken by the wind waves, unable to bend as it was.
It was only such a position.
The position of the Empress.
Ereina barely managed to raise her head. Then, she could see the stadium covered with dust.
The northerners rode horses long before they learned the actions of walking, running, and crawling.
It was a rapport that people from other regions of the empire have now forgotten. It was the words of those who once conquered all the lands that their horses’ hooves reached.
Before Ereina became a stutter, she learned magic from her mother.
After her mother died, her tongue hardened because of the shock, and she was ridiculed by her half-brother and father for being a woman who could not speak.
Every time she couldn’t control her heart, which seemed to swell up and explode, she ran with Kendell, the horse next to her in the mountain in the north.
Running, or practicing magic. Then she thought she would live. She thought that she could survive.
‘…..but this isn’t my hometown.’
Already the people of her country have forgotten to run with horses.
For the first time, Ereina felt fear as she gripped the reins of her beloved Kendell.
Whether Kendell knew the owner’s fear or not, he cried loudly, “Hee-heem-.” Ereina sniffled as she looked into Kendell’s brown eyes after a year.
She wished she could deceive him because of the dust. She took her eyes off Kendell and looked forward again.
Then at the very end of the dusty field stood a beautiful woman. Even though it was her first time wearing a northerners equestrian suit, she looked truly beautiful as if she were painted without any awkwardness.
She tied up her red hair without a hitch, and she looked as innocent as a daffodil.
Her eyes, shining clear without fear or any ulterior motive, were looking at Ereina.
Ereina couldn’t tell what her eyes meant. She felt as if the woman was telling her to cheer up, or she felt like it meant nothing.
‘……no, it can’t mean nothing.’
Ereina thought, clutching the reins with her sweaty hand.
She learned a lot in a year.
The people of the capital, especially the nobility, have never given anything without a price.
‘You want me to be in the eyes of the emperor. Why?’
For the sake of the poor empress, Ereina’s love-. It would be nice to hear that, but there was no one who would help for such a pure reason.
Ereina raised her head when she recalled the emperor who had shown interest in her for the first time.
Lucian Val Ariakne was a man who didn’t need love.
He was able to win the imperial throne simply by choosing a suitable candidate as his future wife without love. And there were many candidates who directly jumped into the fire pit to be chosen by the emperor.
However, Ereina was the one who was chosen from among them.
In the imperial court, people said that Ereina was chosen because she was the weakest and most vulnerable of them. And that was the reason why she had no dignity in the empress’s position.
However, there was something they didn’t know about. Even if she was picked from among the ashes that jumped into the fire pit, Ereina was always proud of herself being picked from among them.
It was because she was in love with Lucian Val Ariakne, and also because she wanted it the most fervently.
Ereina turned her head toward the young emperor. Her determined brown eyes were dimly alive.
‘I won’t miss it. It’s an opportunity that you carelessly have given me.’
Ereina nodded politely to Juliana across the field. And just before the horn sounded, she jumped on top of Kendell.